A few days before its release, we got a long glimpse of Snowy Crowns, the next expansion for Pokémon Sword and Shield, and it’s shaping up to be pretty good.
While the first Pokémon Sword and Shield DLC was short and experimental, Snowcapped Crown Land is shaping up to be a much richer experience in every way, from a storytelling, endgame, and multiplayer standpoint. and extension of the Pokédex. In any case, this is what emerged from the long presentation that Nintendo gave us last week to prepare for the arrival of this new extension this Friday, October 24. This new Scotland-inspired area will be found in the far south of the Galar continent and will be accessible without necessarily having completed the base game, as was the case with The Island of Lone Armor.
Full of stories
As in the previous expansion, our pokédex will be updated as soon as we set foot in this new area and the plot will begin immediately. On this side, the DLC promises to be a little more extensive than the previous one since we will therefore have a main quest in which we will meet Pivonia and her father Dhilan, explorers / archaeologists who excavate the ruins present in the region. We won’t be told how long it will take, but with a larger area but especially side missions, it will necessarily increase. If we want to avoid spoiling what we saw from the main story, and in particular a rather surprising scene with Sylveroi, we also saw a side quest dedicated only to legendary birds who will be hiding in different regions of Galar and which we will have to find after our first meeting with them.
Group policy
But the big piece that will clearly increase the number of hours spent on the extension is the arrival of expeditions and we must admit that it looks much more strategic than one might have imagined. It is not just a chain of Dynamax combat until reaching the final boss and the between fights will be very important since it will be necessary choose the route with the other players, but also know who will be able to change Pokémon. If all the players can capture the Pokémon at the end of a fight, only one player will be able to change his Pokémon by another in each fight, knowing that life and PP are not restored between each fight and a defeat brings back to the beginning from the cave. If several people want to change, the game will choose a player at random.
There are therefore small constraints between each round, it will be necessary to choose which path to take so as not to disadvantage the other members of his expedition according to the types, to know how to switch at the right time and it promises to be more subtle than we could imagine it. Of course, the expedition ends with a raid against a legendary Pokémon and it will be the ONLY way to capture them, knowing that some will be exclusive to a specific version. We will be told that we cannot capture each legendary only once but nothing prevents it from being recombined on expedition for a friend. Last important point: Expeditions can be done entirely with NPCs but it looks a lot less fun. To be tested when exiting the extension.
And it’s not over
That’s not all since on the end game side, we will also be entitled to Galar Star Tournament, which will allow you to participate in fights with one of the characters that we will have met of our choice and exclusive to our version. The interest promises to be a little more limited than for expeditions but it’s always good to take. The new area promises to be once again varied, larger and will have an activity in the same genre as the hunt for Taupiqueur but no one wanted to tell us more. See you on Friday to find out all about it in what promises to be a much better expansion than the previous one.
