These set pieces also work to introduce new Pokémon forms in a way that feels organic and exciting. I will concede that the new place to discover and wacky method of getting there do make the games feel grander - and stranger - than the initial Alolan adventures, helping to set up a nice, big finale appropriate for the story Ultra Sun and Moon tell. A new area accessible on the other side of these wormholes also feels lacking, mostly serving the purpose of giving the big climactic boss battle an appropriate stage. It’s kind of exciting to leap through wormholes populated by random legendary Pokémon, but they’re otherwise barren. Game Freak/The Pokémon CompanyĪs for those parallel universes: They may have been oversold by the games’ marketing. A new form of legendary Pokémon Solgaleo, exclusive to the Ultra upgrades. It’s a satisfying change from the original telling of this story, where things stopped short before we got to see Lillie really bloom. The latter part of Ultra Sun and Moon allows us to see Lillie truly come into her own, staying by the player as they learn more about, and venture into, Alola’s bizarre connection with parallel universes.
#Pokemon ultra sun and moon gameplay upgrade
Lillie’s coming-of-age story remains the strongest part of the games, and this year’s upgrade refines it.
Bopping around Alola to complete challenges is just one part of the storyline the real star is Lillie, a shy, aspiring Pokémon trainer who ropes the player into some serious and supernatural business. Sun and Moon told the most linear and original narrative to date in the Pokémon series, and Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon refine it. One major difference with this mission-based part of the games is the island trials feel even more like padding compared to the bigger story. These have some slight tweaks, but for the most part, the trials and their bosses are the same. And much like Sun and Moon, both games feature a quartet of islands where trainers must prove their Pokémon mastery through a gauntlet of special trials. Much like Sun and Moon, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon take players to the tropical Alola region. The changes are good, but the good stuff hasn’t changed In other words: The games are neither terribly exciting, nor essential for anyone who played their predecessors all the way through. While they’re perfectly serviceable both as the newest Pokémon RPGs and as superior versions of last year’s Sun and Moon, they’re also. Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are the latest games to fill that role. This is often hammered home with the the ritual “third version” release, which serves as every Pokémon generation’s definitive, upgraded edition, often tweaking things in a few key ways while leaving everything else again untouched. But at the end of the day, the stories and gameplay are virtually identical. There are numerous defenses for this practice, and they’ve evolved only slightly since Pokémon Red and Green launched in 1996: Each version of a Pokémon game has exclusive monsters, a few unique characters and some subtle aesthetic differences. Pokémon has long gotten away with something inconceivable with other franchises: encouraging fans to pick up multiple versions of what is, on a fundamental level, the same exact game.