I wasn’t expecting enjoying this one as much as I did.
I bought my copy of this game from a friend back in 2017, and dropped it after playing through the first island.
I don’t know, I just didn’t like it. Just like Pokémon X, which I played a year prior, it felt like a terrible excuse for a Pokémon game, and I just didn’t felt it. The graphics were childish, the narrative was intrusive and it was really weird to get used to the 12 hour thing present in this version.
So, after playing through the so-beloved Pokémon Platinum (which btw was, for me, a super average and even disappointing experience), the seventh generation turned into one of the ones I had yet to play. So, I grabbed my copy from my shelf and, for my delightful surprise… I began to love it. I couldn’t put my 3DS down.
It wasn’t nearly as sh*tty as Pokémon X was.
What I found was a super fun twist in the Pokémon formula (without losing the franchise’s identity), a very unique and fun region to explore, an absurd variety of wild Pokémon to catch (there’s more diversity in the first island grass patches than in the entirety of Sinnoh!) and, my favourite part: fun new Pokémon to use, which kept me constantly rebuilding my party, a feature I absolutely ADORE in monster collecting games such as the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series but, in Pokémon, I never felt that it was as much encouraged as it was in here.
Of course, it’s not perfect, and far from being GOTY material such as Emerald, the Johto remakes and the impeccable Gen 5 games.
It suffers from the same over-simplification of features present in X and Y, baby difficulty for most of the game (despite some parts having quite balanced fights, more present and much better executed than in the Gen 6 games) and a laughably “MEH” story, despite it’s charismatic characters.
What also bothers me is seeing how it’s clearly visible that Sun and Moon are unfinished games. There are literally missing buildings in towns (hinting that these would only be present a year later in the Ultra games), and the captain of Poni Island was left without a trial of her own.
I know that in games such as Ruby/Sapphire and Diamond/Pearl you can feel the “unpolishness” that would be fixed in a third instalment, but it was never so blatantly shown as in here…
Despite that, Pokémon Moon still remains in my mind as the most fun I had with a Pokémon game since my long-gone teenager days, and I surely wasn’t expecting enjoying a modern game in this franchise as much as I did here. Alola is refreshing, fun to explore and home to lots of cool Pokémon to meet.
Not brilliant, and not that far from average: simply fun. And a simple fun.
And I’m starting to get tired of stating how fun this game was (even for a veteran in the franchise like myself) in this review.
Cannot wait to pop in Ultra Sun and see what’s the deal with these revamped versions…
I bought my copy of this game from a friend back in 2017, and dropped it after playing through the first island.
I don’t know, I just didn’t like it. Just like Pokémon X, which I played a year prior, it felt like a terrible excuse for a Pokémon game, and I just didn’t felt it. The graphics were childish, the narrative was intrusive and it was really weird to get used to the 12 hour thing present in this version.
So, after playing through the so-beloved Pokémon Platinum (which btw was, for me, a super average and even disappointing experience), the seventh generation turned into one of the ones I had yet to play. So, I grabbed my copy from my shelf and, for my delightful surprise… I began to love it. I couldn’t put my 3DS down.
It wasn’t nearly as sh*tty as Pokémon X was.
What I found was a super fun twist in the Pokémon formula (without losing the franchise’s identity), a very unique and fun region to explore, an absurd variety of wild Pokémon to catch (there’s more diversity in the first island grass patches than in the entirety of Sinnoh!) and, my favourite part: fun new Pokémon to use, which kept me constantly rebuilding my party, a feature I absolutely ADORE in monster collecting games such as the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series but, in Pokémon, I never felt that it was as much encouraged as it was in here.
Of course, it’s not perfect, and far from being GOTY material such as Emerald, the Johto remakes and the impeccable Gen 5 games.
It suffers from the same over-simplification of features present in X and Y, baby difficulty for most of the game (despite some parts having quite balanced fights, more present and much better executed than in the Gen 6 games) and a laughably “MEH” story, despite it’s charismatic characters.
What also bothers me is seeing how it’s clearly visible that Sun and Moon are unfinished games. There are literally missing buildings in towns (hinting that these would only be present a year later in the Ultra games), and the captain of Poni Island was left without a trial of her own.
I know that in games such as Ruby/Sapphire and Diamond/Pearl you can feel the “unpolishness” that would be fixed in a third instalment, but it was never so blatantly shown as in here…
Despite that, Pokémon Moon still remains in my mind as the most fun I had with a Pokémon game since my long-gone teenager days, and I surely wasn’t expecting enjoying a modern game in this franchise as much as I did here. Alola is refreshing, fun to explore and home to lots of cool Pokémon to meet.
Not brilliant, and not that far from average: simply fun. And a simple fun.
And I’m starting to get tired of stating how fun this game was (even for a veteran in the franchise like myself) in this review.
Cannot wait to pop in Ultra Sun and see what’s the deal with these revamped versions…