Pokemon Sun - Nintendo 3DS Sun Edition

When I first bought this, I really didn't pay attention to any of the trailers because the Pokémon series usually followed the same layout throughout the games - Brief introduction to game mechanics, You venture from home, Battle the 8 gym leaders, fight some gang with a serious background, and beat the E4. The first 30 minutes of the game held my hand so tight. That was absolutely new for me. The Kahunas were like Gym leaders, except they usually gave you permissions to use Cool Z-Moves. Sweet! And then there was team skull, which confused me for most of the game. They're so silly and easy to take out! And post game... there's so much more to do! Spoilers below. Read at your own risk. First, as the champion, you may defend your title as Champion. Ever since I was a kid, me and my friends held badges in our school and acted as the school's gym leaders (with Teams filled with Pokémon who were lvld using gamesharks). When I saw there was an option to defend my title again, I was so giddy with joy! The second thing to do when the game is over is fighting the battle tree. 20 or so years have passed since Pokémon red/blue. I remember playing on the game boy color, buying batteries until I switched to the SP. All of the greyscaled coloring... it all came back to me when I tried to do the battle tree. After entering the area, I was approached by Red and Green. An actual shiver went down my spine. A couple years back, we had a chance to fight Red at the end of the game. And now you have a choice between fighting him or Green. Both are grown up! I was surprised to see both of them here! What surprised me more is that... other champions are here apparently. I spent countless hours climbing the tree and... well, I'll leave the rest to you. In short. Buy this or Moon, it doesn't matter. The game is terrific and is definitely worth the $40 (unless you paid $32 while pre ordering. Then it's 120% worth the money).

late to the program here, but i haven't had time to play it i didn't buy it. i absolutely love this game, and it has possibly beaten pokemon gold&silver as my favorite pokemon game. i love alola, the alolan forms, the trial setup, and especially the fact that pokemon are finally integrated into daily life: your mom has a meowth, and there are pokemon npcs everywhere, from snubull to mimikyu. and you can hear pokemon cries mixed in with the soundtrack, which itself is amazing. my absolute favorite thing: the plot. no spoilers, but this plot actually had substance, as much for kids as for adults, as well as complex morals and touching on a family subject that isn't talked about ever, when it should be. i actually didn't get gen6 because i felt pokemon was going downhill in gens4 and 5, aka pearl/diamond/platinum and black/white. i just didn't enjoy them as much, they were too easy and simplistic, and i was done playing with them in less than 50h. also more than a few of the pokemon designs were unoriginal or even downright ugly (i'm looking at you, garbodor), which i still feel in sun&moon but the alolan forms helped a lot with that, along with creating less new pokemon and bringing back ones we hadn't seen in a long time, and the ultra beasts which i was leery of but turned out great. strangely for islands, you hardly spend any time in the water, which is a shame. trainer customisation is great, i really didn't like the bobble-head look of x/y. and pokemon ride! best idea ever. i realllly want them to bring back having your pokemon walk besides you. pokepelago and pokerefresh? more awesomeness. my faith in pokemon and nintendo has been restored. i might even get sun&moon2, depending on what they do with the plot and new content.

Had to buy for my personal collection. Definitely a fun game to play, and still holds up today.

