Let’s just immediately set the record straight: I love Pokémon. Ever since I watched the show at five and played the games at six, there was no going back. I’ve played basically every main series game, and a majority of the spin-offs, too. The franchise even just celebrated their 20th anniversary, which, God, that made me feel so old. If you’re a '90s kid and don’t have at least a slight connection to Pokémon, well… your childhood might have just been done wrong. Jokes aside, as soon as I saw the ads and trailers for "Pokémon Sun "and "Moon," I was overjoyed at how colorful and interesting it looked. The new Pokémon, the new characters, and the new region, Alola, which is based on Hawaii, if it wasn’t obvious. After playing through the game several times, I came to a conclusion:
These games really are not that great.
Let me give a comparison to how this game is. Let’s say you bake a cake, and you mess it up. Sucks, right? Well, you come up with the genius idea of covering the one ugly and lopsided part with more frosting, thus making the cake even and balanced again, instead of looking like you put a sledgehammer through it. Great! Later, when your friends/family are eating the cake, some are complaining that there’s too much frosting. You think, “too much frosting? Is that even possible?”
Yes, it’s indeed possible. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love frosting and cake, but there’s a time when there’s too much of the thick stuff on top to enjoy the fluffiness on the bottom, or even in some cases, there’s extra frosting to cover up the less-than-stellar substance underneath. This game is exactly the latter. First, I’d like to talk about the good things about this game, then proceed to why it’s like an overcooked sledgehammer cake with too much frosting.
"Sun "and "Moon "really shake up the formula with Pokémon, and that’s something you can’t ignore. You play as a young boy or girl who just moved to Alola from Kanto, another region that you go to in the Generation one and two games, as well as "FireRed "and "LeafGreen." Even mentioning the Kanto region is enough to get some people who haven’t touched a Pokémon game in years to come running back, but I digress. You then are pulled in to the Island Challenge by Professor Kukui, the shirtless, rugged Pokémon professor in the region.
As part of the challenge, you are tasked with traveling to the four islands in Alola, defeating all the Kahunas and passing all the trials there. You are also asked by Lillie, his assistant, to help her find out the mystery of a strange Pokémon named Cosmog, which she affectionately named Nebby. To anyone who’s played a Pokémon game before, this should set off some alarm bells. Where are the gyms? Not here, my friend! The trials take the place of gyms in this game, and in a way, pump some fresh lifeblood into a 20-year-old formula.
It was interesting to go through each trial, which is usually some kind of puzzle or item-gathering challenge, and they all end with fighting a Totem Pokémon, a stronger, smarter version of a Pokémon from the area. After defeating these trials, you are awarded a Z-Crystal, which allows you to perform special moves called Z-moves. More on that later.
Next, these games have a lot going for them aesthetically, even on the 3DS. Alola is a bright, beautiful setting full of flowers, trees, awesome architecture, and many people to talk to and receive items from. I can’t remember having this much fun exploring a new Pokémon region since going through the new areas in "Pokémon Black and White 2," but that’s another story for another day. There are plenty of new characters in the Alola region to get to know, and they all, for the first time, have full 3D models in the game’s overworld and battle sequence. It is no longer the age of 2D sprites in the past generations and crappy, chibi 3D models in "X "and "Y." Instead, we see the characters’ full sizes at all times, which is a welcome change from the past.
The new Pokémon were also fascinating and interesting. Your three starter Pokémon are Litten, Popplio, and Rowlet, which are all very different from any starter Pokémon we’ve had in the past. Litten goes through evolution to become Incineroar, a Dark/Fire-type that is based on a heel wrestler. Popplio eventually changes into Primarina, a Pokémon that brings to mind sirens and seals, and is Water/Fairy-type. Finally, Rowlet evolves into the dusky Decidueye, a Ghost/Grass-type which draws inspiration from owls and archers.
There are myriad other creative designs as well, including a bear based off of a large stuffed animal, an always-sleeping koala bear, a wolf with two different forms, and even an armored samurai bug! Not just those, but there are new versions of old Pokémon, such as Golem, Marowak, and Exeggutor called Alolan Forms, and they are apparently a type of regional variance in Pokémon, something never seen before in the franchise. Finally, there are mysterious new creatures called the Ultra Beasts, which play a part in the story as well as in the post-main story game.
Continuing with the good of the game, the music is very, very… good. To be honest, I’ve never played a Pokémon game with bad music, or even just mediocre music. There’s always one or two tracks that are extremely engaging and well-composed, and these games are no exception. I don’t have much to say about the music that I can say without spoilers, but between the songs played in the cities and towns, to battle music, to emotional music played in important story parts, there’s too much to talk about. The producers at Game Freak clearly did their homework, because the music always has a fresh, island flair to it no matter where you go.
Finally, the online features are great overall, and the QOL (quality-of-life) improvements are as well. Mystery Gift is easy to use and concise, and receiving gifts from online is super easy. Wi-fi battles are also extremely easy to hook up with, and Infared is the simplest it’s been in the franchise. You can press two buttons and are able to trade with anyone in your vicinity. The Festival Plaza, an area where you can “talk” to other players’ avatars and gain points, is interesting.
