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The performance of it is just crazy to me. Like there were areas of the base game that ran better, they just didn’t consider those at all. The entire dlc is based around a huge mountain, which you can see from anywhere, and the game slows to a crawl whenever it’s on screen. Baffling

I found it funny that due to some lines of dialogue from Kieran leads you to believe that he was following you as you go from point A to point B which in my cause means 7 laps around the map and gone up and down the central mountain the wrong way like 4 times and I found that very funny

My main take-away from this is it is suffering from Part One syndrome. All set-up for a payoff that may or may not arrive. I don't know if your opinion on this will change much after Part Two, but I'll definitely be interested to see how you feel about Hidden Treasures as a whole.

My main "problem" with the DLC is, that it feels super small if you enter it with your Ride Pokemons abilities unlocked. The DLC is best explored on foot till you finish it or at least the story. And I only realized this after I did everything.

I was so annoyed when I was forced to lie to Kieran and side with Carmine at every turn. If it were me, I would’ve tried telling Carmine how insensitive she was being and tell Kieran about Ogerpon at the first opportunity. Just in general, Kieran was treated very poorly. And the villagers all just believing Kieran first thing when talking about Ogerpon seems very unrealistic. The writers had a good idea for a plot, but the way it was executed turned me off a lot. At least the new Pokémon and concept of the region are very cool. I love how the Loyal Trio look so ugly and villainous, and Bloodmoon Ursaluna is the best Pokédex reward ever

I really, really hope that Part 2 of this DLC will include Nemona, Penny and Arven.

I thought it was lacking in quests/content. The two other main characters are gonna be continuing in the Indigo Disk when you visit their school. I did find it funny that we mind-break Kieran for no reason and make him go on his villain revenge arc on part 2. lol

I miss the escape rope in sv. I felt so bad for Kieran, I purposefully lost a battle to him thinking it would trigger some new dialog, maybe him being happy that he won a battle and getting some pokemoney,but nope, it was just the default 'you blacked out' that's what Gen 10 needs, dialog for when you lose a battle, maybe your rival says a snarky ass remark after you lost, therefore making the rematch more intense.

My favorite part of the DLC is when it asked Kieran, "Kill this person?" and he said "Yes," this game's so dark

One thing I can appreciate about this DLC is that they’re making an effort to connect both parts with the story as opposed to Isle of Armor/Crown Tundra which were very separate, should help to make the whole package for satisfying and cohesive

This might be the first time a pokemon game shows the consequences of a rival being constantly slapped into the dirt by everyone, including the player.

Better performance should've been priority number 1

This Dreamcast game looks like it's really coming together! I can't wait for it to finish alpha development and start beta testing and actual debugging! 👍

I have only just met Ogerpon, and I will lay my life on the line to protect this jolly green friend-shaped gremlin.

Wow really giving them the bird in that thumbnail huh lmao

I loved this DLC but id be lying if the frame rate drops didn’t make me sick

The framerates are a huge issue, and really effects the enjoyment of this, but beyond that, it's pretty decent. Not great, though. Also, love all the Gen 2 Pokémon on this map.

Look for the kitakami ogre clan members for some decent battles. They’re around mid to late 70s for levels. They won’t be too hard, but an effort was made for some harder fights ( albeit there are only 8)

I wonder what Arlo thought of the Perrin side quest? I enjoyed her and the Blood Moon Ursaluna is really cool with it’s call backs to Legends Arceus

I thought the Teal Mask was fine. Turns out I had like 75% of the Pokedex for it in Pokemon Home so that was neat.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the little photography side story with all the Legends Arceus fanservice, it was short and simple but was probably the highlight of the DLC. The new Pokémon at the end of it is one of my favourites introduced in this generation as well.

As someone who loves legends arceus im really suprised you didnt bring up the Perrin quest did you not do it?

I feel like I got a dev copy because I'm getting minimal frame drops compared to what everyone else is getting

I haven't played it, but just from the footage here it's cool seeing that they're going very much into Momotaro's story. Oni mountain... the legendarys being a dog, monkey and bird... would be interesting if they really explored a lot of the ideas from the original story.

