Features

We played Pokemon Sun and Moon - here are 7 things you need to know

Good night moon

We played Pokemon Sun and Moon - here are 7 things you need to know

A couple weeks ago I went on a journey. I packed my trainer bag full of potions and bikes. I squished a fox into a tiny ball. And strode out into the long grass... of London.

When I was there I got to play a huge amount of Pokemon Sun and Moon. Playing from the very start of the adventure, I got to see more than two hours of the game.

I battled monsters. I caught a team of Pokemon. I ALMOST died but then whipped out a hyper potion and - phew - it's okay.

Here are seven new things about Sun and Moon that I discovered while playing the game.

Gyms are out, trials are in Gumshoos

Oh hey - remember gyms? Those buildings in Pokemon games, where a bunch of trainers and a gym leader took you and your critters on in mortal combat?

They're gone in Pokemon Sun and Moon, having been replaced by trials. Here, you'll get to do interesting new activities and then face off against a giant, towering totem Pokemon.

I played one trial where I had to fight a bunch of Pokemon who were hiding in tiny burrows. The puzzle was figuring out how to get around the complicated cave layout to search all the holes.

At one point, members from Team Skull appeared and battled me, which certainly made things more tricky. And then, with all the hidden critters defeated, I faced off against a totem Gumshoos, and his army of Yungoos.

These trials should allow Game Freak to come up with lots of unique ways to play Pokemon and test you on more than your ability to knock out an electric rat and a rock snake.

The game's much more story focused

Pokemon

Pokemon games have never had particularly deep and complex stories. You wanna be the very best (like no one ever was), and maybe there are some bad dudes that you can stop along the way.

Sun and Moon's story is similar, but told with much more urgency and gravitas. There's an opening cutscene! There are anime-style events! The camera angles are crazy!

Plus, the world feels more fleshed out and considered.

Overall I got the sense that I was playing an actual JRPG - more Final Fantasy than an average Pokemon game. That certainly slows things down - I played for more than two hours and was still essentially in tutorial mode - but some fans will dig the new focus.

Everything's a little easier

Pokemon

There are plenty of decisions in Pokemon Sun and Moon that will be useful for newcomers to the series - but may be derided by hardcore fans of the series.

For example: remember how your rival in the Pokemon games (almost?) always picks the critter that is effective against yours? If you pick Bulbasaur, he'll pick Charmander? Like a jerk?

Well now he'll pick the pick that is weaker than yours, making it easier than ever to squash your rival into a thin gooey paste.

Also, the game alerts you to whether a trainer is going to pounce on you for a battle, or just tell you that shorts are comfortable and easy to wear or some nonsense. So now you know who to avoid if your Pokemon are on death's door.

Plus, if you face off against a Pokemon once you'll then be told which of your moves are effective or super effective whenever you see that same Pokemon again. Forget memorising the elemental effectiveness chart: the game does it for you.

And finally, the new Rotom Pokedex (a Pokedex inhabited by a weird electrical Pokemon) will give you hints about what to do next. Which is, I'll admit, actually kinda handy as I often get lost in Pokemon games.

Old Pokemon, new style

Meowth

There are two joys to a new Pokemon game: finding a new monster and going "Woah! Look at that one! He's new!" and finding an old one and going "Woah! Look at that one! I remember him!"

The first type has basically been ruined by Nintendo's over the top pre-release marketing. In two hours with the game, I encountered only one critter that I hadn't already seen on Twitter.

But the second is given a fun new twist as monsters you remember from Red or Gold or Ruby have been reinvented to suit the Alolan environment.

The only ones I saw in my playthrough were a nasty black Rattata with a moustache, a fa-bu-lous Meowth who is way too chill to be fighting, and another I'm not allowed to talk about.

But when you get the full game you'll find an Exeggutor with a giraffe-sized neck, and ice-white Vulpix and Sandshrews who have adapted to live in Alola's snowy mountain peaks.

There's no 3D Flower

Bit of a bummer, this one. Pokemon X and Y didn't have stereoscopic 3D in the overworld and the game ran like a Slowpoke if you used 3D in battle.

If this demo build is anything to go by (and I was playing on a New Nintendo 3DS), Sun and Moon goes one step further and removes 3D from the game entirely.

I can't imagine too many tears - not many play games in stereoscopic 3D (even my commitment wavers from game to game) but still, it's a bit embarrassing for a big Nintendo game to avoid using the 3DS's headline feature.

You can take photos of Pokemon

Bewear

Okay, it's no Pokemon Snap. You don't ride a cute little buggy through a beach, lobbing apples at Pokemon and taking snaps of Charizards as they burst out of volcanos.

But this cute mini-game, where you take photographs of specific Pokemon at specific spots, is a nice call back to that game. I Instagrammed a Pikachu who was hiding behind a fence.

You get likes for pictures but no idea what that actually gains you in the long run - other than internet fame and kudos. Which, let's be honest, is everything.

There's more trainer customisation Berry

X and Y were the first games to let us modify the way our characters look beyond gender, with clothing, hair styles, facial features, and even eye colour.

This went away for GBA remake Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire but it's back in Sun and Moon and better than ever.

Clothes can be dyed, there are more clothing options, and - hey! welcome to 2016, Nintendo! - you can be black. There are four skin colours to pick from - pale, fair, dark, and darker.

Unfortunately, my people are still no being represented in games as you cannot have skin so white it looks like a bottle of milk. Where's MY history month?

A demo for the game is out on the eShop on October 18th.
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer