Coral Basin shows everything that has made Pokémon Pokopia a success

Pokémon Pokopia has been the year’s biggest sensation and it seems hard for another game to take the title away from it. Leaving aside the obvious one. It came out of nowhere and, when many people expected it wouldn’t get much attention, it has been the reason an awful lot of people made the jump to Nintendo Switch 2. It has topped sales charts and it remains one of the console’s best-selling titles, being the main reason to make the jump for those who weren’t already going to from the outset.

But why has this happened? The reasons seem clear after its first expansion, Coral Basin. Which doesn’t just take us to the ocean floor, but also digs deeper into everything the game already did well. Showing why so many people are excited about such a singular game and how well it has managed to capture the spirit of the times.

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More than enough content

Coral Basin is the first DLC for Pokémon Pokopia, released this past August 5. In this DLC, part of an expansion pass that will consist of three parts, a free patch has been included that adds the ability to dive, which has opened up a huge number of areas to revisit in the base game. But the relevant part is a whole new area, the titular Coral Basin, which is underwater and has its own identity.

Revolving around Manaphy, we’ll have to discover how to get 50 new Pokémon while we obtain new cosmetics, hairstyles, furniture, items, documents, and bits of information while completing main and side quests. All of it, as the famous song would say, under the sea.

Nothing more, nothing less. The thing is, the new map, like each of the previous ones in Pokémon Pokopia, is enormous and full of content. With easily a good ten hours of content for anyone who wants to unlock everything, plus however much time they want to put into it simply by building habitats, buildings, or decorating the neighborhood to their liking, the area feels alive and packed with content. Because the original areas already were.

Pokémon with plenty of character

On top of that,, being a DLC that takes place entirely underwater, as you’d expect we have all water Pokémon. From the most adorable to the most mischievous or downright delinquents, they all have a distinct personality that makes them charming and very interesting in their own right. Making it impossible not to have a handful of them that we grow fond of practically right away.

But again, this is something that was already the case in the original game. It’s a big part of its charm. It’s a game where it’s impossible not to fall in love with how well written the Pokémon are and their personalities, fitting perfectly into a simple story, but one with charm. Making the game have all the key aspects needed to hook us: being aesthetically pleasing, having charismatic characters, letting us play it exactly as much and however we want, and having an excellent gameplay loop.

This is what makes Coral Basin outstanding. It’s more Pokémon Pokopia and the base game was already outstanding. We’ll have to see whether the other two DLCs are up to par, but as a starting point, it seems Nintendo have scored a big win.