[img width=640 height=360]https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/733/32489217232_5bc6de1c48_z.jpg[/img]I'm not a huge Pokemon fanatic. I have dabbled in the series on and off since
Blue and
Red though. I've beaten and enjoyed
Pokemon Blue,
Diamond,
Y,
Snap,
Trozei, and
Stadium. I've played several others like
Gale of Darkness,
Mystery Dungeon and the more recent
Pokemon Go, and found myself satisfied with the experiences. Heck I've even occasionally enjoy a few games of the
Pokemon TCG.
My son is now 8 years old and is in prime Pokemon territory. After hearing some good things, I decided to get us a joint Christmas present of the
Pokemon Sun/Moon double pack (which has both versions of the game). It took a few weeks after Christmas to get some attention from either of us as we were pre-occupied with Lego, comic books, and life for a while. However, we finally decided to jump in and I've had a very interesting experience playing through this game alongside my son.
My son decided right away that
Moon looked cooler and so that meant that I would get to play through
Sun. That was totally fine with me. While I was busy attending to my infant daughter, he started up the game one night and asked if I wanted to join him. The answer was "yes, but I'm gonna need about an hour before I'm ready. You go ahead and start and I'll try and catch up." It was great that he had a headstart as he took an uncomfortably long time choosing his initial starter Pokemon out of the 3 offerings. He wanted to make absolutely sure that he picked the best one. After asking many silly questions and staring at his 3DS, he decided to go with Popplio (the water type). I quickly chose Rowlet (Grass Type) and caught up in no time.
I was expecting the usual Pokemon formula of getting 8 gym badges, defeating whatever ridiculous "team" inhabited this area, challenging the Pokemon League's finest, and finally trying to catch them all. They made some minor changes to this formula, but it is essentially still the same. This time around there are four islands that make up the area. Instead of gym badges, trainers go on their "Island Challenge" and try to defeat specific trainers throughout these islands and are rewarded with Z-Stones which signify that you passed their test and are used as an item that unlocks powerful new moves for your Pokemon that share a type with that stone. To those unfamiliar, there are now 16 different types of Pokemon. That means 16 Z-Stones/challenges. A few of the stones you can simply find, but not until very late in the game, and the rest you have to win battles for. Due to the shear number of stones, I found this task pretty tedious very early.
The "team" in
Sun/Moon is Team Skull. Even though I havn't played about half of the games in the main series, I'm very confident in saying that Team Skull is without a doubt the least interesting and most annoying team in all of Pokemon history. It seems to consist entirely of street gang members who act like stereo-typical 90's rappers. My son picked up on my disdain for them and often quotes or acts like them if he wants to get a rise out of me; he then laughs when he sees how uncomfortable it makes me... Beyond just being annoying, they really don't seem relevant to the story and could have easily been replaced by something far more interesting. You eventually uncover a behind-the-scenes corporation that uses them as pawns, but it doesn't make it any better.
[img width=700 height=393]https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/265/31830310873_218554c627_c.jpg[/img][The Pokemon League doesn't initially exist on these islands, but eventually one is established and it's pretty straightforward compared to past Pokemon games. Nothing new here.
And finally, "catching them all" has become quite the chore. Firstly the fishing, oh god, the fishing... In past Pokemon titles, you start with a crappy Old Rod that can only catch Magickarp and Goldeens and eventually you upgrade to a Good and Great Rod which open up the Pokemon available to you. You could also fish anywhere there was a body of water. This time around, you're limited to a single rod for the whole game, and you have to find specific fishing spots to use it......and 90% of the time you're just going to see Magickarps. For a game that takes place in a tropical island setting, they really screwed up the fishing bad. It is just terrible and feels like a step back in every way. Without leaving and area repeatedly until you get a "rippling water" effect over a specific fishing spot you want to fish at, you have a 1% chance (not an exaggeration) of catching the "rare" Pokemon for that spot. The rippling water raises that percentage to 5%-10%, but you either have to save and keep reloading or leave the area until the water respawns to keep that percentage.....stupid.
SOS battles are needed to catch many of the Pokemon in this game. That means using items or attacking a wild Pokemon until they get desperate enough to call for help from another nearby Pokemon, usually not the one you want it to call. Some of the Pokemon in the game can only be caught using this method and the in game Pokedex and NPCs don't tell you this. Some even require specific weather states to be in effect during the SOS in order for that Pokemon to even have a chance of appearing. In most cases, how to achieve these SOS Pokémon is never stated in the game.
Evolving Pokemon has also become a nightmare when going for a full Pokedex. Building friendship is one of the most boring parts of the game that involves you feeding, grooming, rubbing their tummy, and spending time with your Pokemon. Some Pokemon need to be holding specific items when levelling up or they must be traded to evolve. Some only evolve in specific places in the game while they are leveling up. Some can only be hatched through a convoluted breeding process. Only certain genders of some Pokemon evolve. Some only evolve by being given stones or being traded (this goes back to the first games in the series). I even have one Pokemon who I can't figure out how to evolve at all!! In the older games, you can learn about the unique methods of evolving certain Pokemon by talking to NPCs and reading books you find in houses. In
Sun/Moon I guess they assume players should know this stuff, since they tell you very little. You are basically left to just figure it out. This is a terrible design and has been extremely frustrating several times over.
So after reading words like: frustrating, nightmare, tedious, annoying you must think I hate these games. I'm actually having a blast!!! Now don't get me wrong, if I was playing this by myself like I have most of the other games in the series, I think I'd have trashed it long ago. But this is my son's first time playing through a game in the main series. He doesn't have all of these pre-conceived notions of what Pokemon should be. This is Pokemon to him. When he gets stuck on a battle, I can trade him a few characters to help him through that battle. When he catches a Pokemon for his Pokedex before I do, he gets a chance to gloat before he trades it to me for something he hasn't caught yet. When he spends the time building his friendship and evolving a Pokemon that I haven't had the patience to do, I get to congratulate him.
Last weekend he was sick and stayed home with me and we both play a TON of Pokemon in our pajamas and finished the main story of the game. He was so thrilled to have beaten it and was just beaming for the rest of the day. A few days later when he was comparing his game to his cousins, he was able to join in discussions that he was previously left out of because he hadn't gotten very far.
Even though the main game is done, we are helping each other catch all the Pokemon available in the game (somewhere around 300). Each day we try to get 1 or 2 more and then trade them to each other. He is having so much fun that it's rubbing off on me and I'm enjoying spending time with him and the game because that means we have one more thing to talk about on the ride to school each day. While I wouldn't recommend anyone rush out to purchase a copy, I'm happy to share this "mess" with my son each day.
