Sun & Moon: The Review Panel: Part 1
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Art by Tikitik.
Introduction
To celebrate the fact that Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon are now over a month old, we've asked some of our panelists to review the games. We'll be covering everything from Ultra Beasts to Team Skull.
This is the first of our three-part series that we will release over the next few days; today we'll be looking at the plot, region, and characters. Let's welcome DHR-107, Lumari, and Pikachu315111.
| DHR-107 | Lumari | Pikachu315111 |
| Click on the images to read their thoughts! | ||
The Plot
Did it deserve all the praise? Which parts were the most confronting?
DHR-107
I believe it did. The plot was surprisingly in depth and mostly about family ties this time around. You start off in the usual sort of manner, but then you get involved with both Lillie and Hau, who have problems with their respective families. Hau's father left him alone with his grandfather (a great Kahuna), and Lillie's family is in complete disarray as you work your way through the story. Most of the loose ends get tied up nicely, but overall I had the impression that this is Lillie's story, as opposed to the player's. You aid her while she sorts out her rather bizarre life up until that point, and you see a huge change in her character.
I'm not sure if there were any confronting aspects to the story for me, but I can understand the pressure both Lillie and Gladion must have been under. As the game is based in Hawaii, I am reminded of the quote from Lilo & Stitch. "Ohana means Family". Sun and Moon definitely push into that feeling. As we move through the game, Lillie overcomes her timidness and stands up to her rather controlling mother, Lusamine.
The fact that there is a plot at all is a huge upgrade over previous iterations. Only in Black and White and their sequels did I get a similar feeling from being interested and invested in the story. As others have said, it wasn't the simple "Player saves the World" shtick that nearly all the other games have used. This is a hugely refreshing change.
The Region
Was Alola big enough despite only having four islands? Was island travel easy enough or was the original formula better?
DHR-107
I'm a bit split on this. Alola is a huge region, but it also feels very cramped at the same time. Many of the longer routes are very narrow and there isn't all that much to explore. There are cool little nooks and crannies in which to explore, but not enough of them to be honest. The first three islands feel bigger than they are, but you do traverse the majority of the routes and areas as your progress through the game. I love the fact you loop around the islands a few times; the flow of the world is exceptional, especially on Island 2. You move up north through Brooklet Hill, before looping back down past the Battle Royal dome, heading north again to the Wela Volcano and then around again to Lush Jungle before coming back down once more to the Ranch and the main City.
The game seamlessly moves through the story, taking the player from place to place. There do not seem to be any jarring leaps like with Wally in ORAS, teleporting you halfway across the map in a forced cutscene. The game does a good job of explaining why you are where you are and what you have to do next. However, the roadblocks are minorly annoying, but in this game they have a wonderful backstory all to themselves. Instead of random people standing in the way (I am looking at the Gen 5 Dancers here), the roadblocks are to aid Island Challengers find the right directions to head in. If you are a trainer of skill, you're allowed through no questions asked.
The Characters
Which were the best and which were the most annoying? Any letdowns?
DHR-107
I really enjoyed all of the main cast with few exceptions. Kukui and Lillie, however, stand out for me. For once we got a Professor who is incredibly invested in you and your friends as new Island Challengers and has the creation and drive to make an Elite Four. He researches moves in HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT with Pokémon. He pops up all over the place, guiding and helping the player know where to go and talking to them about the history of Alola. He even has a crowning moment of awesome when he smacks down Guzma, who called him a failed Trial Captain. There seems to still be some needling there between the two of them... an interesting backstory if there ever was to be one. Kukui also pops up again at the end of the game, showing you he really knows what's up as the temporary Alola Champion. He even throws down Stealth Rock at the start of the match!
Lillie has a more permanent role in the story. Always popping up all over the place, but as I said before, I feel like this is her story. We help her blossom into the person who isn't scared of what her mother thinks and is brave enough to travel to a place a long way away in order to become as strong as the player. She obviously cares deeply about Pokémon and although she doesn't like to see them battling, she will always cheer when a match has to happen! It was refreshing to get a character who had a huge amount of development throughout the story.
