A review of Pokémon Sword and Shield: The Crown Tundra, a whimsical legendary adventure
Our Verdict
The Crown Tundra brings back some fan favourite Pokémon and provides some much-needed end-game content. However, it’s content felt skin-deep and could have fit easily into the main game.
Many Pokémon lovers felt split when Sword and Shield was launched in November of last year. Fans anticipated more when the National Dex was eliminated, shoddy character animations, and a franchise that hasn't evolved over many decades. The gameplay of the two Sword and Shield expansion passes that Nintendo has published has significantly enhanced, giving players much more to do beyond the main plot.
If you've finished Pokémon Sword and Shield, you are aware of the lack of post-game content. The game seemed to require more, apart from a brief legendary quest and hours of shiny hunting in the wild. The Isle of Armour was the first DLC for Pokémon Sword and Shield to be released. Pokéfans were furious about a lot of things, but this DLC fixed it all by adding a much-needed feature that let your party Pokémon follow you across the globe and bringing back some of the most beloved Pokémon.
The growth of Crown Tundra follows a fairly similar path. When you initially arrive in the frigid new territory, you are thrust into the same old scenario: a forced verbal exchange with a colourful new character where your choices have little bearing on the outcome and an oddly simple combat.
Your first-round opponent Peony also serves as your tour guide in the Crown Tundra. Hop, your "rival" in the regular Pokémon Sword and Shield game, is now Peony in Dad-mode. Dad-mode Hop, in my opinion, spent just the right amount of time with the main character, so fortunately, his exaggerated nature didn't irritate me too much.
One of my fave additions to the game is Dynamax Adventures. I was unhappy to see that you cannot use your own hard-earned Pokémon in these encounters; instead, you must choose a rental Pokémon at random from a list of three. It did, however, let me experiment with new Pokémon and tactics that I wouldn't normally use. Because I don't have a Nintendo Online membership, I liked that you could finish a Dynamax Adventure with three other NPCs or online gamers.
With The Crown Tundra DLC, 128 Pokémon were released, an absurd 43 of which are legendaries. A legendary will appear at the conclusion of each Dynamax Adventure, and if you defeat it, your chances of catching it are 100%, thus getting a legendary seems less noteworthy than in other games. Finding and capturing legendaries is the focus of every side mission, which gives the narrative the air of a depressing justification for letting you meet strong Pokémon without any real purpose.
Having said that, I thought the little plot was adorable and funny. Assisting Calyrex, the King of Bountiful Harvests, to regain its former splendour and retrieve its faithful steed was the most narratively dense aspect of the expansion. Every time Calyrex took control of Peony's body to communicate with the main character, I couldn't help but snort with amusement. Even though I really like these sequences, I could have related to the characters much more if they had voice acting.
It took around an hour to reunite Calyrex with either Glastrier or Spectrier due to how easy it was. The quest that asks you to look for legendary Pokémon footprints is comparable. If you've played The Isle of Armour, you probably recall a rather tiresome mission where you had to locate 151 Diglett. Finding all of the little bastards took hours, as Digletts lurked on offshore islands and under bushes.
But there are footsteps everywhere. It may seem difficult to locate 50 pairs of footprints for three separate legends, but it's not. All of the prints were located during my overall investigation. This was a great accomplishment for me since I may have given up before discovering them all if I had finished a task from The Isle of Armour that I detested for the second time.
The mythical birds' Galarian shapes are stunning. I had a great time during my first cinematic meeting with the trio, when I watched them combat until my Rotom phone rang and diverted their attention in a humorous, slapstick manner. Being someone who keeps their phone silent all the time, I was quite disappointed in my in-game self for allowing these amazing birds to take advantage of my situation.
Each bird takes off after the first encounter and you have to locate it by visiting the original wild region, the sandy beaches of the Isle of Armour, and the snowfield of the Crown Tundra. The feisty Galarian Articuno, who could project three illusionary shapes of itself, was my personal fave encounter. To subsequently have a chance of capturing it, you have to choose the genuine Articuno from among the group.
I completed the mission of capturing every Regis. I don't think the Regi-roster is all that great, so finding six of them wasn't all that interesting to me. Fortunately, even if I didn't really like the catch at the end, every hint the game gave me to get to a Regi was intriguing and encouraged me to keep playing. Despite my enjoyment of this sidequest, Regi enthusiasts may find this portion a little too surface-level, given that it could have been the preamble to any number of legendaries.
I don't have the best opinion of the natural region after spending a good deal of time exploring there. Floating in the Avalugg-filled ocean, I saw several places obscured by dense fog with poor vision, and I didn't feel submerged until I struck a strangely placed invisible wall. Places went from snow-covered to sun-filled in an instant, and the many caverns had narrow, uniform passageways. I was disoriented a lot and had to constantly enter the main menu to see a magnified version of the globe map in order to get my bearings since there was no mini-map.
One specific complaint I have about the wild region is how many depressed and lonely Nidoran there are♀️. First of all, Nidoran♀️ is one of my favourite Pokémon, and it made me feel really sad to see it go back and forth through the mist on its alone. Though I know that Pokémon aren't real, as I stood there and watched, I couldn't help but feel that I didn't want to capture it and take it out of the wild, but I also didn't want to leave it by alone without a pack. I would want to see Pokémon connect with one another and stop behaving as if the environment around them doesn't exist in order to improve on this element.
About most elements of The Crown Tundra DLC, I'm not sure how I feel. I like the tasks overall, and I will definitely spend a lot of time using Dynamax Adventures and the wild area to finish my Pokédex. After that, I'll shiny hunt Nidoran♀️ for all of eternity. If Gamefreak is to meet any expectations for the next generation of video games, the next Pokémon game must have a mini-map, many methods to navigate landscapes, and voice acting.