So, the final DLC released for Pokemon Violet on Tuesday Evening (at least in my timezone) and I’ve more or less been playing it since. At the time of writing this, I’ve finished the main story and mostly finished my dex (I’m just needing the two Scarlet exclusives– hopefully will get those by the time I finish this post) so it feels like a good time to talk about my thoughts.
Which, honestly, are kind of complicated especially as most of this DLC’s story is used to tie up the cliffhanger from the last DLC and as someone who didn’t form much of an attachment to Carmine or Kieran on top of my general displeasure with battling, that… wasn’t particularly engaging for me.
Carmine’s initial rudeness at the start didn’t work well for me, regardless of her development later, and while I empathize with Kieran’s feelings (it sucks to feel left out and have something you really cared about and supported only to essentially have all the focus put on someone else), I don’t like how the character arc was done. I disliked the position the game put us in, I disliked not being able to say more on why we couldn’t say anything (which made Kieran think we couldn’t trust him in the first place when it was due to a matter of concern), and it ended up making me frustrated that we had to go down this character arc in the first place.
Like have Carmine’s change of heart feel more natural and have better ways to interact with the situation with Kieran without it going full drama into this DLC to finish it. I just hate how everything was handled so much.
My general ambivalence with Carmine is similar to Nemona, but at least Nemona didn’t suddenly change her attitude halfway through super quickly. And so we’re in this plot where we’re forced to join a club I could care less about (and saying no in any of these is just “oh, you’re just being modest!! Of course you want to!!” why give me a no if you won’t take my answer seriously) in order to once again beat Kieran after going through the Elite Four here so he’ll stop feeling mopey? I honestly don’t even understand how this helps. I would guess the idea is showing him that acting like a little punk doesn’t necessarily make you stronger or something.
What really gets me too is so little was actually about the “Treasure of Area Zero”– a majority of the new DLC is spent dealing with Kieran, the League Club, and fighting the Blueberry Academy’s Elite Four. Only after that do you get to the Area Zero part which is fairly short and just, I don’t think Kieran’s and Carmine’s character drama added to any of it. You still could’ve had them added without the extra drama and cliffhanger-ness which I think is part of what soured everything for me.
I would say of the DLC characters, Lacey and Drayton were my favorites (even if Drayton’s trial was infuriating). I found them more interesting than Carmine and Kieran and would’ve liked to spend more time with them.
But ignoring my issues with the characters, I think some of the biggest let-downs for me is every single thing I was excited for just… ended up not being that great. And the BP grinding I was concerned about is essentially as bad as I expected.
I genuinely wish I had more positive things to say. The terrarium idea is kind of cool I guess even if I have mixed feelings on the execution (I’ll talk more about that later). I liked that the photos were still here. I’m glad we can finally actually fly considering how stupid it is the glide just kind of dives off after a while??
One final complaint I have before talking about my general DLC journey (where I’m sure I’ll still have some complaints, just more interspersed) is I’m still so angry about the lack of actual outfit customization. What really gets me is just how horribly done the additional accessories/non-main clothing options are? Having to go back to Paldea and check each shop for things per town with these stores is honestly kind of ridiculous. Why not just have a new store at the new place that has everything?? I ended up getting some new stuff I missed from the first DLC because I didn’t think that on top of making me go back to Paldea to check the stores, they’d actually make me do so in every single town :| I ended up grabbing a new bag and tights.
Honestly, the Blueberry Uniform Autumn top is actually really cute. If I could just wear it with a pink skirt OR ANY SKIRT REALLY and maybe there was a cardigan option or something because other characters get to wear actually coats and other accessories over their uniform, I may have even used it, but nope!
And of course, Pokemon still can’t be bothered to do a wavy/curly ponytail since X/Y even though they literally have pigtails done that way and it’d be so easy to make a ponytail version -_-
Anyway, things kick off with a call from Clavell. We ended up being specified by name for a special exchange program to Blueberry Academy by Cyrano, an old friend of Clavell’s and head of Blueberry Academy.
With things all good to go, we make our way to the Academy and meet Lacey who ends up taking over the tour.
