This review contains spoilers
So, the first part of the Pokemon Violet DLC is here. Its been out for a while and I've had it since release, but hadn't really gotten to it until now. I actually hadn't done some of the post game stuff in the base game so I went and did that yesterday before getting through this DLC campaign. I really wanted to love this considering that I did really like the base game despite its problems, but I think this DLC was pretty mid overall; it doesn't feel like much of an expansion considering how small the new region, Kitakami, can be. I suppose they did it this way because its a two-parter, but it's still a tad disappointing.
I don't need to have a gameplay section since this is basically just more content added to Scarlet/Violet, so I'm just going to do a summary of the game in one of my trademark longwinded paragraphs. I could talk about the weird performance stuff or the fact that the game's environments look horrible, but either I'm getting too used to seeing modern Pokémon bug out or I just don't care anymore since The Pokémon Company doesn't seem to care either. Aside from some slowdown spikes, though, the game ran well for me, so I suppose that counts for something. Also, the level curve here is a little strange to me: maybe I overleveled my team but I entered here with mid-70s and got out with early Level 80s and I was way higher level than everything here, even the legendaries. Anyway, even for Pokémon standards, this story felt very short and simple. Granted, I never played the Sword/Shield DLC, so maybe The Teal Mask is comparable to how long The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra were, but man this felt like it was over quick even when doing my best to explore all of Kitakami and catch every Pokemon I saw. There's only six new Pokémon in this game, four of which are legendaries you can only catch after finishing the story and one of which is a new evolution to an old Pokémon. The rest are just old 'mons sold back to you through DLC (not a fan of how the games do this now). On the plus side, I did like the new characters introduced: you got the legendary Ogerpon and the rival sister/brother duo of Carmine and Kieran. There's some other very minor characters but they really don't do much of anything for the plot, the real meat of it is with the duo of Carmine and Kieran. They're getting their own paragraph since I found them really interesting to talk about.
Basically, the story of this game is that you're going to Kitakami as part of a field trip and, while you're there, your mission is to go find and read signposts about the city's folklore. Real exciting, I know. Things do amp up a bit once you meet Kieran and Carmine, though. As it turns out, the legend of Ogerpon, otherwise known as simply "the ogre", as the myths have it is wrong. It paints the ogre as a violent Pokémon that destroyed a village, when, in reality, it was an outcast shunned by the village. Think Frankenstein, but the monster is really cute and doesn't actually pose a threat. The "Loyal Three" are portrayed in the myths as heroes chasing off the ogre, but in reality they're basically a bunch of cowardly thugs ganging up on the ogre for...seemingly no reason? You never get their perspective on why they're doing this, although they can't speak so its not like they can just tell you. The idea of false myths being passed along generations and people needing to reconcile with the truth once its shown to them would be awesome if this wasn't a Pokémon story, where this stuff never gets explored in any kind of depth. The villagers just accept Ogerpon back with little resistance once Kieran tells them the truth, though I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself here. Basically, the main goals of this story are having the characters discover the truth behind Ogerpon, go beat up the Loyal Three after we accidentally freed them since they stole Ogerpon's masks, and then find a way to reintegrate Ogerpon into the village...and, yes, find all three folklore signs, which, funnily enough, you don't do until after you've already done almost all of the important story stuff first. I suppose this story works fine, but it felt rather middling and unimpactful, and it also squanders any chance it had to be emotionally compelling.
