Pokemon Sun & Moon: My Humble Opinion

I’m not a fan.

Warning: This blog contains spoilers about new features! I will not go into details on the narrative and important plot points.

I’m late to the game, mainly because the game costs a lot of money and I have none, which is why I was really excited when my young brother got me the game: Pokemon Moon. I’ve been a Pokemon player since the dawn of time, playing Pokemon Blue on my very old grey and thick Gameboy, way back when. I’ve been playing the games going up from there, only skipping the first release of Pokemon Safire & Ruby due to a lack of income at the time. You can imagine I was really excited to start playing Pokemon Moon.

Here’s the thing: the intro took forever. Now I am used to these very long intro’s that teach first time players not to wander into the grass without a Pokemon, how to catch a Pokemon and who you can trust and not trust in the game. This introduction felt like it took three years of my life, which sounds pretty dramatic but the story that surrounded it was very long winded and it felt like it took ages to finally get to the point where I could pick my starter Pokemon. Rowlet, in case you were wondering. I believed Litten was over hyped by a lot of people surrounding me and though I love Popplio, I wanted them as a female and it would’ve taken me a few go’s to get that which I wasn’t in the mood for. Rowlet was the obvious choice for me.

Now, I enjoy the island feel of the game, but it leaves little to no room for actual exploration. The sections in which you can train are small and you stumble upon the same three Pokemon, over and over again. Plus, I am not a fan of the red flag system installed into this new talking Pokedex which tells you where to go to further your story. I actually liked that I had to run around aimlessly to figure out where to go and which person to talk to. Plus, these flags are placed closely together, which makes you feel as if all you are doing in running from story point to story point.

This brings me back to the intro of the game, because a lot of these story points are very long winded in my opinion. They might actually not seem that way, but if all you are doing is running from story point to story point, it begins to feel a lot more like an action based story game, instead of a Pokemon game.

I like how the challenges are set up, which is really refreshing and actually something I thoroughly enjoy. I love the care system, where you can brush, dry and clean Pokemon after battles, relieving them of any conditions they’ve encountered during. I also like the new Mount system that they put in, replacing the bike, though I’m not a hundred percent sure they bike doesn’t still make an appearance, I’m only on the second island.

So, here’s the thing. I’m going to continue playing, because Pokemon and Nintendo own my soul, but it is far from my favorite Pokemon game ever. I was really excited to start playing it, but it feels like it’s taking me forever and I’m just not enjoying it as much as I do when I start up my Pokemon X game or my Pokemon Soul Silver. Which frustrates me, because I love the Pokemon games. Who knows, I might end up changing my mind and discovering what everyone else already seems to know? I’m just not that on board.

Loads of love,
Bekah.

Ps. I also really enjoy the fact that a lot of older generation Pokemon are stuffed into this game. Where I feel other newer games such as Pokemon X & Y had completely neglected them until halfway through the game.
January 25th, 2017 at 10:40am