Earlier today, we were treated to a 20 minute Pokemon Direct which gave us so much exciting news to kick off 2020, mainly the new Pokemon Sword & Shield Expansion Pass. In March of 2020, we will be getting Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX, a remake of the original games but with the inclusion of Mega Evolution. The game releases March 6th with prepurchase and a demo available today. Find out more about that here.

But the main news is that Pokemon Sword & Shield are getting 2 Expansion Passes which will be released in June 2020 and Fall 2020 (release date to be announced). The 2 Expansion Passes will be called Isle of Armor & The Crown Tundra and will feature 2 new areas to explore complete with new gyms and new Pokemon, including Kubfu, a Fighting-type Legendary that evolves into Urshifu with two forms and Calyfex, a Psychic/Grass Legendary Pokemon.

There will also be new Galarian forms for Slowpoke, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres as well as new Gigantamax forms for Venusaur, Blastoise, Rillaboom, Cinderace and Inteleon. As you know, Pokemon like Venusaur and Blastoise aren’t in the game, but over 200 past Pokemon will be coming as part of the DLC. There will be free updates allowing these Pokemon to be traded from other games. It also appears you will be able to catch these 200 Pokemon in game or trade your own from previous games through features such as Pokemon Home. You can use Pokemon Home to get Pokemon from the Let’s Go series as well as Pokemon Bank, meaning you can bring many of your old Pokemon to the new games. Pokemon Home is planned to launch in February 2020. Also, starting today, Galarian Slowpoke will be available through a new content update. Slowpoke will evolve into Slowbro in the Isle Of Armor DLC and Slowking in The Crown Tundra DLC.

You will get a new mentor in the expansion pass called Mustard as well as a new rival. If you own Pokemon Sword your rival will be Klara, a poison type user. If you own Pokemon Shield your rival will be Avery, a psychic type user.

The Crown Tundra will have a new co-op mode that will allow you and your friends to explore dens in the area. Deep inside the dens you will encounter legendary Pokemon from past games such as Mewtwo and various legendaries from other generations, and they will also be catchable through the new co-op mode. There will also be new legendary Pokemon to catch in the DLC too.

Overall, this was a very good Pokemon Direct, and I think its a great move to add expansion packs to the game rather than make a whole new game forcing us to play the base game and then the DLC like Ultra Soon & Moon. This continues to breathe new life in the game and there is no reason at all why the expansion passes couldn’t go beyond 2020, giving the developers more time to create the next game rather than having to rush a new generation out.

The Expansion Pass is available to preorder today and will contain exclusive outfits as a preorder bonus.

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