Pokémon Sun and Moon/Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon

Pokémon Sun and Moon are role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. They are the first main series games in the seventh generation of the Pokémon franchise, and were released as celebration for the 20th anniversary of the Pokémon franchise.

Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, updated versions of the games, were released a year after Sun and Moon. They are not remakes or sequels to Sun and Moon.

Plot
The story takes place in the Alola region, an archipelago of islands far away from most other regions in the Pokémon world. Instead of the usual Regional League with Gym Leaders, Alolan Pokémon trainers take the Island Challenge, in which trainers must travel across the four main islands clearing multiple trials and facing each Island's Kahuna.

The player takes the role of a young trainer who moved into Alola from the Kanto region, despite being a foreigner he/she is allowed to take the Island Challenge. Shortly after moving in the Player befriends a kid named Hau who happens to be the grandson of the Island's Kahuna and Lillie, a girl that is too young to take the Island Challenge but is in possession of Cosmog; an incredibly rare Pokémon believed to have come from a different dimension. Hau and the Player begin their Island Challenge, the two decide to travel separately while Lillie tags along the Player as she feels Cosmog, or "Nebby" will be safer around the Player.

The Player, Lillie, and Hau soon run into Team Skull, a group of street punks compromised mostly of trainers that flunked their Island Challenges. Team Skull is trying to sabotage the Island Challenge and capture Cosmog, forcing the Player and Hau to frequently deal with them to protect Lillie and Nebby. As the three continue to face Team Skull, they get involved in a conspiracy regarding the Ultra Beasts; mysterious Pokémon that appear to have come from the same dimension as Cosmog, as well as the Aether Foundation which seems obsessed with capturing the Ultra Beasts and is secretly working with Team Skull.

Why They Make You Gotta Catch 'Em All in Alola

 * 1) You now move in true 3D space instead of being locked on a grid.
 * 2) The new region named Alola is based on Hawaii, USA. Alola's culture is heavily based on Hawaiian culture as well.
 * 3) Gym battles are phased out in favor of Island challenge Trials. Trials each have different sequences and at the end of each Trial you fight a powerful Pokémon called a Totem Pokémon which has boosted stats.
 * 4) The Pokemon Pelago is a great addition. It allows players to grow Poké Beans which can then be fed to Pokémon in Pokémon Refresh to increase their affection. It also lets players grow berries.
 * 5) Pokémon Refresh replace Pokémon Amie and now you can cure status effects in Pokémon Refresh.
 * 6) Z-Moves are introduced in this generation which makes Pokémon battles more interesting.
 * 7) Regional Variant Pokémon were introduced in this generation which are variations of already existing Pokémon now having different designs and typings.
 * 8) The New Pokemon introduced in this region are either EXTREMELY Adorable (Example: Brionne), Or Really Cool (Example: Tapu KoKo).
 * 9) The infamous Hidden Machines have been completely removed in favor of the Pokéride system, meaning you no longer have to use suboptimal moves nor waste a team slot for "HM Slaves". Now, you can simply ride a few kinds of Pokémon to do actions that would require an HM or key items to perform in previous games, such as:
 * 10) * Machamp for Strength
 * 11) * Charizard for Fly
 * 12) * Tauros for the Bicycle and Rock Smash
 * 13) * Lapras for Surf and Fishing on water
 * 14) * Sharpedo for Surfing really fast and breaking rocks while Surfing
 * 15) * Stoutland for finding hidden items (Similar to the Dowsing Machine)
 * 16) * Mudsdale for running across rocky terrain.
 * 17) A new type of Pokémon battle, the Battle Royal is introduced.
 * 18) The game is a lot more plot-driven than previous generations.
 * 19) There is a cutscene where the player battles Tapu Koko during the ending was entertaining, similar to Mewtwo from Pokemon Stadium. They can also receive "Tapunium Z" after capturing, defeating, or fleeing it.
 * 20) In Battle Tree, the player can face not only Red or Blue, but also several trainers from the past generations such as Wally, Anabel, and Grimsley.
 * 21) In Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Alola Photo Club allows players to take photos of their Pokémon.
 * 22) For the first time in this Generation, you actually become the Champion and you can also defend your title by fighting various Characters you met during your adventure in the post-game's title defense.
 * 23) Having an extra space in your party to fit an egg during breeding is no longer required, instead you can choose to either replace one of your party member with the egg or send it to the PC so you can start hatching one or multiple later.
 * 24) * Keep in mind that even with a full party of eggs that reaches the steps required to hatch at the same time, the game only hatches one at a time.
 * 25) Hyper Training is introduced in this generation, allowing players to maximize the IVs of their Pokémon.
 * 26) In Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, Team Rainbow Rocket is introduced, which brings back past villainous leaders from an alternate reality in where they succeeded in their goals.
 * 27) It brings in elements from the XYZ anime with both Ash-Greninja and the Different Forms of Zygarde, which were all previously shown in that series, which is a nice little detail to implement in these games and great fan service for fans of the anime.
 * 28) Lillie is a well developed character with her goal being to protect Nebby from Aether Foundation and take it back to it's home where it belongs, while having an amazing bond with it that is very relatable and easy to connect with for a lot of viewers playing these games, which is great.
 * 29) The graphics are admittedly nice for a 3DS title, with a decent amount of colors and backdrops with the 3D visuals, and the backgrounds looking nice and sharp when compared to X & Y, and the new models for the new Pokémon are decently made and not too bad in the slightest.
 * 30) Great soundtrack that is heavily Hawaiian based with nice and smoothing pieces that feel a earworthy listen for the player, and the renditions of older themes being top notch and amazing with fully new Hawaiian themed music that doesn't botch the iconic theme song too much and still keeps it charm after several entries in the series.
 * 31) It helped the series stay relevant in modern times, and made it adapt to the modern gaming landscape with it's technical innovations to the series and changing the entire formula to make the series less stale and repetitive in general, and with the later games doing the same thing but on a larger scale, it's safe to say that these games could be seen as the most innovative games in the series during when it was released and still feel unique when compared to previous games in the series as a whole, which was something that the series needed since the Red & Blue games on the original Game Boy.

