Pokémon Scarlet/Violet: The Hidden Treasure Of Area Zero Part 1 review

The two-part DLC for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet begins but what can it offer those that have already played through the base game?

We’re not sure quite how it happened, but we ended up liking Pokémon Scarlet and Violet a lot more than many other fans. This seems to have been because we never experienced nearly as many bugs or performance issues as others did. We can only assume we got lucky somehow, although oddly we found Pokémon Legends: Arceus to be far more bug ridden and graphically incompetent. Nobody seems to complain about that nearly as much though, so we can only assume our Switch console was feeling contrary about the games.

The one thing we think everyone can agree on is that both games were better than Sword and Shield and that together they are all a useful step towards that dream, open world Pokémon game that fans have been imagining for years and The Pokémon Company have, for so long, seemed dead set against making.

Although perhaps the most important development of recent years is not the games themselves but the acknowledgement that developer Game Freak is being forced to knock them out too quickly and at too hurried a schedule (they’re also grossly understaffed, given the significance of the franchise). Hopefully that means they’ll have more time to let the next game cook, but unfortunately any change in approach will come too late for this DLC.

The Hidden Treasure Of Area Zero is a single (and rather expensive) purchase, with Part 1 available now and Part 2 later this year – probably in December. Although there are some obvious plot threads left daggling by the end of the first story, they both have entirely different settings, both of which are new locations sperate from the main game world. As such, Part 1, entitled The Teal Mask, takes place in the very Japanese-influenced land of Kitakami.

The main town you visit is at the base of a large, Mount Fuji style mountain, as you investigate folk tales of three brand new Legendary pokémon and fellow debutant Ogerpon, who wears the titular mask. The story is nowhere near as epic as the base game, but while it’s essentially just a feature length side quest the DLC is a lot more structured than the rather perfunctory efforts for Sword and Shield.

The main characters, siblings Kieran and Carmen, are impressively well written, with the game exploring concepts of social exclusion and how far to take tradition in the face of conflicting evidence as to its origins. It’s still a Pokémon game aimed at tweens, so it never gets as heavy as that sounds, but neither is it as perfunctory as you might imagine.

More than ever though, the lack of voice-acting comes across as being a result of cost saving rather than artistic choice. Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is already on the edge of what makes sense for a modern game with no voice-acting but Pokémon blew past that years ago. The problem is even more acute in The Teal Mask because it’s a lot more narrative driven than the base game, and watching everyone flapping their lips in silence, as you read reams of text, makes the experience feel cheap and unfinished.

Although the island is very small, with only two main populated areas, it’s clear that Game Freak’s open world design skills are getting better with each new game, as the geography of the island is genuinely interesting, with lots of secret areas and unexpected sights to explore.

There’s a lot to see and do in general, including a neat new photography quest and a multiplayer mini-game called Ogre Oustin’. The new pokémon are cool too, with fun gimmicks and visual designs. This includes the Legendries but also Dipplin and Poltchageist, who just so happen to be related to two of our favourite modern day pokémon.

Beyond the low-tech graphics, the main problem is that if you’re interested enough in Pokémon to buy the DLC you probably already have a pretty unbeatable team of critters and so you can just breeze through the whole story with your battle-hardened veterans.

There really needed to be some sort of level limit for the DLC, to avoid the temptation of just blitzing through it, but predictably there’s nothing of the sort and whether it offers any kind of challenge depends entirely on whether you’re willing to purposefully hold back and field only novices.

We still think the base game’s technical problems are overblown but those in The Teal Mask are less forgivable, given the frame rate performance is notably worse than the base game – despite it being a smaller open world. This seems madness given how long Game Freak has had to fix things and the fact that Pokémon is a multi-billion dollar franchise, that somehow still looks worse than most mid-budget indie games.

There’s a lot of good stuff in The Teal Mask, including some of the best storytelling the series has seen, but it’s suffocated by a complete lack of a difficulty level balancing and heightened technical flaws. There’s every reason to assume Part 2 will be exactly the same, so we can only hope that the next mainline game will be the clear break from the past that the series has long been crying out for.

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £31.49*
Publisher: The Pokémon Company
Developer: Game Freak
Release Date: 13th September 2023
Age Rating: 7

*both parts available only as a single purchase

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