Let me get this out of the way: I am not going to be explaining why the altered story of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon is a horrendous blemish on the originals because frankly everybody already knows why. This behemoth of a paper is already getting ludicrously long and I don’t need to spend even more time serving as the 500th explanation as to how Lillie was neutered, how the climax and ending were bungled up beyond repair, the lack of attention to detail in trying to make Lusamine more sympathetic, so on and so forth. Instead, I am going to be discussing a certain recent justification that I have heard floated around more and more, something to the effect of:
“The story downgrades don’t matter for the gameplay was improved”
Alright... Listen. I don’t wanna be that guy. I don’t wanna be the fat, sweaty loser who’s like “Your opinion is wrong” because every single person has their own priorities as to what is important to them when playing this series, videogames as a whole really. And in normal circumstances, I would be inclined to agree with this statement. First and foremost, I come to Pokemon for exciting battles, memorable creatures to catch and train and a vibrant, fun world to facilitate all that and other activities, I am not expecting nor will I ever expect Casablanca-tier plots. But with all that said, this rationale infuriates me. This statement, in my eyes, is built off the idea that story and gameplay in videogames are mutually separate things which have no bearing on one another, and maybe if we were still in the 80s where videogames weren’t really seen as capable of telling complex stories it would be true to some extent. But Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are just a little under 3 years old, released in a time where stories in games are held in higher regard than ever before, where they are seen not just as an excuse for the gameplay loop to get off the ground but as a complement to it, good stories enhancing fun gameplay and vice versa. With the catastrophic damage done to the storytelling in these titles, even USUM’s totally unaltered battles with only a vague connection to the plot feel just a bit more hollow, with that sensation varying across the game. Take the Mt. Lanakila duel with Gladion; in both games it’s more or less the same minus USUM giving him Zoroark over Weavile, but it’s far more impactful as a send-off to the character in the originals since you just got done with the out-of-control Mother Beast, finally liberating the family from her declining mental state rather than in USUM where you fought some unrelated light monster and an entire trial beforehand. Looking at other games, RSE and ORAS’ final Wally battles aren’t really all that different team-wise minus the latter incarnation having Mega Gallade over Gardevoir, but the ORAS battle is universally recognized to be the superior rendition and by extension more fun due to the much greater emphasis placed on Wally’s arc in the touched-up plot of those games.
Everything I just said would still apply even if USUM had the most perfect, most majorly improved, most well-balanced and magnificent boss fights in the series. But once again we don’t live in that hypothetical fantasyland. In fact, here comes my potential big hot take of this essay: With a handful of exceptions, I think that on the whole USUM’s boss design took a huge dip in quality from the originals. But before I elaborate on that, I want to first be fair and list some of the examples of...
- Boss Fights That Got Better
- Gladion #1 uses Illusion fake-out strats with Zorua and Zubat.
- The Grand Trial Olivia battle has Anorith and Lileep over Nosepass and Boldore. Gives her more types than just pure Rock including a nice safeguard against Water Pokemon.
- Guzma #2 at Po Town has 3 Pokemon instead of 2.
And that’s it! Now to riff on the...
- Boss Fights That Got Worse
- In his Grand Trial, Hala has Machop over Mankey. This is the first of many, MANY arbitrary Pokemon replacements purely to show off the new and shiny Pokedex expansions... Except Machop was already in the original SM dex, so they made this change just for the hell of it. Either way, Mankey was a way more unique pick that gave Hala his own flavor than Machop yet again. There’s so many of these changes that I’d look even more insane than I already do if I broke down why each and every one of them suck, so I’m just gonna do what IMO are the other two worst offenders, starting with...
- Guzma has Ariados replaced with Vikavolt. This is emblematic of another dumb category of changes I like to call “muh difficulty” changes. Sure, Vikavolt is a much stronger opponent that even gets him some more Alola representation, but I actually think Ariados is a much more fitting pick for Guzma, fits in better with the whole cast-aside trashy underdog theme and gave an infrequently seen Pokemon some time to shine. To me, harder absolutely does not equal better, and there are some much bigger examples of this coming right up. But first...
