Pokémon Sun - Nintendo 3DS

This isnt a bad game, but if you started playing in the 90s like I did then there might be some things youre not happy with. For starters, the game has really been dumbed down. While I understand the game is supposed to be marketed to kids, the amount of hand holding in this game is ridiculous. HMs? Nope. Youll just be given something thatll allow you to fly or surf without having to search for something special or even work for it at all. The island challenges arent very challenging, either. Your rival doesnt even seem like a rival and another challenge was taken away when he heals your Pokemon before every battle with him. Another thing I was disappointed in was how the game seems to focus more on other characters than it does you. You kind of seem like a side character a lot. Theres just a lot that made the older games fun and challenging that dont seem to be part of the game anymore; theres even a pretty big difference just from X And Y. Its still worth playing, but I wouldnt pay full price for it. Go find a used copy or borrow it from a friend. Hopefully, the next installment will be better.

To start this review out, Id like to share my thoughts on the games graphics. In past generations on the handhelds, it had very low deffinition and you could see every pixel that made up every image and character in the game. This gave it a retro look no matter how advances the game was since no matter what, everything was blocky to some degree. In the new seventh generation games, the graphics have improves sooo much and became far more realistic that the characters actually look like real humans! Aside from all the sprites finally having proportional heads, I absolutely love the character wardrobe customizations, allowing the player to show their own sense of style in game. The new set of pokemon and the Alolan forms provided fans everywhere with plenty new pocket monsters to play with. The most noticeable factor of this showed to me that gamefreak still has fresh new ideas of partners that players can enjoy to battle and trade with. The legendary pokemon finally acquire a huge in game role as guardians of their islands and are introduced at the very beginning (Nebby get back in the bag!) and continue to be brought up all throughout the in game. We are presented with fresh new abilities and combinations to dominate other trainers and show off new strategies. The introduction of the Z-moves was far more poor than I expected, their only real power lay in the strongest of their attack moves. using a Z-status move didnt as much as half meet my expectations. using Z-protect raises defense by one stage!? At least make it two or raise both defenses so that it makes it more worthwhile. This would open up more strategic possibilities for people who dont have a team full of sweepers, what a waste of a Z-stone if you can only use it once in battle for it to be wasted on this. The battle tree appeared to be a downgrade of Unovas White Tree Hollow, forcing you to play hours and hours of battling unfair opponents who get too many critical hits and at the end of a day of grinding, we can finally get ONE mega stone for sixty four bp... Nothing in Pokémon that I have ever seen has ever been more irritating or DUMB than this factor, even compared to the logic in every Pokémon movie. The Z-Stones and this silly playground we call the Battle Tree are the only things keeping me from giving it five stars. The storyline was surely one of the best of all pokemon games, being very involving and revealing strange characters and plot twists. In a certain sense, It almost feels like Team Skull is just an underpaid version of Team Rocket, which has to be one of the most notourious groups in all the the games. Thats my review, its my opinion like it or not, I would urge anyone who enjoys a game with a good in depth story to try it out.

This game took over my life for a solid week and thats totally okay (I actually bought a 3DS just for this game). I finished it with fifty hours of game play and I only wish I had slowed down to extend it. This is sooooo fun! My last Pokemon game (unfinished...) played was Black 2, so going from Black 2 to Sun was probably more eye opening for me than those who have played every game, but oh my gooooood. So worth it, it is just so fun. I love how customizable your trainers appearance is and just how different the game is compared to traditional Pokemon. I really hope Pokemon continues in this route for future games, because its an amazing one!

If youve been away from Pokémon for a while like I have, this is the best time to jump back in. Pokemon sun breathes a huge revitalization back into the series, with new features like the ride pager and a breathtaking new region. The new graphical updates in Sun are miles ahead of X and Y and make them look bad in comparison (in a good way)! On top of all the new and shiny, you have the classic pokemon series with brand new animations that are absolutely phenomenally animated. While the post game may be slightly lacking, and the S.O.S battles need a little work, this title will get you hours and hours of game time, and provide you with a new interesting story and take on the pokemon world!

This game is overall a real fun game. I started out with Rowlet the grass starter. I probobly shouldve chosen popplio because the pokemon league is really hard and fairy types are really useful. Dont get me wrong I like Decidueye better, but popplio is really good with what type it is. My team is Decidueye, Mudsdale, Solgaleo, Lycanrock, Lurantis, and Kommo-o. After it was hard to defeat the pokemon league, I decided to fill up the pokedex. I didnt care much about the older pokemon, just the new alolan pokemon. Sorry I got only to the story, so the only flaw with the game is how many cutscenes it has. There are so many pokemon to add to your poledex and to get new information from. I hope you get this game as well.

