Pokémon Ultra Sun (2017)

Pokémon Ultra Sun was definitely a weird one for me. I stopped playing these games back at X/Y, since the changes at the time weren’t really to my liking. Coming back to the series after so many years was pretty intense.

Visually, the game looks very similar to X/Y, which makes sense since it’s on the same console. It’s fine overall, but I was hoping for something a bit more ambitious. The music, though, was great as usual.

The gameplay, however, felt strange. The island challenges didn’t make much sense to me. Most of them boiled down to “touch this, touch that,” with very little thought behind them. Maybe this is me sounding like a “Pokémon grandpa,” but in the older games, gym leaders gave the story structure and momentum. They represented milestones in your journey. Here, challenges feel inconsistent—sometimes you battle, sometimes you don’t, and then some of these characters somehow qualify as Elite Four candidates? If the logic was ever explained, it didn’t click for me.

So on one hand, you have very childish aspects: weak challenges, filler features like the camera functions, and several ideas that feel undercooked despite the effort to give Alola its own identity.

On the other hand, some battles and sections are extremely unforgiving. There are moments where you basically have to burn through healing items to keep moving forward, and certain trainers or Pokémon just sponge endless amounts of HP. The game ends up feeling unbalanced: I appreciated the challenge, but I often wondered if I was pushing too fast or if the design was just uneven.

That said, I did enjoy it overall. The epilogue could definitely use more attention, it feels more like an afterthought than a proper conclusion.

Final thoughts: if you’re looking for a challenge, Ultra Sun delivers. But you’ll need to survive the long cutscenes and uneven gameplay systems to really get through it.

I played through Ultra Sun and the game does a ton right. It really shows at this point that the development team were used to creating games for the 3DS and make good use of it to make really nice visuals. The region's gimmick, Z-Moves were a fun and creative followup to mega evolution even if they didn't hit the same level of enjoyment for me personally.

Really enjoyed the story and characters in this one even though I remember the main villainess from Sun and Moon being much more prominent in those games. But grain of salt there as it has been many years since I played those games.

Pokemon designs are all really great this generation and regional forms feel so natural in the series.

My only complaints (outside of the usual pokemon stuff they'll never change likely) is that the performance isn't great whenever there's more than 2 pokemon in a battle and the excessive hand holding. This game's intro is basically what will stop me from doing too many repeat playthroughs, it takes AGES to get into the game proper imo. Although I like the characters involved in these cutscenes they slow the game down so much it definitely affects my score. Still pretty high though, ending up with

4 / 5 Stars

I'd like to know who at Game Freak was personally stalking me when they decided to make a game that directly appeals to everything I like about Pokemon campaigns. It's a smartly designed decision that this game came out, because it knows exactly what a Pokemon campaign's strengths are. USUM doubles down on the worldbuilding Pokemon is so good at, in fact I'd say it pretty much just is the game. It's constantly about Alola, every new pokemon design and area bleeding the personality and culture of the region and it never really lets up even till the end. It didn't have to end there either, USUM actually brings in a story worth a damn, all wrapped around family values concerning Lillie and Lusamine, finishing in a clash that really delves deep into empty nest syndrome.

There's a very obvious side effect of all this, and that's that you can't move probably 30 minutes without being wrapped into a cutscene. Personally I think this is fine because I prefer my Pokemon campaigns to be roller coasters since I never truly enjoy the full customization experience to last an entire 30 hours due to AI teams being incompetent enough for me to always bulldoze over them. But I do understand where people will find this an issue that walls them off from caring about the game.

That being said, I do have one more positive to cover. USUM actually attempts to have PvE rather than PvP. While I would like to cover it in a full article, to summarize briefly a main problem with Pokemon campaigns from a gameplay center is that they hit a bottleneck by conforming to AI teams. Pokemon's combat systems are practically entirely designed for a real player vs player experience where it's structured around mind games and dazzling team combinations that catch the opponent off guard, creating a neutral game where each side has to understand and infer what the other side will do next with their Pokemon. That's entirely how competitive Pokemon works and it's completely missing in the base game, where AIs are so simple that they can be bulldozed by type advantage or overwhelming numbers. This issue can be mitigated by stronger Pokemon teams but what's a way way better solution is to throw out the middleman and try to make a PvE experience that uses Pokemon combat as a base to be built atop of.