So many other named characters pop up this time, and they all have good moments. Guzma has some incredible backstory that I would love to know more about. How did he end up tied up with Lusamine? How did he flunk out of being a Trial Captain? Guzma could have his own game with the number of questions there are about him. He's also probably the only NPC to ever question the player's motives in chasing down the "Big Bad", with his now meme-level "Y'all are stupid!". I could honestly go on and name the a majority of the cast, so many are memorable.
None of the characters were particularly annoying, but I was let down a little by Hau and Gladion. Hau comes across as a very excitable kid, but he tends to pick on Lillie for no reason and he seems too excited almost all the time. He is under a lot of pressure from Hala to become a great Kahuna like him, but I am not so sure if Hau wants that job like his father. Gladion develops well throughout the story, eventually coming to see the player as someone who he can rely on to help in times of crisis. He does end up being fairly important in his own right, but his introduction is kinda lazy in my opinion.
The Plot
Did it deserve all the praise? Which parts were the most confronting?
Pikachu315111
Pokémon has always been light on plot, often said to be an "excuse plot" to add onto the playtime. We saw our first glimpse of a full-scale plot in Generation V with Black & White and their sequels, Black 2 & White 2. Game Freak showed everyone they were capable of making a large and even thought-provoking plot, which is why everyone was disappointed with X & Y, which returned to having little plot (though Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire tried to expand their plot with mixed success, but still nothing on the scale of Generation V). So where does Sun & Moon's plot land on the spectrum? Warning, spoilers ahead.
For those looking for a plot as engrossing as Generation V's, you're in for a treat! In my opinion Sun & Moon's plot is one of the best in the series, rivaling Generation V's, and deserves all the praise it's been getting. The game first starts out with Professor Kukui Skyping with your character (where you select gender and skin color), neat but nothing really new. But then we're shown a cutscene of Lillie escaping the Aether Paradise, Cosmog in her bag and Aether Foundation members chasing after her. Already the game has started out much differently than previous generations sans Generation V. The game then properly starts with your character and mother arriving to Alola and, after helping Lillie save Cosmog and encountering Melemele Island's guardian, Tapu Koko, you're given a starter and sent out to do the Island Challenge. You explore the Alola region's four islands, on a rite of passage of completing the trials set up by the island's various Captains and defeating each island's Kahuna as the Grand Trial of each island. However, things get complicated as you encounter Team Skull, a group of street thugs who at first were causing minor problems but are later discovered to be working with the Aether Foundation. The Aether Foundation at first presents itself as a good organization, setting up an artificial island in Alola called the Aether Paradise to help Pokémon there. They seem to have been working against Team Skull, but it's revealed they were working together all along to achieve the goal of the Aether Foundation's president, Lusamine. On the first visit to Aether Paradise, Lusamine acts kind and says she only wants to help Pokémon. However, when the truth is revealed Lusamine is shown to be insane, wanting to release powerful and dangerous creatures from another dimension, Ultra Beasts, as she considers them beautiful and in need of her protection. The plot reaches its climax as you end up following Lusamine and Team Skull's leader, Guzma, into the Ultra Beast's home dimension, Ultra Space, where Lusamine fuses with an Ultra Beast. After defeating her and bringing everyone back from Ultra Space you then find Kukui's dream of building a Pokémon League has finished. You battle the newly formed Alolan Elite Four and secure your position as Alola's first ever Champion.
If you couldn't tell from how thick the above plot synopsis is, the game is packed with plot. And I only gave the bare bones of the plot; there are tons of things important to the plot I left out, including interaction with characters for the Island Challenge, Team Skull, and Aether Foundation. And while the Island Challenge and the Team Skull / Aether Foundation plots are separate, they are woven together so that it doesn't feel like one is interrupting the other, at least not in a way that would break your immersion. And on top of that there's subtle pieces and side plots to be discovered that either enhance the main plot or add life to the Alola region. The plot is well written with plenty of moments of drama, comedy, and endearment that are nicely balanced and never feel out of place.
