Pokemon Sun - Nintendo 3DS Sun Edition

I'll review this by all of the game elements. Overall, this is my favorite Pokemon game in the series (Possibly better than Gen IV, dare I say.)! I defeated all the trials and am working on the Elite Four, therefore I did enough to review this game properly. Characters: 5/5 - At first glance, that characters seem bland, but as you continue on, there are plenty of twists and a lot of character development I didn't expect in this game. Team Skull is very funny and is sort of a parody of previous "villain" tropes and are, well, gangsters. They aren't particularly evil, either, and also have development and become much nicer. Gen V was very developed in my opinion, but I think this has more twists. Music: 5/5 - The music is GORGEOUS. Some of it has a beautiful Japanese sound, and some is very Hawaiian. Team Skull's theme suits them perfectly with a gangster-ish sound.There's not much else to say, but listen to the soundtrack on YouTube. It's great! Plot: 4 1/2/5 - It's the typical becoming a Pokemon Master and Champion quest, but with the island challenge instead of gyms. You face trials and defeat the island kahunas instead of Gyms. You have to face a villain team, which turn out to be wayy more developed later on and VERY interesting, as well as human. They are also very amusing, and there's this secret of strange beings similar to Pokemon and a mysterious group also trying to get them, that I will not mention further than that. It has a lot of surprises, and I love the legendary in Sun, Solgaleo. There's also emphasis on Zygarde and its forms, 10% (Doberman look), 50% (the one from X and Y, like a snake) and the Complete form, which is like a mecha robot thing. Overall it's a great plot. It didn't seem as great as it was at first, which is why it isn't 5/5. You have to fully play through it to appreciate the plot and characters. Z-moves are also an interesting, mysterious element that is optional for you to use, and look pretty awesome in battle. The biggest flaw is I never truly had an issue in fights, I never had that difficult of a time, save for the ghost trial with Mimikyu and one character near the way end, but I still pulled through. For people who want a big challenge, they may be disappointed, especially with Z-moves. Graphics: 5/5 - Great graphics. Animations look great, though you may experience lag in some detailed double battles, although it was hardly noticeable for me. The Pokemon look great, including many new ones, such as Rockruff, Lycanroc, Litten, Rowlet, many Alolan forms, Zygarde 10%, Solgaleo, Type: Null, and more. (That right there is my opinion, but there are bound to be Pokemon one would like. There are also Pokemon returning of other Gens.) What else can I say? Everything looks great. New Features/Returning features: 5/5 - Character Customization is back, but expanded upon. You can choose between lots of looks for the player and lots of outfits. It's like X and Y, but even better! You can also change the eye color with contacts and the hair style. Best of all, NO MORE HMS! TMs can be used unlimited times, but HMs are gone! No more rattatas to learn cut, or making a Pokemon lose a likable move because you need to get through somewhere. You have ride Pokemon and the ride pager, which lets you ride Pokemon to walk over rocky areas, destroy or move rocks and boulders, swim over water, and can ride Charizard for fly! You can also ride a Mudsdale instead of riding a bike, which is so cool looking. HMs are just regular moves now. PokeAmie also changed to Pokemon Refresh, which is really good. It encourages bonds between trainer and Pokemon, and makes them do much better in battles. It also is an option to heal ANY status problem without buying those pesky full heals. Yeah, it's pretty useful as well as cute. Overall, a wonderful game. I highly recommend it.

