Hands on with Pokémon Scarlet & Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 2: The Indigo Disk

I never claim to be the very best in any game, I just have this dumb luck where I fail upwards. In this case of my battle with Amarys, one of the Blueberry Academy’s Elite Four trainers, I fought for my life and stumbled into victory. I had a team of unfamiliar Pokémon, with an unfamiliar moveset, and already at a disadvantage, I was shocked to see how difficult the battle was.  I’m not used to the CPU punishing you for a misplay, but this DLC will remind you to make sure you don’t miss.

I managed to impress the Nintendo rep that was monitoring my performance at the The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 2: The Indigo Disk preview event in NYC that Gaming Age was fortunate enough to be invited to a few weeks back. Even with the warning of changing moves and my hubris of thinking I would breeze through my battle, they saw me win this battle with good ol’ fashion dumb luck.

The Indigo Disk is the second of two DLCs for Pokémon Violet/Scarlet, and this is the second part of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, following The Teal Mask.  In order to play The Indigo Disk you must complete the base game and complete The Teal Mask. In this DLC, you travel to the Blueberry Academy, the adjacent school to the main game’s Naranja academy. At the start of the demo I started in the Terarium, a large open world divided by different environments like snowy mountains to tropical locations.

Different Pokémon from different generations appear in these habitats. I can see myself getting lost in trying to catch the insane amount of Pokémon, both old and new! Something I enjoyed seeing in The Indigo Disk were the classes that were in session at the academy. In one such class I was sent on a quest to try and retrieve an Alolan Pokémon and bring it back. I caught a Grimer, who definitely smelled like roses!

The battles in The Indigo Disk are mostly double battles, which should add a layer of difficulty and skill planning as you play throughout your stay. Just like in Teal Mask, you will run into high level and high skilled trainers who were at level 60 and above. This all leads up to the conclusion of my time with The Indigo Disk, where I battled Amary after completing her Elite trial. Just like in the main game you will have to complete mini games before facing off against your Elite Four showdown, in this case I had completed a Pilotwings-esq mini game.

With the help of some items and that dumb luck I mentioned early, I was able to best Amary 1-0. I will say in my 25 years playing Pokémon, that was one of the harder battles I have ever experienced. Like I mentioned earlier I was the only one to win my matchup in my group and I felt a sense of pride.

Since this event I  dove head first into completing Pokémon Violet and The Teal Mask in preparation of the December 14th release of The Indigo Disk. With the large addition of old returning Pokémon to capture and difficult and challenging new trainers to battle I cannot wait to tackle this with my own trainer! This is the DLC Pokémon fans have been waiting for and keeps getting us moving towards becoming Pokémon Masters.