Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsSome new things, some dull things, lots of familiar things.
Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2016
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)