This is hands-down one of the best Pokemon game I've played, and the story is arguably one of the better ones of the series. There are a few caveats which keeps it from being 100 but it's definitely worth the time of day to experience. Please note that at the time of this review, the access to the rest of the pokemon not available to the Alola region hasn't been patched in yet. PROs: + Better narrative +One of the better designed worlds in the series + The characters in the game are a lot of fun + You can run from the start! Also, Pokemon you ride makes covering distances a lot easier, even in the water later on into the game. + It's Pokemon's return to challenging gameplay. You'll have a really bad time doing a Nuzlocke in this game. + The music will give Black & White, and Diamond and Pearl a run for their money. Arguably the highlight of this series. + The battle interface has been streamlined a bit for ease of use. + There are more battle boxes, so you don't necessarily have to constantly edit your team when the usual 2 is used up. + The PC box has been streamlined. Moving items and organizing your pokemon within the box is easier. + Team Skull are one of the most endearing villains in the series. + Breeding Pokemon are a lot easier, and there are visual cues as to when an egg is ready. + The Z moves are a welcome addition to the series. CONs: - Catching rare Pokemon in the water is a horrible experience - The game has one of the longest openings in a Pokemon game. Cutscenes will be very jarring for the first few moments into the game until you eventually get used to it. - NEBBY, GET IN THE BAG! - Festival Plaza, this game's online hub, makes it an even more tedious journey to just battle someone online. It takes a lot more button presses/ clicks than usual. It's a step down from the X&Y's more convenient interface. - The Zygarde Core quest is infuriating. It's definitely a worse version of the megastone quest from X&Y - Acquiring megastones in this game requires you to go through the one of most tedious post-game challenges. To make matters worse, they're also the most expensive.

When I first bought this, I really didn't pay attention to any of the trailers because the Pokémon series usually followed the same layout throughout the games - Brief introduction to game mechanics, You venture from home, Battle the 8 gym leaders, fight some gang with a serious background, and beat the E4. The first 30 minutes of the game held my hand so tight. That was absolutely new for me. The Kahunas were like Gym leaders, except they usually gave you permissions to use Cool Z-Moves. Sweet! And then there was team skull, which confused me for most of the game. They're so silly and easy to take out! And post game... there's so much more to do! Spoilers below. Read at your own risk. First, as the champion, you may defend your title as Champion. Ever since I was a kid, me and my friends held badges in our school and acted as the school's gym leaders (with Teams filled with Pokémon who were lvld using gamesharks). When I saw there was an option to defend my title again, I was so giddy with joy! The second thing to do when the game is over is fighting the battle tree. 20 or so years have passed since Pokémon red/blue. I remember playing on the game boy color, buying batteries until I switched to the SP. All of the greyscaled coloring... it all came back to me when I tried to do the battle tree. After entering the area, I was approached by Red and Green. An actual shiver went down my spine. A couple years back, we had a chance to fight Red at the end of the game. And now you have a choice between fighting him or Green. Both are grown up! I was surprised to see both of them here! What surprised me more is that... other champions are here apparently. I spent countless hours climbing the tree and... well, I'll leave the rest to you. In short. Buy this or Moon, it doesn't matter. The game is terrific and is definitely worth the $40 (unless you paid $32 while pre ordering. Then it's 120% worth the money).

late to the program here, but i haven't had time to play it i didn't buy it. i absolutely love this game, and it has possibly beaten pokemon gold&silver as my favorite pokemon game. i love alola, the alolan forms, the trial setup, and especially the fact that pokemon are finally integrated into daily life: your mom has a meowth, and there are pokemon npcs everywhere, from snubull to mimikyu. and you can hear pokemon cries mixed in with the soundtrack, which itself is amazing. my absolute favorite thing: the plot. no spoilers, but this plot actually had substance, as much for kids as for adults, as well as complex morals and touching on a family subject that isn't talked about ever, when it should be. i actually didn't get gen6 because i felt pokemon was going downhill in gens4 and 5, aka pearl/diamond/platinum and black/white. i just didn't enjoy them as much, they were too easy and simplistic, and i was done playing with them in less than 50h. also more than a few of the pokemon designs were unoriginal or even downright ugly (i'm looking at you, garbodor), which i still feel in sun&moon but the alolan forms helped a lot with that, along with creating less new pokemon and bringing back ones we hadn't seen in a long time, and the ultra beasts which i was leery of but turned out great. strangely for islands, you hardly spend any time in the water, which is a shame. trainer customisation is great, i really didn't like the bobble-head look of x/y. and pokemon ride! best idea ever. i realllly want them to bring back having your pokemon walk besides you. pokepelago and pokerefresh? more awesomeness. my faith in pokemon and nintendo has been restored. i might even get sun&moon2, depending on what they do with the plot and new content.

