Pokémon Scarlet & Violet: The Indigo Disk - Review

 A disk full of surprises.

Console: Nintendo Switch

While it took a lot longer for the 1st part of the Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, the Teal Mask, to release quite the opposite is true for part 2. Many thought that the Indigo Disk would slip into 2024 but no, Game Freak said winter 2023 and in winter 2023 it dropped.

But what was to be expected from it? We got glimpses of double battles, a deeper dive into the origin of the Terastalization gimmick but aside from the story continuing from where the Teal Mask left off we didn´t know much. An approach I was fine with: I was looking to be surprised but I did worry that the Indigo Disk wouldn't be able to tie up everything. Might not be the 'grand conclusion' many might've wanted. 

Were these worries unfounded? Well, let's dive into the 2nd and concluded part of the Pokémon Scarlet & Violet DLC and find out!

Sometime after your school trip to Kitakami, you arrive at the Blue Berry Academy as an exchange student. It quickly becomes apparent that your trip is more than it seems. Ever since your adventure in Kitakami, Kieran has changed considerably. He's now Champion of the Academy's own League Club and has essentially been using his newfound strength and status to bully his fellow students and has been ghosting his sister Carmine. She hopes that if you beat him and become the new BB Champion, he'll snap out of it. 

Let's start with the good stuff of the narrative. The characters are memorable. They have good designs and clear and, when appropriate, likeable personalities. Kieran himself is the focal point here. His transformation from a shy but kind boy to the bully we see here is one Pokémon hasn't done before and a nice change of pace. 

New look, new attitude, same old problems.

The heavy amount of Unova ties, from the inspired locations to tons of easter eggs, also give the story some much-appreciated extra ambience. Underscores the 'exchange student' vibe they're going for while paying homage to Pokémon Black & White, some of my favourite games in the series. This, alongside the many, many remixed and sampled Unova tracks on display is music to my ears here (ha!), but I digress. 

Back to the story, which on top of all the above is also short and basic. There are three story paths here, the BB league, the 2nd expedition to Area Zero and the Perrin photography side-quest but sadly don't have much meat on the bones. The BB stuff is just a prolonged version of your standard Elite Four affair with, albeit a fun, challenge beforehand. 

The Area Zero stuff is too brief and fails to live up to the story's potential. Terapagos itself is very much a means to an end, sadly. And Perrin? Standard side-quest territory that doesn't have that same 'Pokémon Snap' gameplay homage this time around. It's a path to capture the new Paradox Pokémon and that's about it. 

Speaking of the Pokémon: I find the Blue Berry Pokédex lacking. With the Kitakami Pokédex, I had great difficulty getting a team together because there were so many Pokémon I wanted to try out. Here, I only caught 2 Pokémon for my team, and 1 was because it was a Shiny I randomly ran across. The highlights here are the plethora of regional forms, the starter Pokémon and the few brand new Pokémon. Ones you don't see often. The Paradox Pokémon are Paradox Pokémon, but Hyrapple and Archaludon are very cool. 

What I'm very happy with is the difficulty. As stated in the opening, during the previews, it was noted that the battles in the Indigo Disk were a lot harder than usual and not just because it's all double battles. You can´t ´brute-force' these fights with over-levelled and/or legendary Pokémon with type advantages. Not easily, at least. You have to strategize, give your Pokémon items and have backup plans at the ready to beat these EV-trained, item-wielding teams of 6 Pokémon. 

Having to push myself like this was a lot of fun, the most fun I found in the DLC. But not to worry, it's not so difficult that you can't still use the Pokémon you like. You just have to strategize a bit. That higher challenge in the single-player of a Pokémon game is here, even if only briefly, and it is very nice!

Every Black & White player instantly knows what this location in the Terrarium pays homage to!

The Indigo Disk also comes with some gameplay features and mini-games to spice things up. The big things are the Blueberry Quests and the Stellar-Type. This 'new' type is a terrastalization exclusive. It doesn't function as a standard type, rather, it gives the same-type-attack boost to all a Pokémon's type moves (once) and always deals super-effective against terrastilized Pokémon. We'll see how many legs this new addition to terrastilization has but, at the very least, it's the go-to type for Terra Raid battles. 

The 'BB Quests' are a bunch of little activities such as 'catch a Ground-type Pokémon' and 'Fight a Terrastalized Pokémon'. Each completion earns you BP which you can spend on a variety of things. From using it to try and get rare items and Poké Balls from the item printer, to customizing your own club room and more. I like having these quests here. I felt the absence of quests in the base game, but what we got here is. The activity pool is too small and you can only complete them within the Terrarium itself, an annoying limitation. 

For the small fries, we have some quality-of-life improvements such as a permanent flying upgrade for Koraidon/Miraidon to help with exploring the rather artificial but varied Terrarium, Paldea and Kitakami. Nice but something that came a little too late. You're not able to take full advantage of it so late in the game. Tied into this is a flight mini-game. Basic fly through the hoops before the time end stuff. A thing this DLC has, to be sure. 

More interesting is the synchro machine. A feature that lets you directly control your Pokémon, as long as you're in the Terrarium, and go as far as auto-battle Pokémon. Not something for me but I can see kids especially going crazy over it. I can even see it making a comeback in a future Pokémon game if you'll allow me the speculation. 

Let's close things out on how this new area runs. The overall performance of the Scarlet & Violet leaves a lot to be desired still even if it has gotten better over time. I'm sad to say that The Indigo Disk is clearly a step back. For whatever reason, whenever you're in the Terrarium, the game gets choppy very quickly and encountered my fair share of asset-loading issues and clipping. My Switch' fan is also not a fan of the Terrarium, often going into overdrive. A problem it only seems to have with this game. 

Conclusion

The Indigo Disk is a fun, but rather by the numbers, bit of extra content that isn't the big finish to Scarlet & Violet it could've been. It has some interesting features, quality-of-life updates and some stuff longtime fans have wanted for a while like the higher difficulty while it ties up the story elements of both the base game and the Teal Mask. However, there's not much here in terms of 'big' content and it has, annoyingly so, many small and annoying drawbacks to the new features. A fine piece of extra content but not much more I find.