Review: Pokémon Sun and Moon are solid entries aimed at newbies

Pokémon X and Y weren’t groundbreaking new games or anything, but I liked them as much as I did because they took the core structure of previous games and modernized it. You were still a fledgling Pokémon trainer traveling the world, visiting gyms, and taking on the Pokémon League. But, for the first time, you were in a full 3D world with 3D battles. X and Y streamlined play and minimized grinding, whether you were just playing through the main story or running a Poké-eugenics program to build a perfect team for the competitive circuit.

The question Pokémon Sun and Moon have to answer is: where do the games go from here? How do you continue to give each new entry its own flavor without leaning too heavily on fresh new Pokémon to shake things up? And how do you keep a game with so many different mechanics accessible for new players who may be coming to the main series for the first time (or returning after a long absence) because of the overwhelming popularity of Pokémon Go?

Welcome to Alola

Every Pokémon game takes place in a different “region,” and every region takes its influence from a different real-world location. Sun and Moon’s new Alola region has a strong Hawaii-esque sun-and-sand tropical vibe, and, even more than in past games, the setting informs the game’s structure.

Most other Pokémon regions have been one big landmass spotted with the occasional island, but the Alola region has four distinct islands that the player travels to and from via ferry. Rather than beating eight gyms and challenging the Elite Four, you and your friend/rival are taking something called the Island Challenge, which is part Pokémon challenge and part coming-of-age journey. You and your friend/rival visit each island, where you clear that island’s trials before taking on that island’s leader (called the “kahuna,” in keeping with the Hawaii theme) in a Pokémon battle.

Kahunas are more or less just gym leaders by different names—they have teams of Pokémon built around specific types and everything—but the trials are more varied. Clearing a trial or beating a kahuna nets you not a gym badge but a “Z-Stone,” which can power up a move of a specific type once per battle. As you make your way through these trials, you'll also continually butt up against this game’s Team Rocket stand-in, “Team Skull.” They want to steal Pokémon. You don’t want to let them steal Pokémon. You fight about it. Alola feels different from the locations in other Pokémon games, but Sun and Moon are still Pokémon games.

Kahunas and their captains are also presented as community leaders, and you run into them a few times before you challenge them, which makes the world feel more lived in. Previous games’ gym leaders were content to stand in large thematically appropriate rooms waiting for you to bring the challenge to them.

Sun and Moon also get subtle but welcome upgrades. Human characters now have typical proportions, shedding the last vestiges of the “chibi” style characters that were necessitated by technical limitations in the old Game Boy games (X and Y made steps in this direction, but characters still had somewhat chibi proportions outside of battles and cinematics). The game world is also more realistically proportioned, and camera angles have become more cinematic, moving yet further from the series’ traditional top-down view. Despite these changes, Pokemon doesn’t feel grown up (the dialogue is still mostly insipid, although these days the series’ unflagging optimism and simple sunniness seems more necessary than it used to). But the new games feel more like they were made for a 3D console and not just 8-bit games converted to 3D.

Adding new mechanics (and throwing old ones in the garbage where they belong)

The hyper-powerful, once-per-battle Z-Moves are Sun and Moon’s main contribution to the core battling mechanics, much like Mega Evolutions in X and Y and passive Abilities in Black and White. Mega Evolutions still exist in these new games, but no new evolutions have come along since Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, and they’re not really integrated into the games’ story mode this time around.

Sun and Moon add a total of 80 all-new Pokémon, including “secret” ones that will presumably be available via event distributions later on. That number climbs to around 85 once you include the alternate forms that a few of the new additions have. There are also 18 “Alola form” regional variants—versions of some of the original 151 Pokémon that have had their appearances, types, moves, and stats tweaked for the new games. The original versions of the monsters will still be available in Sun and Moon, but you’ll need to transfer them from previous-generation games after the Pokémon Bank app is updated with Sun and Moon support in January 2017. The game isn’t hurting for new monsters at this point, but longtime players like to see how the additions change up the competitive metagame.

Game Freak has made one change that spices up wild Pokémon encounters. Wild Pokémon can now call for help, bringing in reinforcements and turning a 1-on-1 battle into a 1-on-2 battle. The calls for help don’t always work, which amps up the tension if you’re at a disadvantage or trying to catch a particularly evasive Pokémon. Calls for help are similar to, but less tedious than, the 5-on-1 battles that X and Y occasionally threw at you.

The new additions are good, but seeing some outdated design get removed this time around is even better. I’m mostly talking about HMs, or “hidden moves.” Going all the way back to the original Red and Blue, you had to teach HMs like Cut, Surf, and Fly to Pokémon on your team in order to access certain areas, even if you didn’t want to keep those Pokémon on your team full time. Getting halfway into some cave only to realize that you need an HM that no one on your team knows was annoying.

Some of those individual moves live on as standard TMs in Sun and Moon. But, as a gameplay mechanic and a progress-blocker, HMs are totally gone. They’ve been replaced by “Ride Pokémon” that you can call and dismiss at any time once you’ve befriended them. They let you smash rocks and surf around without needing dedicated Pokémon to do any of those actions. They are a welcome replacement for a dated and frustrating mechanic.

And finally, other features from past games have been tweaked. “Pokémon Refresh” integrates the Tamagotchi-esque care-and-feeding minigame from X and Y into the main game better than its predecessors. After battles, you’ll sometimes be given the option to “care” for your Pokémon. Caring is usually just about making your Pokémon “like” you more, but it can also be used to heal status ailments, like paralyzation, without using items.