The new Pokemon Poltchageist is a brutal cup of matcha tea

We’re quickly approaching the launch of the first DLC for Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, and with it has come a dripfeed of new monster info. GameFreak seems happy to stir the pot so far, with reveals like a 19^th Tera Type without much context. Yet the recently released video for the Grass/Ghost-Type Pokémon Poltchageist is wild even by those standards. I’m going to spoil the heck out of it, so watch the short yourself if you want the blind experience.

Our story starts with an older man at a festival telling a ghost story to an audience of children. Apparently, once upon a time, there was a tea master who was an obsessive perfectionist. He was so obsessive that he would yell at any guest handling his tea, leaving him alone with his craft. With no one to share his work with, he tumbled over and “fainted from exhaustion,” which the audience is meant to interpret as “this guy was so angry that he left this mortal coil.”

The master’s tea caddy changes hands in the years to come. But as you might expect from the tone of this story, that caddy is hella haunted. Filled with rage and matcha in equal measure, it proceeds to drain the life force from at least one person who angers it so it can repair everything from cracked cups to phone screens. Then Poltchageist drains life force from the audience of sleeping children before ending the video by winking at the camera.

I’ve watched this final scene three times, and I still can’t decide what’s going on. Is Poltchageist draining life force from the food, or is it straight-up attacking children?

Meet Poltchageist, a newly discovered Pokémon from the land of Kitakami, in The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero 🍵#PokemonScarletViolet ❤️💜 pic.twitter.com/h29lgIPzlB

— Pokémon (@Pokemon) August 22, 2023

Poltchageist is maybe in the top 20 of most disturbing Pokémon

As longtime fans know, Pokémon isn’t afraid to get weirdly dark with its Pokémon backstories. I don’t know who wrote Yamask’s Pokedex entries, but I hope someone gave them a hug afterwards.

As for the raw gameplay details, there’s still a lot we don’t know about Poltchageist. It‘s very similar to Polteageist, even though it seems to share no relationship to the monster. It also joins a surprisingly robust roster of Ghost/Grass-Type Pokémon, including Generation 9’s Bramblin and Brambleghast.

From context, we can assume Poltchageist will rely heavily on draining moves. It apparently knows the ability “Hospitality,” which lets Poltchageist “restore a small amount of its ally’s HP when it enters a battle.” For context, Scarlet & Violet have gone hard on mechanics specifically for doubles battles. Tatsugiri and Dondozo for example specifically work well together, with their potential massively undermined in singles. So only time will tell whether Poltchageist’s Hospitality will help solo players out or exist specifically for the competitive scene. I know I would like to see more double battles pop up in the main game.

We’ll be sure to learn more about Poltchageist when The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 1: The Teal Mask launches on September 13.