I was as excited as anybody else for a new Pokemon game, especially after X and Y - my favorite games in the series since the original Ruby and Sapphire. However, this game seems like a pretty mixed bag so far. As of this writing, I am not finished with the game, so if my opinions change as I get further, I'll update this review to reflect that. The first thing you may notice is the sheer level of dialogue in this game. It took me almost a half hour of playing to get my starter Pokemon. Why did it take so long? There was just so much dialogue to wade through - and not even interesting dialogue. Half of the stuff it forces you to read is vapid nonsense that feels like filler. I was hoping that it would calm down a bit with the dialogue as I got further, and while it did calm down a little, it's still very intrusive. I miss the days of the earlier gens, where the professor gave you a Pokemon and sent you on your way. The next thing I noticed was how much easier this game seems. Just like in Pokemon X and Y, the Exp Share acts as an Exp All, making the leveling of your Pokemon go SO much faster. This might not sound like a bad thing, but when you don't use a Pokemon for an entire town but it's still the same level as your most actively-used Pokemon, it just isn't as fun anymore. On top of that, the trainer battles aren't any more difficult than wild Pokemon encounters. I grinded out a couple of levels from wild Pokemon early on, and am STILL over-leveled because of that. It's almost as if the game wants you to just skate through everything. Another really annoying feature is Pokemon calling for help. In theory, it sounds cool - Pokemon call for backup, and it makes for more tense/interesting fights, you get more exp per battle, and it's just kind of neat. In practice however, it makes me want to throw my 3DS at the wall. Now imagine, you're weakening a Pokemon and it calls for help. You KO that pokemon, and set your sights on the new one. However, before you can do any sort of damage to it, it calls for help. Now you get two attacks landed on you. You manage to weaken one and knock it out, only for backup to be called immediately. This might not be as bad if calling for help took up the enemy Pokemon's attack (like switching Pokemon or using an item) but it doesn't - it happens between attacks. This leads to all sorts of annoying situations, such as one that my friend described where he was facing a Magby. It trapped his Pokemon in Fire Spin, used smokescreen to reduce his accuracy to nothing, and then called for help. He could barely attack the Magby, couldn't switch Pokemon, and if he managed to take one out another one replaced it. If the Fire Spin ended, a new one took its place. There seems to be no limit to how many times help can be called for, so as long as their call for help doesn't fail, they can do it endlessly - until you KO both Pokemon, anyways. You also can't catch a Pokemon while there are two out, which creates a whole new frustrating situation where you weakened one Pokemon enough to capture, and it called for help. By the time you take the new one out and are allowed to capture the other one, it calls for help again, leaving you to do the whole process over again. Maybe this doesn't sound so bad reading about it, but by the 5th or 6th time help is called for, you'll be ready to pull your hair out. It's not all bad, however. The game has finally FULLY embraced 3D (graphics, not stereoscopic 3D - which there is none of in this game), and it controls like how JRPGs have controlled since the PS1 days. X and Y allowed movement outside of the grid-based design when using the roller skates, but in Sun and Moon EVERYTHING has abandoned the grid. Environments look and feel a lot more natural now, and there are a nice variety of camera angles to go along with this new development. There are also a lot of more streamlined gameplay features that reduce tedium. For example, if you catch a Pokemon with a full party, the game gives you the option to send one of your party Pokemon to the box instead of the one you just caught. You no longer need to go all the way back to town to use the cool new addition to your squad that you caught. You can also heal status conditions outside of battle through a system known as Pokemon refresher. This also makes the game easier, which I didn't like, but I feel like the convenience of not having to constantly run back and forth to a PKMN Center to heal your poisoned Pokemon outweighs the slightly lower difficulty that results. This seems to have replaced the Super Training from X and Y, which comes as a bit of a disappointment to me. I really liked that feature - it made training our Pokemon easier, and gave us some halfway decent mini-games to play. Speaking of mini, we also have a mini-map too