Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero – Part 1: The Teal Mask

Wow isn’t that a mouthful of a title 🙂

Thoughts like a review below but there ARE spoilers so if you don’t want the spoilers: A summary – I enjoyed it but it is a little lacklustre compared to it’s Sword and Shield equivalent. There are some technical issues that need addressing oh my god are there.

Generally it’s decent, but it absolutely feels like it’s had less attention than it could have. To be fair this was true of Sword and Shield’s DLC, but Isle of Armour at least held on to me a little longer than a week.

Before I dump in to reasons why, I will mention here that I love the music, the battle themes are fun and the Loyal Three‘s theme I couldn’t help but bop along to (kind of like the Treasures of Ruin theme in that regard).

IoA’s story was fairly short too but there was an actual post game story with Hop that kind of stretched it out a bit longer. Meanwhile in TM the story just ENDS (literally it drops a To Be Continued… which YEAH IT IS the rival kids, Kieran and Carmine are from the Blueberry Academy that players will be visiting in part 2, and Briar who led this whole field trip is the academy’s curriculum designer so we’ll see her too) but there’s nothing else as a “post-story”. Perrin’s Ursaluna storyline is easily possible before finishing the main story, likewise with the Ogre Clan trainers.

IoA also had some extra bonuses around, even if the Diglett serch was abysmal, as well as an incentive to run around (shove Apricorns in the Cram-O-Matic for those Apricorn balls!) and there was some battle content.

AGAIN this will be in part 2, and that’s the problem with The Teal Mask really. So much of this is “In part 2!”, to quickly recap some Part 1 story and then mention what will be resolved in part 2, and I’ll stick this under a spoiler because I’m gonna talk QUITE IN DETAIL about what we learn in Part 1 and some things from the trailer for Part 2

Bigger Spoilers and THEORIES, oh boy!

Resolution to Kieran’s story arc as it’s not a Pokémon generation any-more without bullying a child as I send out “Ferris the Paldea Champion”, except instead of giving them imposter syndrome this time I drove them to lust for strength and hate me??????????? (Honestly most of it is Carmine’s fault, THANKS CARMINE, if we just told him the truth from the start HE’D BE FINE). So I guess we’ve gotta inadvertently bully them more as is a normal thing for the player character to do (it’s also clear there’s a character in the part 2 trailer they’re trying as hard as possible not to show off… yeah that’ll be Kieran).
Carmine wants more battles, okay whatever that’s not really a story thread worth mentioning but it is her final line “This is NOT goodbye” and we’re going to her school so…
The Blueberry Academy characters leave early, due to “an unexpected development in the Great Crater of Paldea” (??? Gotta wait for PART 2!) but WHAT could all that be about? Well you see:

Briar is the descendent of the (disgraced) author of the Scarlet/Violet Book, Heath, and owns the unedited version of the book that lacks the redactions about the Pokémon Terapagos. She wants in to Area Zero to prove they’re real and un-disgrace (is that even a term?) Heath. The entire field trip to Kitakami is partly a ruse for Briar to investigate why Terastal Energy is in Kitakami, she finds out why: There’s a big glowy Crystal Pool that has the same crystals found in Area Zero, and also radiates Terastal Energy. (As a player you will also notice that the music for the Crystal Pool is very reminiscent of another track in the base game… HMMMMMM).

Said pool, after you take in the revelations of the Crystal Pool for some reason there’s this very specific lore dropped: “Tales say that gazing upon the glowing water can allow you to meet those who have passed on”. Now I’ll stop beating around the bush, the crystals are clearly the same Terastal Crystals from Area Zero, there are two characters who are set up as dead by the events in game, Professor Sada/Turo (yes this would make three but until they appear in their opposite version game, it’s two) and Heath, and theoretically also AI Sada/Turo.

I feel it’s strange that we set up Literal Mini-Area Zero in Kitakami and drop something like this… are we going to actually see Heath? Will Arven get a resolution with Sada/Turo? Will we end up coming back and heeding a warning from AI Sada/Turo? ONLY TIME WILL TELL (in November/December), it’s entirely possible this is a completely throwaway line.

Lets loop back to Briar on this though, she hopes that learning what she did in Kitakami means she can take the Terastal phenomena other regions. Now this can be one of two things, set up to keep Terastallization in future games such as Unova remakes (oh did I mention Blueberry Academy is in Unova… well now I have) or just a Bad Plot Time resolution (we know that by Part 2 that Blueberry Academy has Terastallization, no seriously the entire Blueberry Elite Four have Tera Orbs, and they’re in Unova).

