If there is one word to describe Pokemon Sun/Moon, the seventh Generation Pokemon games, it would be relaxed. Pokemon games over the years have trended towards slow and overabundant stories, gratuitous hand-holding through all of except their most complex features, and a structure so well worn the games have paced their way through the ground floor the original generation laid down and about 6 feet beneath dirt. This isn't to say the previous generations are bad, by any means. Gen III (Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Gen I remakes) and Gen V (Black/White/B2/W2 and Gen II remakes) are two of my favorite Pokemon generations, but even both of those suffer from sticking to the Pokemon formula. Gen III may have introduced complex stats like EVs, IVs, natures, and abilities, but it was also the beginning of some uninspired Pokemon designs and some truly obtuse puzzles (remember having to decode braille in order to find legendaries?), and Gen V, while having a pretty good story for a Pokemon game (whose stories are, let's face it, generally bad or pandering -- although it is for kids), still overruns you with text boxes and halts to the gameplay, and did little to nothing to change up the formula that at this point had been going on for a decade. Now that we are in our second decade of Pokemon games, it would make sense that maybe we could change things up a bit. Sun/Moon don't do this. Rather, they lighten up the mood, loosen up the narrative beats, and keep the focus on a simple, fun story about a ten year old going on a Pokemon adventure with his friends.
The beginning of the game is as traditional as the rest of them: you're a kid starting his Pokemon journey, you meet a couple friends soon after picking your starter, you're taught how to catch Pokemon, how to use your menus, and given the task to complete all the challenges in the region (no longer Gym battles, but now Island trials, which we will get into later). After that, you set off with your friends Lillie and Hau across the four islands of Alola. Pokemon has tried to work in-game friends in the past to middling results, often making shallow and congratulatory characters that halt the action and replace the iconic rival characters with dull, forgettable friendly competitors who are notable solely for having taken one of the other starters at the beginning of the game. Sun/Moon is the greatest success on this front. Lillie is somewhat cliche, and rather dull for much of the game, but seeing her transform as a character as the story progresses is one of the better story moments in a Pokemon game, even if that isn't saying all that much. Hau, however, is an effective comic relief, and undeniably likable. Hau is the jolliest character I've seen in a game in a long time, and while that could be annoying if executed wrong, Hau works by making his optimism acknowledged by the rest of the cast of characters, sometimes to their annoyance or reluctant acceptance. There feels like a realistic context for him in this world, even if nothing about this world is particularly realistic. He's happy and game for everything, and every time he appeared on screen I found myself seriously enjoying his company. I can't say I consider either of these characters well developed, but it was easy to feel a friendly rapport when they were around, and that's an accomplishment in its own right, and one that contributes to the feeling of a youthful adventure. The story, inevitably, gets more complicated as the game goes on, and while its payoff isn't great in and of itself, the journey there is rather funny. This time, the evil organization is really a small town gang that no one seems to find threatening in the least. The gang's contrast with the unaffected populace of Alola is really funny, and while their ineptitude does eventually lead to a more cliche Pokemon-type story, it's sidelined enough to not be too distracting.
The game makes two major changes to the general game play of Pokemon: the Z-attacks and the island trials. Z-attacks are this game's version of the mega evolutions from X/Y, allowing for a once-per-battle special attack. I generally avoided them since they seemed a "get out of a pinch" cheat, but its inclusion doesn't ruin the game. The Z-attacks do allow for one interesting mechanic, where the Z-attack able to be used is determined by a Z-crystal, and the Z-crystals act as your gym badges this time around, giving the gym badges a little more function. Instead of eight gym badges, you have something like eleven trials and grand trials to complete. Trials will generally have you doing some task three times before fighting a super Pokemon of that trial's typing with heightened defense. The tasks can vary from fighting three Pokemon, to finding ingredients for a stew. On one occasion, you had to answer three security questions to turn the power back on after the trial captain accidentally blew a fuse, a funny and memorable sequence that also giving you a sense of character for the trial captain, where a gym leader would have been decidedly one-note. Each trial captain is generally met way before and many times after their trial is complete, and there is a significant small town feel to the region, where everyone knows everyone else, giving you a strong sense community I don't recall from any other game in the series. Trials also reinforce learning typing weaknesses by challenging you with a high-defense Pokemon at the end of a trial. Super Effective attacks won't one-hit-KO the beast, or even two-hit most of the time, requiring you to use Super Effective moves against it to get rid of it before it calls in extra Pokemon into the battle. Grand trials, on the other hand, happen at the end of each island and are pretty much the basic gym battle. Fight a grand trial captain and beat their Pokemon.
Pokemon Sun/Moon feel a lot more different than they actually are. Trials and a softened focus on plot certainly give it more of a free wheeling adventurous tone, but underneath it all you are traveling the region's islands to catch and train Pokemon to eventually challenge the Elite Four, same as every other game. The tone is certainly what makes this game so enjoyable, something a little closer to the originals where it felt like you adventuring around was the focus, and saving the world was a happenstance along the way. Sun/Moon have some contradictions to this tone, such as waypoints on your map telling you explicitly where to go, slow camera shots that can drag on too long in cutscenes, and the fact that everyone gets a handful of expressions to help flesh them out, but your choice character gets one blank, and honestly terrifying expression. None of this detracts from the game being fun, just from it being better. There are also very few new Pokemon this time around, the region deciding on a collection of random Pokemon from all of the generations and mixing them here. It comes off as a sort of second- or third-volume greatest hits collection, where we don't have many of the heavy hitting songs, but we have an even mix of eras to give a nice, career-spanning texture to it all. It doesn't feel nostalgic, but rather a new starting place. If you've never played a Pokemon game before, Sun/Moon allow for easy accessibility and are unobtrusive when it comes to what the series does best. It feels generation-less, neutral yet fun, and in the great-if-tired series of Pokemon, that feels like a nice compliment. Crazy stat training is still here, little side games pop up now and again, and customizing your character or collecting Zygarde cells to change his form all have a fun, distracting element to them that you're bound to like if you feel so inclined to do it. But through it all Sun/Moon doesn't lose sight of its most attractive element: a relaxed adventure through the Pokemon world, new and old.
7.5
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