I'm conflicted on what to think about Carmine and Kieran, a sister and brother duo that are the closest thing to this game's rivals. I like how Carmine is very cocky, two-faced, and easy to anger, since we could always use some more mean rivals in Pokémon. She does mellow out considerably later in the story, but even after she's still got an inflated ego and sees herself as the leader. You understand more about her once she reveals at the very end that she was worried that her homeland was being turned into a tourist hotspot for idiots before you proved her wrong, so it sorta makes sense why she was so dismissive of you and arrogant in the beginning. Kieran, though...I really am part of the Kieran defense squad, even if towards the end he's pretty irrationally spiteful. I was surprised to see that I really resonated with his character, even felt like I'd be a little similar to him as a kid if my life circumstances were similar to his. My biggest point against Carmine is that she's a jerk to Kieran, who is already a pretty shy timid kid and obviously has low self esteem. To give her some credit, she does treat him better later in the story and shows concern for his rapidly deteriorating self worth, but I still don't like how she treated him before. It's hinted that the kid is a shut-in and has little to no friends; the grandparents raising him are happy he made a new friend (the player), implying its a rare occasion for him, and of course Carmine teases him about it. At a certain point in the story, you all have to keep a secret from Kieran eventually, but this originally spawns from her not wanting him to know just because she thinks he'd be annoying about it. To clarify, this refers to the whole subplot of you and Carmine encountering Ogerpon briefly, and she wants you not to tell Kieran because he's absolutely obsessed with all things Ogerpon. She completely fails to understand why he would be upset that he's being lied to despite saying she's just trying to protect him, blaming it on teenage angst. Yea, part of that is angst (he gets really upset constantly losing battles to you and bottles up that anger), but another part of it is also that he is very much in the know he's being lied to. It takes until Kieran freaks out in rage for Carmine to realize her mistake...except Kieran is the one to apologize and she only apologizes to him after he already did. Early on, she is incredibly bossy to him and she likes to chastise him for "talking back". I know that siblings tend to be jerks to each other, so I get why they'd portray her this way, but Kieran didn't do anything to deserve this treatment and you can't call her out on her behavior. However, I think the thing about Kieran's character that will divide some people is that he gets very insecure about Ogerpon liking you more than him. It's not anyone's fault, but he grows spiteful towards you and Carmine for it. The way I personally understood this is that its like Ogerpon was an autistic special interest (I have autism so I can accurately compare) for Kieran, and since he seems to have basically nothing else going good for him in life, it kinda makes sense to me that he's so bitter about this. He saw the ogre as a hero even when everyone else didn't and he seems to have projected a lot of himself onto Ogerpon. His sister either doesn't care for or doesn't let him express his special interest and even mocks him for it before she ends up getting wrapped up in the quest to prove Ogerpon's innocence. Of course he also has basically no self esteem (he's shy, often degrades himself, puts others before himself, and assumes you're mocking him when you have to keep the secret about Ogerpon from him) and it doesn't help that he now sees one of his only friends - the player character - as someone that's better than him in every way. Really it makes sense to me why he snaps near the end of the story, although I wish that teaser at the end didn't tease him being in the next DLC expansion like a damn MCU supervillain. Needless to say, I liked this duo a lot, especially Kieran. They kind of singlehandedly carry this DLC; it'd be very boring without them imo.
Overall, "Pokemon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero - Part 1: The Teal Mask" (I'm sorry I really wanted an opportunity to use this long title lol) is ultimately just very middle-of-the-road, even for Pokémon standards. Not good, but not bad either. By far the most interesting thing about it imo is Carmine and Kieran as characters, which isn't really something to carry a whole DLC on. Unfortunately I gotta give this three stars, a whole star lower than my review of the base game.
I don't need to have a gameplay section since this is basically just more content added to Scarlet/Violet, so I'm just going to do a summary of the game in one of my trademark longwinded paragraphs. I could talk about the weird performance stuff or the fact that the game's environments look horrible, but either I'm getting too used to seeing modern Pokémon bug out or I just don't care anymore since The Pokémon Company doesn't seem to care either. Aside from some slowdown spikes, though, the game ran well for me, so I suppose that counts for something. Also, the level curve here is a little strange to me: maybe I overleveled my team but I entered here with mid-70s and got out with early Level 80s and I was way higher level than everything here, even the legendaries. Anyway, even for Pokémon standards, this story felt very short and simple. Granted, I never played the Sword/Shield DLC, so maybe The Teal Mask is comparable to how long The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra were, but man this felt like it was over quick even when doing my best to explore all of Kitakami and catch every Pokemon I saw. There's only six new Pokémon in this game, four of which are legendaries you can only catch after finishing the story and one of which is a new evolution to an old Pokémon. The rest are just old 'mons sold back to you through DLC (not a fan of how the games do this now). On the plus side, I did like the new characters introduced: you got the legendary Ogerpon and the rival sister/brother duo of Carmine and Kieran. There's some other very minor characters but they really don't do much of anything for the plot, the real meat of it is with the duo of Carmine and Kieran. They're getting their own paragraph since I found them really interesting to talk about.