General

 * 1) The biggest problem is the fact that there are too many cutscenes that tend to drag on, and to make matters worse, all of them are unskippable.
 * 2) The opening hours are very slow paced and have too many forced tutorials.
 * 3) Frame rate issues are more severe than in previous games and are now even encountered in the overworld sometimes. In double battles, you are nearly guaranteed to encounter frame rate issues now.
 * 4) * Triple and Rotation battles were removed because of this.
 * 5) These games mark the first time when the National Pokédex is unavailable in game since its introduction in Generation III, and only those in the Alola Pokédex have entries, meaning that more than half of all pokémon don't even have Pokédex entries anymore. In fact, some legendary pokémon obtainable in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon don't even have Pokédex entries which doesn't make sense as the Pokédex is supposed to catalog information on caught Pokémon.
 * 6) * On the other hand, this makes obtaining the Shiny Charm easier because you only need to obtain the pokémon found in-game.
 * 7) *For the Oval Charm, you now have to defeat in-game programmer Morimoto to get it.
 * 8) * The National Pokédex was moved to Pokébank as part of the Sun/Moon compatibility update to compensate instead.
 * 9) This Generation also marks the first time where you have to beat the game in order for all outsider pokémon (this also includes the pokémon that you spent your time breeding and transferred from your older games) to fully obey you regardless of their level.
 * 10) Festival Plaza (the way to communicate online in these games) is an underwhelming replacement to the far better PSS.
 * 11) The Rotom Pokédex can be annoying, especially in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
 * 12) The Island Trials, while fresh, innovative and fun, can get rather boring and monotonous at times, since a lot of them are either just the player walking down linear hallways to do some battles, straight up fetch quests that punish the player with an excessive amount of handholding (which gets tedious very fast), easy quizzes, or just a series of cutscenes and dialogue moments, which results in the trials to Zig Zag in quality in a lot of places, and makes them very inconsistent at times.
 * 13) *This is also adding to the fact that they were added in very late into the games development since Gyms were originally supposed to be in these games, but due to hardware limitations, the gyms were cut and had to be replaced with Island Trials, and since the game was near to it's release during the development, they were quickly added with not enough time to make them as big as they would be, and since the team wasn't given help to expand these trials, it results in the trials feeling rushed and a bit unfinished at times.
 * 14) The Alolan forms were only implemented onto the Gen I Pokemon and sadly not on the others from later gens, this is rather disappointing for fans who are more attached to said gens, as this was likely done as a result of Game Freak's recent trend of overusing Kanto in their later games just for nostalgia purposes and nothing else.
 * 15) The characters aren't very interesting and are rather forgettable at best, mostly characters like Sophocles, Mina, Mallow, Kiawe and Lana who don't really serve much purpose to the story and are just there for the new Island Trial feature in these games, which comes off as rather wasted potential.
 * 16) The lack of Gyms, while very fresh and a nice change of pace from previous installments, can negatively turn off some people who are used to it in the previous gens and are fully attached to them like most fans of the series out there, which can make the game be seen as less fun and more boring by most fans, and considering how flawed the Island Trials are, this can make fans completely disappointed about the lack of Gyms in these games and adding with the rather short length would make fans turn against these games and dislike them outright.
 * 17) Just like X&Y, the amount of Pokemon introduced in Gen 7 is still very limited, only introducing 88 of them, which while an improvement over the previous games is still very small for a new generation, as there aren't enough Tropical Animal based Pokemon designs introduced such as a Fruit Bat or an Hornbill, and most of them introduced are single staged only with very few of them being two or three staged, and there is also a pretty huge lack of Fire, Ground & Rock Pokemon introduced in these games, which is strange for a tropical region like Alola since there is a lot of Deserted, Rocky and Volcanic areas in the region itself, which is poor representation for Alola as a whole.
 * 18) Lana'i, Molokai and Kahoolawe weren't fully adapted from Hawaii at all and never were given Pokémon versions by the developers at all, which is a shame as while it is reasonable for Kahoolawe since it's owned by the US government for training purposes only, there was no reason to leave out Lana'i and Molokai since they are fully explorable and would be great Island to adapt from in the Alola region itself, and what's rather strange about this is Niihau, which is the forbidden part of Hawaii, as been represented in these games as the forbidden Island of Alola which could mean Kahoolawe would've also been in the game too as an island possibly containing Unova fan service, but sadly, these three islands weren't adapted into the Alola region and instead were left out which could be seen as wasted potential. This might've been done due to hardware limitations and budget constraints since the 3DS is pretty underpowered as a whole, but still.
 * 19) *However, this isn't too much of a big deal since Alola itself is already a good region on it's own, and is mostly well made for the most part with beautiful scenery, great Pokémon, a large amount of towns and people, lots of environments that fit the region's inspiration and the peaceful community in the region that is so kind and sweet that it's hard not to say any bad thing about the region, and the region itself does feel fine without them but the lack of islands based on the 3 missing Hawaii islands does tend to make Alola come off as unfaithful to Hawaii and it's history to some people who acknowledge those three islands and know what the entirety of Hawaii is down to it's core, especially those who live there or have taken a vacation in the country itself.