But the plot isn't just about island and dimension hopping; Alola has a strong theme of family, both the good and bad parts. The confronting parts of Sun & Moon's plot come from the stark theme of child abuse. Team Skull at first is a bunch of goofy thugs who are causing minor problems, but as you go further in the story you learn some harsh things about them. The majority of Team Skull members are made up of people who failed to complete their Island Challenge or in general felt like failures and society rejects. In their headquarters, a town they took over called Po Town, you see how many of them live and it's depressing to see how so many young people have fallen to living like this. Team Skull's leader, Guzma, had an abusive childhood with his father physically beating him, which might have given Guzma his cruel attitude that has prevented him from achieving some of his dreams. On the other end of the spectrum, Lillie and Gladion had gone through years of mental abuse from their mother, Lusamine, as she began losing her sanity (revealed to be due to poisoning from an Ultra Beast). This would eventually lead to both of them running away to fight against their mother after crossing a line for each of them, Gladion when it was decided to dispose of the Type: Null and Lillie when she learned Cosmog would possibly die when Lusamine uses it to open the Ultra Wormholes. There are even cases of parental abandonment such as with your rival Hau, whose father couldn't take being the son of a Kahuna, so he left to work in a region far away from Alola (thankfully Hau didn't come off worse from this, though one must wonder what he thinks of his father). Finally, this theme is related to Pokémon when facing Lusamine, who points out the probably true fact that when playing through the game the player had replaced Pokémon in their team for others they wanted to use (one must wonder if maybe one reason Poké Pelago exists is to lessen this fact of player hypocrisy). The game may even make you think about your family relations, either how lucky you are or how you may be able to relate with one of the characters. For a series geared toward kids, it's a surprising theme for Pokémon to confront, but it does it well without it being too in your face, with many of the implications being on the surface though never actually shown.
The Region
Was Alola big enough despite only having four islands? Was island travel easy enough or was the original formula better?
Pikachu315111
The Alola region is a beautiful archipelago. And though mainly tropical, it finds spots to include other types of environments such as beaches, cliffs, volcanic, lakes, desert, canyons, and mountain peaks. The beauty also extends to the shift from night and day, every major time of the day giving the region its own look and feeling from the vibrant day with a bright sun, to the calming evening with the setting sun casting an orange filter, to the peaceful nights with a shimmering moon. But was there enough of it?
If you were worried that you'd whisk through the islands, then don't worry, each island is big, and together I feel they create a region as big as previous regions if not bigger. While some areas might look small, that's because during the main game it's compacted with plot and interesting places to visit. In towns and cities you'll spend time going to the various buildings and talking with NPCs, while on wilderness routes and locations your time will be occupied with plenty of trainers and Pokémon to capture. And as I noted above, the environments are varied, giving you something new to look at and explore, making each area feel fresh and not like what you had gone through previously. Even the same type of environment may have a twist to make it different, like one tropical area might be flat while the other has a lot of hills. While it's possible during the main game to complete an island each day, you'd spend that entire day going all over the island; not a lot of space on the island was put to waste. Also how the islands' paths were made is different; some islands will have you generally following one path all around in a circle with little backtracking while another may have hub areas connecting to multiple locations, thus making you backtrack quite a bit. This means you'll never know what to expect when you get to the next island, and even when you start figuring the path out you may still need to take an unexpected twist or turn, so it's not too predictable and keeps you on your toes.
When playing through the main game, traveling through and around the islands feels natural and never hampers your experience. It's only during the post game when you may start feeling that the compaction of the region can make it sometimes a bother to travel around. Previous games' regions were formulaic in how they were set up: between a town or city there's a route or two. Alola isn't like that, there aren't as many cities or towns as in previous games and between them there are more than just routes. If you want to backtrack through Alola you're going to need to know not only where locations are but which Fly spot is actually the best one to get there. Thankfully there are plenty of Fly spots (or gliding spots, as the Poké Ride that replaces Fly is called "Charizard Glide"), so you're not just stuck with the cities and towns as in previous games, but still for some locations even picking the closest spot may have you do a bit of traveling, while in previous games it would have just been a city or route away from the closest spot. Surprisingly the terrain that requires Poké Rides isn't much of a hassle, especially if you link the most used Poké Rides to the D-pad. However, there are still some issues such as Charizard Glide's animation being longer than the previous Flying animation and Tauros Charge isn't quite a good bike replacement (you'll more often than not be running around). It's definitely something that takes getting used to but does give the region a more natural feel and uses all the space the island provides. The original formula makes it easier to get around the region, but I wouldn't say it's better for what needs to be given up for that luxury of ease.
The Characters
Which were the best and which were the most annoying? Any letdowns?
