So I want to talk about my experiences with Pokemon Shield.

First off I want to say that I got the game day one off of Amazon and honestly I thought it was a good game. Sure it is bare bones for content and overall feeling of being rush with a plot and route structure so railroaded that it almost became a Pokemon game set in the universe of Thomas the Tank Engine. But despite its flaws and Arlo's negative review of the damn thing I enjoyed every bit of it. So when I heard that DLC was coming out for it, I jumped at the nearest opportunity to buy the pass.

So at first I thought $40 was a bit steep but for extra content in a game that felt Ethiopian at best I felt I could deal with it.

So June came around I got to play with the Isle of Armor, honestly I felt they missed an opportunity to name it "Isle of Sodor" but that's my Thomas and Friends bias. I loved the Isle of Armor and the fact it was a massive wild area. I loved how open the level design was, I felt there was always something new every time I hopped on my bike and went around. That and the whole thing with finding the Diglets was pretty fun giving it almost a collectathon vibe with finding all the hidden Diglets within a area. But I felt that the whole plot thing was kinda naff with Avery (I own Shield BTW) and I'm glad we have a dick rival again but he felt kinda one dimensional and seeing his redemption as a character as he tries to screw you over you could see from a lightyear away. That and I don't like Mustard's flowing eyebrows. Also having that fight with Mustard with your Kubfu was cool but having to constantly heal Kubfu and hoping to god you get a critical hit with Aerial Ace isn't what I exactly call fun. But once you get the plot and the Pokedex done (If you completed the Galar pokedex it automatically becomes 50% complete as is), I ended running out of finding cool things to do.

On the whole Isle of Armor felt good and added content that was well needed but felt that there could have been more and that if Game Freak has actually honest with the level scaling feature maybe I would have gotten less of a headache.

Then Game Freak went all silent for the year and instead of telling us The Crown Tundra's release date they hyped us up for a shitty League of Legends game whilst working for Hong Kong hating Winne the Pooh loving Tencent. Which is probably being programmed by some poor soul in a re-education camp.

But then Octobor came and we got the Crown Tundra and its...Underwhelming. First we're shown off a man and his failed attempt to connect with his daughter and then we're shown the big feature with Dynamax Adventure or as I like to call it "Weimar Republic German Money Printer" however instead of printing worthless Reichmarks it prints worthless legendary pokemon. The whole feature is pointless if you own a majority of the DS games and have a Pokemon Bank/Home subscription since you could just transfer them up to grab the Pokedex entries. That and the whole economy of online Pokemon trading via the GTS is based on there being rare Pokemon. If there are no rare Pokemon the whole trading economy will just go out of whack. Why trade for a Entei when you can catch like five if you own the DLC pass. This is how I ended up with two Suicunes.

Other than taking the value out of legendary Pokemon what does The Crown Tundra have? Nidoking? Cool. How about restrictive level design? Yeah the whole place lacks openness. Which is why I like Isle of Armor more because you had a whole island to explore, the Crown Tundra is an extension of the linear railroaded threadbare Galar region. That and also Calyrex looks silly with its head stolen from a Deviantart user's inflation fetish. That and if I can't find the stupid mayor of a village because of the level design and that's where I draw the line.

All and all I like the DLC and even with the Crown Tundra's issues and the fact that you could beat the Isle of Armor in less time than it takes to beat Undertale (for the lack of Goat Mom Isle of Armor easily makes up in Mustard's trophy wife). But I feel $40 is pushing it for something I feel should have been with the vanilla game or better yet, put more time and effort into the other bits of the base game and not need DLC but apparently Game Freak exists in the Libertarian Right corner and thus only wants to flog its Capitalist dong in front of people who just want Sinnoh remakes.

But thank god Game Freak isn't Square Enix otherwise they'll screw it up and overcomplicate it like they did with Kingdom Hearts and the FF7 Remake. Unless you really want the plot of Pokemon Red/Blue to span the course of 17 games plus Disney characters...

Anyway these are my thoughts of the Pokemon SwSh DLC. What do you think? Air off in the comments.