Introduction
When I was younger I played a lot of Pokémon. I bought Pokémon Red when it first came out and later bought Pokémon Yellow. I managed to get all 151 Pokémon (including Mew). I then continued on with Pokémon Silver, but stopped playing before the next entry into the series. Now I felt like it was time to jump back into the series and see if it was everything I remember it to be.
The First 15
I start up the game and am asked to pick my character. I’m a little disappointed by how few choices you have when it comes to making your character.
The opening cutscene shows a young girl trying to escape from a lab. She nearly gets caught before whatever pokémon she has in her bag teleports them out of the lab.
Now we’ve moved on to my character who it seems has just moved to the Alola area. I’m starting to notice that people all smile a lot.
I find it a little weird that even the professor calls my mom ‘mom’.
After a lot of cutscenes I finally get to chose my starter pokémon. I chose Litten the fire cat as my starter. My reason is that it looks the coolest of the three.
Now equipped with my starter I’m ready to go!
Story
There is a decided lack of tension between characters in the game. Everyone remembers the constant tension between Red and Blue (Ash and Gary) from the first game. But in this game it seems like everyone is always friendly. I feel like the lack of a rival does the game a disservice. It by no means ruins the story, but I think the story could be better if there was a character that acted as a true rival for the player.
In Alola, Team Rocket is replaced by a gang called Team Skull. Unfortunately, whereas Team Rocket managed to actually feel like a real threat and defeating them became a priority, the members of Team Skull are mostly characters who are very clearly trying to compensate for being weak by acting tough. This makes defeating them feel less like something you need to do, and more like something that you might as well do since you’re already here. Even their leader is hard to take seriously. I remember Giovani being someone you could respect (granted I was a lot younger at the time). Unfortunately this new group does not elicit the same response.
Interface and Controls
Players gain access to the Ride Pass which allows players to mount up on different pokémon. I like how this replaces the old HM system, but it feels a little odd to be able to just call up a pokémon anywhere I want without having first captured that pokémon. I think you should have to capture the pokémon you use on the Ride Pass. I’m also not of fan of how Sharpedo completely replaces Lapras. Technically you can’t fish while using Sharpedo whereas you can with Lapras, but this just feels like the developers last minute realized Lapras was useless and so they removed something from Sharpedo to make Lapras feel ‘different.’ I’d like to see them give Sharpedo the ability to be fished from and then simply remove Lapras as a mount.
I wish the game had a quest log or a notebook of some kind for tracking quests you get from NPCs. Often times I’ll meet an NPC who wants me to do something for them or trade a pokémon with them. The problem is that if I don’t do it right away, I usually forget about the quest until I revisit the area later on.
One of the biggest missteps the game takes is with the Battle Royale. Players are introduced to the Battle Royale through the story at about level 20. Players participate in one which is a lot of fun. Naturally players are going to want to do a few more before they continue on with the story. Unfortunately, pokémon who participate in the event are all level 50. Pokémon over that level are set at level 50, but pokémon under that level are not leveled up to 50. This basically means that the player, having just been introduced to this new system, has to immediately leave and come back much later in the game to participate. I really wish there were Battle Royales available at level 20 so the player could participate immediately upon being introduced to the system. I would have liked to see the developers add in a series of one-time level 20 battles that reward the player with an item and unlock the normal level 50 battles upon completion.
One of the things that made the game much harder than it should have been is after defeating a pokémon that belongs to a trainer, the game tells you what pokémon they will be playing next. Unfortunately, all it tells you is the name of that pokémon. As someone who hasn’t memorized all 700+ pokémon I usually had no idea which pokémon was about to be summoned next. I would like to see the new pokémon displayed in the bottom screen along with its type(s).
I appreciate that when I’m selecting a move the game will indicated if an attack is super-effective, normal, not very effective, or will have no effect on the opposing pokémon. This is extremely helpful since it means I don’t have to try and memorize a giant strength/weakness chart.
I actually didn’t even realize that I had access to Pokémon Pelago until a random NPC I spoke with told me about it. There needs to be some sort of tutorial added that takes players there once they unlock access.
Gameplay
Early on enemies have a habit of overusing debuff moves which ultimately means they never do any damage. I think it’s intentional in order to make at least the start of the game really easy for new players. This is a great way of giving players enemies with pokémon that are the same level but are still very easy since the player could have chosen any of the three starters.