Pikachu315111
While all Pokémon games give you a ton of new characters, due to Alola being separated into four islands it allowed many of the new characters to have their personality built upon while exploring the island they're on. Each island has a set of characters you'll be seeing throughout your travel on that island, from those part of the Island Challenge (Captains and Kahunas) to supporting cast members. And of course there's characters who you see throughout your journey like Hau, Lillie, Professor Kukui, Team Skull, and the Aether Foundation. Some of these characters will be given a closer look in Part Three, so I'm just going to give each one a quick overview and how I felt about them. Warning, spoilers ahead.
Starting with the best, that award definitely has to go to Lillie. The character development that Lillie goes through is equal to that of Silver's and N's, making her one of the most enduring characters in the franchise. While she starts out as a meek character whose first encounter with us is us helping her, we see her story develop as she's trying to find out the mystery with the Ultra Wormholes and Nebby the Cosmog, her importance in the plot of being Lusamine's daughter and having taken Nebby to save it, and then her transformation (complete with a change of clothes) to a determined character who wants to save both Nebby and her mother. Much of the plot actually revolves around Lillie's relationships with Nebby, her mother, and the player.
Other good characters include Professor Kukui, who follows and helps you throughout your journey, which ends with him being the final challenge to be crowned Alola's first Champion. He's both what you expect and not what you expect from a mentor figure; whenever he shows up you aren't quite sure what you're going to be told what to do, but it's all in helping you and having some fun. Hau was also a fun rival, while yet another friendly one; he's not about being better than you but instead wants to have fun on his Island Challenge (and eat every island's flavor of malasada) and hopes the experience will allow him to be strong enough to beat his grandfather Hala, the Kahuna of Melemele Island. And throughout the story he proves to be a capable trainer, ending with him being a Champion challenger match (meaning he has succeeded in defeating Hala). Lusamine has become one of the most memorable "villain team" leaders for her harshness, her final battle, and the story about her insanity and potential recovery. Though during the main game I didn't feel they did that much with Guzma, the postgame I felt not only fleshed him out but even added some closure. Failing to become a Captain due to his foul attitude, he formed Team Skull with the other society rejects and failures to strike back against Alola. He began working with Lusamine because she was the only adult who acknowledged his strength, though he later found out he was being used. After the Ultra Space incident he disbands Team Skull and we learn he was actually a former student of Hala, and Hala still believes that Guzma can be a great trainer if he can let go of his anger and ego. Speaking of Hala, I like pretty much all the Captains and Kahunas. Each had their own personality and proved to be a challenge, whether through their trial or battling them. I wish I could talk about them all in detail but it would make this already long review twice as long.
However, with the good must come the bad, and the most annoying award goes to Rotom Dex. While giving out a funny joke here and there, Rotom Dex is to Pokémon Sun and Moon what Navi is to Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It feels it has to comment on EVERYTHING and while it is easy to ignore, there will be moments where you want to use one of its functions or check the map but it's not done talking yet. This could have easily been fixed by instead giving you a notifier if it has something to say and if you want to hear (or rather read) it you can tap on it. But even then, a lot of the time it was either restating what was said or where you need to go next, sometimes even acting a bit bossy about it (early in the game I remembered it asking if we can stop helping people and just get on with the trials. What a jerk!). I think over time Rotom Dex cooled its attitude, but it's not any noticeable character development.
And while so many characters got the spotlight, I do feel there are a few who only got a limelight for a few instances. First one to come to mind is Gladion, who is overshadowed by his sister, Lillie, as he didn't really go through any character development (though he at least had some funny moments, was the "tough" rival that Hau wasn't, and in the end became president of the Aether Foundation while Lillie finds a way to fully cure their mother). Similarly there's Plumeria, the Team Skull Admin who definitely had a backstory, but we never learn it, just making her a few boss battles. Her devotion to her "little brothers and sisters", intelligence and strategic thinking (like distracting the player to chase after someone's Pokémon while she then captures Lillie and Cosmog), and role as one of the Champion challengers have you wanting to learn more about her. On the flip side we have the other two main Aether Foundation members, Faba and Wicke, who don't really do much. They have stuff to them: Faba provides a few boss battles and there's Wicke's role in the Looker Missions, but they generally don't do anything else outside those roles. Kahili is a bit of a random character; we only are told about her a couple of times and then she appears as a member of the Elite Four, and that's it aside from her one instance outside of it. And finally many of the returning characters don't do much aside from being cameos who you may be able to battle. This is especially a downgrade for Looker coming off the Looker Missions in XY, which really added a lot to his character (not that he doesn't get any here, but it's all last minute development and a dump of exposition). The only returning character that had any significance was Burnet, though it's more because she's Kukui's wife and was a sort of foster mother to Lillie. Colress, Grimsley, and Anabel could be removed/swapped out with a new character and things wouldn't really change. Red and Blue get a pass for being part of the Battle Tree so they weren't going to have a big role to begin with.
