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While the most recent releases in the series lost sight of the big picture somewhat, the dozens of quality-of-life adjustments and departures from previous Pokémon staples are refreshing. On a minute-to-minute level, Sun and Moon are easily the most engaging Pokémon games yet.
The beautiful tropical islands of Alola are far, far away from the monolithic mainland, so far away that they haven't even heard of the gym challenge every past Pokémon protagonist has completed. With its expansive beaches and tight-knit communities, Alola of course greatly resembles Hawaii. The soundtrack of your island journey features for the first time real instruments — a casual ukulele noodles itself through most of Melemele Island, the ranch on Akala Island features a harmonica solo, and much of the incidental music and battle themes features choral chanting and tribal drums. Sun and Moon should be proud of the immersive world they have crafted. (At the expense of etymological clarity, I might add — it may take a while for visitors to Alola to recall which city is Hau'oli and which is Heahea. For too long have English-language players had the privilege of being acclimatised to the likes of Lavaridge, Lavender and Lentimas.)
Taking a leaf from the extensive annals of Ruby and Sapphire, Sun and Moon introduce two new villainous organisations. But instead of palette-swapped carbon copies like Aqua and Magma, the games here display one of their many deceptively simple design choices. Team Skull are a gang of messy punks with ripped attire and unkempt hair, dressed in black with accents of hot pink and electric blue. Their casual speech patterns make heavy use of slang, and are accompanied by absurdly aggressive gesticulations, frequently lampshaded to comedic effect. Their logo is a rounded, smooth, stylised 'S' that all members have slung around their neck or tattooed into their skin. When sneaking through their base in Po Town on a rescue mission, the player remarks through the heavy moody rain that it is in a state of abject dilapidation and disrepair. The Aether Foundation on the other hand are ostensibly great public benefactors. They care for and protect endangered Pokémon, hosting an enormous conservatory on the floating island they constructed for themselves with seemingly bottomless private funding. Their golden emblem, imperiously spiked, is incorporated into the décor of the ascetically aesthetic Aether Paradise, whose stark white corridors and expansive laboratories are the subject of endless rumour among the citizens of Alola. Decked identically in spotless white, foundation employees can be found all around the region caring for and rehabilitating wounded Pokémon. All are worthy of protection and love under President Lusamine's steady hand and truly fabulous hair.
It would have been nice to spend more time with the benevolent president before she turned into a raging maniac. Sun and Moon do tend to gloss over much of the plot — what, for instance, is Team Skull actually up to? What do they do? But at the end of the day, this is a minor complaint more than made up for by excelling in all other aspects of gameplay.
Instead of slavishly trudging through the region's eight gyms again, defeating the eight gym leaders again and earning the eight gym badges again, the player is sent out on the vibrant new island challenge. Alola's seven trial captains guide you through seven unique trials designed to coax out a vicious Totem Pokémon to whom you must prove your strength in battle. You will have to forage for ingredients in the Lush Jungle and flex your culinary brawn, carefully watch for differences between ancient dances passed down on Akala Island for generations, and in your most daring feat yet, artistically frame photos of ghosts haunting an abandoned Thrifty Megamart.
Far larger than the garden variety and shining with an intimidating stat buff aura, these powerful Totem Pokémon are some of the most difficult and strategic foes you will face, and each has the advantage of calling an ally for help. The Totem Salazzle of Wela Volcano Park can inflict poison upon any foe (including usually-immune poison- and steel-types) thanks to its ability Corrosion and its partner Salandit spits moves that deal increased damage to a suffering target. Charjabug's Battery ability further boosts the already formidable special attack stat of Vikavolt, the Totem Pokémon of Mount Hokulani. Most terrifying of all is the seemingly innocuous Castform summoned by Totem Lurantis to the Lush Jungle. It can intensify the sunlight, eliminating the charging turn for Lurantis' Solar Blade attack and boosting its own Weather Balls, all the while activating the totem's Leaf Guard which protects it from status conditions. Good luck finding anything that can resist both grass- and fire-type moves.
In Sun and Moon's only serious misstep, wild Pokémon on low health are also able to call upon an ally for assistance in battle. While passingly convenient when grinding up your partners, this new feature is a recurrent annoyance, especially given that the player bizarrely lacks the dexterity to aim a Poké Ball when two targets are on the field.
Unlike the vaguely scribbled characters arcs of companions from previous Pokémon games, Lillie’s aims straight and true. Rivals and friends alike showed barely any character development. The arrogant misers with whom the player butts heads in Kanto and Johto get barely a taste of the comeuppance they so richly deserve, and the cutesy nickname the Kalos crew bestow upon you does little to mitigate the player’s vexation with their incessant one-note wittering. But here, Sun and Moon outdo themselves. Lillie is their greatest accomplishment. Initially a cowed, fragile girl healing from her mother’s mistreatment, Lillie grows into a strong and independent young woman before the player’s eyes. This is all capped off with a tender moment — the defeated Lusamine, barely conscious, finally recognises Lillie as her own beautiful daughter, then lapses into a coma. I was tearing up.