After making a pitstop to check out new clothes and pray for a better hairstyle which unfortunately didn’t happen, I returned back to Blueberry Academy to finally head to the Terrarium. In here ended up being Perrin. I’m sad I didn’t have the Growlithe she gave us in the party as apparently she had some special dialogue if you did.
Lacey, meanwhile, had invited us to join a class in the Coastal area. We had to find an Alolan Pokemon and honestly, I was really looking forward to more classes and life as an exchange student.
Unfortunately, this is the only class we actually get to do. Shortly after this, we’re called over by Carmine, but before we get to that, some other things that happened:
-We unlocked BPs which are essentially various little side quests that require you to do things in the Terrarium from taking pictures, doing auto battles, catching Pokemon, picking up items, etc. BP is used for a lot of things in the DLC such as nearly everything you can do with the Club Room and Blueberry’s Academy shop and cafeteria. It is a grind and you will need like… 20K+ total and when most of the little quests give you like… 20-30 on average, it’s just an infuriatingly long grind.
-We unlocked the Pokemon syncing which I never actually bothered using again.
-Also some thing with Black Tera Raid crystals (not be confused with Dark Tera Type Crystals) that are apparently super hard I guess.
I did end up doing one Black Crystal raid because it had a Pokemon I needed to catch for the Blueberry Academy dex and Home wasn’t up yet, but I didn’t really get much beyond a thank you for the data and how more could show up.
It was then off to meet with Carmine who we had to battle with and then Drayton showed up to invite us to the League Club.
In the Clubroom, we learn about the PC which is where we can customize the room and learn the new Pokeball poses (which of course you can’t preview first).
Another annoying thing is you both have to pay BP to unlock these new things, but also use BP again to change them in the first place. At least changing your Pokeball pose is just 10BP, but changing the Clubroom Layout is 300BP so nearly as much as you had to spend to unlock layouts in the first place.
Thankfully, the theme I wanted was in the first sets you unlock and it’s so pretty.
Which makes it all the more infuriating that my Dorm room, which I can once again not decorate at all, just looks like this. They threw some blue paint over our old dorm room and called it a day.
As much as I do like the Fancy theme, I did expect to be able to customize more parts individually so it was kind of surprising that it just coated everything into the theme and that was it so I’m glad I like pretty much all of it.
Anyway, it was then time for our date hangout trap with Drayton where he had a plan to have Kieran see us and convince them to let us battle against the Blueberry Academy Elite Four.
I decided to go in Counter Clockwise order as it was essentially how I planned to visit the different biomes in the first place so first up was Crispin’s. His trial required getting ingredients from the trainers to make a super spicy sandwich. I kind of wish there was more variety besides battling, trading ingredients, and one oddly done quiz question. Honestly, I just wanted less battles. Once the sandwich was done, it was time for the battle.
At least there’s still the cute commemoration pictures.
Next up was Lacey’s trial which was a Pokemon quiz and easily the best one.
I wish my Pokemon could’ve been in the picture too though :(
Drayton’s was the next trial which was the worst one. I had to make a team solely of Pokemon caught by myself in the Terrarium… I was not fun. We made it through, but I’m not happy about it. I hate when I can’t do something with my usual team.
The final trial was Amaris’ which had us needing to complete her flight trial which was… different, but fun, at least until I had to go through all the other time trial courses which were not as fun.
With the Elite Four beaten, it was time for the Champion battle.
It went better than expected. I honestly found it easier than some of the Elite Four battles.
It was then time to meet up with Briar finally to actually finish up the story beat left off from the last DLC that actually connected with the main game’s story. This would have us going back down to Area Zero to find Terapogos.
Unfortunately, Drayton declines, so we end up just going with Carmine and Kieran (plus Ms. Briar, obviously). Geeta and Rika are also here briefly and to scold us a bit for having gone down dangerously during the main storyline, but their appearance is just… so incredibly brief, I’m surprised they showed up at all.
We were then off to Area Zero.
With the Indigo Disk, we were able to go to a new area which let us get further down into Area Zero to the Underdepths where Terapogos sleeps.
The general puzzle aspect was that you needed to find a Terastalized Pokemon in order to remove a crystal barrier. The area itself is quite pretty.
