Highlights

  • Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk offers players a wealth of content to explore, including new Pokemon, hidden loot caves, and the ability to obtain Stellar Type Shards.
  • The DLC focuses on double battles, providing a challenging experience for competitive players while also showcasing some familiar strategies that have been used throughout the Pokemon community.
  • The Indigo Disk breaks the fourth wall by featuring NPCs with strategic combos and tactics that players may have encountered or used themselves, creating a sense of unease and blurring the line between AI and real-life competition.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk may have some cut content that players will never see, but it was and still is a good Pokemon DLC nonetheless, especially seeing how much content there is for players to grind through. From Indigo Disk's Snacksworth and Legendary Pokemon to hidden loot caves in Area Zero, there are many things for players new and old alike to look forward to, even before they wrap up the story. Doing this, however, will unlock several other features and will finally allow players to start obtaining Stellar Type Shards to change their critters' Tera type into Terapagos' signature one. Another interesting aspect of the DLC is its focus on double battles, and while this is good practice for official Pokemon VGC formats, it also breaks the fourth wall.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Drayton also breaks the fourth wall in The Indigo Disk when players first approach him in the Polar Biome for his Trial, as his challenge is for trainers to catch and use critters caught in the Terarium to defeat three students, stating he knows it would be too easy to grab one's best Pokemon from the Box. Likewise, The Indigo Disk's approach to double battles is a fun proving ground for competitive enthusiasts as much as it gives players a taste of their own medicine.

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Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk Gives Players a Taste of Their Medicine With Double Battles

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Indigo Disk's Double Battles Can be Hard

Pokemon double battles in The Indigo Disk can feel like they come out of nowhere, considering how they are almost from both base Gen 9 games and The Teal Mask DLC, but they are contextualized in a high-tech, highly competitive setting in the form of the Blueberry Academy. Here, every trainer that players will find in the Terarium (and outside of it) will always start a double battle, and while many of them can feel too easy even against level 70-to-80 mons, some pack quite the challenge.

The main thing to note with these double battles is that in-game trainers will always use some sort of competitive strategy that's been around for quite some time, even cheesing with it if needed in order to give Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players a run for their money. For example, the BB League's Crispin leads with a Talonflame and Heat Rotom, which was a common and quite powerful lead not too long ago, bat at the start of Regulation A in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Players are faced with combos like Sunny Day into Overheat, and even over-leveled teams can struggle.

Why The Indigo Disk's Double Battles Break the Fourth Wall

What truly breaks the fourth wall, though, is how some NPCs will feature cheesy combos that some players have been using throughout the years, such as Focus Sash activation into Endeavor into a priority move to get the knockout. Some of these strategies are used even now, in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Regulation F meta, which goes to show that Game Freak is very aware of all the niche or sometimes frustrating tactics the community has come up with over time, to the point that it uses them against players.

Another example comes from Kieran's team in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk, when players battle against him for the title of BB League Champion. Here, Kieran leads with a Wacan Berry Drizzle Politoed and a Multiscale Dragonite with Thunder and Hurricane, making the most of Rain, and proving he could very well compete in real-life VGC tournaments. In fact, Rain teams have won several competitions in earlier stages of Gen 9's lifespan, with critters like Pelipper and Salamence being a good part of the core.

What The Indigo Disk does is use those same strategies and combos and put up a spectacle for unaware players - and while level difference can win the battle, trainers can leave with a sense of unease because what they played against didn't seem like AI.