Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Isle of Armor, Part 3: Hop's Big Honey Hunt

So after completing the three trials of the Master Dojo and getting my new Kubfu buddy evolved into an Urshifu, apparently there's still more! And... well, honestly, I did not expect anything particularly extensive for the DLC's story. Maybe it's because everyone told me that the DLC had 'maybe two or three hours of story and gameplay', and so I came in with an already lowered set of expectations, but hey, either way, there's a fair bit more to go. And while it's certainly nothing particularly intensive, the fact that we still have a fair bit of story left here is pretty neat.


And apparently... Hop shows up in the Isle of Armor, which is something Ididn't expect! This is post-game Hop, who's a Pokemon Professor research assistant, and he's here to research the Dynamax/Gigantamax phenomenon. Which, in turn, raises some interesting questions, too. The game glosses over it because Pokemon isn't the sort of franchise to really delve deep into the semantics of things like this, but we do know from the main storyline that Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing is caused by Eternatus showing up from whatever eldritch planet or dimension he hails from, lands on Galar and is embedded deep within the earth, which is the reason for all these Power Spots and Dynamax abilities and whatnot. Yet somehow, in the Isle of Armor, a bunch of mushrooms are able to transform Pokemon and alter their dynamax form? It's pretty bizarre. Did some part of Eternatus get embedded here, which is why some mushrooms in this island is so tied to the Dynamax/Gigantamax phenomenon? Oh well, that's for the fandom and the manga to explore, I suppose.

I do like the explanation that Mustard knows about Hop because Leon used to train in the Master Dojo, something that actually makes perfect sense but I didn't really think too much about it. Hop gets roped into my own side-quest, though, because Mustard tells me that Urshifu has a Gigantamax form... but the dumb bear hates the taste of mushroom, and I need to find a 'certain something' to make the mushroom palatable. Hop's theory is that it's some sort of sticky honey or nectar, because that's the sort of things bears like (Hop loves Winnie the Pooh) and goes off to the nearby forest to look for some nectar.

And in the Forest of Focus, Hop quickly directs us to Liligant, telling us that Liligant is famous for its sticky, sweet nectar. I actually like this a lot, Liligant is easily one of the more forgettable vaguely-humanoid flower Pokemon and giving it a bit more focus here, even if it's not in a particularly major role, is something that's going to actually make Liligant a bit more memorable for me in the future. Hop and I find a Petilil instead, who looks sad, and it's missing its mommy. The Petilil, in Hop's words, gets 'smooshed' onto Hop's feet, and is 'glomming on' to him, and Hop can't move without stepping on it, so I have to go off and find the mama Liligant.

And I actually like the Forest of Focus a lot, it actually feels like a relatively large and while not quite maze-like, it still feels kind of neat to explore. It's a bit of a simple escort mission as the Liligant hops around and trails behind us. With a 'gant tu', the Liligant is reunited with its child, thanks us by giving us some of her nectar. Hop, honey connoisseur that he is, immediately slurps it up and decides that it's not sticky enough. Okay though but why don't you let Urshifu taste it? You're not the one that the dish is made for, Hop.

Next up is an Applin hunt, and after hunting for the one Applin in the Forest of Focus, the Applin rolls away with an "appawaaaaaay". The localization team is having way too much fun trying to write wacky dialogue for the Pokemon, huh? The Applin hides on top of a berry tree, before jumping off and bonking me in the head before going off with an "awaaaaaaylin".

Apparently this causes my hair to be drenched in Applin fruit juices (ew) and Hop decides that we don't have to hunt down the Applin and he's going to... uh... drink the fruit juice straight from my hair. NO, HOP! Don't be creepy, personal boundaries, personal boundaries, no Hop no I have an Applin in the box you can take the juice from him! Anyway... after that bit of wackiness that I'm sure is someone's fetish, Hop decides that fruit-juice that he slurps down from hair isn't right either.