I'll review this by all of the game elements. Overall, this is my favorite Pokemon game in the series (Possibly better than Gen IV, dare I say.)! I defeated all the trials and am working on the Elite Four, therefore I did enough to review this game properly. Characters: 5/5 - At first glance, that characters seem bland, but as you continue on, there are plenty of twists and a lot of character development I didn't expect in this game. Team Skull is very funny and is sort of a parody of previous "villain" tropes and are, well, gangsters. They aren't particularly evil, either, and also have development and become much nicer. Gen V was very developed in my opinion, but I think this has more twists. Music: 5/5 - The music is GORGEOUS. Some of it has a beautiful Japanese sound, and some is very Hawaiian. Team Skull's theme suits them perfectly with a gangster-ish sound.There's not much else to say, but listen to the soundtrack on YouTube. It's great! Plot: 4 1/2/5 - It's the typical becoming a Pokemon Master and Champion quest, but with the island challenge instead of gyms. You face trials and defeat the island kahunas instead of Gyms. You have to face a villain team, which turn out to be wayy more developed later on and VERY interesting, as well as human. They are also very amusing, and there's this secret of strange beings similar to Pokemon and a mysterious group also trying to get them, that I will not mention further than that. It has a lot of surprises, and I love the legendary in Sun, Solgaleo. There's also emphasis on Zygarde and its forms, 10% (Doberman look), 50% (the one from X and Y, like a snake) and the Complete form, which is like a mecha robot thing. Overall it's a great plot. It didn't seem as great as it was at first, which is why it isn't 5/5. You have to fully play through it to appreciate the plot and characters. Z-moves are also an interesting, mysterious element that is optional for you to use, and look pretty awesome in battle. The biggest flaw is I never truly had an issue in fights, I never had that difficult of a time, save for the ghost trial with Mimikyu and one character near the way end, but I still pulled through. For people who want a big challenge, they may be disappointed, especially with Z-moves. Graphics: 5/5 - Great graphics. Animations look great, though you may experience lag in some detailed double battles, although it was hardly noticeable for me. The Pokemon look great, including many new ones, such as Rockruff, Lycanroc, Litten, Rowlet, many Alolan forms, Zygarde 10%, Solgaleo, Type: Null, and more. (That right there is my opinion, but there are bound to be Pokemon one would like. There are also Pokemon returning of other Gens.) What else can I say? Everything looks great. New Features/Returning features: 5/5 - Character Customization is back, but expanded upon. You can choose between lots of looks for the player and lots of outfits. It's like X and Y, but even better! You can also change the eye color with contacts and the hair style. Best of all, NO MORE HMS! TMs can be used unlimited times, but HMs are gone! No more rattatas to learn cut, or making a Pokemon lose a likable move because you need to get through somewhere. You have ride Pokemon and the ride pager, which lets you ride Pokemon to walk over rocky areas, destroy or move rocks and boulders, swim over water, and can ride Charizard for fly! You can also ride a Mudsdale instead of riding a bike, which is so cool looking. HMs are just regular moves now. PokeAmie also changed to Pokemon Refresh, which is really good. It encourages bonds between trainer and Pokemon, and makes them do much better in battles. It also is an option to heal ANY status problem without buying those pesky full heals. Yeah, it's pretty useful as well as cute. Overall, a wonderful game. I highly recommend it.

1. There are too many spots that are just... empty. I can't tell you how many times i've gone off exploring on a route and a path leads to nothing. Same with surfing, you'll get on lapras and surf around and then.... there's nothing, maybe a few trainers and "fishing holes"? But that's usually it. this is a new gen, there should be a least a little more detail/things to do. Disappointed in the emptiness this game has. 2. Poke ride is pretty cool... at first. You get a few pokemon to ride at first that are actually helpful. Like tauros has the speed to get places fast, and stoutland has the ability to sniff out items, he also runs pretty fast when he's not sniffing. But when you get mudsdale, it's such a pointless addition. All he is used for is to cross a certain path on a rocky route. Thats' it. And theres no need to ride him when your out and about afterwards because he is incredibly slow and clunky... So whats the point of him? There's none and it's disappointing. Same with charizard. Why were we not able to ride him when we were able to ride ratios over the Hoenn region LAST generation? This is a new generation, there is absolutely no reason we weren't able to fly over the all region. Very disappointed with poke ride. 3. The trial on the first mountain to me, was a joke. The guys literally just says, almost instantly after meeting him and getting there "Well, I guess we should do the trial now, right?" ...What? No story to lead up to anything? You literally just got to this new place and they are already having a new trial thrown at you with little background story or anything. Lazy and boring story telling. And when you're done with the trail you're pretty much done wit the place and the urge you to go to the next mountain. What what what? Done in 5 minutes? 4. Poke finder lost it's fun after the first few times. It's really just kind of boring now and i don't feel the need to go back to any places and take more pictures because the same pokemon are always there and nothing new is happening. 5. The dialogue can be clunky and hard to understand at times. I can't count how many times i had to re read what some of the NPC's were saying to me, especially before and after battles, some of the sentences were just structured to weirdly that I gave up on the 4th time rereading it, and i'm a 22 year old man. What is the deal with that? Was the localization team drunk or something? 6. The music is a major let down. Coming from Pokemon Y to this, this game has very little memorable tunes. The same route music is used for like the first half of the game. What the heck is that all about? Pokemon Y had a different memorable song for just about each route and hardly recycled music. Very disappointed in the music, a lot of it felt like stock music or something, like there was no emphasis on it. The game just can't touch Pokemon X&Y. The story was better, the graphics were more memorable and charming, the music was better, everything was better. Its not a bad game, but it's not good either. I would like the old director/composer back! Junichi Masada why you do this?!

