Pokemon Ultra Moon

Playtime: 38 Hours

Played through this game with Popplio as the starter this time - note that my original run of Moon back in 2017 used Rowlet, following my trend of usually picking the Grass starter. My final team for this run was Primarina, Hariyama, Noivern, Leafeon, Malamar, and Lycanroc - which was a very fun lineup to use! I originally had a few different Pokemon in mind (Tyranitar and Volcarona, among some others) but those didn't work out because of availability issues, on top of having extremely late evolutions.

"Completing" this game only involves finishing the main story, since there's a ton of stuff to actually do. I also got all 17 of the type-specific Z-crystals though. There's a checklist here with a ton of postgame completion activities that I can try doing, including the wormholes, postgame story, and much more. There are probably tens or hundreds of additional hours I could probably spend in this game if I really wanted to, but I don't know if/when I'd be interested in really trying to fill this out as I have so many other games to play too.

On another note, I decided to buy a copy of Ultra Sun after finishing this game - so there's a small chance that I'll be returning to USUM someday, potentially to do some postgame completion? It's hard to say, given that I also have the full X/Y/OR/AS set and haven't touched completion for those yet either. For what it's worth, my USun story playthrough is almost definitely going to be using Rowlet as the starter again because I can't stand Incineroar's trash furry design (for like the 5th gen in a row).

As the last set of mainline Pokemon games on the 3DS, I feel that USUM (and Gen 7 in general) are a great swan song to that era of the franchise. The Hawaiian islander vibe of the Alola region is extremely recognizable and distinct from the feel of the regions in previous generations, which all felt quite similar with few distinguishing qualities. This includes not only the overall layout of the map, splitting the region across 4 large islands, but also into the towns you visit, shrines you find, and trials you take. In a ton of ways both large and small, I feel like this generation as a whole departed from a number of conventions that were getting somewhat stale in order to keep the series fresh. USUM takes it even further by making some incremental improvements to the original Sun and Moon games; it still doesn't feel quite right to have them as separate games, but that's just the way it goes I guess. I haven't touched my copy of Moon since 2017 so I can't give definitive details on the new changes, but my general impression is that UM is more than a basic update, while not being a fully new experience (if that makes any sense).

The atmosphere of Alola is quite excellent, as mentioned previously. Part of this is obviously from the characters - Hau and Lillie, your closest companions, are generally very friendly the entire game, and most other NPCs tend to be very positive and relaxed overall. This had been a trend for a few generations already, but I remember Hau being bagged on heavily for his personality even though he's not particularly awful or anything. With respect to characters not being jackasses in this game, I don't see anything wrong with a children's game expressing the idea that people can change so the development of Guzma & Lusamine isn't an actual issue IMO. In a more general sense, all of the tribal islander-inspired architecture throughout this game, the Tapus, and the concept of kahunas and captains running trials instead of camping in sterile gyms made the characters feel more alive and involved in the actual story. While some people (especially speedrunners?) may lament the hefty load of cutscenes and long sequences, especially at Po Town and Aether Paradise, as someone mostly just playing the story for the experience I didn't have any issues with it.

Compared to most of the previous games, I feel like actual Pokemon were far more present in the game world itself - you can find them all over the place and even play with them in some basic interactions (limited to some spinning, peekaboo, etc. unfortunately, but still a start). Lots of them had more prominence during the island trials and other scenes, giving a far more proper feel of actual cohabitation between people and Pokemon. I thought it was pretty funny that you could find some Magmars in various houses - wouldn't that be a fire hazard? But they aren't all limited to just flavor, either - USUM introduces a bunch of small "side quests", many of which star various Pokemon in different situations. For example, there is a small side plot involving 5 Dittos on Akala island that innocently disguise themselves as townspeople, leading to lots of confusion (but no harm!). There's also a funny pair of Pyukumuku in a Romeo & Juliet situation, a famous snobby Pikachu, a heartfelt scene involving an old Pokeball that you find on the first island belonging to an old man that you can take to their grandchild, and the list goes on. There are some more basic interactions of course - characters in several Poke Centers will simply ask to trade or to see a specific Pokedex entry, similar to what you might rarely see in previous games, but these are in addition to, and not in lieu of the aforementioned events. Really, the only thing that I might consider dissatisfactory is that the overall story is nearly unchanged compared to the original SM games with only a few key differences.