The Plot
Did it deserve all the praise? Which parts were the most confronting?
Lumari
As you've probably heard about a thousand times already, Pokémon Sun and Moon in many ways tried to break the standard formula of Pokémon games, and the plot is no exception. The fact _that_ the plot was pulled to the forefront this much was not really anything new, since we saw the same in Black and White; however, where every game since Ruby and Sapphire had the Kid Protagonist Rise Up To Save The World, we have little of that this time. We kind of do, or kind of could have, I guess, but more on that later; but Guzma is not out to control legendary Pokémon or to rule or destroy the world. Lusamine is out to control "legendary" "Pokémon", but she is not interested in the world, just in "catching them all"—and the "world" we have to save is a considerably smaller one. We're helping our friend bring Nebby home, and we're protecting Nebby. And we're helping our friend try and get her mother back. That's all there is to it. The overall direction of the plot is a pretty great one; more than anything, this is a game of friendship, and Nebby evolving into Lunala / Solgaleo to open the door to Lusamine ties everything together pretty brilliantly.
It's in the details where the whole thing starts crumbling down a bit and Sun / Moon starts feeling a bit... simplistic. Black and White already did the "initial villain is not the main villain" thing first, but where those games did make it clear right away that Ghetsis was bad news, N's status remained ambiguous for the longest time—it was clear that his intentions were reasonably honest, but was he too far gone and would you have to take him down to save him from himself, or would he reveal himself to be a good guy in the end after all? (Turns out it was a bit of both!) And who exactly was in control here? Was it indeed Ghetsis like it appears to be, or was N really that deranged that he was the mastermind after all? Compare Sun and Moon—it was a nice touch to turn the creators of a perfect Pokémon sanctuary into the villains, but... let's be honest, after that evil grin Lusamine showed when Nihilego first appeared, was anyone really surprised to hear it was the Aether Foundation who abducted Lillie and that they were in cahoots with Team Skull? It was clear right away that this time we'd be taking on two villainous teams rather than one, but the number was essentially all that was different—unlike in BW, which made us think about what was good and what was evil much more effectively. Yes, I know Lusamine is Lillie's and Gladion's mother; however, until her inexplicable turnaround after her defeat there's really little more to it than "my mother is a villain but she's bad she's still my mother". Overall you just don't feel as many powers at work here, which makes me feel the plot is not as good as it could have been.
One particular thing that had me pretty disappointed in my playthrough was what should have been the highlight of the game, the battle with Lusamine in the Ultra Space. Yes, the encounter with Guzma is positively unnerving, and the encounter with Lusamine is downright surreal, but... it's just one corridor. As someone who likes to gush over the Distortion World at every opportunity that I can get I almost cannot help but weep at the thought of what could have been, of how Guzma could have been chasing a more and more deranged Lusamine further and further down the Ultra Space while the player slowly but surely caught up with them in one of the most bizarre decors we've seen yet... Gah, maybe in the third game.
And then there's the matter of the Ultra Beasts themselves, too. Honestly, when I first saw them revealed, and with how it was stressed that "they are not Pokémon" (if that's the case then why we can register them in our Pokédex is kind of beyond me, but I digress), I half expected us to be getting actual boss fights this time. Not "legendary Pokémon you can catch" fights, but "here is a boss, now defeat it and get rid of it for good". The initial Nihilego encounter is one, I guess... but otherwise the player's encounters with them in the main storyline are limited to that one corridor of Ultra Space, and they just seem to be part of the standard post-game legendary roundup. Boring. I do have to stress that I have not cleared the Ultra Beast roundup yet (I'm at Nihilego now), because that bout of soft resetting is gonna take a loooong time and a lot of my sanity, but let's be honest, for "extra-dimensional beings whose goal is to destroy Pokémon", their involvement in the main storyline is seriously poor. And it really didn't have to be that way—they do attack Alola, we do see the Kahunas taking them on, but apparently the Kahunas managed to fight them off just fine while we were busy watching Lusamine jump into the Ultra Wormhole, and for the rest of the storyline there's honestly not a trace of them remaining. I understand that having to revisit all four islands to fight all of them off would have been overkill, but this is kind of the other extreme—the game pretty much tells us "a lot happened here, and none of it involved you", and that doesn't really sit right with me. Then again, I just said that not having to save the world for once was a really nice change of pace too, so I guess I... don't really know what I would have liked to see here? I just hope that the concept of Ultra Beasts is not too much at odds with the smaller-scale plot for the two of them to fit together properly.
