Pokémon Sun and Moon Review

Introduction

In Pokemon Sun and Moon you take on the role of a Pokemon Trainer who catches Pokemon in the wild to train them and let them face off against the Pokemon of other trainers. In contrast to other Pokemon Games before these, Sun and Moon break some of the traditions known to many gamers, so the end goal of the games are not quite so clear at first.

Story and Atmosphere

The story starts off in a similar fashion to earlier Pokemon Games. The player has just moved to the Alola Region and is now starting his adventure in this new tropical place. At the very start of the game, the player is convinced to start the “Island Challenge”, an event that all young aspiring Pokemon Trainers of the Alola Region do, where you journey across the four islands of Alola to take on their trials. In the Island Challenge, the goal is to pass the trials set by the Island Captains. Maybe you will find out the purpose of the Island Challenge while you are on it yourself.

If it ever where as simple as this. In this well-paced and beautifully put together story, you are going encounter the villains by the name of “Team Skull” who are out to make a quick buck, no matter how many people or Pokemon get in harms way. You will take it on as your duty to protect those who can’t protect themselves and will get into numerous conflicts resolved by battling with your Pokemon. Make sure you train your Pokemon well, so that you can succeed in the challenges that lie ahead.

The games’ atmosphere is one of the best in the pokemon series yet. The tropical region makes the environment stand out from its predecessors and the world feels more connected and better designed than ever before. The game pushes the power of the 3DS to its limits and really made us look forward to future Pokemon games on the upcoming Nintendo Switch.

Game Mechanics and Difficulty

The game mechanics have been vastly improved over previous pokemon games. The grid based movement typical to Pokemon games has been abolished in favour of the free movement found in all modern games. The Hidden Machine System, where you had to teach Pokemon certain moves to traverse certain terrain, has been replaced by a much better system entirely, which enables all 6 of the Pokemon in your party to be used to their full potential. Some conventions of the games have been broken, giving you a better chance to be surprised of the content in the game, not knowing what could potentially come next. Overall if you liked Pokemon games before, this game is great for you and if you were turned off by Pokemon games due to them being too similar to one another, you may be very pleasantly surprised.

In terms of difficulty, there is no standard difficulty selection in this game. But there are ways to make the game more challenging, with the first being the Experience Share item. You get the experience share very early in the game. It effectively gives all your party Pokemon bonus experience points, even if they haven’t participated in the battle. Turning it off will therefore reduce the total experience of your Pokemon, making the game more challenging but still very comfortable to play. To further increase the challenge, you can go into the options menu of the game and set the “Battle style” to “Set”. This means that you have to use one of your turns to switch out a Pokemon that may fare better against the current one sent out by your foe. We recommend to use this feature if you are already familiar with Pokemon games and are looking for a bit more of a challenge.

The Conclusion

Pokemon Sun and Moon have a fantastic story and are a major step up from previous games in the series. There are very few things to critize them negatively for, with one being that there could be a bit more post game content for dedicated players akin to the Battle Frontier in previous games. The upside is that with some of the introduced mechanics, competitive online battling has become more accessible than ever before, giving dedicated players a reason to play for a long time after finishing the main story. For more casual players looking to play through the story, the games are a joy to play and worth your money with a fantastic 30 hours of gameplay. Overall, we had a wonderful experience playing these games and after finishing them, we are really looking forward to the next games in the Pokemon Franchise.