My Thoughts on Crown Tundra

When I originally finished the Pokemon Sword and Shield base game I was admittedly underwhelmed with the postgame. Other than battling online, the battle tower, and Dynamax Raids there wasn’t a whole lot of content to keep me coming back to the Galar Region and I placed all my faith on the Expansion Pass offering a more robust post game.

The Isle of Armor was an exciting breath of fresh air, giving you a large Wild Area to explore in, a new pokedex and another (albeit small) story to immerse yourself in. There was some fun sidequests to fill some time in, like finding 150 Diglets or Decking out your Dojo, but after completing the main story there wasn’t really anything that would test your merit as a trainer. While I enjoyed exploring the new area, I was still thirsty from something more.

And then we got the Crown Tundra. So how did it shape up?

I should preface here that if you haven’t yet played through the Crown Tundra, there will be spoilers for the content and story that you encounter in the game, if you don’t want that spoiled, come back when you have finished the game.

When you first enter the Crown Tundra you are introduced to the main characters, Peony and his Daughter Peonia. When you meet them you learn Peony has planned out a whole adventure for himself and his daughter to enjoy in the Crown Tundra, with various spots he anticipates finding legendary Pokemon. However, his daughter is more interested in exploring Dynamax caves. You have your only mandatory trainer battle in the Crown Tundra against Peony and upon winning you find out Peonia has run away into a Dynamax cave. Peony runs off after her and asks you to follow. You then take on a Dynamax Adventure, the new raids in the Crown Tundra (we will come back to them) and after completing one you find Peonia and she asks you to take her place with Peony. You report back and although he is upset his daughter is bailing he is happy to have a friend join him on his quest of finding Legendary Pokemon anyway. He leads you to the only town in the Crown Tundra, Freezington, and takes you to your new home there.

From Freezington this is where the expansion sort of truly begins. After completing that introduction Peony gives you 3 different clues relating to the local legendary Pokemon and then you can explore to your hearts content. The main story involving Calyrex, the new Pokemon in this expansion, is hard to avoid because its basically spelled out for you what to do you just have to do it. I would consider that the main story of this expansion, its pretty enjoyable, offers a lot of lore for the area and helps you get familiar with the new area. You can finish the story with Calyrex in a couple of hours but I didn’t mind that since there were so many other Legendary Pokemon to find.

As we all know, the Regis made their stunning return in this game, complete with temples that have a puzzle on them. None of them are all that hard, the only one that had me stumped was because I forgot about whistling briefly. Other than that, it was all pretty straight forward. The hardest part about catching the Regis were getting them in Ultra Balls. I had Regirock on red health and was tossing ultra balls at it for so long it ended up killing itself to Struggle. I recommend having a pokemon that can paralyze or put them to sleep, something I rectified afterwards which made the process easier. Finding the temples and catching the Regis were enjoyable and once again got you familiar with the landscape. It offered something else to do which was a nice change of pace.

Finally the Legendary birds. I think this is what everyone was most excited for, and for good reason. Upon watching them have an epic battle by the big tree they all run off to different areas. One to the wild area, one to the isle of armor, and one stays in the Crow Tundra. They all have different mechanics to find them. Zapdos requires you to chase after it on your bike, eventually you catch up to it and you can battle. Moltres will fly around on a set path, if you can memorise its path you can wait it out and whistle for it. Articuno was the hardest, first you need to fly to the right area, then follow its shadow on the ground. It leads you to a place and stops before you, then duplicates itself. It spins around with its duplicates and you have to guess which Articuno is the true Articuno. Failing the guess will make it fly off without you, guessing right initiates a battle.

Finding a catching the legendary birds, while it references the roaming pokemon of the past like previous news sites said it did, still wasn’t quite the same. Especially since finding and catching the birds is a part of the main story for Crown Tundra, so it didn’t quite catch the mystery of accidentally bumping into one of them.

After catching the new legendary Pokemon Calyrex, all the Regis, and all the birds, you report back to Peony and the postgame story begins. There is some lore that explains why more Legendary Pokemon are appearing in the Dynamax Adventures and also now Ultra Beasts are in the Dynamax Adventure cave system. You are asked to investigate, then when you’re done there and leave Leon calls asking you to come to Wyndon for important news. When you go there you now have access to the Star Tournament which are double battles with everyone you have met across the game and expansions. All this part of the story does is explain what you can do now you have finished everything:

Dynamax Raids like previously

Dynamax Adventures in the Crown Tundra

Tournaments at Wyndon and the Battle Tower

And honestly, after all the content from the expansions I’m happy with that. Before I conclude I want to make sure I don’t miss this. There is one other Legendary Trio available in the Crown Tundra as a side story. Kind of like the Digletts from the Isle of Armor you can find footprints around the Tundra. Finding enough of them and visiting Sonia you will be told the location of these legendary Pokemon. It was quite exciting running into them in the wild, and was just another extra thing to do in the Crown Tundra.

So, final thoughts?

The Crown Tundra had a lot of things to do, but it was all about catching Legendary Pokemon. In my opinion I would have liked more ways to challenge myself and my team, at this point I have a lot of Pokemon at or close to level 100 and at worst the Pokemon I was encountering were sitting at the level 70 mark. This was disappointing because the game has been out for a while now, I was hoping that since this content is coming out while we have had access to the game Nintendo would provide a more challenging campaign. Instead, while I enjoyed what content there was, I was also disappointed that it was more of a catch-a-thon than a more challenging experience. That’s not to say it was bad, I enjoyed the interesting approach to catching these Legendary Pokemon, especially the birds, it reminded me of playing Diamond or Ruby when you just explore these interesting areas and find something special, but I would have liked some added spice to make it difficult. People online are suggesting this will be the end of our travels in Galar, so if that’s true why not make it hard?

Which leads me to how I feel about Sword and Shield now that we have had both expansions. I’ll be honest, I’m not ready to say Goodbye to Galar and a part of me is hoping for another Expansion pass adding even more content into the game. I would love to explore more difficult areas with this team I have built, and now we already have every Legendary so why not? The post game, as it stands now, is fine. I like Dynamax adventures as something co-operative to do. It’s a lot more interesting than just completing raids, I like that you are forced to use Pokemon that aren’t your own because that adds another layer of depth to the raid itself. After encountering a wild pokemon you really have to think about the movesets of your current pokemon compared to the pokemon available to you and whether its worth swapping. I can see myself returning to the Dynamax Adventures over and over again, even after catching the Legendary Pokemon available. Of course, the new cast of Pokemon should add even more diversity to the online battling community if you’re into that. But I think where the game is sitting now is quite good. Overall, if you enjoy Pokemon and haven’t already purchased the expansion pass, I would recommend it. Between the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra you have a good amount of content to keep you invested in the Galar Region. Thanks for Reading!