Basically, the story of this game is that you're going to Kitakami as part of a field trip and, while you're there, your mission is to go find and read signposts about the city's folklore. Real exciting, I know. Things do amp up a bit once you meet Kieran and Carmine, though. As it turns out, the legend of Ogerpon, otherwise known as simply "the ogre", as the myths have it is wrong. It paints the ogre as a violent Pokémon that destroyed a village, when, in reality, it was an outcast shunned by the village. Think Frankenstein, but the monster is really cute and doesn't actually pose a threat. The "Loyal Three" are portrayed in the myths as heroes chasing off the ogre, but in reality they're basically a bunch of cowardly thugs ganging up on the ogre for...seemingly no reason? You never get their perspective on why they're doing this, although they can't speak so its not like they can just tell you. The idea of false myths being passed along generations and people needing to reconcile with the truth once its shown to them would be awesome if this wasn't a Pokémon story, where this stuff never gets explored in any kind of depth. The villagers just accept Ogerpon back with little resistance once Kieran tells them the truth, though I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself here. Basically, the main goals of this story are having the characters discover the truth behind Ogerpon, go beat up the Loyal Three after we accidentally freed them since they stole Ogerpon's masks, and then find a way to reintegrate Ogerpon into the village...and, yes, find all three folklore signs, which, funnily enough, you don't do until after you've already done almost all of the important story stuff first. I suppose this story works fine, but it felt rather middling and unimpactful, and it also squanders any chance it had to be emotionally compelling.
I'm conflicted on what to think about Carmine and Kieran, a sister and brother duo that are the closest thing to this game's rivals. I like how Carmine is very cocky, two-faced, and easy to anger, since we could always use some more mean rivals in Pokémon. She does mellow out considerably later in the story, but even after she's still got an inflated ego and sees herself as the leader. You understand more about her once she reveals at the very end that she was worried that her homeland was being turned into a tourist hotspot for idiots before you proved her wrong, so it sorta makes sense why she was so dismissive of you and arrogant in the beginning. Kieran, though...I really am part of the Kieran defense squad, even if towards the end he's pretty irrationally spiteful. I was surprised to see that I really resonated with his character, even felt like I'd be a little similar to him as a kid if my life circumstances were similar to his. My biggest point against Carmine is that she's a jerk to Kieran, who is already a pretty shy timid kid and obviously has low self esteem. To give her some credit, she does treat him better later in the story and shows concern for his rapidly deteriorating self worth, but I still don't like how she treated him before. It's hinted that the kid is a shut-in and has little to no friends; the grandparents raising him are happy he made a new friend (the player), implying its a rare occasion for him, and of course Carmine teases him about it. At a certain point in the story, you all have to keep a secret from Kieran eventually, but this originally spawns from her not wanting him to know just because she thinks he'd be annoying about it. To clarify, this refers to the whole subplot of you and Carmine encountering Ogerpon briefly, and she wants you not to tell Kieran because he's absolutely obsessed with all things Ogerpon. She completely fails to understand why he would be upset that he's being lied to despite saying she's just trying to protect him, blaming it on teenage angst. Yea, part of that is angst (he gets really upset constantly losing battles to you and bottles up that anger), but another part of it is also that he is very much in the know he's being lied to. It takes until Kieran freaks out in rage for Carmine to realize her mistake...except Kieran is the one to apologize and she only apologizes to him after he already did. Early on, she is incredibly bossy to him and she likes to chastise him for "talking back". I know that siblings tend to be jerks to each other, so I get why they'd portray her this way, but Kieran didn't do anything to deserve this treatment and you can't call her out on her behavior. However, I think the thing about Kieran's character that will divide some people is that he gets very insecure about Ogerpon liking you more than him. It's not anyone's fault, but he grows spiteful towards you and Carmine for it. The way I personally understood this is that its like Ogerpon was an autistic special interest (I have autism so I can accurately compare) for Kieran, and since he seems to have basically nothing else going good for him in life, it kinda makes sense to me that he's so bitter about this. He saw the ogre as a hero even when everyone else didn't and he seems to have projected a lot of himself onto Ogerpon. His sister either doesn't care for or doesn't let him express his special interest and even mocks him for it before she ends up getting wrapped up in the quest to prove Ogerpon's innocence. Of course he also has basically no self esteem (he's shy, often degrades himself, puts others before himself, and assumes you're mocking him when you have to keep the secret about Ogerpon from him) and it doesn't help that he now sees one of his only friends - the player character - as someone that's better than him in every way. Really it makes sense to me why he snaps near the end of the story, although I wish that teaser at the end didn't tease him being in the next DLC expansion like a damn MCU supervillain. Needless to say, I liked this duo a lot, especially Kieran. They kind of singlehandedly carry this DLC; it'd be very boring without them imo.
Overall, "Pokemon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero - Part 1: The Teal Mask" (I'm sorry I really wanted an opportunity to use this long title lol) is ultimately just very middle-of-the-road, even for Pokémon standards. Not good, but not bad either. By far the most interesting thing about it imo is Carmine and Kieran as characters, which isn't really something to carry a whole DLC on. Unfortunately I gotta give this three stars, a whole star lower than my review of the base game.