Pokemon Sword and Shield: First impressions of The Crown Tundra

We dove into the first hour of Pokemon Sword and Shield: The Crown Tundra and am excited to report back with our findings.

Isle of Armor was cool but The Crown Tundra, the second expansion for Pokemon Sword and, Shield sets it up to be so much more and I’m already enjoying it a lot.

When you first turn on your game, you immediately get an update that you now have a “Crown Pass” in your inventory. From a story perspective, this bugs me, the same way the “Armor Pass” did where instead of working in an NPC that gives you the pass and a reason to go there, you just, instead, get this pass that no one talks about and then you head off to the Crown Tundra which, surprisingly, is just south of where you originally started the base game and not on a separate island.

Once you get there though and leave the station, you immediately meet the newest “mentor” character. Like Isle of Armor had Mustard, the Crown Tundra gives you Peony. I thought the big thing to his character was just going to be the fact that he looks like Rose and a lot of people compare him to Rose, but it turns out his major character quirk is that he’s a remarkable tryhard father to the point of almost scaring away his daughter.

His constant efforts to go on a fun exploring expedition with his kid ends up chasing her away in a very humorous way that endfs up with you being saddled with keeping the struggling father company, I found this a lot more enjoyable than Isle of Armor’s traditional “rival/mentor” storyline that I’ve seen a million times in a Pokemon game.

As you start to get to know him, which moves VERY fast, you end up sharing an expedition hut where you start studying various stories about mythical Pokemon. A massive tree that seems to attract legendary birds. Temples that open only after solving riddles. And, most importantly, stories about a Pokemon that serve as a harvest king that roams around on a noble steed.

As the story progresses and you tackle these, they’re done almost like episodes in a show, complete with humorously over the top title cards.

Very early on in the first quest, through solving a puzzle that was so simple I ended up loving it just for the sheer stupidity of it. I won’t spoil it beyond saying, “you thought that was a pillow?!” Upon completion, you get to encounter the newest legendary Pokemon “Calyrex”. While Calyrex definitely doesn’t win any awards for looks, it definitely wins by being one of the few that has a good way of communicating with you. It possesses someone and uses them as a proxy speaker to talk to you directly. It’s bizarre and I love it.

Beyond the awesome story, the game also reintroduces us to some familiar Pokemon and some unfamiliar new play modes.

New Pokemon and Dungeons

Outside the exciting new story, one of the first things that made me happy was seeing some of the Pokemon that are new to Sword and Shield. Right out the gate I ran into the surprised arms of a Jynx. Immediately afterward, I found myself catching and working an Aurorus into my team. Listen, I know Ice has their problems but look at it. It has aurora fins. Come on.

You also get to do a Dynamax Adventure right out the gate. It recommends that you play by yourself but gives you the option to play online. I played online because I’m very familiar with how terrible the A.I. partners in the game are.

When you enter the round,  the game goes one player at a time and lets them pick from a pool of three random Pokemon, you can’t take your own in. When someone picks one, it replaces it with a new random. I really liked this because not only did I see a lot of Pokemon I don’t normally see used, but it stopped people from using Dynamax Raids as an excuse to just show off their remarkably weak shinies, getting us all killed in the process.

As you go through the Dynamax Adventure, you encounter, through a series of branching paths, Dynamaxed Pokemon which you fight and then choose to capture. Afterwards, someone in your party can choose to swap out their current Pokemon with the one you just battled.

When you get to the end, there will be a Pokemon hiding in a storm cloud as the “final boss” of the adventure. All you get to know is it’s type, in my case, it was “Psychic”. And imagine my surprise (I refuse to confirm I jumped up out of my seat when this happened) when I encountered and caught a Latias.

When you complete the journey, you get the choice to pick one Pokemon you caught during your adventure. I can imagine it’s going to lead to some tough choices, mine however wasn’t exactly Sophie’s Choice.

Sorry Dunsparce, I’ll see you at the crossroads.

All this new stuff and encountering so many legendaries and stories right out the gate has me more than excited to dive back in and see what else I can discover. All I know is that in the hour I played last night I felt excitement and wonder in a Pokemon game like I haven’t encountered in years and I can’t recommend diving into the Crown Tundra enough.