Don't get me wrong, I liked what they tried to do here, and the plot and concept they came up with were really good ones. I just hope this generation the third game won't meet the same fate Z did and that they'll actually go all out there, because I'd hate to see the (enormous) potential that this adventure has go to waste.
The Region
Was Alola big enough despite only having four islands? Was island travel easy enough or was the original formula better?
Lumari
In all fairness, I think we're just fine judging this region like any other one and leaving the whole "island" thing as little more than footnote. All of the islands are pretty big and almost self-contained "regions" in their own right, and there are no issues with island crossing anyways since you get Fly pretty much right away; you barely notice that the sea has chopped the region in four (or five). The Oblivia region from Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs is the closest precedent we have for an island-based region, but there you still had to physically travel between islands (and the sky was worth exploring too!), unlike in Alola. We have, and completely overuse, Fly in every main series game anyways; honestly what even has changed. It actually is kind of a shame that you get Charizard that quickly after reaching Akala, since finding yourself cut off from the first (couple) island(s) for a while could have made things pretty interesting (and enabled some cool new plot elements), but it's not a huge deal I guess. The one (slight) downside to the island formula is that it makes it harder to add new areas for a third game; the space the islands offer is already used pretty much fully as is, expanding their land surface feels dishonest, and adding a fifth island would require the addition of a fifth Tapu, which doesn't really seem to be an option for obvious reasons. Or maybe it is. Surprise me, Game Freak.
Otherwise, I'll just judge this region based on atmosphere and "path", like I always do. And as for the former, I'm glad I picked Moon, if only for the spring night tranquility that your house by night evokes and really reminded me of taking my first steps in Sinnoh, which imho beats every other region out there to pulp when it comes to atmosphere. I really don't have any other metric here than "I enjoyed being there", which between the nature, diverse scenery, and overall laidbackness I definitely did; this was a region where I didn't mind sticking around and that gave me the feeling no one would mind me deciding my own path. "Path" admittedly is a vague way to word things, but I like it when the route you have to take is not apparent from the map right away. Backtracking is good, revisiting places is good, junctions are good, and those things are the main reason why I enjoy Kanto, Johto, and to a lesser degree Sinnoh so much; conversely, one of my biggest gripes with Unova is its race track-like layout. And fortunately, the Alolan islands were anything but a straight line. Calling them an open world goes a bit far, since there is a clear distinct road for you to follow—unlike in Johto or Sinnoh—but at least we have the feeling we're actually searching for something, not just going from point A to point B and that's it. Sadly, in practice this is mostly ruined by the "are you actually serious" levels of ludicrousness the hand holding has reached (through the Rotom Dex's map), but I don't think it's fair to fault the region specifically for an over-the-top gameplay feature.
Alola is a good region, the best we've seen since Sinnoh, but unfortunately the wasted potential is here too. For the third game, please make us take note of the fact that we're on multiple islands through more ways than just the existence of the Kahunas, and if you're afraid of us taking a wrong turn... we're on the scenic route anyways. There are worse things that could happen.
The Characters
Which were the best and which were the most annoying? Any letdowns?
Lumari
Looks like Pokémon is continuing on the merry way it chose come BW and paying much more attention to creating unique and memorable characters. And most of them end up complementing the region pretty well—many of the characters are genuinely friendly and pleasant while all being unique in their own ways, and I know I am not the only one who will end up remembering Mallow, Lana, Acerola, and the others for a while to come. And let's not forget Guzma, the Team Skull boss who stays very true to his underlings' over-the-top "thug lyfe" nature but still is not exactly someone I'd like to run into in a dark alley and manages to strike the balance remarkably well here. Possibly the most human villain since N.