To continue the thought on USUM being more fleshed-out than their predecessors, there are a ton of minigames available, some of which I don't think were previously in SM. I could be wrong about some of these, but having Mantine surfing, the Battle Tree, Ultra Wormholes, photo taking, and other activities available beyond the basic adventure gameplay is really interesting. Pokemon Refresh (also available in SM) is awesome, and it's about as close as the series has ever really gotten to letting you directly interact with your Pokemon. I love how you can pet and feed them to build your bond, and also cure and clean them up after battle - and they're all very expressive of their happiness too! It's a bummer that you don't get much of that in the Switch games. Poke Pelago is also a super neat feature you can access to get some passive benefits managing all the Pokemon you own; it's nice to know that in Alola, the Pokes you catch and keep boxed aren't trapped there forever, but will casually come out to have fun or to work together as a little community on these smaller islands. Again, I really want to see this kind of interaction in more games, even if it is mostly symbolic.

Mechanically, this game improves on previous generations in several ways as well - the concept of ride Pokemon is a very cool concept, and was sorely needed by this time in the franchise. Having to use HMs and maintain HM slaves was always considered a very annoying part of the games, as it severely limits the number of actual combat Pokemon you can use due to the HMs largely being terrible battle moves (except Surf). Not only are Ride Pokemon sensible from a thematic standpoint, it makes your team composition far more flexible. The only complaint is that the silly/stupid costume is unnecessary, and is especially strange given that this game also has character customization (like Gen 6) that you won't see when you're using the pager. The Rotom Dex is also new for this gen, which is pretty fun personality-wise, while also helping you keep track of objectives. The Roto-Loto powers that you can roll sometimes are also very useful, though many of them are more or less equivalent to free items and some of them are quite overpowered.

The actual Pokemon introduced in Gen 7 are overall pretty solid in my opinion, far better than Gen 5 IMO and probably better than Gen 6? The Tapus, Legendaries, and Ultra Beasts are all quite interesting conceptually at least, and most designs that I remember tend to be at least pretty good if not great. On top of these, the concept of regional variants of familiar Pokemon was a very significant development, presenting a far better solution for variety than Gen 5's horrible clones of basic mons. The starter Pokemon were also very good overall - Decidueye is my favorite still, but this run with Primarina was very fun as well. Again, for like the 4th generation in a row, the Fire type starter is yet another huge whiff - why on earth did they make Incineroar another furry? It's hilarious how terrible the concepts for Fire starters have all been time and again, and they managed to get closer this time - Litten and Torracat are awesome, then they hired a guy off FurAffinity to design the final evolution. Even once I get around to doing Ultra Sun, there's no way in hell I'm going to pick that as my actual starter. Also, another criticism I have is that Pokemon evolution timing is not adjusted at all across different generations and some of them evolve WAY too late. Noibat is a perfect representative here, available at around Level 10 in USUM but not evolving until Level 48 (!), making it super weak for around 75% of the game.

Finally, with regards to the overall gameplay flow of USUM, I felt like this time around it was far more challenging than my impression of the original Sun & Moon games. A number of the totem fights had surprisingly tricky move coverage, useful items, and could call SOS pokemon to really make your life painful. Trainer and Pokemon quality seemed higher on average as well, though Hau still choosing to take the starter weak to yours is still kind of sad, c'mon man. Much of the challenge was still dampened in my playthrough because I kept the EXP share on, so I was seriously outpacing the average trainer/Pokemon levels for the vast majority of the game. Still, there were some tougher or more interesting fights, and some battles might be scaled up to your level? (Not sure about this). The Z-move mechanic, while not quite as impressive as the mega evolutions of Gen 6, was still pretty decent and much better than the dogshit Dynamax and lame Terastal mechanics, speaking purely from a coolness perspective. At the very least, I felt some effort put into them, and it did allow for some fights to be much riskier than expected - it's pretty clear to see how the gimmick mechanics already started to kind of get lazier per generation though.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Ultra Moon (at least up until the point where I stopped) - it felt like a culmination of so many incremental steps that the DS and 3DS games took. When thinking back to Gen 4 and looking at USUM, it's nice to see how so many little things were added to make the game more comfortable to play, while giving you more options and interactions that make the world feel more alive. I personally don't think it'd be too farfetched for me to call this the best DS/3DS Pokemon (outside of OR/AS, but mostly for Gen 3 nostagia reasons), but maybe that opinion will cool slightly over time - not sure! I'll see if my statements here still hold true when I play through Ultra Sun someday.