Pokémon Sun & Moon Review

(Note: I played through Sun for this review)

Pokémon is one of the oldest consistently popular franchise in gaming. Over the past 20 years, it has had seven generations of games and plenty of spin-offs. But, spin-offs aside, the gameplay and story beats have retained a basic structure throughout the years. Leave home, collect eight badges, fight a legendary and deal with some criminal organisation, and defeat the Elite Four.

Well, after 30 hours, I can say that Pokémon Sun and Moon... are pretty similar to past games. Fortunately, the series isn't really in need of any radical changes.

The formula has received a bigger change than we’ve seen since the introduction of legendaries as plot points in Pokémon Gold and Silver. The classic quest of traveling around a region to challenge gym leaders for badges has been swapped out for traveling around a region to take part in Islands Challenges. That may not sound like a big departure, but it definitely feels different because the Island Challenges aren’t totally focused on battles like the gyms of past games were. The change is definitely a refreshing departure from the past games.

The story isn’t anything special. It isn’t thought-provoking, it won’t stay with you for weeks after you complete it, it’s just a Pokémon game. I will say though, there are characters here that are among the most enjoyable of the series, and the story does hit some beats that we haven’t really seen before in previous games. It’s still predictable, and it still has some awkward dialogue, but in the end, it’s just fine.

Graphically, it’s amazing to see how far this series have come. When I think of Pokémon graphics, I think of 16-bit top-down four directional movement, but the past few games have been getting more and more three-dimensional. Here, it’s become something radically different from what it used to be. The world has taken the leap to full-3D instead of sticking to the middle ground between the old and the new that X and Y stuck with. Actual Pokémon battles have gotten even more visceral than they were in Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby, and seeing how great they look here, I’m excited to see how it gets better in years to come.

The Alola region, based on Hawaii, is more diverse than I’d expected. It’s not all just palm trees and beaches, though I won’t spoil any of the places you’ll visit. It’s great to see that Game Freak hasn’t run out of ideas for fun, new environments. Also, despite being another island region, Alola doesn’t suffer from Hoenn’s overabundance of water-type Pokémon.

Speaking of the titular creatures, the new Pokémon introduced here are actually good. The past few generations have gotten a lot of complaints because the pocket monsters they added weren’t seen as ‘creative’ or ‘interesting’. Sun and Moon, for the most part, doesn’t suffer from that shortcoming. Plenty of the 80 new creatures are cool additions, a few of which I count among my favourite Pokémon of all time.

That figure of 80 doesn’t really include all of the new Pokémon, too. Some returning monsters from past games have gotten a reskin here, taking on an ‘Alolan form’. These variants have new looks and new types, meaning new movesets. It’s a nice way to bring back some favourites from years past but make them feel new and interesting.

Playing with friends is as easy as it’s ever been. Over the last few years, Nintendo has been opening up their online component in games, and it’s been easy to see that process over the years in Pokémon games. We’re well-past the days of needing link cables to trade and battle. Players can access the multiplayer hub, the Festival Plaza, at any time by navigating to it through the touchscreen, and it makes battling other trainers from around the world and trading Pokémon with them is super easy.

The new Battle Royal mode is a lot of fun, especially if you’ve got three friends to play it with instead of competing against strangers. Battle Royal puts up to four trainers against each other in a free-for-all battle in which the trainer that knocks out the most Pokémon wins. It’s exciting, fast-paced, and makes online battling better than it has ever been.

My earliest memories of Pokémon are all about wishing I could free up my party slots but needing to keep my crappy Wingull for all the HMs it had. These moves have always been a burden, and many of them aren’t very effective in battle. Thankfully, Pokémon Sun and Moon have totally done away with these space-wasters. The new Poké Ride mechanic is a breath of fresh air and is much less annoying than Hidden Machines. It’s a welcome change, and one that I’m surprised didn’t come sooner.

The entire journey through from the beginning of the game to the end of the story took me about 30 hours. Granted, roughly eight to ten hours of that time is a result of my unrelenting impulse to ‘catch ‘em all’, (sadly, I have not yet succeeded in catching them all.) So, the average player can expect to spend anywhere between 20-30 hours completing the main game. The late game isn’t as meaty as HeartGold and SoulSilver or Platinum, but it’s substantial enough to have kept me playing for hours after finishing the story.

After battling over 40 gym leaders in my Pokémon career, I was beginning to wonder how many more of these games I could play before boredom struck, but with Sun and Moon’s evolution (get it?) of the classic formula, I have a feeling I’ll be playing Pokémon for years to come.