Sun and Moon

 * 1) SOS Battles make catching pokémon more annoying due to them being unable to be caught if more than one enemy pokémon is on the field at once, and new pokémon constantly being called in to replace the fainted ones. Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon changed this so that you need to use an Adrenaline Orb for wild pokémon to call for help more than once.

Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon

 * 1) New forms for Pokémon and entirely new Pokémon were introduced in these games which make players of Sun and Moon unable to play with players of the newer games if they use the new forms and new Pokémon, forcing players to buy the new games in order to compete in matches. Also, the newly introduced Pokémon cannot be traded into the old games.
 * 2) Ultra Necrozma's battle is infamous for being a big difficulty spike.
 * 3) The different plot in these games compared to the original Sun and Moon are contentious, namely the fact that Lusamine is less villainous.

Tips

 * 1) Toxic is highly effective against Totem Pokémon, even though they're boss fights they're technically Wild Pokémon so they can't use healing items, meaning they have no means to get rid of the poison and will die after a few turns. Protect works alongside this tactic to stall out while waiting for the Totem to run out of HP.
 * 2) * This strategy also works very well against Ultra Necrozma, who is a major difficulty spike.
 * 3) * Salazzle can poison the Totem Togedemaru despite being Steel type due to its ability Corrosion which allows it to poison every pokemon even steel and poison types.
 * 4) It is recommended to save after long cutscenes so that if you have to reload your file you won't have to watch that cutscene again.
 * 5) In order to defeat Ultra Necrozma, make sure to use a Zoroark, which has the Illusion ability, with any Poison or Fighting type Pokémon in the last slot of your party, which can force Ultra Necrozma to use Photon Geyser, which does not affect Zoroark as it is a Dark-type Pokémon.
 * 6) * Alternatively, a Rattata holding a Focus Sash with the moves Endeavor and Quick Attack will also defeat Ultra Necrozma easily. A Focus Sash can be obtained from a dancer in Poni Wilds after defeating her, and Rattata learns Endeavor at level 34.

Reception
Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon were very well received for the multiple innovations and new ideas introduced to the series that gave them a different feel from other Generation of Pokémon games. Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon on the other hand, while still positively received, were criticized for being too similar to the first Sun and Moon pair.

Sun and Moon
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Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon
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