Pokemon Generation 9's Add-Ons

I genuinely have no idea what I feel right now.  Normally I’m pessimistic going into a game’s downloadable content, particularly for a Nintendo venture, but my last foray into a Nintendo RPG’s DLC suite was actually pretty positive.  So maybe I should be optimistic!  On the other hand, the add-ons for the last Pokemon game were predictably bad, and that was both more recent and for the same series, so likely there’s more call for pessimism.  Then again, bad though they were, Generation 8 was such irredeemable, lazy trash as a whole that its merely regular-bad DLCs were nonetheless its best quality!

Meh, I guess the answer is to stop waffling and just get started already.  Here we go!



The Teal Mask: This little adventure sees the protagonist go on an extended field trip to a new area in the countryside, and partake in a quest to exonerate a Pokemon that’s been wrongly vilified by the nearby village for ages.  It’s a mixed bag, but pleasant overall.  On the upside, the primary new characters involved are decent (Carmine is, in fact, strangely very likable to me), and the overall plot has a pleasant feeling of authenticity to its theme of local legends, traditions, and festivals; it seems like the kind of story that could have been an arc in Okami.  I also find it interesting that an element of the backstory to this DLC’s town is that a friendly and well-meaning stranger and his Pokemon were chased out of town for the fact that they looked different, while a trio of thieving, violent charlatans who looked more “normal” were embraced by the community and even eventually venerated as heroes--this year I’ve played Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 and watched I’m in Love with the Villainess, and I’m starting to get the distinct impression that the creatives of Japan are rapidly losing their patience and abandoning light touches and analogies in favor of direct, outright criticisms of the problems of their society.

Most of all, I approve of making a story that involves its lead Pokemon as a major participant, an actual character, rather than just a non-entity that amounts to no more than a prize.  This trend of valuing the occasional Pokemon as an actor in the drama that Generation 7 began with Nebbie, Generation 8 very lightly continued in its DLCs with Kubfu and Calyrex, and Generation 9 incorporated with Koraidon and Miraidon, is probably at its best here with Ogerpon.  She actually does have a bit of a personality, and a character arc, and I approve of each tiny little step Nintendo takes (even if unintentional) towards an eventuality where Pokemon games actually value and are about Pokemon, as entities.  As an individual that you actually assist, who’s shown to have her own feelings and opinions, and, hugely, one who gets to actually choose to become the protagonist’s partner out of her own goddamn free will, Ogerpon’s a great possible step forward for the franchise in terms of its narrative potential.  Doubtless it won’t come to anything for a long while, if ever--I’m done with my previous naive optimism about that--but it’s still good to see.  Oh, and the fight against Ogerpon to prove that you’re worthy of her is actually pretty cool, even epic.

But there are downsides to The Teal Mask, too.  While plenty of older Pokemon are added to Generation 9 through this DLC, there are very few outright new Pokemon to be found, and most of them are pretty dumb.  I can’t believe that the fucking apple pie Pokemon is no longer the dumbest version of its evolutionary family, and a matcha tea Pokemon?  Really?  Actually fucking really?  Nintendo really looked at their keyring Pokemon and said to itself, “I know I can never recapture the magic of Garbodor, but I think I can still do worse than this”?  And, related, the villains of this piece are pretty lame, too, which lessens the story of Ogerpon’s vindication a bit.

I also will say that the way this add-on’s story concludes is, on a certain level, dissatisfying.  To me, it feels wrong that Ogerpon chooses to go gallivanting off with Juliana/Florian.  Sure, she/he has helped Ogerpon defeat the Loyal 3 and clear her name, and been a friend to the Pokemon after presumably centuries of loneliness.  But Kieran also assisted and was only not involved from the start because his sister made the dumbass decision not to tell him about what was going on, and whereas Juliana/Florian just blew into town earlier this week, Kieran has spent his whole life feeling instinctive sympathy for the maligned Ogerpon, and trying to find and befriend her.  It feels like Juliana/Florian just inserted her/himself into someone else’s heartwarming Pokemon story, and yoinked the happy ending to it for her/his own.  I understand that this ending is needed to set up Kieran’s going all Vegeta on us* in the next DLC, and I even actually respect some of the intent behind that, but it still feels like an unfair and out-of-place turn of events.

Still, as a whole, I actually like this add-on well enough.  I’m not going to judge whether or not it’s worth buying just yet, though, because all of Pokemon Generation 9’s add-ons are sold together rather than separately, so we’ll hold off on figuring that out until the end.  Still, there’s reason for at least a little optimism!