Kieran: "battle me" Me: "how many times do i have to teach you this lesson old man"

the fastest Arlo Pokemon game review in years

This just harkens back to the original discussion of how some people are getting worse performance than others, because I'm watching this footage and the slowdown is super evident, but when I play I don't get anything like this. There was one moment where it got stuck for a half-second while I was falling from a jump up on the mountain but none of this slowdown

Yeah I felt the same about the characters and legendaries. The sister started out just insufferable and only got better at the very end, the brother I was initially nice to and then he started getting jealous and I bounced off him so hard. The legendaries too just...nah, I'm good. The main one sure I'll maybe use it sometimes. The other three? I'll catch them for the Dex and then they go into box purgatory even if they're good.

i had literally no expectations going into this dlc. But i will say, that raising a new team and going through the story that way was very interesting and i had a lot of fun doing it

As for the story I think all of these characters will be expanded on in part 2 because of the cliffhanger ending

I am invested into finding out what happens to Kieran. I feel Carmine will be nicer next time we see her

The DLC felt like it wanted to bully Keiran so much. Every time I thought his character arc was over the game decided that the kid needed to suffer more. He forgives you for lying to him, now Ogerpon doesn't like him; he gets Ogerpon to be liked by everyone, now he wants to keep Ogerpon; you beat him in a battle to gain ownership of Ogerpon, now he goes crying to his room and swears vengeance.

It is really frustrating how Pokémon is the highest grossing company yet can’t even manage a running of game that’s considered “good” AT LEAST. 😅

There were way too many sparkly spawns in the dlc, like I shouldn’t get 20 rare bones in 10 seconds. Plus I feel like the Pokémon were everywhere(especially the hard to see ones), it felt hard to get some exploring done. Boxes fixed though, so that’s something!

The only thing I wish'd that the characters were actually real characters you didn't interact with much. Like Using Eri and Atticus who could bounce off Carmine and Keiran very well, one very artsy and traditional Atticus could probably surprise Carmine. And Eri's earnest nature could be great for interaction as well! Wanting to help deal with the three pokemon troublemakers (I'm kinda trying to walk around full spoilers) Also in the battle tournament I think S/S did better with the DLC characters appearing in it and double battles too! I hope they update the tournaments so that the new characters AND the Gym leaders appear in the battle star tournament- cause otherwise you just don't see the gym leaders *At all!*

Made a new team for the DLC based on the *spoiler* you get and the wild mons around the map. Playing it that way I think made the experience much more enjoyable

About the level scaling thing, because I always get a new team of Pokémon from the ones available in the dlc, the level scaling never hurts since the wild Pokémon are of similar level to the trainers and it made my experience very fun.

I'm glad we live in a world where cookie monster's brother is a gamer

I can totally relate with feeling sad and hurt when I watch Carmine bully Kieran. Kieran was the only one who believed the truth from the start and he gets zero credit, and treated like a baby, and like he has to constantly apologize, when Carmine is constantly furious and rude as hell.

I think carmine was not meant to be, it was meant to be a "I know him best and do what's best to push him, etc" and it goes predictably poorly. Which is why I wanted l an option to tell him early haha. Get it over with

I haven’t played this DLC yet honestly, I’ve been addicted to Vinemon- probably my favorite Pokémon-like that’s come out this year, even with the already stacked roster of things such as Cassette Beasts and Infinite Fusion. They came out when they were ready. I am still kind of excited to try this sometime, but man I just want GameFreak to get the time needed to finish their work… and to actually have sleep schedules free of such crunch and stress.

I am curious of how will they develop the story of the next DLC since the Blueberry academy doesn’t appear to have much of a story itself

I love this DLC, but I feel like you miss the point of the characters. Carmine was meant to be unpleasant at first but once she saw she generally hurt her brother by lying about the ogre she slowly became a better person and her monologue at the end proved that. Kieran also doesn't start off as jealous of you but rather admired you, it's when you were forced by the to lie to him that made him more jealous as his dream of meeting and befriending the ogre is given to you rather than him. The point of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet was the treasure hunt and you could say that Kieran's treasure hunt was the ogre, so I felt like it played into the themes of the main story.