And this is what USUM succeeds at, mostly. Totem Pokemon require you to make enemy-specific strategies and brute forcing requires more effort than just leveling. This comes to a head in Ultra Necrozma which is practically a playwall that demands a fundamental understanding of a lot of Pokemon's combat so that you can 'cheese' it. It's not perfect, it's a very weak step forward but a step forward nonetheless.

Overall I find USUM to be the best a singleplayer Pokemon game has been, mostly since it scratches each itch I have for a Pokemon campaign and that it has a powerful soul and heart to every hour of playtime. Also Gen 7 competitive is good enough to elevate that. (8/10)

Pokemon Ultra Moon is the 'third game' of Alola.

Let me explain what I mean.

Until Pokemon Black and White Version every new generation featured three Pokemon games in the region. For Kanto (ignoring the Japanese-only Green Version) it was Yellow Version, for Johto it was Crystal, for Hoenn it was Emerald, and for Sinnoh it was Platinum Version. Unova's lack of a Pokemon Grey Version was an oddity when the fifth generation of Pokemon games released, but the subsequent lack of a Pokemon Z in Generation VI seemed to place the final nail in the coffin of 'third' Pokemon games.

The 'third game' in each generation featured similar traits, with the ability to catch the Pokemon unique to the other two versions being the main selling point. However, the 'third game' also usually featured a bit more depth in the story, a focus on a third legendary, and often a bit more post-game content or unique features.

What Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum were to their respective generations, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are to Alola. The story, while the same, has a bit more depth. Necrozma is the main focus as opposed to Solgaleo or Lunala. There is more post-game content. All the boxes are effectively checked out.

There are two problems with this. The first is that Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were advertised as sequels, not alternate versions. Black 2 and White 2 were sequels in that they had a different story from Black and White, while still taking place in the same region. The Ultra games only slightly alter the story of the original Sun and Moon, making them more akin to Platinum than Black 2 and White 2.

The second problem is that, like the other 'third games', Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon both render the original Sun and Moon obsolete and, frankly, not worth your money. People who do not own Sun and Moon have no reason to buy it over the Ultra versions because they are objectively inferior. On the same logic, owners of Sun and Moon feel cheated because they wasted money on an inferior version and are forced to buy another game simply to enjoy everything Alola has to offer, hence the mixed feelings on the Ultra games' release.

In conclusion, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are not sequels, but alternate versions of the game. People looking to get into Alola for the first time should not waste their time or money with the original Sun and Moon, while those who do own them should consider if some post-game content and a few extra features are worth the price of a whole new game.

I should preface this review by mentioning that I had completely stopped playing Pokemon after Emerald came out due to the fact that when the new installments came out I had had no money for a DS system, I was perfectly content with Generation III, and I was getting to an age where Pokemon was not holding me like it used to. I had seen the newest generations and thought "Ah, they look dumb" but what made me decide to beg for a 3DS and Pokemon Ultra Sun for Christmas were Guzma/Team Skull and the location, but more on that a bit later.

Now the game starts off the same as it always has: Settle into a new town, run in with a wild Pokemon, and then you choose your starter. What threw me for a loop was that my "rival", Hau, chose a Pokemon whose Type was weak to mine. Um..okay.

From there you have to go through the four islands and battle the trainers for

Agh, let me just run through the changes that I liked and didn't like. This is all personal opinion from someone still reminiscing about Gen III because that is the most recent point of reference I have for these games, so if anything I have a problem with was added in Gen IV, well..you know why.

Changes/Features I Liked:

• Poke Pelago, namely the training island. I can level up/train tons of Pokemon stuck in my Box while I'm out doing other things. That sort of leveling could only be earned by giving two Pokemon to the Daycare Center. A great improvement.
• Customizable character. Finally a character I can dress how I want.
• Festival Plaza. Fun way to interact with other players!
• I can do sick burnouts on my Lapras and ride a giant Schnauzer/Lhasa Apso to hunt for items. Eat your heart out, Itemfinder.
• I found myself laughing a bit at some of the cut scenes in the mini missions. There are some cute and silly things you encounter
• The Waaaaarp Zoooooone to catch Pokemon from different dimensions and regions was also way cool. It added a stellar new feature that increased the longevity of play time after the end credit scene.
• Team Skull. Absolutely hilarious.
• Alolan variations of familiar Pokemon, probably one of the main features boasted about the game, and it delivers more-or-less.
• Eggs hatch so much quicker.
• RotomDex special abilities really came in handy.
• Thank God, don't need to use up a move slot for an HM
• If you're stealthy and smooth, you can avoid trainers' line of sight sometimes.
• I've always wanted to pet a Pikachu
• The Totem sticker collecting was actually kind of fun.
• So many Pokemon that were rare or impossible to find in other games are just THERE (Eevee, Mime Jr., Smoochum, etc.)
• The Exp. Share gives experience to ALL Pokemon in the party, not just one Pokemon holding it. This quickly becomes a broken feature because it leads to your Pokemon becoming almost godly and wipes away almost all challenge by the end of the game.
• You get Exp. for capturing a Pokemon. Nice nice nice.

