One of Sun and Moon's new features is the Festival Plaza-a ring of shops that brings to mind Black 2 & White 2's excellent Join Avenue. If these games are any guide, Sun and Moon is where Game Freak will cut loose a bit. Black and White, for its part, boasts one of the most expansive and interesting regions in the series. To wit, Gold and Silver has one of the franchise's best surprises: the return to Kanto. When Game Freak is working with familiar tech, they tend to stretch out and get a little more ambitious with their content. Gold/Silver and Black/White were both second generation games on their respective handhelds, and both were well-received by fans. Game Freak has a good track record with games like Sun and Moon. Pokémon Sun & Moon follows a positive tradition But I'm sure a few people will be disappointed that Game Freak is moving backward rather than forward on this front. With all that said, I never turn on 3D anyway, so I don't really care. both supporting 3D and looking markedly better than Pokémon Sun and Moon, it makes one wonder how good Game Freak's tech actually is. But with both Fire Emblem Fates and Super Smash Bros. Why? At a guess, it's because it doesn't play nicely with their engine, and because they have bigger fish to fry. But rather than try and improve it for Sun and Moon, Game Freak has opted to drop it altogether. One strike against Pokémon X and Y was its poor 3D implementation, which was patchy and tended to hurt the framerate. Bring back the hateful rivals, Game Freak! It's been too long. Hau, though, probably won't amount to much more than a speed bump, putting him in the same forgettable category as Barry, Bianca, and Calem (Cheren was alright). When you beat Blue, you felt like a million bucks. We're a long way from the halcyon days of Gary/Blue, who managed to be both an excellent trainer and an unrepentant prick. He reminds me of Brendan-the friendly but ultimately weak rival from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire who can't even bother to fully evolve his starter. Right at the outset, he breaks tradition and chooses the monster that is weak to your starter, which results in him getting rolled in less than two moves. But alas, he's not a great Pokémon trainer. He's fun, he's energetic, and he looks like he would be right at home bumming around a beach in Waikiki. Okay, I'll start by saying that I like Hau-the main rival in Pokémon Sun and Moon. Hau is another in a long line of lame rivals I don't know if it's a massive difference-truth be told, I was kind of hoping some of the challenges would be resolved with minigames ala The Orange Islands-but it's still a nice change of pace. The asymmetric battles are something that Pokémon hasn't really done before, and it's evidence of Game Freak pushing both its engine and its traditional battle format a bit. Going head-to-head with a buffed up Pokémon is an interesting wrinkle, especially with it being able to summon in additional monsters to help it, forcing you to fight 2-on-1. The biggest difference is in the Totem Pokémon-powerful monsters that stand in for gym leaders. Yes, there are a handful of quests and items to collect but at the end of the day, they aren't that dissimilar from the gym puzzles of previous game. Well, I'll let you in on a little secret: They aren't that different. Much has been made of Sun and Moon's trials, which ostensibly replace the gyms from the previous games. All in all, Pokémon Sun and Moon stands to be one of the better looking games on the Nintendo 3DS.
POKEMON SUN MOON RIVAL UPGRADE
The upgrades extend to the graphics and while the difference isn't quite the N64 to PS2 upgrade touted by the Treehouse representative at the event, the animation and character models are noticeably better. Even the Pokedex has been possessed by a Navi-like Rotom that bobs around the bottom screen and offers advice. Everything is bigger, brighter, and more attractive in this game, which has the effect of elevating the visuals as a whole. In that light, Sun and Moon's colorful menus really stand out in comparison to previous games in the series.
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Pokémon has never been what you would call ugly, but its presentation has typically been utilitarian at best. The presentation is lovely this time around With that, here are some observations from my time with Sun and Moon.
POKEMON SUN MOON RIVAL SERIES
This is definitely the freshest the series has been in a while. On the contrary, Pokémon Sun and Moon looks to build on what worked in the previous games while having its own voice and outlook. But that doesn't mean I was disappointed. And for better or worse, my expectations were largely borne out: Game Freak has Pokémon down to a science. When I drove down to Nintendo last week to spend a couple hours with Pokémon Sun and Moon, it was with the expectation that it would follow the well-worn template set down by other games in the series.