btw there is a tad bit of inconsistency. there are pokemon that scale up to 60-86. Ogre clan have around level 70-80 pokemon as well

i burned through this DLC looking for friend trio story content that turned out to not actually be happening at all until indigo disc. they never even notice you left since the DLC can be done at any time and not just as postgame, they're still just one-liner statues in their rooms waiting to actually be able to hang out with us again. you know GF initially planned for it to be them on this trip instead of three nameless kids though, you know they did. the writing of the teal mask overall was a bit more usual pokemon stuff and a little less whatever gold they struck with base game S/V, which makes the fact that they haven't shown new footage of nemona/arven/penny at all in the trailers for the past half a year, just new characters, really stressful. they do know it was gold, don't they...? the teal mask really would not be worth it if it could be bought standalone. it's just a teaser with a few days of stuff to do when we needed a few months of stuff to do. no performance improvements either, as you noted. a lot of the story battles were running in slow mo for me because of the dense grass around town. but i did warm up to carmine despite her pretty obviously causing her brother's problems, probably without realizing, largely because of how funny her mannerisms are. her unpredictably sweet or mean behavior is acknowledged by the story and symbolized by her morpeko, so it's obviously not just bad writing. her saying she doesn't trust tourists and then that not being a plot point at all kinda is, though. a lot of people feel like this storyline forced them to do things they didn't want to do, too. it's weird to try and have a faceless voiceless self insert protagonist but also have them make decisions on their own we have no control over. kinda the worst of both worlds. main story got away with it because the other three made our decisions for us.

Honestly S tier youtuber. Ive been watching you for years, weather its a big fat review of breath of the wild, or small quickie like wario ware. Consistently excellent, thanks Arlo.

The environment looks like an early-access Steam game that will never be finished.

I FEEL LIKE I'M NOT GOING CRAZY - Thank you Arlo, for being one of the few people I've seen talking about this DLC who recognise how uncomfortable Carmine's interactions are with Kieran. If Kieran had more attitude and a more agressive personality, perhaps their interactions could follow the "squabbling but love each other" sibling trope, but yeah instead it just comes across as bullying... Enabled by their Grandparents no less. It really made it hard to like the cast of characters in The Teal Mask, especially with no player agency to side with Carmine or Kieran on "the ogre"

I enjoyed this DLC enough for what it was (mostly because I adore Ogerpon), the new pokemon are cool, but tbh for what it costs it's awful value. It's 35 US dollars in America but the DLC cost me the equivalent of 55 US dollars because I live in Switzerland and the price here is 50 Swiss francs, which is insane. And tbh no matter how good Part 2 is, there's no way it's gonna be good enough to justify this, especially when Part 1 is like 5 hours of content. Meanwhile RE4 Remake's expansion costs 9 dollars. A much more polished game with much more content and a much more significant expansion, and it's a tiny fraction of the price. The Pokemon Company is absolutely robbing us blind. I won't be buying any DLC from them in the future if this is how they price things.

I raised a whole new team for the DLC and it was AWESOME, the battles felt challenging, I fell in love with Pokémon I've never used, tried out the new ones, got a shiny Rockruff, got a new angsty rival, it was a ton of fun. To each their own I guess, but I personally cannot wait for part 2 of the DLC and to see Professor Tera-earring's part in the story lol.

Can’t wait for your review of the 2nd part.

I couldn't even finish the main game because of the performance. And I'm usually someone who doesn't care much about frame rate....but it was so BAAAAAAAD.

I've been living in the real Kitakami in Iwate for a few years and I got a bit excited when they announced this new area. But it's just kind of...boring? Like, Iwate is VERY rural, but there's still enough here to draw from, other than a mountain and a village. Heck, Momotaro, the story that the legendaries are based on, isn't even from this region, it's from down south. That's like having Paul Bunyan down in Arizona or something. Just a tad disappointing and not doing much to really utilize the area it's based on. Maybe in a future game they can have a full region based on Tohoku and expand on this region some more

Good time to be an Arlo fan with all the videos comin out

super happy to learn that Gen II is your favorite, it's mine too !! great video Arlo :)

You summarized my feelings about the story/characters perfectly. And I'm glad you addressed the issue with Carmine. Like there's jerk rivals (she's not even really a rival??), and then there's characters who're just... meanspirited. Maybe she'll get some kind of character arc in the second part? I guess? But for right now it just feels gross, especially for how much the game forces you to ALSO be mean to Kieran. It's just "DLC Part 1: Let's Bully Kieran Together", I guess. It's just a bummer compared to the base game's story, I think. You go from incredibly impactful stories and characters that leave you feeling good about what you've been through, to a story that ends with you feeling kind of gross and like a villain against your will. If Carmine wasn't Like That, and the scenarios that repeatedly make Kieran inferior weren't so ham-fisted, maybe I could be more on board with the idea of unwittingly being the reason for someone's villain arc.

