So I finally finished Pokémon Moon and I am glad that I played it as it allowed me to take another look at gen 7 long after the launch period.
It's no secret that I really dislike Gen 6, I was very vocal about how I found it to be disappointing as I was expecting so much after being blown away by gen 4 and 5 but alas my expectation was unmet and it felt like that the series regressed hard while resorting to gen 1 pandering.
When I first played Pokémon Sun I remember loving it and praised it highly over gen 6 but in the month before playing Pokémon Moon, I couldn't help but think if I was praising it so much was because I wanted it to be better than gen 6 and would take any food scrapping especially when I knew that Pokémon Sun was not perfect game and did fall short off gen 4 and 5.
But when I played Pokémon my fear was unfounded as gen 7 is a major improvement over the bland gen 6, like for starter trainers not only have 3D models but do animation at the start of the battle, which I felt is the natural progression from animated trainer sprites that Black and White 2 introduced rather than the stock static image that gen 6 used.
But the progression goes on a deeper level as little touches like a trainer standing in the field throwing a Pokéball felt so much lively than what Gen 6 did which was having them stand still, which was fine when the series was in the 2D era but not acceptable in move to 3D.
Alola was also a much more interesting region to explore and did not feel like a paint by number region, furthermore the region had something that Kalos did not have and that was scale so when I was climbing up a mountain it felt like that I was going up so it was clear that Game Freak had mastered 3D environment.
However Kalos has one advantage over Alola and that it felt like a bigger region whereas Alola felt small and compressed with areas being isolated in its own bubble rather than being part of an inter-connective region.
As I did not enjoy Island Trial in Pokémon Sun I was worried that it would affect my playthrough in Pokémon Moon and while I still don't care for them because they are so far spread out and for the most part short it was bearable to some degree but I much rather prefer doing gym challenges.
Another flaw of Sun and Moon is that the level curve is pretty bad towards the end with levels jumping in places and grinding for the Elite 4 was more frustrating than grinding in gen 2 due to Game Freak reusing the gen 5 experience formula but forgetting what made it work in gen 5, which was Audino in shaking grass. It was also annoying that Alola feels like that it has the lowest count of trainers and that even in late game they will carry two Pokémon so it felt like I saw less of my Pokémon thus making it harder for me to bond with them.
But the biggest problem is the heavy handedness of hand holding and how brain dead easy the game is at time as mentioned before trainers only carrying two Pokémon, the region dungeon is also streamline to prevent players from getting lost which I found ironic as they made a big deal of introducing Pokéride but did nothing with them. Now I get that Game Freak want to make the game easy for kids but that doesn't mean that they can't bring back challenge mode to offer veteran players a challenging game play rather than force everyone to play easy mode as it got annoying when Hau getting giving me Revives like candy when I didn't need them and I if I wanted them I would buy them myself.
But I will give credit where it's due and will say that the Alolan Pokémon league is more challenging than whatever Kalos offered and with a better champion to boot who AI really surprised me by how smart it was.
And too Game Freak credit they didn't straight up give the player a free strong Pokémon, Zygarde, they had to put in the work and collect the cells/core and wait till they reach the location to rebuild it much better to how the Hoenn remake did it with Latias/Latios, though Zygarde still feels like he was shoehorned into the game as I forgot that he was even in the game till I reached the location to rebuild him, I opted not to collect the cells and core as I was not interested.
So in summary, I really enjoyed my time with Pokémon Moon and while it isn't perfect it's a major improvement than Gen 6 and I look forward to see what "Pokémon Star" will offer and whether will it push Gen 7 into the same level as gen 4 and 5 as I believe that it has potential.
"pokemon aren't for collecting" anti-objectification speech might be the dumbest dialogue in any jrpg.
This is a game where I was encouraged to add gods and other dimension creatures to my collection.
A game where you're encouraged to trade away or breed away your "friends" just for stats.
it would be like playing Doom 2016 and being told "guns are bad"
Contex matters, Lusamine was collecting and freezing Pokémon that she judged to be beautiful rather than befriending them.
Plus in Sun and Moon any Pokémon that are in the PC end up going to Poké Pelago where they are free to relax.
As for trading well the series push hard that trading Pokémon is a way of making friends as trainers help one another and stresses how trading Pokémon is like trading memories as you will have memories of that Pokémon.