The Indigo Disk: This DLC package is a continuation of the story of The Teal Mask, in which the protagonist gets involved in an exchange program with another academy, notably the one that Carmine and Kieran attend.  And I have to say, I’m impressed with the amount of content to be found.  There’s a lot to The Indigo Disk!

You start off with a storyline where you find out that since losing his match to Juliana/Florian and watching Ogerpon choose her/him over Kieran, the kid’s adopted a try-hard anime tough-guy attitude, and made his school’s Pokemon training club a no-fun zone.  It’s the protagonist’s job to battle her/his way up the ranks to challenge and defeat Kieran in order to knock some sense into him and restore his club to being about the fun kind of competition, which...well, it’s not exactly an interesting premise, but on the other hand, “beat some trainers, beat the champion, be the best” is the boring default of Pokemon narratives anyway, so just the fact that The Indigo Disk bothered to create a reason for becoming the academy Champion beyond “Because it’s there!” or “Because it’ll shut Nemona up!” is at least a step in the right direction.

Besides, I happen to very much like the idea of Kieran, a regular guy, being pushed over the edge because he can recognize the gross, cosmic unfairness of Protagonist Privilege.  It’s not just Ogerpon--Juliana/Florian gets the best Pokemon, she/he gets to travel as she/he pleases, everyone seems to like her off the bat or becomes her friend through, let’s face it, very little real effort...meanwhile, Kieran’s stuck as an introverted kid limited by reality in what he can achieve, forced to give up on a Pokemon he had a legitimate emotional claim to for no apparent reason beyond the fact that it’s a 1-of-a-kind and thus HAS to belong to the player.  I like it when games force us to look at our player privilege and confront that our demands of wish-fulfillment from games might in fact be an unhealthy, destructive kind of mindset and behavior.  It’s not Undertale or Doki Doki Literature Club or Nier: Automata, but this story of Kieran’s frustration still clearly touches upon this notion of looking at ourselves as players and asking critical questions.

Unfortunately, the resolution to this is basically just Kieran seeing the danger his fixation caused, and giving up on beating Juliana and asserting himself over the Player Character.  Turning away from obsession is a good thing, of course, but at the same time, it feels like Nintendo was approaching a thoughtful discourse but chickened out before anything could be meaningfully explored--not an unknown phenomenon when it comes to Pokemon.  A more brave and passionate creator would have done interesting things with this scenario, but Nintendo clings to Pokemon’s status quo the way Bethesda clings to its Creation engine--unreasonably and to the expense of its own creations.

Still, both parts of The Indigo Disk’s story are okay enough, and there’s a LOT that comes with them.  The first part necessitates traveling through a large, multi-biome conservatory as big as any given zone of the main game, to challenge a new stable of Elite 4 in both minigames and actual battle, which is a sizable endeavor.  The new Elite 4 also have a little personality to them,** too, which frankly I thought was really lacking in the Gym Leaders of Generation 9’s main game.  Combine that with the second part of the DLC being an exploration of a sizable cave below Area 0, and you have an add-on with a pretty wide scope overall.

The new Pokemon are mostly pretty cool (and Terapogos is adorable).  A new sidequest is added where you help Team Star with some tutoring...it’s a pretty decent little side thing that helps better expand and cement their personalities and team dynamic, which is a positive gesture since they really didn’t get as much characterization in the main quest as they probably should have.  And there’s a ton of new cosmetics and emotes, if you actually care about that.  Sadly, most of the ones you can get at auction are stupid, but at least you can be Cyclops now.

Finally, there’s also, when you’ve finished the main story, a secret post-story scene you can find at the Crystal Lake from The Teal Mask involving the game’s professor.  It somehow feels very meaningful and significant, even though Sada is, really, merely a long-gone villainous legacy.  The fact that a scene with her can make such a poignant and positive impression is interesting, really.  Regardless, it’s a nice experience.

So yeah, there’s a LOT of content in The Indigo Disk.  I’m genuinely, pleasantly surprised by how much there is to do in it; this add-on is really more like an expansion than a typical downloadable content.  And it even has some deft touches of flavor and creative care here and there along the way--I really like the fact that if you bring Ogerpon out when battling Carmine, she’ll recognize it and comment on it, and that if you use Ogerpon during the battle with Kieran, he’ll likewise see her and react with strong hurt and anger.  Pokemon REALLY needs to incorporate little personal touches like this in its major battles more often; it added such great, raw drama to the battle!

With a lot of content, a reasonably okay story for Kieran (even if it did disappoint by not living up to what it could have been), a few cool new Pokemon, and some laudable care put into its method, I think it’s safe to conclude that The Indigo Disk is actually a pretty good DLC, too.  I think I liked The Teal Mask a little more simply because I think Ogerpon’s story is a bit better, but things are still looking optimistic.


