I’ve played my fair share of Pokémon games. Whether it be as early as Red or Silver to the more recent Omega Ruby, I’ve spent numerous hours on the franchise. My partner in crime for this review of Pokémon Sun and Moon has previously played Pokémon GO. The idea of this review is to bring a unique point of view from both a newbie and a series regular. As a point of reference; I’m tackling this review having played Pokémon Moon while Chantal played Pokémon Sun. Our experiences were surprisingly similar.

The more things change the more they stay the same (Garth)

The most noticeable change in Sun and Moon is the new island setting of Alola, essentially what you would imagine Hawaii would be like if it were populated by Pokémon. Not only does this change the overall look and feel of the franchise, it more importantly brings a fresh new aspect to what initially made me enjoy the franchise — Gameplay. You still find yourself following a certain path or trail to any given destination, but what makes Sun and Moon unique is the way in which your challenges are now presented to you. Rather than having a gym battle as a progression point you are now tasked with Island Challenges. These include several non-battling trials, anything from scavenging for recipe ingredients on the back of a Stoutland, to listening to audio clips and being quizzed on them. After each trial, you need to battle a Totem Pokémon. These creatures are (usually) much larger than Pokémon you’ve encountered before and summon companion Pokémon to assist them in battle. Once the Totem Pokémon have been defeated you move onto the Grand Trial. This is what would traditionally be your gym leader in previous titles, now known as Island Kahunas. After beating these colourful characters, you are rewarded with a Z-Move Crystal. These Z-Move Crystals are a special type of move introduced in Sun and Moon that let your Pokémon unleash much stronger attacks than usual. These Z-Moves replace Mega Evolution moves from previous titles in the franchise and come in two different forms; one that is Pokémon specific and the other that can be applied to any Pokémon. What’s the catch? You can only use a Z-Move once per battle, so you best make sure you use it at the right time.



Another standout feature of Sun and Moon is the Poké Ride. This gives you the ability to harness one of seven different Pokémon’s abilities. These range from clearing paths by bashing rocks, to moving heavy objects around. While these tasks could be done in previous titles, it’s the way in which they are now executed with Pokémon that gives them a new charm. You no longer acquire a bicycle to move around environments quicker; you travel on the back of a Pokémon. These Poké Ride Pokémon aren’t part of your primary party so the days of needing a fly type Pokémon along with a specific HM ability are gone. They form part of a different team that assist you throughout the different islands and can’t be used during battles. It’s a unique, new way to perform tasks of old that I find more efficient, especially if you’re new to the franchise.

Pokémon Sun from the newbie’s perspective (Chantal)

As Garth has mentioned above, the extent of my exposure to Pokémon games beyond dabbling with Diamond for less than an hour in a time long forgotten, is limited to Pokémon GO. Whatever your opinion on the (mostly) shallow app from Niantic, there is no doubt it has exposed more people to the franchise itself. Hopefully, like me, they’ll be interested enough to learn more about the little critters they run off of cliffs and into traffic to catch, to pick up a copy of Sun or Moon.



There isn’t much that I can say to expand on the gameplay mechanics already introduced by Garth, so I’ll expand on my own personal approach and opinion of my time with Sun instead. The biggest difference in our approaches is, as he’s alluded to already, what we spend time on. Try not to hate him, but Garth isn’t an RPG fan. Never has been. He’s a platformer kind of guy. Me, I live for story line, and grinding. RPG fans may not like grinding much, but it’s in our blood. There’s nothing quite like picking up that rare armour while fighting your eleventy sixtieth nine thousand and two battle (keeping this local) of the same vein, or getting to a boss fight that you’re far too overpowered for and serving a great big pile of smack down with ease. It was also a whole lot of fun being able to comment “Oh, that Grand Trial was easy though?” when Garth said “This one’s quite hard” (Yeah, I don’t always play nice. Ask anyone who has played Rayman Legends with me in multiplayer). Comparatively, I spent an awful amount of time hunting through tall grass, talking to every single NPC I encountered, and exploring paths just to make sure that I didn’t miss a single item. Pokémon Sun and Moon gives you more than enough varied environments to do this in, and you are free to roam off of the story line within areas you’ve already visited to hunt for these treasures and level up your chosen Pokémon to your heart’s content.



The introduction and play style of Pokémon Sun feels much like an ongoing tutorial, but in a way that helps rather than bores. The battle system is simplistic enough to jump straight into, while offering a wide enough variety of moves per type, with more options becoming available as your Pokémon level up to keep you from boredom (I would like a “skip” button on some of those cinematics though please, mkay?).

The cinematics and graphics impressed me, especially in light of the fact that I was playing this on a handheld that is now 5 years old. The level of detail that Game Freak have put into the Pokémon facial expressions and reactions is just downright adorable. I now NEED my very own real life Litten. The islands you visit are as beautiful as they are varied, and a lot of time and care has clearly been taken to highlight the differences in your environments to match the type of Pokémon you can expect to find in each different locale you enter.

