- Publisher: The Pokemon Company
- Release Date: Sep 13, 2023
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Oct 5, 2023A relatively quaint expansion that doesn’t really strive to do much beyond adding some Pokémon and telling a small, nice story. Still, it is victim to the horrendous technical woes that plague the Generation 9 games, as well as some strange balance choices that make the early periods of the expansion feel quite weird.
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Sep 26, 2023Ultimately, The Teal Mask isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. If you were able to get past the technical flaws of the base games, you’ll probably enjoy yourself well enough here. The main story isn’t as good and there’s something lost with the more linear structure, but the photography is fun and the basic loop of Pokemon remains as entertaining as ever. We’ll have to see how the second part of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero goes to make any final judgements, but for now this is really just for those who loved their time with Scarlet & Violet and want to keep the good times rolling.
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Sep 25, 2023A nice addition to the base game for everyone who enjoyed this generation of Pokemon so far with a new location, some quality of life features, and its new content. It is however let down by a plethora of technical issues still plaguing the experience.
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Sep 21, 2023Once again I ask, is the Pokemon Violet DLC worth buying? That depends. If you were hoping for a smoother framerate, you’ll be disappointed. The Teal Mask DLC runs just as well as the base game. If you want more Pokemon content, you’re in luck! There’s something like 100 old Pokemon being added to the total roster. There’s also new sidequests, new story content, and new items to acquire. The battles are challenging (by Pokemon standards), and there’s a wide variety of biomes within Kitakami to explore. For me, this was a perfect excuse to jump back into the game. But I recognize that I’m a hardcore fan of these games. Ultimately, that’s who Pokemon DLC is usually for. If you’re a fan, you’ll enjoy this extra content. Otherwise, you can leave this one be.
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Sep 19, 2023If you’re the type of Pokemon player who isn’t bothered about a game’s technical shortcomings, you’ll have a good time regardless. Otherwise, you might want to wait for the next batch of patches Game Freak have surely added to its to-do list.
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Sep 18, 2023Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero – Part I: The Teal Mask is a nice adventure that takes us back to an unbeatable formula, but it falls somewhat short and continues to be plagued by performance problems.
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Sep 17, 2023Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Teal Mask is set in a beautiful world rich with culture but suffers from some severe technical problems that hinder the experience. Interesting characters and new Pokémon make it worth checking out, but some minor technical updates would have made it significantly more enjoyable.
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Sep 16, 2023The expansion has even more technical problems than the base game and features similarly empty areas. But it offers a nice story with typical Pokémon characters and is particularly suitable if you not only want to explore the game world, but above all want to follow a storyline again.
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Sep 14, 2023I’m left struggling with how to talk about The Teal Mask. Like the main game, it is one of the most enjoyable mainline Pokémon games ever produced, but the series’ old problems keep rearing their ugly heads and dragging the experience down from both a technical and gameplay standpoint. I love this DLC and I love Scarlet & Violet, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
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Sep 18, 2023Even though performance problems were very annoying, we had a good time returning to the world of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet with The teal mask. It's a good expansion; maybe not great, but it's fun and leave us with the promise that the best is yet to come.
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Sep 21, 2023The Teal Mask is, for better and for worse, more of the same. It tells an enjoyable story with some excellent lore that makes Kitakami feel as alive as any past region, and offers the same freedom of exploration that made Paldea so captivating. Unfortunately, it also comes with all the performance issues and poor optimisation that made Paldea so frustrating, and its short length, poorly-designed level scaling, and failure to deliver a proper conclusion to its story make it a less satisfying experience than it could have been, particularly if you’re coming into it from an endgame save state with a powerful team. The value of The Hidden Treasures of Area Zero as a package will of course be determined by both parts of it, but The Teal Mask is not as strong of a start as it could have been.
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Sep 21, 2023Technical problems and a lack of difficulty balancing spoil what would’ve been a neat slice of DLC, with some surprisingly good storytelling.
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Sep 19, 2023The Teal Mask adds a variety of interesting characters and Pokémon to the ninth generation, and while Ogrepon is the clear star of the show, there’s something to love about each addition. Plus, a focus on tradition and folklore add a richness to the area of Kitakami that is so great to see. But, wildly outdated visuals, inconsistent performance, and a litany of bugs mean that it’s genuinely hard to recommend this DLC, especially for nearly the price of a brand new game.