However, there is one dissonant here, and unfortunately the decision to go with a more outgoing Professor did not really end up working out for me. I'm gonna say this as nicely as I possibly can: the Island Challenge should have been a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. And Kukui is far and away the absolute worst companion you could have been given. The Island Challenge should have been you trying to discover your own limits, find your way through the challenge, become the very best like no one ever was, and a good day on the challenge should be one where you go to sleep alive. And instead? We get this annoying uncle (fine, cousin, whatever) who, at every chance he gets, seems to go out of his way to downplay the trials that await you as much as he can. "So this is Akala island, and here's Olivia, the Captain you'll be facing at the end of this island. Isn't she a nice woman? Come on, go do your trials, go have a good time, we'll see you in a bit." No. Way to kill the suspense. If these trials are worth doing at all, I should be walking on my last legs by the time I reach Olivia, if I reach her at all—how else can this journey make me grow as a person? And then, the final hurdle of this journey of self-discovery he tried so hard to turn into a pleasant holiday is... him. Talk about condescending. Apparently it really was easy, huh, apparently it really was all games... No, then compare him to a rather less cheerful dude. "Oh btw, I'm an Island Kahuna, let's have a quick battle before you head off to Aether Paradise; it'll be a rough trip and the experience will come in handy." This man gets it, and if I sound pretty sarcastic at this point, I apologize—Nanu did not borderline erase his trial from the challenge, he gave it a purpose no Kukui would ever have understood.
Fortunately, Kukui is pretty much where my list of poor characters ends. I guess there were some characters with little screentime that I cared little for, but of the main characters, my other least favorite one was not bad, just... kind of purposeless, even prompting a friend of mine to say "they could have left him out of the game entirely, and nothing would have changed, except for you receiving a couple fewer Full Restores and Max Revives". While that's not entirely true, since he does provide some sort of a counterbalance to Gladion's Anguish, Hau indeed ended up amounting to little more than just a nice lad. If he were a Trial Captain or some other character that doesn't end up hanging on to you I honestly think he would have been on par with Mallow and Lana, but instead he ended up being little more than a smiling sidekick. Oh well, at least he was good company. I guess the other traveling companion was given all the character development. I've said it before, this is a game of friendship, and Lillie's character grows as friendship requires it—her goal is to save her friend Nebby, and when Nebby needs it most, she grows stronger... and when she has saved Nebby, Nebby more than repays her by opening up the door to the other person who needed saving. Whom she saved by finally racking up the courage to defy her—not exactly something we would've expected of her the first time we saw her. While she was a little over the top at times (yes Lillie, I know this is your Z mode, I got it the first six times already...), there was no way to really go wrong with a character like this.
And by defying her mother, she follows in the footsteps of her brother, who gives new meaning to the word "tortured". A very large part of Gladion's character development has already taken place before the game even starts, but that's not a bad thing—rather, it makes him a testament of what having a mother like Lusamine can do to someone and helps reinforce her warped character better than most in-game events could have. She is an interesting villain, just extremely self serving rather than megalomanic like numerous ones before her, and getting to know her character more through Lillie and Gladion than through her own in-game actions was a nice touch. Nevertheless, I do feel her in-game character development was left a bit unexplored, since she remained a flat character most of the time, except for her turnaround after her defeat, which honestly left me a bit unsatisfied—her defeat "broke" her, I guess, but she was not fighting to be strong to begin with, and still being in Ultra Space surrounded by dozens of Nihilego she should not have been any freer from Nihilego's influence than before they merged. Her offspring do not follow in her footsteps here, though, with Lillie being Lillie and the game's plot naturally being far from devoid of Gladion character development either, and him slowly warming up to the player and realizing it's not all bad in this world is just another example of how this is a game of friendship. No matter how much Gladion may insist he and the player aren't friends.
Overall, I don't really have a clear-cut favorite character in this game, but honestly I didn't need one, and just like I enjoyed being in Alola, I enjoyed being around these people (when Kukui was off the screen, that is). Lowkey sad that there's little to no role for them in the postgame...
Conclusion
What do you guys think? Do you agree with our panelists? Let us know on Smogon's Facebook page!
Keep your eyes peeled for part two over the next few days!
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