Following the release of Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet in November of last year, further DLC expansions for the game, titled The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk were revealed, with the former being officially released on September 13th. This half of the expansion centers around the player character being sent on a school trip to the region of Kitakami, where they befriend siblings Carmine and Kieran as they get involved in a mystery surrounding the mysterious Pokemon Okidogi, Munkidori, Fezandipiti, and Ogerpon. Spoilers ahead for the expansion, so if you don’t want those, skip straight to the end.
Having played through the main story of the DLC, the expansion is certainly very different to Scarlet and Violet’s main game. The environments are much more detailed and diverse than the main region of Paldea, as are the many returning Pokemon from past games who are populating the environments. It’s very fun to explore, yet despite that, there surprisingly isn’t much in the way of sidequests. Most of the available sidequests are rather short, and the new Pokedex to complete is rather small, only being half the size of the base game’s. If players have already completed that Pokedex in the long gap between the initial game and the DLC’s release, they’ll find this Pokedex not much of a challenge to complete.
The game’s story is very unique, however, and it’s certainly a departure from the story of most Pokemon games, which is saying a lot given the time travel and multiple branching paths that were featured in Scarlet and Violet’s main story. Right from the get-go, players are sent right into the thick of the action as they meet Carmine and Kieran and end up befriending them almost immediately. Kieran is obsessed with the Pokemon Ogerpon, who, in Kitakami, is stated to be a terrifying creature who attacked the village long ago before being stopped by the Loyal Three: Okidogi, Munkidori, and Fezandipiti. Kieran sympathizes with Ogerpon, and wants to meet it one day.
As Kitakami’s Festival of Masks starts, Carmine and the player encounter Ogerpon, who drops the titular Teal Mask. The two work together to fix the Mask for Ogerpon, keeping it hidden from Kieran as Carmine believes he would feel left out if they told him. Carmine and Kieran’s grandfather reveals the truth about the whole legend after they show him the Teal Mask, however, and he states that the Loyal Three were actually the antagonizers, and that after they attacked Ogerpon and its friend, Ogerpon retaliated, which the town misinterpreted as the trio protecting them from it.
Kieran overhears this and goes to the Loyal Three’s shrine. After he is defeated, he vows to grow stronger as the Loyal Three are suddenly revived from the dead. The player and Carmine save Ogerpon from the Three, and the player and Carmine go after them in order to retrieve the Masks they stole from Ogerpon long ago. The player bonds with Ogerpon in the process, and after the Masks are retrieved, Ogerpon wishes to join the player. Kieran angrily fights the player for the right to catch it, but is defeated. After the player catches Ogerpon, Carmine and Kieran have to return to the Blueberry Academy, the school they attend in the far off Unova region. A brief cutscene plays, showing that Kieran has become obsessed with strength as he flashes an evil smile, ending on a cliffhanger about what is to come during the next DLC expansion, where the player will encounter Carmine and Kieran again.
The story as a whole wasn’t bad by any means, but was overall a very brief experience. I completed this story around two days after the game released, and I hadn’t even been playing too excessively. The story does a good job, despite its length, of making the player feel attached to the siblings Carmine and Kieran, as both of them have positive and negative qualities that definitely make them feel like deep characters. Kieran’s arc in particular is very good despite its length, and its apparent continuation into The Indigo Disk looks like it will have promise. Despite this, the game tries to make a whole game’s worth of rival fights in the span of what is a much shorter story, so they perform the very daring move of having us fight one of them every twenty minutes or so of playtime. Though rival fights are always fun and their battle music is great to listen to, it starts to get tiring after taking down Kieran’s Yanmega for the fifth time in a row.
The story also does an excellent job handling Ogerpon. The promotional materials did a great job masking the truth regarding it status, which allows for the twist of the Loyal Three being the true antagonists to be an especially good one. The so called “ogre of Kitakami” turns out to actually be a baby faced and fun loving Pokemon who follows the player around and supports them during the story, and it’s hard not to grow attached to it. Not only does it make it so that you as a player want to catch Ogerpon when it gives the opportunity, but it also further enhances the schism built between you and Kieran as a result of the story. It’s excellently handled, and despite the short time spent with it, it does its job remarkably well.
Despite this, the plot with the Loyal Three is very rushed. Despite being the so-called “Protectors of Kitakami” for the vast majority of the plot, they as Pokemon don’t seem to acknowledge it, and the references to them in town are rather brief. More time is spent fighting them as general ruffians more than anything, and while that was likely the intention of the story, it made it so their battles didn’t really feel as special as, say, the battles with the Ruinous Quartet in Scarlet and Violet’s main game. The Titan Pokemon-esque boss fights were very fun, and their battle music was good as well, so that was a plus, but they sort of just disappear from the plot after being defeated. The village suddenly hears one story about them being bad guys and automatically pretend apparent centuries of worshiping them never happened, further erasing their presence from the plot and the game itself. The trio doesn’t do anything else after this, only re-appearing to be caught in the post-game, and it’s also never explained why they’re suddenly revived from the dead, either. They just sort of come back without explanation. They were very fun antagonists, but despite this, they were heavily underutilized and not as well handled as they could’ve been despite being the major driving force behind the story.
There are a few bits of notable additional content. The first is a short sidequest involving the photographer, Perrin, who is hunting after a rare version of the Pokemon Ursaluna, known as “The Bloodmoon Beast.” It’s an enjoyable little quest while it lasts, and there’s a fun minigame where the player has to go around taking photos of Pokemon species. However, this minigame is over and done with very quickly, and the quest has the player battle and catch Ursaluna almost immediately afterwards. The sidequest, despite being heavily advertised in promotion for The Teal Mask, lasts very little time at all, taking at most little over half an hour to get done. Perrin as a character also has a very rushed arc that doesn’t really mean much since the player hardly knows her for more than twenty minutes by the time she starts spewing out her emotional backstory. Like with a lot of things in this DLC, it really needed more meat to it to be effective as a story. Another, albeit smaller example, is in the minigame Ogre Oustin’. It’s a rather fun little game, but there’s not much excitement or incentive to be gained from it. It’s more of a time killer than anything else, and there’s better things to be killing time with than Ogre Oustin’, especially when the rewards are rather mediocre unless you play it a lot.
Overall, The Teal Mask is a short yet sweet little piece of content for the game. Does it have a lot of meat to it? Not really. There’s a lot of new content to be completed, though it’s overall very short. Is it fun? Most definitely. The story and characters keep the plot fun and engaging, and discovering the various aspects of Kitakami is a journey in and of itself. Is it really worth the DLC expansion’s thirty dollar price tag? For the amount of time it lasts, probably not, but given that this bundle also includes The Indigo Disk expansion which releases this coming Winter, it remains to be seen for sure. If you enjoyed Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I’d definitely recommend the DLC, because while it’s not the longest piece of media in the world, it certainly is a fun one.