It’s nice because you can spend those points to get shops where NPCs sell you cool items and give you services like dying clothes, but it’s bad because it’s awkward and it takes forever to get good shops, and grinding is tedious. In terms of QOL, meaning features in the game to simplify gameplay and reduce inconveniences, "Sun "and "Moon "do an awesome job. You only have to press one button to throw Pokéballs. The attack menu tells you which attacks are more effective against particular foes, as well as displaying the effects of attacks in battle, such as reduced stats and weather turns. These things all make battling and catching smoother and more relaxing.
Now that I’ve given this game all of the praise I can muster, it’s time to move into my absolute biggest gripe in this game.
Here’s something to chew on: let’s say you’re playing a game with RPG elements, and besides the main quests, there are sidequests you can do. One day you decide to do a sidequest, and the entire time, the map is displaying the marker for the "main "quest, all the while reminding you that you have to complete it to advance. To top it all off, once you go to the area that is indicated on the map, you are forced to sit through long, drawn-out cutscenes that are poorly animated and detract away from the main point of the game: battling. Also, the game forces you to go into places and events you don’t want to go in for the sake of a tutorial.
This is "Sun "and "Moon." All of it.
I almost could not find a moment of peace. I knew within the first 30 minutes that the first island was a sad excuse for a tutorial level, and that I would be stuck there for a while (two hours, to be exact), letting characters hold my hand through a franchise I’ve been playing for almost 15 years. Now, some of you are thinking, “but Seth, "Pokémon" is aimed at kids! Why are you so angry over a silly tutorial?," and that’s fair. "Pokémon," at its core, is a kids’ game. But that doesn’t mean that "only "kids play it. In fact, many adults play it, and by adults, I mean the adult millennial crowd that played the original games and have been giving GameFreak their hard-earned money for almost 20 years, so yeah, "I’m a little jostled about this." In this game, it seems that GameFreak seemingly threw good game design out the window in favor of a forced story that isn’t interesting really at all, and characters that have half-baked development and weepy, cringy story arcs. Instead of letting you explore this massive region and all its untapped glory, you’re railroaded into a claustrophobic experience that you would often find in kids’ computer games from the '90s. And I’ve only broken the ice.
The rest of my complaints are merely mechanical, and instead of going into paragraphs and paragraphs of details, I’ll write them out on a list, so you can skip them if you like. Here goes nothing…
- For a game that boasts character customization, the male character option’s choices are a little…barren.
- Your Rotom Pokédex, which also serves as your map, never shuts up.
- A lot of the new Pokémon are locked behind 5% or lower encounter rates, making it nearly impossible to catch the ones you want without waiting exorbitant amounts of time.
- The game, because of its hand-holding and tutorial-ridden existence, is too "easy."
- So much wasted potential. The final confrontation with Lusamine could’ve proven to be an epic change in the formula, but was instead shafted for lazy design.
- There aren’t even that many new Pokémon, only around 80, not counting regional forms. I thought this was a new generation?!
- The postgame is boring and uneventful. After one sidequest, there’s nothing of note to do besides doing the Battle Tree, which involves knowing how to breed and raise Pokémon for competition, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
- Z-moves are lazy, flashy, and meant to just make the game more unbalanced. They’re cool, but are like the extra frosting: they only sweeten the shallow crap beneath it.
Wow, that is so much info, sorry. I needed to get that off my chest. I guess it’s all the bitterness of being cheated out of two generations worth of "Pokémon" games. Nonetheless, I don’t hate these games, but as you can see, there’s a lot of issues. I have a lot of the same issues with these games as I do the Generation 6 games ("X "and" Y/Omega Ruby "and" Alpha Sapphire)," but those discussions will come another day.
In the end, "Sun "and "Moon" made me sad. They were promised and hyped up to be this game-changing, formula-altering experience, but ended up falling flat, mostly. I read other reviews of this game from big websites, and they give it glowing reviews, but I just don’t see it. Maybe I’m biased, but I just think this game has a lot of issues, even for people who aren’t necessarily avid players of "Pokémon." With "Ultra Sun "and" Ultra Moon "on the horizon, we can only hope that those will be much better, and from the trailers and teasers they’ve been putting out, it’s looking very good.
Pros:
+ Fresh, new take on an old formula
+ Alola is exciting and refreshing; exploring it is very fun
+ Interesting characters
+ Despite being few in number, the new Pokémon are quite good
+ Regional variants was a really clever twist
Cons:
- Hand-holding and patronizing gameplay
- Despite the interesting characters, they fall flat as story devices
- Story is boring and bare-bones
- Unskippable cutscenes that drag on forever
- Pokémon availability is not done well
- Trials are often too easy
- Team Skull and the Aether Foundation both missed out on a lot of potential
Overall Rating: C+
Would I recommend these games to an avid Pokémon fan and player? No. They are not worth your time. To someone just starting the series, no as well. If you want to play a Pokémon game, go and pick up "Platinum" or "HeartGold." I only recommend these games if you are either a competitive player looking for the most recent version for competitive play or someone who wants an easy, mindless Pokémon game that won’t take too much attention.