Because... well nectar is not honey, and it's something that I can't believe I didn't pick up on. Of course, nectar is the sweet substance produced by flowers, while honey (which is the things edible to humans and bears) is nectar after it's processed by bees. I do really like it when Hop gets this epiphany by seeing a fat Venipede waddle on by and connecting the dots from the fact that Venipedes also create a 'form' of bug honey, albeit a Venipede's is poisonous. Thankfully, while Hop is willing to drink nectar from someone's sweaty hair, he isn't that reckless and doesn't try to drink the Venipede's paralytic juices.

Hop asks me what Pokemon would make honey. Is it a beehive Pokemon or a sheep Pokemon? Obviously it's a sheep, Hop doesn't know what he's talking about, but okay, fine, I guess Wooloos and Mareeps aren't in the Isle of Armor. Hop buggers off to Honeycalm Island, which is actually an island I've explored before, and I thought that it was weird-looking. And, hey, the Liligants hanging out there make a bit more thematic sense now with this story. Presumably it's a whole symbiosis thing where the Liligants and Combee hive hang out near each other.

Hop's power spot detector is active and turns out that the giant tree in the middle of the Honeycalm Island is a power spot. I shake the tree, and, well, a gigantic Dynamax Vespiquen bursts out of the glowing tree with a hilarious "OH BEE HAIIIIV". I'm not sure if there's some pun involved in the original Japanese because I know they like to do something like it, but this is still kinda silly and hilarious. The fight is relatively simple, even if it's a 1-v-1 against a dynamax Pokemon. With how moronic the A.I. trainers can be, I genuinely do think that it's a lot easier to fight a Dynamax raid one-on-one anyway. It's a huge kaiju bug fight with a Vespiquen fighting the Frosmoth from my main team (which I had around just to test if she will fly around when I surf in the ocean) and one Max Blizzard later, the Vespiquen blows up and drops a comb of Max Honey. The game tells me that the Max Honey acts like Max Revive, so the fact that it has an alternate effect means that it's going to be useful for more than just feeding Urshifu.

Hop goes on a bit of a talk about how he's too shocked to help us fight the giant bee monster (sure you are, Hop, I don't see you hesitating when it's licking my hair) and then goes into talking about how something something max gigantamax dynamax max mushroom max soup max max max. Okay Hop. At some point, Hop also drops hints that Sonia is off in a colder place, so that means that Sonia's going to show up later this year in the Crown Tundra, then.

Hop and I return to the dojo, and Mustard is positively shocked that we figured out where the Max Honey is without a hint from him. Which... honestly, do you take us for a moron, old man? We could do the first three trials without your hand-holding anyway. Mustard then tells me that he wants to battle me seriously after 'some training', which to me reads that he's going to level up his team to the 70's or 80's. And he's definitely going to have an Urshifu of his own.

I attempt to feed Urshifu the Max Honey, but the soup lad tells me that I still need three Max Mushrooms and god damn it, I would have saved them instead of feeding them to my Inteleon, then. Which means... I'm going to have to go mushroom hunting. (I had thought that the mushrooms spawn over time too, but apparently it's extremely rare and you really do need to play the max raids in the Isle of Armor like what soup lad tells us).

And it's honestly not that bad, because despite all of my admitted bitching about the shittiness of max raid battles, the Isle of Armor's overworld is at least pretty and not as repetitive as the original Wild Area, and I have so many Wishing Pieces and Watts that I just switched off my battle animations and just go into anything with four stars and lower and just spammed all the max raid dens. Max raid battles don't really make for good video game experience if it's repeated over and over, but this is the Nintendo Switch, so I can just pull the console out and hold it in my lap and button-mash while the game goes through the repetitive animations of shields breaking and stuff while I watch episodes of Star Trek or the Pokemon anime. It's like, something that's neat to do in the background that you mindlessly do like a grindy mobile game, and treating Max Raid Battles as such is probably a way to tolerate and get them over with.

