Was not a big fan of Sword and Shield. I bought the games around when they came out, and they arent the worst things in the world by any means. I still had fun while playing through it with my friend. But it was probably the first time I felt very detached an non imersed playing a Pokemon game (coming from somebody who has played every mainline game (including importing Black in Japanese when it came out)). I had a lot of problems with the game, the gym strucutre, the ABYSMALY boring post game and writing. But most of all was the Wild Area. The wild area sounds like a kinda cool concept for maybe a spin off game (cough cough Legends Arceus) , but it DID NOT work for a game like sword and shield. So when they anounced that the DLCs would play like the Wild Area, I immediately became disinterested based on that comparison alone. I passed on both of them, but recently bought the physical bundle that bakes the DLC onto the cart because I have been on a small Pokemon kick lately. So after having tried this first expansion, its honestly better than I expected. I still have major problems with it, such as there are barely any trainer battles in the entire expansion, I CANT STAND how willy nilly this expansion and newer games in general throw fully evoved level 60 Pokemon at you to catch (combined with the laughably high catch rates), and a couple other things. But overall, this is a large improvement on what the Wild Area should have been. I've already played like 5 hours of Legends Arceus, so I see how this concept is taken further. And I think the main apeal of this expansion is to just give you an Island full of added Pokemon for you to catch. But I think the concpet still works best in Arceus, since that whole games concept is more revolved around catching and filling the Pokedex. This game is still a turned based RPG where the largest focus should be on batteling, so I think the concept is a little weird when applied to Sword and Shield. Regardless, its a fun little 5 hour thing to do, and its certainly better than Sword and Shield's base game.