Game Review — Pokémon Ultra Sun
I have mixed feelings about Pokémon Ultra Sun. It is the latest entry to the Pokémon main series titles, it has more and better features in general, and it did somewhat try to refresh the genre. Yet, the game just generally felt…lacking. As a disclaimer, this review isn’t built on any experiences with Pokemon Sun and Moon. I decided that I wouldn’t want to waste my time with them considering that Ultra Sun is the improved version. So yes, this is my first and only experience with the Generation 7 engine, with my expectations set by Omega Ruby.
The setting of Pokémon Ultra Sun follows the same old formula: evil team threatens society, legendary Pokémon threatens the world, the main character gets a starting Pokémon from the local professor, collects more mons and certificates while getting stronger, beats villains and capture legendary Pokémon. Beat Elite Four, and go through the post-game content. This is that same game you love and grow weary of at the same time. Ultra Sun however, freshens up things with a couple of new additions. Instead of the typical Pokémon journey, this time it happens differently in the form of an ‘island challenges’. The change is not merely semantic: these trials involve more than just navigating a gym maze filled with trainers to beat a boss trainer at the end.
Trial captains don’t really battle you (they do on other occasions, but not always part of the trial), but they assign you a goal that involves solving puzzles, quizzes, and navigating terrains, which eventually involves a Totem Pokémon, which is a larger, stat-boosted variant of the usual Pokémon. The Totem Pokémon can also call for support from other Pokémon, which can lead to very difficult battles, often more difficult compared to the average gym battle from past games. You have to prepare not only for new species of Pokémon which you are not familiar with, but also deal with highly deadly support combinations that will have you spamming the use of items which you never knew you needed. The average gym battle mostly involve defeating fodder, making your way to the main boss, and defeating him in a single battle. In generation 7, you can be facing potentially up to three Pokémon up on the field at once, where you have to take all of their moves into account in the same turn. Difficulty definitely went up a notch, although I personally didn’t find most trials challenging until the Totem Battle. After you beat the trial, you get a Z-Crystal, which are the equivalent of badges, with the ability to allow your Pokémon to perform the powerful Z-Moves. Every island also has a Kahuna, which is effectively the Gym Leader of this new format. This will still involve the standard single battle, rewarded with another Z-crystal at the end. To put this into perspective, one island is effectively a gym, where the trial captains are the gym trainers each setting up amd monitoring your progress through the tasks, while the Kahuna is the leader you fight at the very end. It is not exactly a brand new formula, but it shakes things up, which might provide inspiration for future games. I generally enjoy this format, although I wish that the Kahuna fights could have been harder, like a full 6 on 6 battle.
The setting of Alola is unique. It is not necessarily my favourite, but they manage to squeeze a respectable amount of cultural content into these few islands. The music and the trademark ‘alola!’ greeting gives off an unique Hawaiian vibe which really stands out compared to previous games which generally lack a distinct cultural signature.
Another part I liked about the game is that you actually become the defending champion, where other challengers challenge you. This might seem like a semantic difference, but it actually opens up a new world of possibility in terms of game play. This means that every Elite Four run will not be predictable as there will be a host of different characters ready to challenge you at the end. I hope that this tradition will stay on for future games.
The plot….still leaves much to be desired for, although I generally like it due to the sci-fi theme. There is slightly more complexity as it involves several parties: Ultra Beasts, Kahunas, Tapu guardians, Aether Foundation, Ultra Recon Squad, and Team Skull. But the interactions of these parties have not much depth to them. Team Skull are basically Island trial rejects who just….cause trouble for the sake of it? Aether Foundation do social work for Pokémon with some other agendas. Kahunas and Tapus align together to fight alien Ultra Beasts. Ultra Recon Squad are just members of an alien race who travels to Alola and invites you into the legendaries’ conflict and Ultra Wormholes. The setting for these parties are a bit on the shallow end with very limited development. I am of the opinion that the storytelling could been a lot better, but it is still acceptable, especially after the storytelling disaster that is Pokémon X and Y.
The postgame isn’t the best, perhaps somewhere between the terrible shallowness of Pokémon XY and the rich endgame of Pokémon ORAS. There is tons of fun to have with the Battle Agency, which is a rehashed version of my favourite Battle Frontier facility. The Battle Tree is standard but unexciting, and I couldn’t be bothered to go through it. There is a decent roster of legendary Pokémon to capture though: you get the titulars legendary plus Necrozma, you revisit the altars for the four Tapus, and Zygarde lies waiting in the Resolution Cave with its Power Construct form unlockable. There is also a huge bunch of past legendaries hiding in the Ultra Wormholes, so if you are a completionist the game can keep you occupied for a long time. On top of these, there is also the extra Team Rainbow Rocket episode, which is effectively an over-the-top crossover of all the villainous teams in Pokémon coming together through a space-time fault. It is not as emotionally epic as the Delta Episode, but more of a nostalgic trip where you get to see old faces and hear old OST in the superior game engine. There is also tons of high level battles to be had, where the bosses actually hold legendaries! Not the most creative and content packed postgame, but satisfying enough to justify the purchase.
The ‘bells and whistles’ part of the game is pretty good! The side quests are actually pretty entertaining as they unwind you from all the Z-Crystal collecting business by bringing you to find lost Meowths, attending Pikachus weddings, delivering letters, and working part time gigs. They are not exactly necessary to beat the game, but they add a whole new layer of optional content for players to experience. Same goes for collecting Totem stickers, which keep you on the lookout for corners and secret passages to explore. The return of trainer customization is great as well, although the limited options of the male wardrobe (in an rainforest region, no less) don’t really excite me.
