DLC Direct (June 2)

Being perfectly honest, after I heard about today's mini direct from the news yesterday, I said "oh cool" and then immediately forgot about it for the rest of the night. This is a VERY harsh contrast from how it was up until the game's launch, with every time they told us there'd be an announcement leading to me excitedly waiting for the announcements to eventually come. I feel very little motivation to actually go out and buy these, which is partially because I don't know if I have enough money and partially because I don't know enough about it to get me interested. All I've seen about it is something something wild area, plus six new regional variants, five new gmax forms, and six new Pokémon as of right now. I feel like I may be heavily swayed one way or another depending on whether or not I enjoy the gameplay, because I'm definitely going to watch it when this releases.

I mention all of that because above all else, this trailer has just furthered my uninterested feelings towards this game's DLC packs. Some of the stuff they're doing is interesting, like I love seeing new Pokémon of course, but there's nothing that excites me like the base game did when it first introduced the idea of Wild Areas. These trailers haven't made me feel like I'd be getting a big enough experience to warrant 30 dollars, and today's trailer felt no different for me. The fact that today's trailer felt like there was next to nothing truly exciting for me makes me feel like I'd be better off spending my money somewhere else than on the DLC packs.

New moves are pretty cool, but they get me more excited for the competitive scene's shift than anything else. The new signature moves that have been shown are nothing special, but Burning Jealousy and Grassy Slide interest me. Those two moves are really unique, akin to the kinds of things I would see fans come up with on Smogon, and they're pretty exciting for me.

If I recall correctly, Burning Jealousy can burn Pokémon which have boosted their stats earlier in the turn, which sounds absolutely fantastic for a defensive Pokémon. Status effects can be game-ending for some setup sweepers, and having any kind of countermeasure for setup sweepers is very important for a defensive Pokémon. Think of something like Toxapex using Haze. Grassy Slide on its own isn't anything special, but it's been shown on Rillaboom, a Pokémon who will likely be very strong under Grassy Terrain. Powerful priority moves are very important, and that's what we're getting here. I'm interested to see what they do with this, but not enough so that I'm going to buy the DLC off of that alone..

Biggest takeaway for me was Galarian Slowbro. I'm sure I'm not alone on this, but seeing new Pokémon and regional forms has always been the best part of new trailers for me. Everything about its design felt like it was a pretty obvious guess, at least I've seen it a lot from the sides of the community I'm a part of. I still like Galarian Slowbro's design though, and I'm interested to see what they do with the other evolution, which could end up being more along the lines of something like Runerigus in that it "replaces" an evolution. However, seeing Galarian Slowbro and its signature move being Shell Side Arm has some implications relating to leaks that have been on my mind more than anything else.

Spoiler: Spoilers Relating to Some Leaks

So, at some point last week, Pokémon Home got updated and it was datamined, which showed the names of some new moves and some new items. All of the moves and items shown today were in the leaks, confirming them to be true. The unfortunate part is that the new moves included one of each type for tutors, Shell Side Arm, Zarude's Jungle Healing, and Urshifu's two forms' moves. What's so unfortunate about that, you might be asking?

Every new Galarian form up until this point has recieved a new special move or ability, with no exceptions. The fact that we most likely know all of the new moves means that if any new Galarian forms exist, then they would have new abilities. As a rough estimate, about a third of Galarian forms have a new move, and the rest have a new ability. While this may lead you to believe that we may get some more with new abilities, and I can't blame you for thinking so, I wouldn't hold my breath on that. I'd think that if we were getting more Galarian forms, we would have seen more than what we currently have at this point. Game Freak has been especially bad lately about showing what all new Pokémon they have to offer before release, and although Sword and Shield toned it down to an extent, it'd be unreasonable to assume we'd be getting too many Galarian forms that all coincidentally happen to have signature abilities instead of moves or for them to break the trend of all Galarian forms having at least one.

I will mention that the leaks only show what's coming in the Isle of Armor, which means it excludes the Galarian forms of the bird trio, but I have a feeling it'd be the same case there. I really doubt that Game Freak would "save" most of their designs for Crown Tundra and I wouldn't be surprised if you got a similar value out of both of them in terms of reintroduced Pokémon. I wouldn't be surprised if the new Pokémon and regional forms we've seen so far are all we're getting, other than maybe some Galarian Regigigas, which would admittedly most likely be awesome, but not enough to save the lack of new Pokémon.

Remember when I said Galarian Slowbro was the most interesting thing to me about this? I lied. It's actually the meta shifts in OU that we'll end up seeing with the new Pokémon. I don't remember what all Pokémon were confirmed to be returning before today, so I'm just going to just go over some of the big ones briefly...

- Kantonian Slowbro was the absolute first thing that came to mind. The fact that it has pivoting in Teleport now is actually huge, and it allows for it to fit on much more offense-based teams as well as the usual defensive ones that it could before. Having something new to check things like Conkeldurr is nice as well.
- Tangrowth was fantastic last generation, and in this generation, there aren't really many good bulky Grass-types. The only good Grass-types in OU are Ferrothorn, who works a bit differently from typical bulky Grass-types, and Venusaur, who is offensively on Sun teams and isn't good enough defensively. Tangrowth could fill in that gap pretty nicely, at least until Crown Tundra comes out.
- Chansey also gets Teleport, and the same thing applies as it would with Kantonian Slowbro. Rather than checking most physical attackers, Chansey checks most special attackers. What a fun timeline for you guys where Chansey will likely end up being everywhere.
- Magnezone looks absolutely fantastic. Rotom-Heat being prominent is unfortunate, and Gastrodon is expected to rise up which is also unfortunate, but there aren't many defensive answers to this thing as is. Trapping things is a nice touch, and since it gets Body Press, it still traps Ferrothorn, as well as usual suspects like Corviknight and Scizor.
- Speaking of which, Scizor. The reverse in power creep is going to make this thing's strength much more impressive. Rotom-Heat, Corviknight, and Toxapex are still annoying for it though, which makes me very skeptical of how successful it'll end up being.
- Volcarona gets Heavy-Duty Boots now. Toxapex and Gastrodon exist even if it has moves to beat both, and this is yet another Pokémon that hates Rotom-Heat, but it doesn't require nearly as much team support to be successful now that it has Boots. Scary Pokémon.

All of these are in the Isle of Armor expansion, so this excludes the legendary Pokémon that are bound to shake things up significantly more than what we're getting here.

Back on topic, though, it's pretty sad that this has made me more excited for Pokémon Showdown than the product that Game Freak is trying to sell me. Maybe it's just me, but I most likely will just end up observing this all from a distance. I may end up going back to buy it later if the gameplay looks interesting, but I'm not going to keep my hopes up given what little interests me from what I've seen. I hope to be proven wrong though, since I have no reason to want this to bomb.