Announced back in January, Isle of Armor, the first Pokemon Sword and Shield DLC, was met with great excitement by fans. Revealing content such as new rivals, a new story, and an entirely fresh Wild Area-type zone to explore, the franchise's first foray into downloadable content seemed rather promising from the get-go. With Isle of Armor's release date on the horizon, Nintendo has revealed more new content present in the game - namely, the inclusion of level scaling.
Earlier today, IGN reported that level scaling was present in Pokemon Sword and Shield's upcoming Isle of Armor expansion. With Isle of Armor's release coming in a few days, IGN got to chance to have a hands-on preview with the DLC. During the preview, level scaling was discovered when the first trainer battle had been scaled to the highest level Pokemon in the player's party. IGN reached out to Nintendo's Demetrius Boggs, who directly confirmed that level scaling would be a new feature in the Pokemon expansions.
While level scaling is now known to be a feature in Pokemon's DLC, there are not many specific details about how it will be implemented. As of now, two things regarding level scaling have been confirmed: enemy Pokemon will be scaled to the highest Pokemon in the party and the expansion is not locked behind a minimum level requirement. The lack of level requirement allows anyone who has Pokemon Sword and Shield to get right into the expansions, given that they have reached the base game's Wild Area. Meanwhile, the presence of level scaling ensures that both new and old players are able to enjoy the DLC.
The inclusion of level scaling, overall, may be seen as a step in the right direction for the Pokemon series. For the most part, it solves the biggest issue that Sword and Shield's Mewtwo Raid Battle suffered from—bad balancing (or a lack of it) that made the event nearly impossible to complete without a high-level, well-coordinated team. On the flip side, level scaling allows multiple players to experience the same content while also accounting for variations in their playtime and their Pokemon.
While level scaling definitely fixes some issues with Pokemon Sword and Shield, it's by no means a perfect solution. The problem with the Mewtwo event wasn't only how high leveled Mewtwo was, but also how strong its moveset and stats were. There are many battles in Pokemon where the level disparity is only a couple of levels, and having scaling might take away some complexity and challenge from some fights, particularly in games as easy as Pokemon Sword and Shield. Level scaling might be a good addition overall, but Sword and Shield's balancing problem could be resolved by simply improving the design of encounters along with it—after all, a broken encounter is still a broken encounter despite levels being scaled.
Pokemon Sword and Shield are available now exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: IGN