Changes/Features I Didn't Like

• Hau. I hated him. Maybe I'm just getting old (I'm in my early 20s as I write this) but I could not stand Hau. He was too cheery, too
  excitable, and too shonen. Again, maybe it's just that I'm old, but I would have preferred a rival like Gary (stuck up, full of himself, but serious when he wants to be) or even the newly-introduced Gladion (really dour and moody and brooding) to Hau as a travel companion. He just really killed the mood every single time he was on-screen.
• The extreme amount of hand-holding in the beginning. I don't know, does it only increase from Gen IV to now, because I don't recall there being this much "Okay do this and do this and oh let me heal your Pokemon, oh by the way --!" in Gen III and installments prior. It's almost as if the creators didn't want kids to become discouraged from the possibility of there being a challenge as you made your way through the world. The balance between explaining everything to the player and being completely mum about it when those features do happen to be discovered is a fine line that I don't think the creators really nailed.
• There should have been an option to shut Rotom's chatterbox butt up
  because his constant talking and constant prompting for me to heal my pokemon or to use an item wore very thin. It felt like I was playing on a Leapster. The game was probably aimed at a new generation of 6-12 year olds but still.. It felt too much like Nick Jr. to me.
• So many trainers with only ONE Pokemon. Where's the challenge in that?!
• Not enough Team Skull and Guzma :(
• Game seems to be nerfed, or I just did the veteran Pokemon player thing and did too much grinding. The Elite Four was a joke. I only needed to use two Pokemon and by the time I got to them all my Pokemon were probably 5-12 levels higher than theirs (lvl 56-62 vs My level 68-75). I wasn't even trying to, the Exp. just stacked up like that with the use of Exp. Share.
• There is NO National Dex for all the Pokemon you will catch in the Warp Zones. To me, having all these Pokemon in the game but no way of cataloging them is unacceptable.

Overall this was a nice return to the world of Pokemon. The game seems to be more of an "experience the world of Pokemon" type of game that focused more heavily on immersion and collection than straight-up battling. My three biggest complaints would have to be the lack of Pokemon that trainers had, the lack of a National Pokedex, and the constant annoyance that was Rotom.

This game is overall the same as sun and moon with small changes here and there that do not make the playthrough specially refreshing. The beginning is tedious and too long, I like to refer to it as an hour+ long tutorial. Throughout the playtrough I'm constantly forced into long dialogue sections inbetween new areas/towns, it's annoying. You still can't skip cut scenes and there's way too much dialogue, most of it is the same as the last game so it's really really boring to sit through. So the major con of this game is all the dialogue and cutscenes. As for the difficulty, it's an improvement over the original games. I had a bad team with no fire type and it made things harder for me personally, i turned off the exp share and turned it back on once i had 6 pokemon in my team and i've been the same level as enemy trainers. The legendary battle is the hardest part of the game, surprisingly.

I liked the new selection of pokemon though, i was really happy to have a mareep/ampharos in my team again, its one of my favorite pokemon ever. I felt like there was a lack of fire types though, besides marowak and salazzle. Also, the catchrate for necrozma is 255. Which means it has the same catchrate as route 1 pokemon, lol.

I highly recommend this game if you HAVE NOT played sun and moon yet, but if you have, then don't bother.

I'm trying to enjoy playing this but I'm so bored. I beat Sun & Moon last year, and going for a third (and fourth) time feels so tedious.

I'm especially bored because I've been trying to have a "challenging" playthrough. Sun & Moon were already the easiest games in the series, and these ones give you even more ways to make it easier (for example, the Roto Loto power-ups). I have to put in all this extra effort just to make the game not a cakewalk, so I feel like I have to choose between fully exploring the extra content or having actually interesting Pokémon battles. In other words, half of the game is going to be uninteresting either way, and I just get to choose which half.