now, which is nice. I really wish we had that in Diamond/Pearl, because I always got lost in that mountain in the very center of the map. Of course, there are a bunch of new Pokemon to explore. I mean, at this point we have around 800 - the thrill of a brand new Pokemon isn't as high as it used to be. Actually, for some Pokemon I can't remember if they showed up last generation or not. Still, there are plenty of new Pokemon to play around with, which is always great. On top of that, some of the older Pokemon got a fresh makeover - ranging from simply a color swap to a brand new design all the way to having a new type configuration. There are also a couple of new things that they did in order to spice things up. The biggest change is the fact that Gym leaders are gone, and in their place are island trials. Gyms have been a staple of Pokemon games since day one, so it's a bit weird to not have them. However, it's time to face the fact that the Pokemon formula has barely changed since day one. Expanded, sure. But changed? The core premise is fundamentally the same, so it's nice for things to get changed up a bit - even if the replacement trials are generally easier than the Gyms were. HMs are gone, too. At the end of the day, this is another new Pokemon game. It has a nice, new coat of paint and some new features, but it's not all that different from what we've been playing all along. On top of that, this is probably the easiest Pokemon game to date, and there is simply far too much dialogue. Of course, being as beginner-friendly as it is, newcomers and less experienced gamers may enjoy this more. I've been playing since the original Red and Blue on the Game Boy, so Pokemon is like an old friend to me. There's still too much pointless dialogue though. (For the record, my favorite games in the series are Gold/Silver, Ruby/Sapphire, and X/Y)

Pokemon Sun was okay. Although I started playing in December I beat the pokemon league in May because there wasn't THAT much motivation to get back to it...and I still have yet to collect the legendaries and defeat Red and the gang and that sort of thing. Now the game itself is quite easy. It was interesting of them to give you a Rotomdex; that is, Rotom is essentially your Fi or Navi or Midna if you're familiar with Zelda games--but that feature also made me a little lazy. Every time I turned on the game Rotom reminded me of where to go since he even has a map with the destination written on it! That's very coddling in my opinion, and while I become familiar with almost every city and route in other pokemon games while playing through, I still don't quite remember where things are in Sun and Moon because I didn't have to. They point you there anyway. So I will spend about five minutes flying on Charizard from place to place until I realize that I should probably take the ferry/ship to another (guessed) island because what I'm looking for isn't here. The best part of the game to me was Team Skull; they were really funny in the sense that Game Freak knew how lightly the "bad guys" are taken by the players anyway so they took the liberty to show that through their lines. That being said, because of Team Skull's humor I saw early on that Aether Foundation was suspicious. Skull was too non-threatening and disorganized to be the true threat, so even if Aether acted like perfect citizens something felt off. There's also questions I had about the deeper motives behind Aether funding Skull; I believe there's always something deeper when money is involved between two parties. Then the leaders of those two parties blindly jump into another dimension together with these strange pokemon they've barely seen? And one is older, has more influence and power than the other? But I keep that to myself. Also, although the dimensional lore and such is being expanded through the events and tidbits from this game, the plot is basically oriented around Lillie. That's not bad at all--you don't have to be the main/most important character all the time, but yes, Sun and Moon is Lillie's story which can be summarized as "Mom, what are you doing?" "Mom, STAHP!" And Lillie learning to stand up for herself and stop being a helpless child all the time. Although my character is friends with her and was a catalyst for her growth in the series, I am not attached to her (Lillie) as a player of the game. Maybe if she were in some other series she'd be more interesting to me? I don't know. Gladion and Hau were rather one-dimensional too but still nice to have as companions. (It wasn't anything as disarraying as having four friends constantly skipping and flocking around you and calling your name in circles like in X and Y.) But anyhow, I like them more than Lillie. Hau never gets flustered when crazy stuff is happening; he really keeps his cool