Mochi Mayhem: This is so fucking dumb.  Like...holy shit, this is so.  Fucking.  DUMB.

Okay, so this DLC is a mini-adventure that takes place as an epilogue to The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk.  In this add-on, Juliana/Florian’s friends from the main story of Generation 9 (Nemona, Arven, and Penny) come along with Juliana/Florian to meet up with her/his friends from the DLC story (Carmine and Kieran) and hang out.  And that’s actually a pretty good concept for a little finale episode to Generation 9!  Because the protagonist’s connections to both friend groups formed the backbone for each of Generation 9’s major stories--Juliana’s story has been that of forming friendships and both helping and being helped by those friends.  It feels very right to bring the 2 groups together and to have that be the ending note of this game.

But then once that’s going on, this thing happens where people are eating purple mochi that turn them into a Pokemon’s mind-controlled zombies who do...who...who do the...the funky chicken dance as they shout “Mochi Mochi” and try to battle you.  As the rest of Juliana/Florian’s friends are controlled, it’s up to her/him and Kieran to defeat the Pokemon causing it.

This is a fetish thing, isn’t it?  That’s the only explanation I can really think of.  Someone on the Generation 9 team has a weird kink for mind-controlled girls doing weird little dances, and the rest of the writers finally let them have a turn at the script to shut them up.  There’s just no way something this fucking dumb and bizarrely out there came about from anything other than some deeply buried tag on Archive of Our Own.  I’d stake half of my entire readership on it.***

That said, even if it’s dumb as hell, I suppose it’s harmlessly silly-dumb, and thus, I guess, not really bad, per say.  But it does kind of suck that something this weak is the last impression of the game you’re left with.  Also a little annoying that, as the first one affected, there’s basically no Carmine in this DLC; she already had to take a decidedly backseat role in The Indigo Disk to Kieran’s story, so it would have been much better to have switched her and Kieran’s role in this so that she’s the one helping Juliana/Florian through to the end and Kieran’s Patient 0, balance things out a bit.  But eh, whatever.  This thing’s barely worth the time it takes to play it.


Purchase or Purse-Pass?  So here’s the thing.  Is The Teal Mask pretty good?  Yeah.  Is The Indigo Disk also pretty good?  Yes.  Is Mochi Mayhem at least not a net negative?  Ehhhhh, I guess.  But are they good overall and going to provide you with 35 hours of gameplay?

No.

And that’s the problem.  All in all, the combined content of Pokemon Generation 9’s add-ons is probably gonna give you between 20 and 25 hours of gameplay.  Which is a TON!  This absolutely should be viewed as an expansion and no less.  But the combined cost is a staggering $35.  Over half the cost of the actual game!  And I’m just not ready to abandon the metric of $1 = 1 hour of content for DLCs.  That day is coming, but it’s not here, and even when it gets here, it’ll still probably have a hard time justifying this particular purchase.

Still, this expansion package IS good as a whole, and I genuinely like a lot of it, so I can at least say that when it’s on sale or its price has dropped to $25 or lower, then it’ll be worth the price.



Well, even if I can’t recommend it as of this moment, the quality of Pokemon Generation 9’s add-ons is generally positive, and that by itself is a pretty unusual occurrence when it comes to DLC, so all said, I’m pretty pleased with this state of affairs.  I’ve no doubt that the good mood that Fire Emblem 15’s DLC put me in won’t last for much longer, but it’s certainly nice that it’s managed to prolong for more than a single game.  Who knows, maybe we’ll even be able to start a streak of good add-on experiences!











* I don’t get it when Pokemon trainers start talking about becoming stronger.  With the exception of Bea, who is actually fucking hardcore...they’re not.  Their strength has absolutely nothing to do with Pokemon battling; it’s the damn Pokemon who do everything and whose strength is tested.  The most personal strength you contribute to any given Pokemon match is simply having the physical capacity to lightly toss a ball onto the ground a few feet away, asshole, so take your scrawny little kid physique over to the corner, shut the fuck up, and stop trying to take credit for the ones actually putting in the work.


** Crispin’s kind of an idiot, though.  These are 2 actual quotes by the man:

“I love battles and I love cooking ‘cause they’re both so easy to understand!  In battles, you either win or lose!  With cooking, your dish is either spicy or not spicy!”  
“I’ve got no clue how to manage the temperature of anything besides what I’m cooking.”

Crispin, your entire existence is defined by 2 things: being a Fire Type trainer, and having a frying pan.  And you have basically just told us that you should never, ever be allowed near either.


*** You hear that, Ecclesiastes?  We’re slicing you right down the middle if I turn out to be wrong.