Pokémon Sun and Moon were released worldwide on 18th November 2016 everywhere except in Europe where they were released on 23rd. The commercial above went back to showing actual human children playing the games and exploring the world around them, promoting the gift of friendship and togetherness that inspired the series in the 90s.
Sun and Moon brought a ton of unique features including:
- The Rotom Pokédex
- A QR Scanner used to receive event Pokémon and spawn Pokémon not accessible in the main game
- New forms for existing Pokémon as well as Regional forms
- The new gimmick: Z-Moves
- The Island challenge replaced standard Gym battles
- Riding Pokémon to replace HMs
- Hyper Training to max out EVs on Lv 100 Pokémon
- Festival Plaza
- Poké Pelago
- 81 new Pokémon to bring the total to 802
There was a lot going on. Unfortunately, for me, I lost interest after a few weeks thanks to an obscene number of cut scenes. It felt like you couldn’t walk to the other end of a route without someone stopping you for 5 minutes. And the storyline wasn’t compelling enough to warrant all the stoppages so it left me despondent and I’ve yet to complete Sun or Moon.
And then Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon came along, with an alternate storyline and the return of Team Rocket (now called Rainbow Team Rocket). My interest was piqued but the earlier problems still remained. Eventually, I beat the game last Christmas, 4 years after its release. The above commercial was a story trailer meaning the kids were gone and gameplay was front and centre again. At least this showed the new inclusions and storyline changes.
(Header photo: “Ryu” by Nathan Rupert is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
