During the latest Pokemon day presentation, it was revealed that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet would be receiving a DLC expansion: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero. This expansion will be split into 2 parts with different locations and stories.
While it’s already guaranteed that this expansion will bring with it new characters, new locations, and new Pokemon, not much else has been revealed as of yet. As any good expansion should do though, it also needs to help improve various aspects of the main games. It can’t be expected to overhaul them entirely, but these are some big improvements that need to be made.
8 Character Customisation
Ever since Pokemon X and Y, the main series of Pokemon games have featured plenty of options for character customization, including hair, eyes, and clothes. Scarlet and Violet have this feature as well, but many fans don’t enjoy the way their clothing system is handled.
Due to the school motif, all players are forced to wear some version of their school uniform at all times, limiting options for player expression. The reveal trailer for the DLC has already shown some alternate outfits, so hopefully, that’s a sign that the options for fashion will be less restricted.
7 Pokemon Animations
This has been a recurring complaint against the Pokemon games for a few years now. Although the series has made improvements to the animations from game to game, there are still places where they could do even better.
Particularly, since the series has gone fully open world now, the way Pokemon move on the overworld is important to get right. At the moment, they mostly stand around, occasionally turning stiltedly or interacting with the player. It would be nice if some overworld Pokemon could interact more with each other, or simply get more natural turning animations.
6 Shiny Encounters
While shinies are an aspect of Pokemon that not all people will interact with, there is a large and dedicated number of ‘shiny hunters’ who love the mechanic. Even besides them, any player would be happy to find a shiny. Unfortunately, Scarlet and Violet are currently dropping the ball on shinies.
Unlike in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, shinies on the overworld don’t make any sound or give off any kind of visual indication beyond their color. When certain shinies are almost indistinguishable from the original (especially to color-blind players), these indicators are important to have and should be put back in.
5 Tera Raids
For the most part, ‘tera raids’ are a fun system and an improvement over the raids from Sword and Shield. However, the tera system still has some edges that need ironing out. For one, it would be helpful if players could see the star count of a raid on the overworld map so they don’t have to waste time checking each raid den individually.
The ‘tera shards’ used to change a Pokemon’s tera type are also way too time-consuming, as 1 type swap costs 50 shards, and even 5-star raids might only give out 5. And considering there are 18 types of tera shard, it can take days to get 50 of just one type.
4 More Interesting Towns
Towns and cities usually add a lot of personality to a Pokemon region. Those who played the original Red and Blue games still have strong memories of Lavender Town or Fuschia City. However, the locations in Scarlet and Violet just don’t have that level of memorability.
This is mostly due to most houses being closed off to players, with even shops simply being menus with no interior. If Game Freak could take some time to add more intractability back into the towns, it would help them feel alive again.
3 The Trading System
For a long time, Pokemon games had a good method for handling trades between players. However, it has been missing from recent games. At the moment, players can only set up trades with link codes, or do completely random surprise trades.
Bringing back the ‘global trade system’ or something similar to it would be a big help for Pokedex-filling. Especially when each version of the game has Pokemon that are exclusive to it, players are often forced to buy both versions if they don’t have anyone to trade with or don’t want to risk finding trade partners on internet forums.
2 More Post-Game Single Player Content
Despite their great story content, Scarlet and Violet drop the ball once the credits roll. Players do have the option of rematching the various gym leaders and taking on the rest of their school in the ‘academy ace tournament’, but that’s about where the content ends.
Previous games have featured ‘battle towers’ or the ‘battle frontier’, which helped players ease into more competitive battles against CPU trainers, as well as providing some extra variety and callbacks to previous games. The Indigo Disk part of the DLC features a school with an emphasis on battling, so hopefully, it will provide some quality battle facilities.
1 Better Performance
This is by far the most important improvement that needs to be made. Despite being some of the best games the franchise has seen in a while, Scarlet and Violet have been weighed down from launch with performance issues that have made the games harder to enjoy than they should be.
From frame drops to drooping textures, glitches, and pervasive pop-ins, the games have a slew of problems that need to be fixed. Assuming the DLC worlds are smaller than the main overworld, they will hopefully be better optimized, allowing players to fully enjoy what the games have to offer.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are out now for Nintendo Switch.
Part 1 of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet: The Secret Treasure of Area Zero; The Teal Mask is due to release in fall 2023, and part 2; The Indigo Disk is due to release in winter 2023.