Safe to say the “developments” are simple, Briar continued the same field of research as Sada/Turo in harnessing Terastallization, and it’s setting up for Briar herself entering Area Zero. This might be Very Bad. These are all points that will potentially resolve in Part 2 as we already know the DLC flows: Kitakami ➡ Blueberry Academy ➡ Area Zero (again)

A little bit more of self-indulgent theory crafting, it’s safe to say Something Funky is going on with the Terastal crystals. Two characters particularly interested in them became obsessed to the point where they neglected their child. One character likely disregarded their own safety in search of what could be down there with the crystals.

Briar herself could fall in to this category (or even be beyond the threshold) in her obsession to find Terapagos and prove that Heath wasn’t a liar, while also working with Terastal phenomena (she even has the Terastal symbol as earrings).

Either the crystals, or Terapagos themselves, inadvertantly feed in to people’s desires and causes this obsession to seeing a dream through, or Terapagos is potentially doing it intentionally thinking they’re helping.

Not my theory, but some people online do think that Kieran’s absolute catastrophic breakdown by the end of Part 1 comes from his obsession with Ogrepon and making contact with the Terastal crystals on Ogrepon’s mask. I think it does fall in to “coincidental” but the theme so far with Terastal Crystals and humans is: Obsession.

These are all great plot points (okay, two of them are) to resolve, and these are what detract from Part 1 – The Teal Mask. They want the climax to be in Part 2 – The Indigo Disk, so they did the groundwork in Part 1 to set it up, but that just leaves the entire story feeling lacklustre as a result because they clearly didn’t know how to resolve this as a two episode series other than a literal “TO BE CONTINUED…“. Because it’s so unceremoniously dropped, it means they didn’t expand a story beyond that end card, we don’t learn more about the characters in Kitakami, we don’t learn more about Perrin who just, runs off, we’re just left with half a pokédex empty and going “well… I guess I’ll catch the Loyal Three and the missing Pokémon?”.

SV’s story was fantastic, I trust that the team can resolve the DLC story well as well, but the manner in which they did it… oof.

Of course there’s the other drawbacks to this DLC, that was already an issue but Kitakami makes it more evident… There’s also some SERIOUS performance issues. Like SV’s was already quite bad but there’s some areas in Kitakami where I can literally count the frames 😬

I have finally worked out it’s light reflections on water that cause SV’s major performance issues though. I had a suspicion that this was the case as the laggiest areas in Paldea are the Casseroya Lake, Cascarrafa and North Province Area Three IMO (Levincia is pretty close if you’re wanting to grab the items under the battle ring). What do all these areas have in common, a lot of water.

The lagiest areas in Kitakami? Looking towards Mossui Town from far enough above to have the rice paddies not render in leaving the muddy puddles, the Mossfell Confluence (especially by the signpost about it), Fellhorn Gorge (it’s full of water), and the worst offender with it’s light reflections from above AND scattering from below the Crystal Pool. I’m not kidding! There’s a cutscene there and the moment it stops panning the pool and turns to a camera who isn’t in view of the pool from the player (e.g. the player turns to the side or behind them) and the frame-rate immediately catches back up to what it was meant to be.

Hopefully Part 2 they’ll optimise on this but I’m not holding my breath.

And that’s the general pity about Scarlet and Violet as a whole, if it wasn’t for the performance issues it would be my favourite game in the series… okay 2nd favourite… okay maybe third sorry gen 5 exists. Generally it’s better than Sword and Shield (no matter what people claim) but it is dragged dooooooooooooooown by the game’s own engine.

Like I could forever armchair dev it, but I do genuinely believe that more time is needed between the major releases of Pokémon. The battle engine? Fantastic. The everything else engine: It needs more work. A LOT MORE WORK. And if extra time with the DLC wasn’t enough (a reminder that the DLC was likely in development before it was announced…) to improve it then it’s genuinely a matter that is “we really can’t have a major release of pokémon every other year” any more. The brand was already suffering to the point where Nintendo backhandedly make comments on the performance (while also being MORE than happy to publish and ship the product regardless)… I could always continue to ignorantly comment on what needs to be done, but either way it needs it whatever that is.

IDK, it does worry me, especially as they seem to be setting up for at least a Black and White remake… my favourite game in the entire series 😬

A Phantom Memory