The Poké Finder Instagram-ish feature starts of kind of fun (and is actually a pretty promising feature to include if one day a grand Pokémon MMO is to happen), but ends up being more of a pointless grind that does not have to be bothered with. It does make some sense that you have to collect enough ‘likes’ through getting good photography to unlock more camera features, but the feature is so inconsequential to the game that I see it as just a minor mini game to distract myself from the plot.
I still have trouble learning to like the Rotom Dex. It looks terrible (I love the console shaped Pokédexes!), offers way too much hand-holding (like the rest of the game), and makes the game too easy through the Roto Loto feature. I am not sure why I couldn’t appreciate always having a map reminding you of what is your next objective. Why couldn’t players be allowed to get lost for a while? For instance, if I strictly followed the map, I wouldn’t be able to discover a secret Z-Crystal near Ten Karat Hill after unlocking the Taurus Charge on my own. The game world feels shallow and absent because the Rotom Dex seems to know better than you about what you ought to be doing better than you do. Don’t even get me started on the Roto Loto, which is to me just outright bullshit. On top of the hundreds of useful items already available in game, a mobile device can somehow dispense out literal buffs that can provide benefits ranging from battle buffs, capture buffs, prize money, and bargains. Quality of life improvements are nice, but random buffs that come out of nowhere needs to stop.
The biggest win of Generation 7? Ride Pager. HMs have really become more of an annoyance in recent generations. Overcoming obstacles by beating gyms is one thing, but having to carry a Pokémon to ferry you over obstacles is a relic that should have died in Generation 5. Ride pagers make perfect sense and I expect to see them in future games and even remakes of older games. This can very well be expanded upon with more features (a Cut user, Defog user, Rock Climb user, Flash user, Mach/Acro Bike replacements), so I really look forward to seeing this becoming a mainstay of the Pokémon games.
In the trailers, I personally couldn’t tell apart differences between generation 6 and 7 in terms of graphics. But when I got my hands on the games and started playing them, the differences were visible, although on the more subtle end. Characters in the overworld looks more realistic (quite close to those cell-shaded anime games) and each trainer class have their unique Poké Ball animation. Every character, especially Lillie, Hau, and Gladion, now has much more lively emotional expressions (aside from your main character, again). The gameplay and cutscenes really feel right out of an anime, so this is definitely a right direction. The music is really, really good too!
The game camera is also much more dynamic, allowing the game to present its graphical detail when the scenery calls for it. Admittedly, this might have made the game feels less Pokémon to me as I find Pokémon to be defined by their trademark bird-eye view, but this is not a great problem at all. That being said, I definitely wished that some form of camera control is present to give us the option to adjust our perspective, especially all the elevations and automatic camera-panning can disorient me on occasions.
The biggest thing holding Pokémon Ultra Sun to be a truly outstanding game is that it feels bounded. There are unskippable tutorials which drag out the game time, tons and tons of cutscenes and dialogue trying to craft a coherent satisfying story, and the Rotom Dex marking your destination on your lower screen. The entire bounded experience, lack of exploration options, shallow world, and subpar storytelling come together to create a ‘not Pokémon’ feel. For a game themed around exploring islands, there is very little exploring to do because the Rotom Dex would have easily guided you to explore all of them. There are also very limited interactions with the environment, where you can no longer sit (why is this even removed from generation 6?) and interact with furniture that isn’t a bed or a door. Many doors actually can’t be opened. For a seemingly big and matured game, there is surprisingly little to explore as compared to older games like Omega Ruby. If anything, generation seven Pokémon remind me more of Mega Man Battle Network (where the world seems huge in story and presentation, but surprisingly little to actually explore), at least at the overworld level.
I don’t think I presented a fair review of Pokémon Ultra Sun, considering that it has been a couple of months since I finished the game. I definitely missed out commenting a lot of things and new features, but my reasoning is that none of these are standout enough. Admittedly, Pokémon Ultra Sun did have some of the more challenging battles assuming you don’t know what is coming for you, but the challenge is really diluted by the easy EXP All, Rotom Buffs, and Z-Moves one-shotting stuff. Having experienced basically every single generation, from the staple classics of Red and Yellow, the remarkable adventure of Gold and Crystal, the content packed Emerald and Platinum, and the storytelling masterpiece that is Black and White 2, I found the 3DS games really lacking in non-graphical aspects which Pokémon Ultra Sun represents the most. Constantly evolving graphics, constantly improving quality of life features, but the storytelling, presentation, and options to explore have been dumbed down in this new platform. We can always make the excuse that Pokémon is experimenting with new platforms (they have been doing that since Pokémon X!), but Ultra Sun and Moon is certainly the last game on this platform! Experimenting doesn’t mean taking away old good features and adding new half-assed features which fail to be of relevance to the main gameplay or even casual entertainment. Teasing me with limited edition of Johto Apricorn Poké Balls is rather unforgivable to me.
Pokémon might be a kids game, but if kids from the 90s can take on the difficulty posed by the classics, there is no reason kids these days couldn’t handle mature gameplay and more difficult gameplay. At least let us have a hard mode.
Tl;dr: Pokémon Ultra Sun looks and sounds good, but falls short of expectations set by all the predecessors. Not much actual exploration, slow pacing, and not many memorable battles and events. Decent nostalgia-fest as postgame content. Ride Pager should stay forever. Future gym content can incorporate some elements from Trials.
Originally published at thenewbarkcodex.wordpress.com on May 6, 2018.