Pokemon Sun was okay. Although I started playing in December I beat the pokemon league in May because there wasn't 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 you're 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! That's 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 don't quite remember where things are in Sun and Moon because I didn't 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 I'm looking for isn't 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 Skull's 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. There's also questions I had about the deeper motives behind Aether funding Skull; I believe there's 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 they've 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. That's not bad at all--you don't have to be the main/most important character all the time, but yes, Sun and Moon is Lillie's 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 she'd be more interesting to me? I don't know. Gladion and Hau were rather one-dimensional too but still nice to have as companions. (It wasn't 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...he's so afflicted and standoffish it's 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 didn't wait around for anyone to save him while suffering in the meantime. He took type:NULL and got OUT of there! That's my boy. I really like that. Anyhow, moving on to the soundtrack: it's 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 I've picked up Sun I've 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 didn't 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 don't like is the new menu for handling pokemon. In many ways it's 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: It's 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 it's an interesting system them procured over in Aloha. Definitely enables you to have only who you trained to be a warrior with you while you're going. Alolan forms: Pretty cool; it brings out observations that we can see in the real world. Not all squirrels, even though they're all squirrels, occur in the same appearance throughout regions or the world. So that makes it a little more interesting, though I won't comment on Dugtrio nor Golem's alolan form...or whatever random stuff they did there. And the oricocos! Oh my god. All in all: not bad. I really didn't 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 wasn't interested in having him because...you know...I'm 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 don't 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 won't lie. I wasn't motivated to do any more that I had to, though.

I've been playing pokemon for 20 years now, and every game that has come out has been beautifully amazing. The only gripe I have with these gen 7 games is the fact that not all Megastones are available and the ones that are unavailable will be obtained via events or online competitions. This does annoy me greatly. Equally as annoying is if you have an older 3DS this game loads up much slower than it would on a New 3DS. Sometimes it takes a while to even shut the game off. So if you want to play this I do recommend getting a NEW 3DS to play it on, it'll be a lot less slow running. Though beyond that the battles are harder, the graphics are gorgeous, the cut scenes are amazing, and I'm just blown away by this game. Though if you're looking to relive your nostalgia for the good old days (Red and Blue) this game is probably not for you mostly because Gyms have been eliminated and in it's place is Trials. If you're looking to relive the old days I suggest buying the virtual console in the eShop rather than buy this game. This also applies to players coming to this game via Pokemon GO, do remember if this is your first Pokemon game do not expect it to operate in the same way that Go does. Though I do hope you give this game a try, the core series is definitely the better of the Pokemon games in my humble opinion. I cannot wait to see what they have in store for us next. <3

The best pokemon game released to date. For those who haven't played since the days of Red/Green/Blue/Yellow, this is the time to give it another shot. ******************************************* PROS: The ability to randomly trade a pokemon in Wonder Trade The ability to trade online with friends The ability to leave a request to trade one pokemon for another with specific details in GTS The Pokepelago islands allowing you to level pokemon and gain items as time passes in real life without playing ******************************************* CONS: Completion of the pokedex is possible but unnecessarily difficult due primarily to various pokemon only obtainable via fishing (and the fishing mechanic in this game is honestly broken). The appearance rates of many water pokemon are in the realm of 3% and there is only 1 fishing rod in this game. It was relatively easy to complete the entire pokedex, but sadly there is little reward for doing so. The Battle Tree is more difficult than prior games, but for the wrong reasons. From the start the BattleTree can put you up against a trainer who will absolutely sweep the floor with you. The difficulty ramping is insurmountable and success in a series of battles always feels more like RNG luck than skill. The Global Event quotas are ridiculously high and prevent the community from being able to attain the highest rewards (which tend to be too low to begin with), which results in the community shying away from the events.