If I had to choose a “down” side to presentation it would be that the use and implementation of 3D is limited to photograph opportunities in the wild. But, as I’m of the “reacts queasily” variation of 3D players, this isn’t really an issue for me.

Fun new festivities (Chantal)

Two new features to the Pokémon franchise (so this noob is told), are the Festival Plaza and the Pokémon Pelago. These may seem trite and fairly useless at first glance, but spending some time with both will show rewards fairly quickly.



On its surface, Festival Plaza appears to be aimed squarely at your communication features such as Link (NFC with another player in your vicinity), Friendly, and Rated Battles, as well as enabling Trades. Taking part in any Rated Battles requires a Game Sync and registration at the Pokémon Global Link website which is, to be blunt, very clunky and not linked to your Nintendo ID; but we got it working eventually. You can take part in the non-rated Battles without this step, but if it’s not recorded, it didn’t happen, right?

PSA: when you access Festival Plaza make sure you go into the “castle” and chat to the assistant on the right as you enter. This will give you the option of “Game Sync”, and you are asked if you’d like to create a Game Sync ID. Choose to do this, and the ID generated for you is what you use to register yourself for online battles at the PGL website.

Looking deeper into Festival Plaza will reveal the extra rewards you can earn through mini pop-up shops and visiting players; interacting with these visitors earns you Festival Coins (FC), which can be used at the available shops to buy items you can't find within Alola itself, such as Rare Breakfasts that raise the level of the Pokémon you feed it to, or an Attack Lunch that immediately raises the Attack stat for the chosen Pokémon. The more FC coins you earn, the more pop up shops you'll be able to choose from and the more visitors you'll get, so time spent here is well worth the effort.

The Pokémon Pelago is presented as a daycare facility, but is essentially a background Pokémon slave camp that utilises any Pokémon you’ve caught and sent to the PC Box to expand the islands they’re kept on. In doing so, they give you access to rare Beans used in Pokémon Refresh, drinks that will raise Pokémon stats, as well as Berries as the island network expands through the Pokémon’s work. I don’t know about you, but I’m all for cheap labour.

Overall, these two features for the new Pokémon Sun and Moon variations add a depth to the game that isn’t obvious at first look, but that I’d highly recommend spending time on.

Another feature I thought would be pointless when reading previews of the game, but turned out to be one of my favourite aspects of Pokémon Sun and Moon is Pokémon Refresh and Care. Having not played any of the previous Pokémon games in the franchise, I am aware that a similar mechanic has been employed before, but have no experience to compare the prior iterations. Based on comments, it wasn’t as integral to your experience in the past though. From a newbie perspective, at first I didn’t see the value, but made sure my Pokémon were given a steady supply of Beans, petted, and cared for when needed. The game almost forces this at the start of your adventure using a “Care” notification at the end of a Battle. Pressing “Y” when this appears takes you to the Pokémon requiring care and presents you with an array of tools to “treat” the current affliction. A Wand will remove various status effects such as Paralysis or Poison, a Towel cleans off mud, etc. Here you can also access the Bean menu to feed your Pokémon which will raise its affection towards you, you can also stroke them to do the same. It’s a clever way to introduce this feature without you having to leave what you are currently doing, as the Care aspect flows easily from the end of Battle without feeling disruptive.



So the obvious question, I hear you ask, is why? Well, the higher your Pokémon’s affection towards you, the better they perform in Battles. The first time my Flitten avoided an attack thanks to my Shout, I was thrilled. I was even more touched when Flitten rid himself of poison “So you wouldn’t worry”. Sweet, right? This mechanic has a way of making you actually care about the little critters in your party, with the added advantage of various Battle perks that are more frequently apparent the more you take the time to look after your party members.

Two differing sides of the same coin (Garth)

After both of us started playing, something became evident surprisingly quickly. While we were both enjoying the game very much, we discovered that our approach to the game was rather different. Chantal would stop and inspect every single detail. The moment a new menu item or feature was unlocked she would analyse it to the Nth degree, especially the Festival Plaza. I, on the other hand, quickly got engulfed in the game’s story and motored through in just over 30 hours. There are so many aspects that I’m going to revisit after the main campaign, along with a host of Pokémon I would like to catch and build up for more challenging online battles and trades. Pokémon Sun and Moon is the product of 20 years of evolution in a franchise that has now reached its Mega Evolved status.

In a nutshell (Chantal)

Pokémon Sun and Moon is a deeply varied game, offering a cornucopia of activities for both the veteran and the noob, and after 16 hours of gameplay, I personally cannot wait to get back to feed a Bean to my Pikachu and pet my Eevee.