This review contains spoilers
Overall this is more of the same for Scarlet/Violet, with a bit more tedium.
100 additional Pokémon was nice but it really felt like at times you were just running into the same Pokémon over and over. The diversity through Kitakami somehow felt lacking. There are some nooks and crannies where specific lines are hidden away at that make you need to explore, but once I already had nearly 50% of the additions within 30 minutes it made the DLC feel more like a slog.
Story and characters; Briar was unremarkable though she does look pretty blatantly evil (dem eyes) and I wish the Paldean trainers you went with to Kitakami were fleshed out too. I know the focus was the Blueberry kids but at least put some effort in for the other three so they aren’t just pure others. Carmine and Kieran were a mixed bag for me. I really like Carmine’s design, less so Kieran’s. Them as characters were okay, very anime trope tsundere and afraid weakling that grows into a competent trainer. Looking forward to Kieran wanting revenge or something (lol). Ogrepon and the Three Loyals had a cool story. Also Perrin was probably my favorite out of all. She a baddie and having a photographing story in the main game was different. My biggest gripe with the story was that going back and forth through the same areas of Kitakami over and over sucked. There were a dozen other places you could also go that would have made it feel less repetitive tracking back to the same 4 locations constantly.
And of course there is the performance. It handles about as shittily as the proper game, potentially worse to be honest. I never had issues with the base game freezing but I experience it constantly while playing the DLC.
100 additional Pokémon was nice but it really felt like at times you were just running into the same Pokémon over and over. The diversity through Kitakami somehow felt lacking. There are some nooks and crannies where specific lines are hidden away at that make you need to explore, but once I already had nearly 50% of the additions within 30 minutes it made the DLC feel more like a slog.
Story and characters; Briar was unremarkable though she does look pretty blatantly evil (dem eyes) and I wish the Paldean trainers you went with to Kitakami were fleshed out too. I know the focus was the Blueberry kids but at least put some effort in for the other three so they aren’t just pure others. Carmine and Kieran were a mixed bag for me. I really like Carmine’s design, less so Kieran’s. Them as characters were okay, very anime trope tsundere and afraid weakling that grows into a competent trainer. Looking forward to Kieran wanting revenge or something (lol). Ogrepon and the Three Loyals had a cool story. Also Perrin was probably my favorite out of all. She a baddie and having a photographing story in the main game was different. My biggest gripe with the story was that going back and forth through the same areas of Kitakami over and over sucked. There were a dozen other places you could also go that would have made it feel less repetitive tracking back to the same 4 locations constantly.
And of course there is the performance. It handles about as shittily as the proper game, potentially worse to be honest. I never had issues with the base game freezing but I experience it constantly while playing the DLC.