A fair and just review of Pokemon Sword and Shield: The Isle of Armor.

There are many wonders and mysteries in the world of Pokemon, but none as interesting as Gamefreaks choice to do a series of Pokemon DLCs rather than the creation of a sister or sequel game. This is not a criticism on my part, as I for one prefer this option to playing through what is essentially the same game again for a few more hours of content. Which, to some, can be tedious and irritating.

One of the main charms of the Pokemon Franchise is it’s cutesy and adorable creatures and their distinct personalities. Isle Of Armor manages to once again continue this trend of adorable scenes between trainer and Pokemon, whilst managing to bring a new level of enjoyment and immersion to Pokemon that return, which fans were already in love with. Simple things from Emolga jumping from tree to tree, or a puppy-like Rockruff running towards you waggling it’s tail.

Perhaps one of the DLC’s main selling points, is the ability to access the new area and content at any point during the main story’s development. This allows for players to experience the main game in new and different ways by using Pokemon which were unable to be obtained in the wild pre-DLC. This may be confusing for some as surely the DLC is meant to be post game content and as such all trainers and wild Pokemon would be considerably higher level than the player. This is not the case. Gamefreak have created a dynamic level scaling system in which the wild Pokemon and the AI controlled Pokemon scale to highest level of the players party. There is a catch though, they only scale up to level 60, I believe this was implemented because multitudes of wild level 100 Pokemon could become overwhelming for inexperienced players.

The story is short and sweet, however as a well invested player into this game, I had lots of Pokemon to choose from which trivialized the content, this however did not take away from its charm. I look forward to playing through the game again with the DLC installed and experiencing the new content from a newer players perspective. The new areas, whilst similar to the main games open world sections, are still just as breathtaking and expansive for what is obviously less player space. The areas throughout the Isle Of Armor are filled with lots of different variations of Pokemon separate from the main game, whilst still having the odd familiar face thrown in.

Some wild Pokemon in this area have been specifically animated to suit their new environment, as mentioned earlier Emolga can be seen jumping from branch to branch, whilst Pokemon like Sharpedo can be seen racing at you through the water with seemingly no escape. I believe it would be a disservice to the incredible creature designs to not correctly fit them into their environment with the appropriate personalities. Speaking of personalities, the main “rival” is the same bland and boring concept as most Pokemon games, which makes their scenes and battles feel pointless and time consuming from the main draw from the DLC which is of course, catching Pokemon and exploring the new zones.

The DLC suffers from a lack of new Pokemon as there are a total of 3. 4 including the event Pokemon Zarude which is not yet in the game and must be obtained through an event. However, the DLC introduced a free patch to the vanilla game that allows players to transfer Pokemon which were reintroduced in the DLC from older titles such as Sun and Moon. This can be done without the need to purchase the DLC! Long time Pokemon fans which were heartbroken to see some of their favourites not make it into Sword and Shield can now rest easy as over 100 Pokemon have been reintroduced into the Sword and Shield ecosystem, this should surely spice up the competitive scene quite a bit.

The overall experience was nothing new from the current iterations of Pokemon, as the battles were simple and easy as I expected from a Pokemon game. Pokemon is designed with children in mind which is why I went in with the expectation that it was going to be easy as to not disappoint myself, I would say with great certainty that it did not exceed my expectations however. Difficulty in Pokemon stems from a greater problem that isn’t something I wished to discuss on this post as I wanted the focus to be on the DLC itself.

The main take from my time in this DLC is that Gamefreak are on their way to a successful system in keeping their Pokemon games relevant till the next iteration, for the price of £13 per DLC it certainly feels worth the investment and I hope to see them improve upon these in the future with later installments in the series.

Harry.