Pokemon Sun was okay. Although I started playing in December I beat the pokemon league in May because there wasnt THAT much motivation to get back to it...and I still have yet to collect the legendaries and defeat Red and the gang and that sort of thing. Now the game itself is quite easy. It was interesting of them to give you a Rotomdex; that is, Rotom is essentially your Fi or Navi or Midna if youre familiar with Zelda games--but that feature also made me a little lazy. Every time I turned on the game Rotom reminded me of where to go since he even has a map with the destination written on it! Thats very coddling in my opinion, and while I become familiar with almost every city and route in other pokemon games while playing through, I still dont quite remember where things are in Sun and Moon because I didnt have to. They point you there anyway. So I will spend about five minutes flying on Charizard from place to place until I realize that I should probably take the ferry/ship to another (guessed) island because what Im looking for isnt here. The best part of the game to me was Team Skull; they were really funny in the sense that Game Freak knew how lightly the bad guys are taken by the players anyway so they took the liberty to show that through their lines. That being said, because of Team Skulls humor I saw early on that Aether Foundation was suspicious. Skull was too non-threatening and disorganized to be the true threat, so even if Aether acted like perfect citizens something felt off. Theres also questions I had about the deeper motives behind Aether funding Skull; I believe theres always something deeper when money is involved between two parties. Then the leaders of those two parties blindly jump into another dimension together with these strange pokemon theyve barely seen? And one is older, has more influence and power than the other? But I keep that to myself. Also, although the dimensional lore and such is being expanded through the events and tidbits from this game, the plot is basically oriented around Lillie. Thats not bad at all--you dont have to be the main/most important character all the time, but yes, Sun and Moon is Lillies story which can be summarized as Mom, what are you doing? Mom, STAHP! And Lillie learning to stand up for herself and stop being a helpless child all the time. Although my character is friends with her and was a catalyst for her growth in the series, I am not attached to her (Lillie) as a player of the game. Maybe if she were in some other series shed be more interesting to me? I dont know. Gladion and Hau were rather one-dimensional too but still nice to have as companions. (It wasnt anything as disarraying as having four friends constantly skipping and flocking around you and calling your name in circles like in X and Y.) But anyhow, I like them more than Lillie. Hau never gets flustered when crazy stuff is happening; he really keeps his cool and remains positive, and Gladion...hes so afflicted and standoffish its funny. But on a deeper note I approve how he got away from his mother and made his own path when she was losing it. Unlike Lillie, he didnt wait around for anyone to save him while suffering in the meantime. He took type:NULL and got OUT of there! Thats my boy. I really like that. Anyhow, moving on to the soundtrack: its not bad at all. Until I went to YouTube looking for the songs I liked, I never knew that there were two versions for most of the songs, so I suppose every time Ive picked up Sun Ive only played at night (I highly favor those compositions over the day version anyhow) and missed the daytime renderings. The music is fine but to me the routes used a lot of the same songs around the same places so I didnt differentiate them as well as I would other Pokemon games. And although the music is objectively decent, I only have about three that I regularly go back to actually listen to out of affection...DEFINITELY not the wild pokemon song though. The totem pokemon version makes it better but the original makes me angry for some reason... What I dont like is the new menu for handling pokemon. In many ways its convenient but I dislike trying to move a pokemon in my party and then remembering OHHH, I have to go out of my way to press Y to move this fool! On the bright side, I really like the options they give you when your party is full. You can exchange pokemon and items back to the PC all in one go! HMs: Its sort of convenient to not have to have an HM slave to perform all of the functions you need to get around the terrain, so I think its an interesting system them procured over in Aloha. Definitely enables you to have only who you trained to be a warrior with you while youre going. Alolan forms: Pretty cool; it brings out observations that we can see in the real world. Not all squirrels, even though theyre all squirrels, occur in the same appearance throughout regions or the world. So that makes it a little more interesting, though I wont comment on Dugtrio nor Golems alolan form...or whatever random stuff they did there. And the oricocos! Oh my god. All in all: not bad. I really didnt want Solgaleo though. I can only remember him as Nebby (should name him that for kicks!) and if only they had given us the choice to catch him or let Lillie have him! He iS hers. Honestly it would be gold to see a girl as clumsy as Lillie have a magestic pokemon like Solgaleo as her starter pokemon in Kanto. They deserve each other; she saved him from his demise and they went through a lot together as a team already. I really, really wasnt interested in having him because...you know...Im not a fan of legendaries anyway. I was more excited when I accidentally stumbled upon Tapu Lele the other day. Though the nature of the guardian pokemon rub me the wrong way too...going around on MY island punishing people as you will...who gave you the right?! Just kidding. I just dont really connect with legendaries in general. And I think she would feel better with him as her partner as her mom rehabilitates. And it was interesting for them to make a legendary that evolves too. That about wraps it up! Pokemon Sun and Moon...pretty okay game, I wont lie. I wasnt motivated to do any more that I had to, though.