and remains positive, and Gladion...he's so afflicted and standoffish it's funny. But on a deeper note I approve how he got away from his mother and made his own path when she was losing it. Unlike Lillie, he didn't wait around for anyone to save him while suffering in the meantime. He took type:NULL and got OUT of there! That's my boy. I really like that. Anyhow, moving on to the soundtrack: it's not bad at all. Until I went to YouTube looking for the songs I liked, I never knew that there were two versions for most of the songs, so I suppose every time I've picked up Sun I've only played at night (I highly favor those compositions over the day version anyhow) and missed the daytime renderings. The music is fine but to me the routes used a lot of the same songs around the same places so I didn't differentiate them as well as I would other Pokemon games. And although the music is objectively decent, I only have about three that I regularly go back to actually listen to out of affection...DEFINITELY not the wild pokemon song though. The totem pokemon version makes it better but the original makes me angry for some reason... What I don't like is the new menu for handling pokemon. In many ways it's convenient but I dislike trying to move a pokemon in my party and then remembering OHHH, I have to go out of my way to press Y to move this fool! On the bright side, I really like the options they give you when your party is full. You can exchange pokemon and items back to the PC all in one go! HMs: It's sort of convenient to not have to have an HM slave to perform all of the functions you need to get around the terrain, so I think it's an interesting system them procured over in Aloha. Definitely enables you to have only who you trained to be a warrior with you while you're going. Alolan forms: Pretty cool; it brings out observations that we can see in the real world. Not all squirrels, even though they're all squirrels, occur in the same appearance throughout regions or the world. So that makes it a little more interesting, though I won't comment on Dugtrio nor Golem's alolan form...or whatever random stuff they did there. And the oricocos! Oh my god. All in all: not bad. I really didn't want Solgaleo though. I can only remember him as "Nebby" (should name him that for kicks!) and if only they had given us the choice to catch him or let Lillie have him! He iS hers. Honestly it would be gold to see a girl as clumsy as Lillie have a magestic pokemon like Solgaleo as her starter pokemon in Kanto. They deserve each other; she saved him from his demise and they went through a lot together as a team already. I really, really wasn't interested in having him because...you know...I'm not a fan of legendaries anyway. I was more excited when I accidentally stumbled upon Tapu Lele the other day. Though the nature of the guardian pokemon rub me the wrong way too...going around on MY island punishing people as you will...who gave you the right?! Just kidding. I just don't really connect with legendaries in general. And I think she would feel better with him as her partner as her mom rehabilitates. And it was interesting for them to make a legendary that evolves too. That about wraps it up! Pokemon Sun and Moon...pretty okay game, I won't lie. I wasn't motivated to do any more that I had to, though.

I've been playing pokemon for 20 years now, and every game that has come out has been beautifully amazing. The only gripe I have with these gen 7 games is the fact that not all Megastones are available and the ones that are unavailable will be obtained via events or online competitions. This does annoy me greatly. Equally as annoying is if you have an older 3DS this game loads up much slower than it would on a New 3DS. Sometimes it takes a while to even shut the game off. So if you want to play this I do recommend getting a NEW 3DS to play it on, it'll be a lot less slow running. Though beyond that the battles are harder, the graphics are gorgeous, the cut scenes are amazing, and I'm just blown away by this game. Though if you're looking to relive your nostalgia for the good old days (Red and Blue) this game is probably not for you mostly because Gyms have been eliminated and in it's place is Trials. If you're looking to relive the old days I suggest buying the virtual console in the eShop rather than buy this game. This also applies to players coming to this game via Pokemon GO, do remember if this is your first Pokemon game do not expect it to operate in the same way that Go does. Though I do hope you give this game a try, the core series is definitely the better of the Pokemon games in my humble opinion. I cannot wait to see what they have in store for us next. <3

Had to buy for my personal collection. Definitely a fun game to play, and still holds up today.