Pokemon Pokopia Expansion Pass Part 1: Bubbly Basin - Darling It's Better
After a short break from the game that helped me work through some serious burnout earlier this year, it’s time to pop on a bubble helmet and dive back into Pokemon Pokopia. Bubbly Basin, the first part of a planned three part expansion pack, is here, and it’s taking players to greater depths – literally – than they have experienced before, offering up the expansive ocean floor as a new playground to explore. While in real life the deep ocean is home to some of the world’s biggest horrors, here it provides a peaceful sanctuary where you can decompress, float with Pokemon pals, and live inside a giant mechanical shark – and it’s a perfect next step for the cosy dystopian city builder.
To access Bubbly Basin, you’ll need to have completed an early game quest about raising the environment level in one of the first worlds you’ll unlock – Bleak Beach. As long as you’ve passed this (surprisingly early) milestone, a new Pokemon arrives to teach you the wonders of the expansion’s new ability, Dive. Even those without access to the expansion do receive access to Dive with the new update, meaning Dittos all over the world are able to explore the ocean floor of the game’s existing worlds.
Though those without access to Bubbly Basin won’t find a whole lot under the water to pique their interest, I’m still a fan of the fact that the new ability allows them to venture to the edges of most of the game’s areas. Dive itself is a handy ability, significantly reducing the amount of time Ditto will spend accidentally drowning because you blocked them into a stream or behind a waterfall, so I imagine it’ll be a welcome addition for all players. In order to unlock its true potential, however, you have to go deeper.
Once you make your way through the new area gate and into the basin, things really open up. Bubbly Basin itself is almost entirely submerged, with the exception of a small, pre-made cave around the ruins of its Pokemon Centre. I did find it interesting that it doesn’t seem possible to make your own, separate small caves in other parts of the depths, but I suppose perhaps it’s wrong to be asking for more dry land in the one underwater area. You’re here to swim around and make friends with water Pokemon – and there are certainly plenty of them.
If you’re me, you may also be there to weep a little at the fact that Bubbly Basin contains the ruins of the once-great Cerulean City, home of my childhood favourite heroine Misty. At the time of writing this review, I’m still in the process of lovingly excavating the gym from its watery tomb, putting greater care into this area than I have into any other. Just as in areas before, notes and journals found throughout will give you hints as to the townspeople’s feelings towards ‘current events’ of the past, with many of them more overtly referencing what you learned to be the fate of humanity in the game’s later hours. This might mean that players who encounter Bubbly Basin relatively early in their playthrough are in for some earlier revelations than those who came before them, but I guess the game is never really committing too strongly to the ‘mystery’ of its premise, so spoilers aren’t too much of a concern.
There are multiple layers to the depths of the underwater ruins, with deeper sections requiring more light sources than those closer to the surface. It can get a little eerie down there, but there’s obviously no real threat to be bothered by, so exploration is encouraged. Bioluminescent coral and lamps made from organic sources will light your way – just as they do through the main caverns – and a soothing soundtrack provides fitting accompaniment to your journey into the unknown.
A collection of quests will guide your way through the new area and introduce you to a host of new Pokemon, and in this area more than others I felt the game pushing me to explore in a very purposeful way. The game doesn’t want you to miss out on any of the area’s new mechanics, so everything is tutorialised a little more clearly than in the base game. As a way of setting the new scene, I didn’t mind it – there was still plenty to explore on my own time, and in my own way, once these quests were done.
For the most part, everything is a little easier in Bubbly Basin. Many of the benefits unlocked via late-game abilities that make building and terraforming easier are also effectively available underwater simply because a lack of effective gravity makes moving around on a vertical plane much simpler. Structures can be placed on floating blocks, adding some fun new dimension to the way you can set out your city – so really, the world’s your oyster (you see, this joke is funny because you can unlock pearls as an item). Plus, there’s no stress of drowning, or of running out of energy while hovering mid-air, so everything is just that little bit more peaceful.
Ultimately, this feels like a very smart way to have expanded on a game that already felt perfect. Bubbly Basin is just another new biome, but it’s one that fits in neatly to the existing roster and that opens up a whole new world of design possibilities for those of us who just can’t get enough of restoring the ruined world of Pokopia. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, you can place a mechanical shark wherever you want in this biome and live in it. With Mudkip. What more could you want?
Player 2 reviewed this Pokemon Pokopia DLC using a code kindly provided by Nintendo.
