Underwater levels have a reputation. Not a good one. So when Koei Tecmo and Game Freak announced Bubbly Basin, a free DLC biome for Pokémon Pokopia dropping in August, the reaction from longtime players was equal parts excitement and apprehension.
The expansion introduces a brand-new move called Dive, which lets players breathe underwater and opens up new Pokémon habitats, hidden items, and exploration routes. On paper, it sounds like a natural fit for Pokopia's cozy sim formula. In practice, it's the kind of content that has tripped up far better-resourced games for decades.
Why underwater levels keep failing
The track record here is genuinely rough. Ocarina of Time's Water Temple remains one of gaming's most complained-about sequences. Jolly Roger Bay in Super Mario 64 slows momentum to a crawl. Even The Witcher 3, with all its polish, made underwater combat feel like a chore. The common thread across all of them: restricted movement, obscured vision, and some form of time pressure that turns exploration into anxiety.
Pokopia is different in one important way. The game has almost no challenge built into it. There's no stamina bar punishing you mid-swim, no combat encounters dragging you down. The cozy sim structure removes most of the typical underwater frustrations by default. But that doesn't mean Bubbly Basin gets a free pass.
What Bubbly Basin actually needs to deliver
Size matters here. Community speculation has pointed to Bubbly Basin being inspired by Cerulean City from Kanto, and if that's the direction, the biome needs to commit fully. Routes 24 and 25, Bill's house, and Cerulean Cave are all part of that identity. Pewter City, Saffron City, and Vermilion City are already in Pokopia, so the geography lines up. A shrunken-down version of Cerulean that skips the surrounding routes would feel like a missed opportunity.
The underwater content also can't be self-contained. Withered Wasteland, Bleak Beach, and Pallet Town are all surrounded by ocean, and right now those coastlines serve no purpose. Bubbly Basin's Dive mechanic needs to extend outward into those existing areas, planting hidden caves, rare Pokémon habitats, and collectibles beneath the surface. The trailer showed Ditto swimming with Psyduck, Piplup, and Azumarill, but the surrounding water looked barren. That's the version of this DLC nobody wants.
There's also the question of which Pokémon can actually live in Bubbly Basin. Pokopia has never been strict about habitat logic. Charmander can live wherever you want it. Restricting Bubbly Basin to water-types only would break that design philosophy and frustrate players who've spent hours building out their teams. The flames will be fine.
The Pokémon series has done underwater well before
This isn't entirely uncharted territory for the franchise. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduced underwater traversal in limited contexts, and the series has always treated water routes as a core part of exploration. Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen handled Cerulean's surrounding water areas with routes that felt purposeful rather than empty, which is exactly the standard Bubbly Basin should be measured against.
The key here is that Pokopia's formula already does the hard work. Exploration in this game genuinely rewards patience, and an underwater biome with enough density, from hidden relics to rare spawns to secret cave systems, could be the freshest content the game has seen since launch.
Leaks circulating ahead of the August release have suggested shiny variants and new accessories tied to the expansion, which points to a more substantial content drop than the announcement trailer let on. That's encouraging.
August can't come fast enough, but the pressure is real
Bubbly Basin is Pokopia's first major expansion, and first impressions for DLC tend to stick. Get the underwater traversal right, fill the biome with enough to discover, and extend Dive beyond Bubbly Basin's borders, and this update could genuinely set a new standard for how cozy games handle aquatic exploration.
Fall short on any of those, and players will have a very specific word for it. Hint: it rhymes with "watered down."
For players who want to revisit the Kanto roots that clearly inspired this expansion, our version-exclusive Pokémon guide for FireRed and LeafGreen is a good refresher on what made Cerulean City's surrounding area worth exploring in the first place. Bubbly Basin drops in August alongside the full Ver. 1.3.0 update for Pokopia.
