The first half of Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet’s DLC, The Teal Mask, released earlier this week, adding a whole new region for fans to explore while on a Naranja Academy field trip.
But as players have been doing just that, some have discovered a side quest that really highlights how messed up the core conceit of Pokémon can be.
Reddit user u/KvasirMeadman brought attention to this by posting about their encounter with the “Bloodmoon Beast,” during its side quest in the DLC.
“I just fought the bloodmoon beast and all it did was use calm mind, while me and ogrepon kept smacking it with terrastitilzed ivy cudgels. I was told this was going to be a tough fight so I went all out, right from the get go,” /uKvasirMeadman wrote. “Like this guy is just going for his nightly stroll, gets flashbanged, and then when he’s trying to figure out what is going on he gets clobbered 4 times by this little thing in a mask bigger than an beartic. I feel like I should apologize to the poor thing.”
It seems they weren’t the only one who went into this fight guns blazing and ended up bulldozing the Bloodmoon Beast.
“NGL, I assumed this fight was gonna be tough, so I used my level 100 False Swiper Breloom and Spored turn 1,” u/Noble_Jar replied. “Poor guy kept getting Seed Bombed in the face while he was asleep up to the last turn where it took half of my Breloom’s health before fainting. It did make the cognitive dissonance of Perrin saying how epic the battle is as I wailed on a sleeping bear pretty funny in the moment.”
The violence against critters in this world, and even equating Pokémon battles to dog fighting is nothing new, and fans have been talking about it for years, but this encounter seems to hammer that point home even harder than usual. If you’re reading this and haven’t taken on the Bloodmoon Beast quite yet, maybe keep this in mind and go easy on him.
Though beware being hit by his Calm Mind, as one redditor noted his follow-up Bloodmoon attack is a killer.