Kieran ends up trying to pry poor Terapogos out with Briar’s encouragement and when it starts crawling towards us, throws a master ball at it because he refuses to lose another Legendary to us.
After winning against him once more, things go horribly wrong when he terastalizes Terapogos which causes it go out of control and destroy Kieran’s master ball. With the power of teamwork, we’re able to control it once more and also catch it ourselves. Sorry, Kieran.
We then head back and Kieran apologizes and asks if we can still be friends. Unfortunately, we don’t actually get to apologize ourselves or talk about why we lied to him in the first place or anything because who knows why and I hate this stupid plot.
Also, this story part is so short?? So much was spent on the Club and Elite Four that any of the actual Blueberry Academy Class stuff and Area Zero stuff was so short and shoved to the side which really sucked. The DLC part is literally called The Indigo Disk and the entire thing is “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero”, but it was over and done with so quickly and the Indigo Disk was there for like two minutes just to unlock something and that was it.
At least we got this cute photo thing at the end of the credits I guess?? Not that we get to see these cute photos anywhere in our forever undecorated rooms.
Supposedly there will be one final story continuation that adds the last legendary and stuff and maybe we’ll get more of a proper ending there, but even if that is the case, there is no excuse for it not being part of this with how empty it felt.
With that done though, there were various neat Post game things such as Miraidon now being able to fly whenever which is great because the hover is super disappointing.
We could also invite characters to the Club Room now for BP, but it requires multiple invites before you can get their Pokemon trade offer which is about the only thing I cared about :/ So I don’t know if I’ll bother.
There’s multiple other Flight Trials as I mentioned earlier. Most of them weren’t too bad, but the final one is just awful partially because turning is so wide and it’s so easy to get stuck in the cave. I ended up diverging from the path a bit as I built up enough extra time and that was what finally let me finish the last difficulty.
I then met back up with Perrin as I hoped maybe now that I had hit 200 in my Dex, she’d comment on Growlithe. She didn’t, but she did mention about the two new legendaries in Area Zero because clearly I wanted to go there yet again :| I hate Area Zero. I hate that there aren’t more pit stops to navigate outside of the Lab teleports. It’s just annoying. Speaking of Legendaries though, we also had Snacksworth who gives you snacks to catch the various legendaries. Once again, unless there is a neat Event interaction part to it, I don’t know if I’ll bother. I’ve caught all the Legendaries so many times already and I don’t have the patience (or a proper Pokemon to use to help get their HP down without killing them) to try catching them all over without more Masterballs.
In addition to catching the new Area Zero legendaries though, I ended up having to make one more stop for a secret area in the depths. I had noticed it in my first run through during the story, but thought maybe it would unlock after getting Terapogos. It didn’t (not that I could check as we were teleported out), so I ended up having to find another Terestralized Pokemon like the other ones. Inside were tons of Tera Shards.
It was then I noticed that Giacomo and Eri, some of the Team Star characters, were on the navigation back in Paldea and it took me way too long to find them because they were out of their usual Team Star outfits. Eri looks like she could be my character’s older sister. Also really makes me wish we had more physical customization too.
Essentially, they asked for our help to tutor the rest of Team Star so they can pass our classes. It was… really odd seeing them all dressed in regular uniforms.
Despite being younger and newer to the school than everyone else, it thankfully worked out.
The next odd surprise was after getting a copy of Briar’s book. Heading back to the Crystal Pool with Terapogos caused us to cross space and time to talk to the real Professor Turo.
After more discussion, we ended up exchanging books. I kind of wish I could’ve gotten another another copy of Briar’s book too though.
With that done, I was finally able to complete my Pokedex after finding someone to trade for the new Scarlet Area Zero legendaries. I hate exclusives so much. Completing the exclusives gets you the mark charm. I didn’t mention it, but personally I think the Catch Charm from Drayton is the best charm.
Clavell then showed up to give us our diploma.
And with that, my card is complete… Or well, mostly.
I still had a few Sandwich recipes to finish. And also suffered through Olive rolling in my journey to get all the Table cloths to get all the chairs to get Herba Mystica even after I just did raids for some.
But now everything is done. At least until that final little story update with the last Mythical is out.