Pokemon Sword and Shield Isle of Armor Release Date Appears

The latest Pokemon Sword and Shield announcement for Expansion Pass dropped recently in a new trailer. There’s tons of gameplay footage, legendary Pokemon teases, and most importantly, a release date. Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s The Isle of Armor releases June 17.

The trailer’s first half shows The Isle of Armor in fairly good detail. As we mentioned before, it centers around your journey to an island off the Galar coast, where people apparently love to train alongside new legendary Pokemon Kubfu.

When you aren’t at the Dojo and doing your own training with Kubfu, you’ll be exploring the island’s own Wild Area and encountering all manner of familiar Pokemon. The trailer shows dozens of Pokemon spanning the generations, from Druddigon to Loudred, Emolga to Gigantamax versions of the Kanto starters.

And Galarian Slowbro, assuming you still have the Galarian Slowpoke from earlier in the year. It’s a dual Psychic/Poison type.

There’s a strange-looking backpack with a Cramorant head as well called the Cram-o-Matic. You can feed it four items and get a completely new item in return, including a rare item depending on what you put in.

Then there’s Max Soup, which is something you can apparently only make on the Isle of Armor, and it grants the Gigantamax ability to whatever Pokemon drinks it.

The second half of the trailer focuses on The Crown Tundra, part two of the Sword and Shield Expansion Pass (the part that still doesn’t have a release date). It seems more exploration based, with lots of big, set-piece encounters with legendary Pokemon.

It looks like almost every legendary Pokemon from generation two on — the Regi Pokemon, Lugia, Dialga and Palkia, on up through Solgaleo and Lunala. There’s two new Pokemon in the Regi family, an Electric one called Regileki and a Dragon one called Regidrago.

All these encounters appear to revolve around the Crown Tundra’s three legendary bird Pokemon, which are Galar versions of Zapdos, Articuno, and Moltres.

Galarian Zapdos is Fighting/Flying type, Galarian Moltres is Dark/Flying, and Galarian Articuno is Psychic/Flying.

Finally, The Crown Tundra introduces the Galarian Star tournament, where you’ll team up with, and battle against, numerous Galar trainers you met during your journey.

We’ll doubtlessly find out more as the year wears on, so stay tuned to GameSkinny for more Pokemon Sword and Shield announcements as they turn up.