Pokémon Sword - Isle of Armor review: It’s almost what I wanted

My 8.5 out of 10 rating for the initial release of Pokémon Sword and Shield may not be absolutely clear about this, but the latest Pokémon games are my favorite ever. They're not perfect by any means, but even with their cautious approach, I believe they made the biggest advances to the franchise across the board, and like I said, they gave me hope for the future of the series.

That hope was strengthened when The Pokémon Company announced in January that it wouldn't be releasing a brand-new mainline Pokémon game this year, and instead would opt to release an expansion pass for the current games. I'm not a huge fan of the annual releases Pokémon has accustomed its fans to, and DLC could allow the company to keep current games alive and make profit for longer. And it could do so while offering a better value for fans by selling something that's cheaper and less redundant. In the meantime, the next game in the series can be worked on by a separate team, with more time for new ideas and mechanics to be implemented.

Now, the first part of the expansion pass for Pokémon Sword and Shield - the Isle of Armor - is available, and it gives us a (very small) glimpse of what could be a better future for Pokémon. It's not quite what I'd like it to be, but it's certainly close.

A gorgeous new open world

I found Pokémon Sword and Shield to be beautiful games overall. There's a good variety of scenarios and themes, and they're all represented beautifully as you go through the game. At the same time, these games introduced the Wild Area, a huge open field which gave players more freedom of movement than any Pokémon game in the past, specifically by offering free camera movement for the first time. However, these two aspects didn't come together, and while the closed, linear areas of the games were beautiful, the Wild Area didn't change that much across the whole map and felt a little bland after a while.

The Isle of Armor is an almost perfect marriage of these two aspects. The entire map in this expansion, excluding the inside of buildings - of which there are only four in the whole map - is an open area with no loading screens or transition animations between each area. On top of that, there is so much variety in this map. A large portion of the map is made of water with small islands littered across it, and on land, each area is radically different from the next. Wetlands, beaches, caves, forests, and deserts all come together in a single map that doesn't feel disconnected. Simply traveling across the region is an experience on its own.

The team also seems to have put a little more work into the visual quality of the Isle of Armor. It's not leaps and bounds better than the base game, and it's unlikely to change your mind if you didn't like how the game looked in the first place, but there's a touch more color and more quality to some of the textures.

There are also little things that add to the look and feel of this expansion. The option to have your Pokémon follow you around in the map should have been in the game to begin with and it's a very welcome addition. You can also add a cool new light trail to your bike, which I do think makes it look much nicer.

Not enough to do

The Isle of Armor falls a little short when it comes to new content, though. The main plot, as revealed in the trailers prior to release, revolves around training at the Master Dojo to obtain Kubfu and ultimately evolve it into your preferred style of Urshifu. To do this, you have to complete a series of trials, but the whole process is short and is over quickly.

Training with Kubfu once you've obtained it is a little more challenging, but if you've spent a lot of time playing the base game, you can easily just train it to the maximum level and breeze through it all. You might benefit more from the expansion if you're new to the game or haven't spent a lot of time training in it, since it will be somewhat more challenging and thus, feel more rewarding. For the others, it will be a short experience.

That lack of content extends to other aspects of the Isle of Armor. This expansion brings back about 100 Pokémon from generations past, including personal favorites of mine like Volcarona, Shinx, and Zoroark. Alongside them, a similar number Pokémon that were already in the base game also appear in the Isle of Armor. 100 Pokémon isn't a small number, but with a world as big and beautiful as this one, having more Pokémon you couldn't get before would have helped tremendously in providing a sense of discovery and wonder. As it is, I felt like I was more often disappointed to see Pokémon I already had than I was happy to see new ones. Again, this is something that will likely affect you less if you're relatively new to the game - I had already obtained all 400 Pokémon in the base game, so it was easier to be underwhelmed.

Aside from that, there just isn't a ton of things to do. When you first arrive at the Isle of Armor, a stranger will task you with finding 151 Alolan Diglett hidden throughout the many areas of the region, and that's fun enough, it reminds me of finding Koroks in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You can also donate Watts to a character in the Master Dojo for some rewards, some better than others, and after proving your worth, a new Restricted Sparring mode offers some challenging battles to go through.

These are nice additions and they make it easier to obtain certain items and Pokémon, but they just don't bring that much that's new to the experience, and with such a big and beautiful world, it's just disappointing that it feels so empty. There are no other trainers or much in the way of challenges around the area.

Conclusion

The first expansion for Pokémon Sword and Shield is best described as a step in the right direction, at least as far as world design goes. The Isle of Armor is beautiful and it feels more open than any other area in Pokémon games, and just going around it is joyous. But it doesn't bring with it enough content to make it feel like it's a truly big adventure, especially if you've already invested a lot of time into the main game.

The $30 expansion pass includes two expansions, and the Isle of Armor is just one of them, which means you can think of it as costing just $15. At that price, I think the Isle of Armor doesn't do an amazing job of justifying its price. However, I am looking at the expansion pass in a similar way to the Breath of the Wild expansion pass, where the second part was clearly marketed as the bigger of the expansions. I'm holding out hope that The Crown Tundra expansion will take things even further and justify the $30 price tag for the complete expansion pass. Until it releases, you may want to wait to see if it's worth it.