Extraordinary writing aside, Sun and Moon have implemented countless little changes to make your journey as a Pokémon trainer easier. Annoyed at having to constantly heal your party's status conditions after battle? You may directly enter Pokémon Refresh (renamed from Pokémon-Amie, presumably to remove the French pun now that Kalos has been left behind) after each battle to cure them, brush the dirt from their fur, groom their feathers and generally treat them more like real pets than ever before — even skyscraping dragons and fearsome monsters of legend can't resist a scratch behind the ears/horns/eldritch appendages! Concerned that all the buddies you catch but don't train will rot in your PC forever? They're now free to pop off on holiday in the jolly new Poké Pelago minigame! Dreading the inevitable onslaught of useless new Hidden Moves? They have been removed entirely in favour of the Poké Ride system — you can instantly summon a Tauros to smash large boulders out of your way without cluttering up one of your partners' movesets with an underpowered and nigh-undeletable move, and surfing Alola's seas on a toothy Sharpedo is just a click away!
Past professors drew meme-grade attention from bluntly asking the name and gender of a person they clearly already know quite well, whereas Alola's Professor Kukui is putting together your passport in advance of your impending arrival on Melemele Island. Kukui also continues the general trend from the last few games of making all major characters ridiculously attractive — handsomely tanned and barely thirty, he wears only a lab coat over his toned pecs and rippling abs. Professor Sycamore of Kalos with his artfully tousled geek-chic aesthetic has finally met his match, in more ways than one. Even copy-and-paste random trainers scattered throughout the region have received generous upgrades — compare the skinny speedo-sporting swimmers of yesteryear to Alola's hunky beefcakes.
Sun and Moon also display a much sharper sense of humour than their predecessors. When foiling an attempted kidnapping at Memorial Hill (just past Route 9 from Konikoni City — visit the bazaar for great deals on rare incenses and herbs!) the camera repeatedly cuts to the clueless face of a Slowpoke for a dramatic reaction shot. If you tell a pair of Team Skull grunts you don’t recognise them from a previous altercation, they will make a quip about their self-esteem issues. And the bus the takes the player from Route 10 all the way to the Hokulani observatory displays the slogan: “Our safe driving record will absolutely slay you!” Courting that elusive millennial demographic?
You can’t actually scale Mount Hokulani during the course of these games. In fact you cannot climb any of Alola’s several mountains and volcanos, most egregiously Mount Lanakila on Ula'ula Island; reaching the freshly built Pokémon League at its peak takes mere minutes. The Wela Volcano Park too simply teleports you through the cave network directly to the top, presumably because an arduous trek up an active volcano before your third trial could be considered overkill.
While the Alola Pokémon League leaves much to be desired design-wise as well as musically (especially coming so soon after X and Y’s definitive edition), Sun and Moon bow out with a final twist on past formulas. All the other regions’ Pokémon Leagues pay lip service the same concept — should a trainer come along and defeat the Elite Four and the Champion, they are to be crowned the new Champion — without actually implementing it. Defeat Alola’s brand new Elite Four (two promoted island kahunas, one trial captain and a new character) and you will have to face down Professor Kukui, who is overseeing construction himself, and you become Alola’s very first Champion. But upon beating the Elite Four each subsequent time, you must defend your title against a trainer randomly selected from a prestigious list: Kukui himself, several other trial captains, a handful of new characters, and most heartwarmingly a little kid you first met all the way back on Route 1 who promised you he would become the very best (like no-one every was, naturally).
The Champion defence battle theme is one of the few that demands your attention. In an elegant act of bookending, it dramatically respells the music of the games’ title screen with those tribal drums and choral chanting — and finally, decisively and permanently, strings and brass that won't melt your ears off. Sun and Moon have come through the growing pains of generation six stronger, more focused, and far more cognisant of what works and what doesn’t. The unrelenting beige that bogged down Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire has been thrown into the trash where it belongs, letting different colours shape different moods from the background where GameFreak has decided to put them. The Team Skull motif invokes appropriately grubby record-scratching while the sweeping piano figures of the Aether Foundation reinforce their stylish aesthetic. Spiritual successors to blockbusting tracks like earlier legendary battle themes and are more subdued and textured. The Solgaleo/Lunala fight relies more on dazzling visuals than burning a melody into your mind, as does your showdown with the Symbiot in the Aether Paradise. Even Lillie’s theme blossoms as she does, from a nervous teetering waltz to a stoic, propulsive march.
From the charming Poké Pelago jingle to the melodic twists of Alolan incidental music, Sun and Moon have composed a soundtrack worthy of such an excellent game.
Thank you for indulging me with a week of voluminous ramblings. I hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them. I now return you to your regular schedule of a single album of the week per week. Excelsior!