Recently the latest round of DLC for Pokemon Scarlet/Violet was released called The Indigo Disk which is a direct continuation of what we got in The Teal Mask. So with that being said I be talking a little bit about spoilers for The Teal Mask because it’s hard to really explain the story of The Indigo Disk without it. As we saw with the end of the first DLC your new friend Kieran kind of breaks down mentally as his jealously for your character catching Ogerpon reaches a boiling point and he shows signs of having a massive change in character. 

The story of The Indigo Disk follows you being invited to be an exchange student at Blueberry Academy where Kieran and his sister Carmine are studying. You find that Kieran is very different and is now the Pokemon Champion of the academy so it’s up to you to work your way up to battle him at his best. There’s also a second story involved with the DLC where circumstances that I won’t discuss since they contain spoilers lead to discovering a previously known section of Area Zero in the main game that is filled with new discoveries and mysteries.

First I want to talk about the gameplay as that is the highlight of this DLC for me. The Elite Four of Blueberry academy and Kieran are legitimately tricky opponents and far stronger than anything we got in the first DLC. As far as challenges go Kieran isn’t quite up to par with the most difficult battles like with Cynthia in Pokemon Diamond/Pearl or Red from Gold/Silver but he is noticeably more difficult than your average champion battle. I really enjoyed that quite a bit and there is a lot to do here. Lots of new Pokemon to catch and some cool new modes like the ability to actually play as your Pokemon and the ability to gain infinite flight for your ride Pokemon. I’m still navigating around catching Pokemon and just looking for more stuff to do. The school has a currency system called BP which you complete various quests to do such as catching Pokemon, auto battles, traveling so far ect. and honestly it’s kind of fun to just go around collecting points to spend. Plus you do also need a certain amount to advance the story but by the time I realized that I had way more than enough.

As a side note I love Blueberry Academy. The idea of a location entirely in an underwater facility with different biomes is really a unique and cool addition to the world of Pokemon. 

The story is arguably the weakest element of the DLC for me. It wasn’t bad by any means but it does show how Pokemon still has a long way to go in order to consistently tell compelling stories in their games. I was legitimately looking forward to see how Kieran’s character growth was going to play out after such an entertaining bit of foreshadowing we got in The Teal Mask. The only problem was his change wasn’t as drastic as I was hoping it would be he kind of just came across as a kid throwing a temper tantrum who was too out of line to stop where as I was expecting him to be more of a ruthless dominating force that intimidated those around him. Plus we really don’t get that many moments with Kieran till late in the DLC which just made it harder to see his character progression.

When you get to the part of the story that takes you to Area Zero we do get some very entertaining moments with him such as some nice heart to heart conversations and him going into detail as to why he changed in the first place. I liked these a lot but they made up about the last half of the DLC when I wanted moments like this with Kieran spread out from start to finish. Overall I liked the Kieran stuff I just felt like more time and effort could have been taken to make his story a lot better.

As for the story part of Area Zero I was honestly very disappointed here. Visually the new locations were amazing but it also showed how much Pokemon needs people who can better render these locations maybe from someone at Monolith Soft with their Xenoblade games or even the developers of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl. I was hoping the story would go more in depth as to what terrestrialization really is and what causes it. Or even just an explanation of what Area Zero really is in the first place, but we didn’t get any of that. Honestly without explaining it in detail we basically saw what all the new locations of Area Zero had to offer in the very trailers for the DLC. Don’t get me wrong I was entertained but I am also very invested in Area Zero and terrestrialization but that investment felt wasted considering what we got.

Overall The Indigo Disk was an entertaining new venture in to the world of Pokemon yielding what I thought was one of the most unique locations I’ve seen in awhile in The Blueberry Academy. The gameplay was great as I loved all of the new Pokemon to catch and all of the new things you can do. The story sadly did not live up to my expectations. What I expected was a drastic character change in Kieran and a detailed story of trying to get him back to his senses and it felt more like disciplining a kid with a temper tantrum. I was hoping for a detailed story about the mysteries of Area Zero but all we did was catch a Pokemon and left. While I did enjoy this I am left wondering if I enjoyed it enough to justify the price I paid for the DLC.