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Sep 19, 2023In terms of content there's little to complain about. But the technical shortcomings that already plagued Pokémon Crimson and Purple have by no means been fixed.
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Sep 18, 2023The Teal Mask could have been a chance to give us some much-needed performance updates for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet. Instead, any shine it could have offered is marred by the same performance issues present at the launch of the main game, and it's just not acceptable at this point. Unless you're a die-hard Pokemon fan, the additions here simply aren't enough.
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Sep 14, 2023I really hope Indigo Disk brings it, because at present, the current incarnation of the season pass is tough to recommend.
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Sep 14, 2023The Teal Mask is a fun diversion for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet players that builds on the base game's strengths, but also exposes its weaknesses that much more. Fortunately, those strengths sparkle and Terastalize into a breezy, fun experience that delivers some rich regional storytelling, great characters, and some fantastic new Pokémon. We wanted more, though — more love and care put into the visuals and the battles. The Indigo Disk has a chance to build on the foundations The Teal Mask has laid, and we hope that's exactly what it will do.
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Nov 16, 2023The Teal Mask could have been a great expansion for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet if Game Freak had taken the time it needed to address and fix the overwhelming amount of issues that still plague the overall package. The fun stories and great Kitakami area make for some good fun if you can look past the technical troubles.
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Sep 25, 2023A fine story and the return of some old favorites can't mask what is a poorly coded, poorly optimized and poorly performs new area. They could have taken the time and effort to fix problems with this DLC, but instead they made some things worse.
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Sep 24, 2023Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 1 The Teal Mask offers nothing we haven’t seen before. Kitakami, despite the Japanese theming, feels exactly like Paldea just with different Pokémon. The story is uninteresting and has characters changing completely on a dime, and quite a lot of the included Pokémon already appear in the main game. There’s just not much going on here.
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Sep 20, 2023The Teal Mask is yet another step in a slow quality downslide for this series: it runs terribly, looks ugly, feels predictable, doesn’t offer any of the freedom Scarlet and Violet’s main story did, and falls short in so many ways compared to just about every other Pokemon game and DLC I’ve played.
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Sep 18, 2023There really is very little of interest The Teal Mask. Throughout the four hours of gameplay - which left me sleepy - I felt like I was playing an uninteresting filler, or some kind of visual novel with no content. The bulk of the DLC is dialog where you spend your time pressing "A". All of the story and characters introduced are nothing more than an excuse to sell Pokémon and cosmetic items to players, sneakily masking a completely insignificant story and additional adventure. Despite its flaws, and as I said at the beginning, here's hoping that part 2, The Indigo Disk, will be better and deliver an interesting Pokémon experience.
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Sep 18, 2023The Teal Mask contains your average monste- catching fun, but it doesn't do enough to address Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's biggest problems.
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Sep 21, 2023Nailing down my feelings on Pokemon Scarlet and Violet this past year has been difficult. In my review of the base game, I said it was one of "the best mainline Pokemon games in years," and 350 hours later, I still stand by that. Terastallization is the best battle gimmick the series has introduced to date, the open-world design fits nicely into the series' themes of exploration and discovery, and the competitive scene has been a thrill to follow and participate in. However, Scarlet and Violet's triumphant highs are still obscured by technical issues, and the same can be said for The Teal Mask. Scarlet and Violet's core issues still persist, but there's a lot to chew on here, both for hardcore competitive players and fans who want to see more of the Pokemon world. [Provisional Score = 70]
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Sep 14, 2023Scarlet and Violet already showed major signs of technical stress, and the bulging seams are even more apparent in The Teal Mask. As much as I enjoyed this DLC, it remains disappointing that some of Pokémon’s best stuff is being dragged down by a game engine that feels like it’s just a slight breeze away from falling apart.
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Sep 26, 2023Again, The Teal Mask doesn’t solve many of Scarlet and Violet’s core gameplay issues, and people hoping for a drastic overhaul are going to be rather disappointed. But playing the DLC at a time when the rumors about a Switch follow-up have shifted into “it’s getting serious” territory is especially fun because you can see clearly how beefier hardware could really work wonders for Scarlet and Violet and how the more Kitikami-like approach to design might be what makes next big Pokémon game shine.