The End of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet | The Indigo Disk REVIEW

Here are my thoughts on The Indigo Disk and all the other Hidden Treasure of Area Zero stuff from the final chunk of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet DLC.

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This video was edited by the excellent @Yoshiller !

"Reloaded Installer #11" by LHS.

[deltalord]

Ngl its both funny and sad somewhat that you can see the landscape glitching out while the cutscenes are going through them

[unironicallylikesranger]

Arceus almighty, seeing the already muddy textures flicker out of existence in a scripted cutscene is unforgivable

[matthewbochnik]

I feel conflicted with these games and dlcs since they showed that they can still come up with great ideas but spend no time executing them. Imagine if these games didn’t have to meet a deadline, every concept not being half baked truly would’ve resulted in an amazing game. The story not feeling conclusive at all with terrapagos was all I needed to know about these dlcs to not get them, great ideas with next to no execution

[connergoessupersonic]

To put it simply, this game and DLC are all sorts of wild and delicious flavors all crammed into a half-baked crust. Had they left this game to cook for a year longer, it would’ve been AMAZING

[PoserPosse]

It is utterly ridiculous that Horsea is floating above a mucky puddle of water, while Haxorus has to have a baby floatie under him, just to fight.

[kilimachevsk]

The thing I found most interesting about the DLC's story was the meta elements going on with Kieran.

Like, we all know how it goes with Pokemon. You show up, you battle people, you hear about the new legendary and it decides it wants to be your friend, and all your opponents and rivals come to respect you and be your friend too- and that's exactly how the Teal Mask went.

...Except that Kieran didn't become your friend. Instead, he had the much more realistic reaction of being FRUSTRATED by losing to you over and over. Here in Indigo Disk, he says how WEIRD it is that his sister, who hates outsiders, somehow became best friends with you. Not only that but he talks about how unfair it is that Ogerpon, the Pokemon he loves, the Pokemon that ONLY he loved, that everyone else treated like a monster, that he's been totally obsessed with... decided to befriend YOU, a complete stranger that only heard about it like 5 minutes ago.

He starts acknowledging how unfair it is, that you win EVERY battle, befriend EVERY enemy, and catch EVERY legendary. In the final battle against him, he even had the line when I got a crit against him "You're still lucky even NOW?! What are you, the main character or something?!" So of course he immediately acts to try and get SOMETHING for himself, and chucks the Master Ball at the legendary, because of COURSE, even though he's the one that found it and pulled it from it's resting spot, OF COURSE it takes one look at you and wants to be your friend instead of his, and OF COURSE that set him off.

...Oooof course then it takes that interesting idea, that leaning on the fourth wall, and doesn't DO anything with it. After that, he's your friend now, same as everyone else. Even though he frankly got robbed of the legendary he rightfully earned and deserves. You can always count on Pokemon to squander it's potential and interesting ideas.

[backlogrob]

The way you ended it is entirely accurate: it’s hard to care when you get all these features at the very end of the game’s shelf life, when you’re done with most of the content already. They strip all the content we’ve had for decades (and the actual Pokémon!) and then give it to us at the end of a dlc pack with some other neat new things that I don’t even feel like playing around with, cuz like you said, I’m mostly done and a new game is probably right around the corner.

[thespeedyyoshi]

And this concludes Season 2 of Arlo’s Raycon saga: The Arlo Prime Arc.

[desnaymk]

I think the games can be summed up in this, "Made with enough love but not enough time"

[_AshB_]

If they let us join random union room instead of locking us behind link codes it would be better imo. that or give us way more bbq points per quest. The grind is a bit demoralizing.

[kisukoev]

About the meeting with the professor at the lake, it's probably not a "bootstrap loop" like many people think, and there are 3 very important details to establish this:
- the professor him/herself mentions different timelines as soon as he arrives, as to hint that he's from one of those and not YOUR past
- the professor gives you their book, the same book they had since childhood, since it has their name written on it with a "childlike" handwriting. The issue here is that Arven also has that exact book from the beginning of the game, so either the professor had 2 of them (unlikely, since they claim that it hurts to give it away, but why would it if they had 2?) or, more likely, there was only one book but "yours" was from a different timeline
- the most important detail is that in the notes found while descending area zero, the professor claims to first create the time machine and THEN Arven was born, while the one at the lake claims to already have a son but the time machine still isn't working.

If this is true, it implies various things:
- Terapagos, or at least the crystals/terastal energy can create links between different timelines
- the time machine should be renamed "timeline gachapon with built-in desire sensor"
- maybe, since the professor from the other timeline had Arven before the time machine was completed, this time they'll prioritize him over the research, MAYBE

[urdimsum]

The Kieran/Carmine dynamic is as realistic a sibling dynamic I've seen in a bit.

[matthewLkidder]

Scarlet and Violet are the epitome of love hate.

[Echoingsunflowers]

My main gripe with the game is the Union circle and the fact you have to do like 10+ group quests to get all of the legendary snacks from snacksworth if you already have done 120 solo quests. It makes it more difficult than it needs to be

[MikulOnIce]

I think that Keiran would have been a wonderful character in the digimon universe Arlo. There would have been so many dark digimon who would have been *happy* to take advantage of his personal shortcomings and negative emotions.

[amateraceon]

The Terarium and quests is honestly the most satisfying gameplay loop I’ve had in this game, maybe in a main series Pokémon game in general, but the actual story content definitely let me down a good bit especially when compared to base game, so how much one likes Indigo Disk likely depends on what they prefer in their Pokémon games

[darkmoon]

I honestly thought you wouldn’t enjoy the Area Zero part of the Indigo Disk. The storyline once it got to that part felt kind of like a nothing-burger, almost an afterthought.

Terapogos is unexplored almost entirely. It’s powers and the whole Astral type thing just feel like a gimmick rather than expanding the Terastal phenomenon lore. And then it just randomly has time powers, that are only shown for that one professor cutscene.

We also get little info into the true nature of Paradox Pokémon. For example, how did Heath the explorer come across various Paradox species in an era where Terapogos was asleep and the time machine didn’t exist? Where did they come from?

I was really let down in that department, but I’m glad you had fun with it.

[coltonk.]

ARLO

I know this is unrelated to the topic at hand but I have no idea when you'll talk about this next and I want to make sure you see this. Because of YOU, I finally played Pikmin. And it's good. Like, REALLY good. It's criminally underrated given how poorly the games have sold and I'm sad about that. Thanks for introducing me to the series that SHOULD HAVE BEEN the next Mario!!

[crane]

Weird, the terrarium ran really well for me in comparison to kitakami, which was a SLOG. I loved Indigo Disk and although they’re rushed as fuck, SV as a whole really has a place in my heart

[heynowitslife]

i will never understand how a supposed battle focused DLC, with a legitimate battling school, that has a ranking system for battling and a special battling location DOESNT offer a battler tower/maison/tree ??? Like what???