Personally, I liked this dlc waaaaaaay more than I did the sword and shield dlc. I actually connected with the story, and it’s the first time it’s made me care about a legendary Pokémon in quite a while. Carmine is an interesting take on anti-tourism sentiment from locals and I like that the story actively scolds her for the way she acts. Kieran is a character I like a lot, it’s not an arc we’ve seen much of in Pokémon of a kind-hearted person having their darker side drawn out from neglect and mistreatment (even if not having a choice at the player on the matter is frustrating)

Arlo thank you for wishing me a happy birthday!!

7:12 Relating to the limited pool, a notable part of Kitakami's dex is basegame 'mons.

I liked the story and the side quest but yeah it was definitely short. I did everything in about two days playing casually

I think it is fair to say that Isle of Armor was a better first-parter than Teal Mask has been. Performance and resolution aside (IoA at least looks good), there’s at least a bit more of a climactic finish and wildly different environments. Teal Mask felt like it was demoing the few features it had through the story, followed by the obligatory catching of a legendary. I wasn’t expecting this DLC (which costs more as a reminder, if only by $5 total) to be less substantial than Isle of Armor but I am entirely wrong in that. Maybe Indigo Disk will be better like Crown Tundra was, or maybe we’ll feel better about Teal Mask in retrospect, who really knows. As things currently stand though it feels like the bare minimum they could have delivered. 100 returning pokemon, a couple new ones, some battles, and a minigame/sidequest or two.

I enjoyed the Teal Mask, but yes the beginning is just about as handhold-y as Sun and Moon’s beginning. I really hoped they would have fixed the performance issues. At this point, I won’t be surprised if the Indigo Disk runs just as awfully, which is saddening. I did like the story and Ogerpon is just ADORABLE. Most of the graphic updates seem to apply towards the texturing on the Pokémon themselves, which is fine, but it also seems to have an impact on the framerate, but this is is an issue with the base game mostly. If waiting a few more years for the next generation Pokémon games means better performance and quality, I’m willing to wait. Can’t say the same about the franchise’s investors and merchandise distributors. They’re about as impatient as Vigoroth.

Your videos are rolling out like hot cakes and I’m here for it

Was the base game ever fixed?

One of my biggest issues with SV is how easy the game was. I like the addition of the ogre clan battles and the rewards you get for completing that quest. That final battle was actually very difficult. Unfortunately I think that’s the closest we’ll ever get to another Red battle but I hope I’m wrong. Granted, I did get an entirely new team to go through this instead of using my level 80+ Pokémon

Did you do the bloodmoon ursaluna sidequest? It is short, but I thought it was pretty fun, just because of the new character.

I like the bait and switch for both the Legendaries, and Kieran and Carmine. I thought it was a relaxing, if not kinda sad, experience. I really enjoyed Kieran and Carmine, and Ogerpon benefits from the Miraidon/Koraidon way of getting you familiar or forming a bond with a legendary. Kinda excited to see them return in the Indigo Disc.

They prob arent doing a patch because they are working on gen 10 which is insane to me

There are a few NPC battles that can be tricky that are above level 60 (the kitakami clan)

The framerate complaints always confuse me because I haven't had like, any issues with it. In the main game I only became slightly laggy in the place with the false dragon titan, but in the dlc I have not lagged a single time.. Is it an issue with some people having older switch models? Maybe other TVs?

At last, confirmation that Arlo is in fact a Muppet fan.

I still can't believe that the performance of a main series game is sooo bad - and they are just going with it, like pretending that nothings wrong / needs to be fixed. I really hope that some Nintendo Chiefs are smacktalking Gamefreak behind locked business doors so that this will never happen again.

How do you get pikachu on a bus? *You Don’t*

An Umbreon called Erebus is unhinged, I hope he gets hurt in every battle

I like that this one does a little more setup. The last dlc pair didn’t seem too connected at all if I’m remembering correctly. Also as someone that raised a new team for this (you really don’t have to do that much. Everything is way past it’s evolution level when you find it), the trainers were actually super tough. Especially the Ogre Clan, but even Kieran felt like he could genuinely beat me if i wasn’t careful. And it made sense too because of the school he attends. (Side note: Did you guys seriously struggle against Ogerpon? It’s four single-type fights.)

love your videos arlo.

