Alola! Consider that your official welcome to Gameological’s Game In Progress coverage of Pokémon Sun and Moon. Over the next several weeks, William Hughes and Nick Wanserski will be making their way through Nintendo’s latest monster-training adventure, playing the same section of the game together and serving as your tour guides to Alola, its quasi-Hawaiian setting. William, a longtime fan of the series, will be playing Moon and providing an eye toward what’s new or different. Nick is a series newcomer and will be bringing his fresh perspective to Pokémon Sun. This first report covers everything from the start of the game through their time on its first island, Melemele.
William Hughes
The first thing I’ll note about my time with Moon is how damn good it all looks. Game Freak stuck with the same 3-D models they used in 2013’s Pokémon X and Y, but the studio has brought an even heavier focus on cinematic presentation. Because I’m playing Moon—which time-shifts its in-game clock 12 hours from my own in Portland—I’m also getting a lot of chances to see how good its night-time lighting can be, giving everything a pleasant soft-focus feel. Given how long the Pokémon games managed to stick to their top-down, bare-bones aesthetic, it’s really nice to see them embrace some visual flare and varying camera angles. And the soundtrack is consistently great, tapping into the new faux-Pacific setting without going over the top.
The game kicks off with a video call from Sun and Moon’s resident Pokémon professor, Kukui, a man with a disturbing willingness to barge, shirtless, into the homes of preteens he barely knows. But while the good professor verges on being just a little too “X-TREME” at times, Kukui’s a good introduction to the game’s lively writing and energetic tone. (See also: a reference to “humble bragging” that got a surprised laugh out of me, and the bone-headed antics of the latest Team Rocket stand-ins, Team Skull.) The Pokémon games have always been aggressively cheerful in tone, but I’ve been happily surprised by how well-drawn Sun’s and Moon’s initial characters have been—Kukui, island chief Hana, and even the player’s normally faceless mom.
How about you, Nick? What were your first impressions of Alola?
Nick Wanserski
As dramatic as it may sound, playing a Pokémon game right now is proving to be a balm for my bruised soul. I’ve always enjoyed Nintendo’s commitment to making and publishing games with cheery, brightly hued aesthetics, and I’m grateful they continue to do so even after that look has largely fallen out of fashion. You’re right that the soft, pastel nighttime effects are lovely, and right now, spending time in a world where everyone is so out-of-their-damn-minds happy to just wake up in the morning is a welcome counterpoint to my previous week.
Of course, that constant effervescence also invites reflection on how truly weird these games are. I know it’s an observation as old as the series itself, but the unerring tone of wholesome enthusiasm and good sportsmanship demonstrated by the trainers you battle feels pretty at odds with the game of fantastical cockfighting in which you’re engaged. Consequence-free battles are such a baked-in video game abstraction that I wouldn’t give the contradiction much thought if it weren’t for Lillie, the mysterious ingenue your character meets at the beginning of the game. She carries a mysterious Pokémon in a duffel bag that she’s very protective of and constantly references how she doesn’t duel because she can’t stand to see the creatures in pain. It makes me feel a little guilty for wandering out into the grass to forcefully conscript members into my ever-increasing army of goofy animal thralls. But at the same time, I gotta find a water Pokémon.
Speaking of which, are Sun and Moon pretty typical of the difficulty of most Pokémon games? It’s been pretty effortless so far, and I haven’t had any problems winning either the random or scripted encounters. I haven’t played a one-on-one role-playing game since the copy of Dragon Warrior for NES I got for free with a Nintendo Power subscription, and I find it a welcome change from managing a giant party. Can I expect the challenge to ramp up as I build up my collection? I know the game is predicated on a rock-scissors-paper dynamic, where each Pokémon is weak to certain types of moves, and I don’t know how stunted I may be in the future if I don’t strategize for a good team now.
William Hughes
It’s not that Pokémon games—Sun and Moon included—are easy. (Ask anybody who’s ever slugged their way through an iteration of the Elite Four about that.) But they derive their difficulty from complexity, the delicate balancing of types and moves, more than any individually powerful opponent. And complexity is in short supply here on Melemele Island, where most trainers only bring a single monster to a duel, and where most of the Pokémon lurking in the tall grass are Normal-type or Bugs. To be fair, every Pokémon game features this same opening lull, a numbing gauntlet where type differences barely matter, and your starter Pokémon (hideous clown-dog Popplio in my case, chosen largely out of spite after somebody snagged the adorable Rowlett for himself) can carry you through 90 percent of fights. But Moon exacerbates it with one of its big changes to the game’s regular structure: replacing Pokémon gyms with “island trials.”
These trials fulfill the same narrative structure as the old gym fights, acting as milestones and gating access to the new “Z-Power” system, which lets players supercharge some of their techniques. But instead of culminating with a gym leader fight, pitting your tired team of six against a roster of high-end monsters organized around a theme, they throw you into battle with a “Totem Pokémon,” a more traditional boss fight with a single overpowered monster. The thing is, it’s never been hard to take individual Pokémon down—hit it with a couple of super-effective moves and watch it faint—so these fights feel like an anticlimax, rather than a test of skill. But as we get to the end of Melemele—taking on the island Kahuna, and getting formally introduced to our rival, Hau—I’m starting to run into welcome situations where Popplio (nickname: Seal, as in the singer) can’t just Water Gun her way through every fight. Meanwhile, I’m also starting to catch stuff—Magnemite, Petilil—that can do more than Tackle, widening my move pool considerably. The game’s been good so far about giving me the types I need, when I need them, so I’m not worried about getting screwed down the line, as long as I keep my lineup diverse. (That being said, you might want to pick up a Wingull if you need some Water power to back your team up for the next stretch.)