So yeah, I did spend a fair bit of time just running around the Isle of Armor, catching more Pokemon and beating up max raid dens while also hunting Digletts (I got an Alolan Raichu the last time I talked to Diglettman, and apparently all the Alolan mons have their hidden abilities, which is nice). I also tried to do a bunch of Cram-o-matic stuff and curry stuff, and gave Honey a bunch of Watts. It's just... upgrading the vending machine to carry soda pops and lemonades, apparently, and at this point I'll hold off on that because I need my watts for wishing pieces.

At this point I don't think that there's going to be much more to the DLC beyond the final fight with master Mustard, which is probably going to be my final piece of the playthrough. And I'm sure they have snuck in a bunch of little random easter eggs and stuff into the Isle of Armor (and I'll have some opinions about the new designs and new attacks to bulk up that last piece of the let's play) I definitely feel like I'm satisfied with the Isle of Armor. Again, treating the two DLC as a $40 alternative to a 'revised' game you have to purchase all over again like Platinum or Ultra Sun does make it a bit more tolerable in my mind. And... sure, they definitely could've added a lot more. The lack of trainers in the Isle of Armor's overworld is an interesting choice (and if they had them it would've added a bit more length to the story mode's runtime) but the fact that it's just this huge Wild Area with a relatively decent story (which, to be fair, ran a fair bit longer than I expected it would) is something that does end up being far, far more charming than what I had expected. There are a lot of little bits that make the DLC far more fun than what it could've been -- the Diglett hunt, the story, walking with your Pokemon... hell, even the Kubfu stuff. It feels different, and while that feeling might fade in time, I certainly rate the Isle of Armor higher than the 'oh, it's just a new Wild Area with a short two-hour story'. It's pretty fun.

Random Notes:

• All this talk about Max Mushroom soup has got me craving a lot for creamy mushroom soup. 
• Hop notes that Kubfu/Urshifu is the Wushu Pokemon that 'hails from a distant region'. Is that just a throwaway line, or are we going to Poke-China in the next generation? Shit, I sure do hope so. 
• I'm not the type of person to bitch about a lack of an elaborate cutscene in a Pokemon game, but that bit with the Vespiquen tree is actually a bunch of pretty obvious sequences where the game designers had to do some tricks with the camera to zoom in and out of a still frame of the large tree (since they probably didn't animate the large tree shaking like the berry trees) and then we get to see a bird's-eye-view of the giant Vespiquen swooping down and 'sucking' us into the den in order to not animate the Vespiquen emerging from the tree. It's actually pretty neat. 
• I tried tossing Wishing Stones into the Honeycalm Island den, and it's always Combees and Vespiquens. That's kind of neat, actually. It's not always perfect, but I do like that both Galar and the Isle of Armor's raid dens try and follow some sort of a theme with the available encounters. 
• That said, beating up a Vespiquen in a max raid causes her to drop a comb of Max Honey, and all the bonus loot aren't TRs in a Honeycalm Island raid, but rather just Honey. That's neat. 
• One of the Digletts I found on a random small island is hanging out with a goddamn Dugtrio, which is hilarious. Alolan Dugtrio is hilarious. I'm not sure if the Dugtrio counts as three Digletts or not, though. 
• Outside of trade-exclusive evolutions (like Slowking and Escavalier) and version-exclusives (I'm going to assume that Skrelp and Dragalge show up in Shield) I think I've seen most of what's in the Isle of Armor dex? There are still a couple of missing entries from what I can tell, but I'm not sure if it's just the 'restored' legendaries that I know you can import from Pokemon Home. And... honestly, they added a bit less Pokemon than I expected, around only the ballpark of 100, but the Isle of Armor still feels genuinely fun and unique even with that amount added in. 
• Urshifu and Kubfu are both examples of Pokemon that I feel look extremely awesome in motion, and actually have somewhat cluttered-looking official artwork.