Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have its massive slew of issues. A lot of bugs, performance issues, and just a lot of other things that keep them from being as good as they could be. Even then, I thought Scarlet and Violet were pretty solid games aside from their issues, with great story, music, and characters. This is to say, of course, my autistic ass was assuredly going to play the DLC, Pokemon has been a major part of my life, and it won't stop yet. Overall though, much like the base game, it still contains some issues that I can't neglect.
Especially since this DLC released only a couple days ago, I'm not going to talk about the story in much detail. But it's a pretty nice story all things considered. It's not the most complicated, but through that less complication, there's some fun antics to be seen in it. And at the same time, I really like the new characters they introduced, and I'm curious to see how they continue in the second half of the Expansion. The ending to the main story of The Teal Mask, and a specific fight in it was super cool to me, and was probably the highlight of the DLC I was say.
Kitakami obviously isn't as large as Paldea, and that's to be expected for a DLC Expansion, and ultimately I feel mixed on it. When you're in an actual named location like a forest or a mountainous path, there's some really nice stuff to be seen! But there's also just really empty spaces at the same time, and while I get that they're meant to be "Kitakami Wastes", I wish that there was ultimately less of what felt like empty space. Especially cause the places that are filled are really neat locations.
The new pokemon introduced in the DLC are cute. I love Ogerpon, I think it's a silly pokemon, especially as seen through playing the DLC. The other legendaries I don't really have a strong opinion overall, but their names are really silly, I can't get over Okidogi particularly. And the couple additional pokemon they introduce are really nice, but I'm uncertain if those were the pokemon they needed to spotlight first.
But god, the one thing that kept me from really enjoying the DLC to the fullest was the performance. I may be worse than the base game's performance issues. The game had frame drops so often, both in docked and handheld mode. I remember a time where the game just freezed for a couple seconds, and I was worried the game had crashed. While I'm fine with the occasional frame dip, it was so bad here. And I'd argue even more inexcusable here than in base game. Though keep in mind, I don't blame Game Freak for this, as yearly release schedule for games with this much ambition behind them is bound for issues like this.
Yet again, I found the Teal Mask DLC to be quite nice. Though until I see what the Indigo Disk DLC offers, I don't think it's worth the $35 dollar price tag just yet. It's nice for what it is, with a good story, characters, and pokemon. But since this is only half of the total, the quality of the other half will determine its overall worth.