I also had a team of level 80+ Pokémon going into this. I just ended up getting an entirely new team to go through the story with so it wasn’t a complete cakewalk

Does the wheel rotate on the Pokémon’s body? Lol still unsure if I’m ready to jump back into a Pokémon game 😅

Gonna wait until the second and see if that's worth it. If so will do both DLC at the same time.

Haven't played SV in a long time. Forgot how absolutely ugly it is lmao

haven't bothered with this dlc. the switch pokemon games just haven't done it for me, and while scarviol was better than swsh it wasn't the difference I needed. So I've gone back to the ds & 3ds games, & been having a lot more fun.

What i find funny is that i only get performance drops on top of the mountain, everywhere else my switch runs fine, both docked and not

As someone who actually enjoyed the dlc I can say I really like the story as it was something I could relate to my own life with the theme of being honest usually brings better results than hiding the truth. I found the bond between ogrepon pretty amazing as well as the character development of your rivals in the story. Also as a shiny hunter I found the new variety very nice.

the idea of wanting your playthrough pokémon to still be at the right level is a little ridiculous… i think a lot of the fun in the dlc comes from catching new mons and using them. i had a good bit of challenge doing this

I honestly loved the dlc and feel its a step in the right direction as far as the story goes. Also i did make a whole new team so there was an actual challenge.

In tears of the kingdom you could fall from the heavens to the bowels of hell and it ran buttery smooth and looked amazing. In Pokémon, you just look at a pond and the game drops to 5 frames a minute. And that hurts my feelings considering this is the most fun I’ve had with pokemon since I got the original Pokemon Gold for my gameboy color on launch day.

Still you think GF would be able to create an engine that can reuse previous animations and models. If Genius Sonority was able to reuse gen 1&2 models and some animations from Stadium in pokemon colosseum in thier no excuse for Gf to have dexcuts aside for rushed development.

My favorite part of the DLC was when Ogrepon said “It’s all ogre for you!” and then proceeded to beat up the Loyal Three.

Man, I still just can't believe the biggest, most profitable game franchise ever still makes games that look so lazy and cheap

You know, I never saw that muppet recommendation comming. Who woulda thought...

haven't tried this DLC yet, big pokefan here but good to know i shouldn't rush; might wait for part 2 to release, thanks arlo :)

While I can appreciate the effort put forth by the team to make this game/DLC fun…I just can’t get past the issues man. Like a few things look better compared to Sword and Shield but I think that those games were better from a performance standpoint. Hopefully this just means GameFreak will make the next mainline entry spectacular because they have a lot of nice laid foundation to grow off of.

The DLC battles are actually good/challenging if you use a new team from the DLC mons. The ones you can catch in the DLC are at a good enough level to use in the story battles.

I had an opposite experience. Overall the lag/ frame rate issue was near non-existent in Kitakami compared to Paldea. And I had a lot of fun. Because I have no life (jk got lucky with my schedule), I did every side quest, explored every inch of the map, fought nearly every trainer and completed the dex. In total probably 20 or so hours in Kitakami. And did you not do the Ursaluna quest?

This definitely felt like if you weren't huge on the new map, it was mostly a story set-up for part 2. That disappointment being doubled down on by not liking the characters definitely makes sense too.

Where is pikmin 4 blue boy

They can't do a performance patch, but they can do paid DLC. They aren't getting my money

Yeah, sorry Arlo, I've gotta disagree with you about the story and characters of this DLC. All the other parts? Completely valid complaints, but just saying that you didn't like the characters because they were "unpleasant??" That was the entire point. You have a typical jerk rival who ends up being your friend by the end, and the typical friendly rival who ends up hating your guts by the end. You're not supposed to feel good. Same with the legendaries. They're not pleasant because they're literally villains. You also have to remember that this is a 2 part story. Characters like Briar are going to be utilized in the Indigo Disk, she's just being introduced here so we're familiar with her whenever she becomes more important later. Most of these character's arcs are not complete yet, which you can see especially with Kieran who ends this part on a cliffhanger. No offense or anything, you're allowed to have you own opinions, but this entire review feels like you went into this expecting one thing, and were disappointed that it wasn't the safe, fun, Pokemon adventure that the Isle of Armor was. Sorry again about this essay, but I just had to get my thoughts out.

I noticed that a lot of the rock textures on Oni Mountain actually looked far less repetitive than the ones in the base game. Still a ways to go, though.