The game gives you access to the Exp Share item very early. Personally I feel like this is one of the best decisions the game makes. By having the Exp Share all of the pokémon in the player’s party are constantly leveling. This makes it so you don’t have to spend time farming experience or constantly swapping pokémon at the start of every battle if some of your pokémon start falling behind. The early access to Exp Share means you can always use the pokémon you want to use, but the others in your party will be strong enough when the time comes for them to shine.
In the old days (Pokémon Silver) pokémon would full heal when they leveled up. They don’t do that anymore, which is probably for the best.
The game strikes a nice balance between random encounters and avoidable encounters. Walking in tall grass or inside of caves causes the player to encounter pokémon at random, while others can be seen spotted beforehand. I like the mix of encounter types and how they made each area feel unique.
Replacing dungeons are the Island Challenges. These challenges require you to navigate through an area, usually a cave, while completing some kind of quest which then ends with a fight against a totem pokémon (basically a supped up version of a normal pokémon). While fun, the challenges tended to be quite easy and the fights with the totem pokémon were also quite easy if I burst down the totem pokémon right away. I like that they’re trying to change things up, but their one-hit KO methodology prevents things from being as interesting as they could be (more on that below).
My largest complaint about the game is that most of the fights come down to one-hit knock outs. Because of how much damage pokémon deal at a time, hitting an enemy pokémon with a super-effective attack will usually KO that pokémon (or vice versa) without giving the target a chance to do anything. There were a number of times when I would put out a pokémon of my own only to have it get knocked out without being able to attack even once. Because of this I found the majority of the game to be rather easy since I could stick my Butterfree out first which usually had at least one attack that was super-effective against anything the game threw at me. And if it doesn’t, then I could just switch to one of my other pokémon who did have a super-effective attack. I would have liked to see fights be a little more of an actual fight. That means that even a high damage super-effective attack wouldn’t do more than one-third to one-half of a pokémon’s health. I just feel as if the constant one-shotting makes the main part of the game too easy and a couple select fights much harder than they needed to be.
The first time I was defeated it was to a trainer who played a Meowth that used Bite. Bite is a move that has a chance to make the opposing pokémon flinch, thus skipping their turn if the opponent goes second. Unfortunately for me, the enemy was faster and proceeded to make my pokémon flinch every turn until eventually they all fainted without being able to attack even once. Losing purely to RNG like this felt so completely awful. A feeling that just got worse when I went in again and defeated her without any trouble the second time. I feel like the designers need to be a little more careful not to give enemies moves like Bite which can potentially cause the player to lose without being given a chance to do anything due to bad RNG.
Z-Power is a new mechanic which allows players (and very rarely enemies) to supercharge a single attack once per fight. I actually found Z-moves to be a bit underwhelming from a gameplay perspective since they’re mostly just a more powerful version of an existing ability. It’s a good attempt to try and follow up on Mega Evolutions, but it just doesn’t have the same effect. Z-moves also tended to make wild encounters even easier than they already were since a Z-move is almost always going to one-shot the target even if it isn’t super-effective. The upside to Z-moves are the animations that play when players use one. Some pokémon have unique Z-moves which generally have some of the best animations.
Mega Evolving is a system from the more recent games. In Pokémon Sun/Moon players aren’t given access to it until after the main storyline is already completed. I feel like this is done to further highlight the new Z-Power mechanic.
Something I want to highlight about Pokémon Sun/Moon is that players can spend an almost unlimited number of hours playing this game. Even once you beat the main storyline there are several other storylines that follow it. Besides story content there is the collection aspect. Players can catch pokémon to fill up their pokédex. And once that’s completed then players can try to collect the rare shiny variation of each pokémon. Between that, breeding and hatching eggs, online battles, and a number of other gameplay features players can easily pour hundreds (maybe even thousands) of hours into this game.
Conclusion
You will like this game if you enjoy collecting a seemingly limitless number of creatures, training them, and taking them into battle against enemy trainers or players.
You will not like this game if you don’t know many of the pokémon by name or you dislike games that have an over the top cheerful atmosphere.
Pokémon is (as it always has been) the ultimate collector’s game. With over 700 pokémon (over 300 catchable between the two games in the current expansion) players have plenty of things to chase after. But even for those who aren’t into filling up their pokédex, the game is still a lot of fun with an engaging story. There are a few missteps such as Team Skull lacking a sense of danger and the constant one-hit KO attacks, but all in all I enjoyed my time playing this game.
The Meaning Of Fun 