Packaged like new. Delivery was super fast. Cartridge is clean and worked without issue. Stoked to game out!

Have to say for this to be such a special year for Pokemon, I am rather disappointed in Sun and Moon. For me the best game for Pokemon was ORAS. So much more you could do in that game. I dont care for the Poke Finder and miss the DevNax in locating pokemon. I miss the ability to go to a route or area and seeing what I might still need to get with regards to pokemon. I dont care for the limitations in fishing and even surfing. The biggest disappointment so far from what Ive seen is the inability to re-fight trainers to level up and gain more $$. I liked that in ORAS because I enjoyed working more than one team which is more time consuming with Sun and Moon because it lacks the ability to re-fight. ORAS had a lot to keep one busy until the next new Pokemon game release. I dont see this as being the case with Sun and Moon. And the ability to catch shiny pokemon is for me more frustrating. The new method of chaining is a pain. One other major thing I dont like about this new generation game...........we cant transfer between ORAS and Sun/Moon except through the Poke Bank which isnt even available until sometime in January. The one plus I do find with Sun and Moon is the way the HMs were handled. Now that was a cool change.

What’s Hot + Game is done in a full 3D polygonal world + Interesting Story + Graphics + Some unexpected plot twists + Alola Pokemon shake up the type match ups. What’s Not - Slow Load Times - Dropped frame-rates in some battles - Slow pacing - Miss Traveling to gyms - Hordes were removed… - Lack of a true Rival What is it? Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon are the newest entries into the Pokemon Franchise. The game takes a new spin on the franchise where you don’t have to travel from gym to gym rather you travel from islands battling Totems and Kahunas. Story: 4.5 This game is basically Pokemon goes Hawaii. The game starts out with you moving to the Alola region with your mom. The young shirtless, intrusive Professor Kukui eventually introduces himself and then you go through your normal tutorial as in all other Pokemon Games. Pokemon Sun / Moon is full of interesting Characters, Vast region to explore, as well as cool new Pokemon. What it lacks in is Pokemon gyms, and a true rival. Graphics: 4.5 This is one of the better looking Nintendo 3DS games, and probably the best looking Pokemon Game to date. The only real downfall is the dropped frames when battles turn intense. Audio: 4.0 This is your typical Pokemon stuff here. You get your usual town battle and route themes w/ your familiar Pokemon Center theme. Still, no voice acting and only Pokemon that says their name is Pikachu (I feel we have graduated from this Game Freak / Nintendo. It is about time we upgrade all the Pokemon cries.) . Replay: 4.5 Pokemon Games typically always have a high replay value due to there is always so much more to do after your finish the main adventure. Pokemon Sun / Moon is no different here. One you finish the game you still can complete the Pokedex, Take part in the Battle Royal, as Battle and trade with friends and strangers alike. Around The Web: 4.7 This game is currently holding a 4.7 on Amazon.com Thoughts Pokemon Sun / Pokemon Moon may not be the best Pokemon Games (at least in my opinion) but they are great in their own right. I found the game to be easy. The difficulty comes when you are trying to fill up the pokedex and you are waiting for that 1 Pokemon to show up and they never do; yeah I’m talking to you Dratini (insert angry emoji). Cut-Scenes, while scarce run long and there is no way to speed them up or skip. Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon places Hau as your rival which is a bit disappointing being that he is anything but a rival. He chooses the Pokemon weakest to you at the start of the game, He is way to cheerful and upbeat. Plus he constantly gives you helpful items and heal your Pokemon. He is more of a best friend. I find it hard not to recommend to anyone with a Nintendo 3DS. If you are shopping for a Nintendo and / or Pokemon fan, you can’t go wrong here. Score 22.2 / 25 89

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, Ill 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, its 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 dont use a Pokemon for an entire town but its still the same level as your most actively-used Pokemon, it just isnt as fun anymore. On top of that, the trainer battles arent 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. Its 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 its just kind of neat. In practice however, it makes me want to throw my 3DS at the wall. Now imagine, youre 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 Pokemons attack (like switching Pokemon or using an item) but it doesnt - 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, couldnt 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 doesnt fail, they can do it endlessly - until you KO both Pokemon, anyways. You also cant 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 doesnt sound so bad reading about it, but by the 5th or 6th time help is called for, youll be ready to pull your hair out. Its 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 didnt 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 isnt as high as it used to be. Actually, for some Pokemon I cant 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 its a bit weird to not have them. However, its 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 its 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 its not all that different from what weve 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. Ive been playing since the original Red and Blue on the Game Boy, so Pokemon is like an old friend to me. Theres still too much pointless dialogue though. (For the record, my favorite games in the series are Gold/Silver, Ruby/Sapphire, and X/Y)