A Critical Review of Pokémon’s “Isle of Armor” DLC
Pokemon Sword and Shield quickly became one of my favorite Pokemon games to date. And with the first DLC finally out I am pretty disappointed to say that while Isle of Armor does deliver on most fronts, a lot of the fun on the island was drowned in tedium and began to drag before the end came into sight. These moments are all throughout the campaign in Isle of Armor, overstaying their welcome with gameplay loops that just don’t make much sense. Nonetheless, experiencing a new area in Pokemon Sword and Shield is still fun and Isle of Armor provides that and much more.
Isle of Armor begins with a call for me to head to Wedgehurst Station and leave for the new area as well as be introduced to the new rival (which differs depending on the game version). For Pokemon Sword, the new rival is Klara who uses poison types, and for Pokemon Shield, there is Avery who uses psychic types – both of which are perfect fits for the already large cast of trainers with great designs. My playthrough has entirely been on Pokemon Sword, so I’ve been enjoying the colorful personality Klara expresses from start to finish.
After boarding the train and catching a lift from the Flying Taxi, the Isle of Armor locale is shown on the map and reveals itself to be a giant Wild Area with various biomes, much like the Wild Areas that can be found in the vanilla game. After a quick battle against Klara I was tasked to avoid the Master Dojo, so of course the first thing I did was start heading towards the Master Dojo, but almost immediately got sidetracked by realizing how large the Isle of Armor is – and after seeing a giant Wailord in the distant ocean, I just had to go and see if I could catch it.
I quickly found myself spending almost two hours running around the island, finding all the returning Pokemon from past generations and being absolutely terrified by a Sharpedo rushing towards me while I was on my journey to the giant Wailord. After catching almost 30 different Pokemon and whiffing almost triple the Quick Balls, I realized that there is no Pokemon Center on the entire island. This meant that anytime I needed to restock on Pokeballs or potions, I’d have to fly over to the main Galar area and then come back. It just seemed like such a weird decision to not have at least some sort of PokeShop to fix this annoyance.
The Master Dojo is where the real story portion of the DLC resides, explaining some new mechanics that have been added in the Isle of Armor DLC. One of the nicest changes is that there’s a new set of items that can be found on the island to make Max Soup – which can be used to change a pokemon’s Dynamax form into a Gigantimax form if that pokemon has one available, making Gigantimaxing more accessible.. After getting acquainted with the Master Dojo, Mustard made his appearance as the Dojo Master and quickly sent me on the first of three trials (two of which are fetch quests) in order to progress through the story.
The first trial is just running through the Wild Area and finding rogue Slowpoke dashing from trainers. The second trial introduces the Max Mushrooms which make the Max Soup that I mentioned earlier. At this point of the DLC, I was pretty tired of running around the island almost aimlessly wandering for items since I was given little direction when sent on the task, but thankfully the third trial was actually a final battle against Klara. True to herself, Klara spends no time setting up toxic spikes around the field before the battle to give herself the upperhand, but even though the Island of Armor DLC is treated as endgame content, I never fought against a pokemon over level 75. This, plus the fact that most of my party pokemon are already maxed out to some degree, made these fights with Klara have been more one sided than I’d like and offer little challenge. I never felt a need to take advantage of dynamaxing my Pokemon, nor did winning feel any good. It was just another step to take to reach the end.
After completing all the trials and defeating Klara, Mustard introduces Kubfu – the new legendary Pokemon of the Isle of Armor. At first I wasn’t too big on Kubfu’s design, but its evolution as Urshifu is imposing and a real winner. After receiving Kubfu, I was granted access to pokemon walking with me outside of the pokeball, but only in Isle of Armor territory. It’s cute, but the pokemon quickly get outpaced and can even get stuck on corners when running around the Wild Area. I appreciate the novelty, but the frustrations made me lose interest almost immediately.
The second half of the DLC is mostly spent hanging out with Kubfu and training it up in order to take the challenge of my choice represented by two different towers – each of which dictates the way Kubfu can grow. The Tower of Waters is known for its Rapid-Strike Style and will cause Kubfu to evolve into a Fighting/Water type. The Tower of Darkness on the other hand is known for the Single-Strike Style and will allow Kubfu to evolve into a Fighting/Dark type. I took no time choosing because I already knew what the Gigantimax form of the Dark type looked like and the striking resemblance to Street Fighter’s Akuma made it a no-brainer: I took the Tower of Darkness.
Before being able to challenge the tower, the trainer at the entrance encourages grinding Kubfu up to level seventy five. To put this into perspective, Kubfu is gained at level ten and all of the wild pokemon in the area are at least level sixty. I’ve grinded max raid battles since the game’s launch and have had a horde of EXP Candies that grant large amounts of experience to Pokemon. Getting Kubfu to level eighty cost me maybe a few seconds. For anyone that is just now jumping back into the DLC and only did the main campaign for Sword and Shield, I’m not sure how long this road block would be, but it just felt like extra padding for an expansion that doesn’t really need it.
Challenging the Tower of Darkness meant using Kubfu exclusively. Each trainer faced only has a single Pokemon in their party as well, making for a series of even fights. The last battle in the tower was difficult enough, making for a pleasant change of pace. Once the fight is over, Kubfu evolves. The DLC would have been best to end here. Instead, it overstays its welcome. The newly evolved Urshifu has a Gigantimax form that requires Max Soup to unlock. Unfortunately, the game sent me through a series of unwanted hoops before letting me feed the soup to Urshifu. By the time the real final battle occured, I was ready for things to be over with. Fortunately, the final battle is a solid challenge even with a fully trained party.
Upon victory, the Isle of Armor campaign is complete and I’m free to run around the Wild Area, capture the new Pokemon, and try out the new battle type called Restricted Battles. These new fights force me to use only specific types of pokemon and are a fun challenge outside of the battle tower in the base game.
The Isle of Armor DLC was a lot of fun, but had a lot of nonsense padding that just felt out of place in a game where all I want to do is catch Pokemon and battle trainers. There are definitely some fun moments and interesting ideas, like being able to choose Kubfu’s style, and both of the final battles with Mustard are intense, but in between it all are just boring fetch quests that soured the whole experience. Thankfully, the DLC doesn’t necessarily have to start and end at the Isle of Armor’s campaign because making the entire island a Wild Area means I get to continue running around looking for new Pokemon. In this aspect I’m grateful and am looking forward to the new pokemon team builds that can stem from these additions. Outside of that, I definitely don’t see myself wanting to play the DLC again on Pokemon Shield and have now gotten a bit wary of the next DLC to come in the form of The Crown Tundra.
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