3/5 ★ – Royvlution's review of Pokémon Sword and Shield: The Isle of Armor.

This is the first part of the expansion pass for sword and shield. Overall this was a fun experience even if it had flaws. The main appeal to this expansion is that the map is completely made up of wild area, so you have total control over the camera and loading time in between areas is basically nonexistent. The only downside to this is about a third of the map is water and it’s very time consuming to get across it. This can be frustrating when playing it again and again but the first few times I don’t mind it. The story is interesting. Mustard a dojo master of the island trains you as one of his students, and puts you through 3 trails. These trails are fun and have a few cute ideas but are easy to knock out in about 15 minutes if you know what your doing. Klara is your rival in Sword and Avery in Shield, since I own sword I will be referring to Klara from here on out. Karla starts off with a pretty weak team, but as time goes on they get stronger. In the end she is somewhat challenging, but only because she try’s to win the final battle by cheating with toxic spikes. I like this unique little touch, because until now I don’t think any rival has ever tried to resort to cheating to win. Gigantimax soup is a way to make a regular Pokémon gain access to its Gigantimax form. This is nice because instead of throwing out my original Pokémon I can just feed it this soup and get the form I want. I wish however this was in the base game, because this is a feature they should have originally implemented to make your Pokémon feel more special, but I digress. I like this feature and I think it works well. Kubfu is the legendary that you get for completing all three trails. I like him a lot, and growing your friendship with him is cute but kinda empty at the same time. Urshifu his evolution is a cool design and evolving him is a fun challenge, I just wish there was more to it, because as is you can get start to finish in about an hour. During the story you can talk to Honey, Mustards wife. She will ask for watts in order to upgrade the dojo. These upgrades can be pretty useful, up until about the last 3 or 4. The prices for these grow to the millions, in total you’ll spend about 2.4 million watts. The final reward is a battle with Honey and while this is very cool, it’s way overpriced. If there has been more worth while rewards in between then it would have been fine, but as is for completion it’s a grind if that’s all your focusing on. Overall I enjoyed the Isle of Armor but it’s lacking in content for those who aren’t shiny hunters or competitive battlers. While I enjoyed my time a lot I can see why others might not. It’s fun to play through but definitely the weaker of the two dlcs.