- Lusamine has Mismagius replaced with Lopunny. Not Mega Lopunny, mind you, base form Lopunny. If I have to explain to you why this is a tremendous downgrade you either know nothing about Pokemon or are just incredibly horny.
- Now let’s get on to some of the new Trial fights, starting with Totem Araquanid! As you might imagine, I prefer Totem Wishiwashi for several reasons. For starters, the build-up to this fight was way cooler, fighting all the little Wishiwashis before confronting the fused form in an epic stormy battlefield as it dramatically leaps out of the water... Good stuff! Yeah, sure, technically Totem Araquanid has the same intro, but it just ain’t the same and feels really lazy, especially considering it still shows Solo form Wishiwashi leaping out when it appears. Also while I’m normally not the guy who complaints about underleveled boss fight Pokemon (eg Ghetsis’ Hydreigon), I think the fact that Totem Wishiwashi was the minimum level to be in its School form was a nice touch, whereas Totom Araquanid is 2 levels lower than it should be to actually evolve. Again, normally I wouldn’t care that much, but all in all this trial feels like a hasty retooling into an overall lamer boss for the sake of being different rather than having an actual cool idea.
- Something similar applies with Totem Alolan Marowak. Possibly more challenging, but Totem Salazzle was a much more surprising and funny pick for the Totem mon considering the prior cutscene and making Marowak the new one just adds an extra bit of redundancy seeing as one of the mid-trial fights already had you fight Alolan Marowak.
- Yet again something similar applies with Totem Togedemaru. Again, more challenging and well-constructed overall probably, but I’m sorry, Totem Vikavolt’s set-up and just the Pokemon itself is way, WAY cooler, even despite using physical moves it has an omniboost to make up for it somewhat.
- And finally there’s the new Totem Ribombee and it’s OK I guess? It’s actually a pretty neat little fight, but like with many, many other things it comes with a caveat, that being it replacing Totem Kommo-o as the final Totem battle. Look, I have nothing against Ribombee, it’s a cute lil bug who I’m using in my current Sun playthrough, but man facing off against the 600 BST warrior dragon in the hauntingly silent innermost reaches of Vast Poni Canyon was a way more badass send-off to the Island Trial than a souped-up early route bug. Doesn’t help that the trial preceding it was tedious and unfitting as hell with a very “slapped-together” feeling.
- Now all of that is bad enough, but even if all of those things didn't exist, the next 3 boss fights are the worst downgrades by far and drop down these games’ boss design several pegs on their own, all the other stuff notwithstanding. Get ready for the Wretched Replacements, in progressing order from very bad to “oh god why”:
- Hala being replaced with Molayne at the Elite Four: Again, nothing against Molayne, but out of all the possible Alolan Elite Four contenders he’s at the very bottom rung. Hala was an awesome and kinda poetic pick, of course a sumo wrestler who was your first Grand Trial opponent would make sense to be part of the final challenge to test how far you’re come since then! Meanwhile Molayne, while a PC technician, doesn’t also mean he’s a good battler, and as such he seems like he’d be way more busy than Hala. This is the epitome of an arbitrary change with no real point other than to force a difference even if the ultimate result is way more lame. But this is just a warm-up compared to the next two...
- Hau replacing Kukui as Champion: Yet again, I have absolutely nothing against Hau, he’s a fun character who gets a bit too much hate for being the typical friendly rival scapegoat. And I’ll give him this: compared to other mid-gen Champion changes it’s nowhere near as bad. It’s not as poorly justified and random as Wallace replacing Steven and it’s not as borderline sacriligious as Trace replacing Blue. That said, a downgrade is still a downgrade, and this one has several reasons behind it. For starters if you ask me I’d say Kukui has the much better team with monsters like Magnezone, Snorlax, the starter strong against yours and even a Lycanroc lead that sets up Stealth Rock, whereas a lot of Hau’s choices are kind of middling, including having one less move on his starter compared to Kukui. In addition, and I’m sorry for this funny malasada boy, but you just aren’t Champion material. Aside from the fact Kukui canonically fucks, he also was the one who went through all the effort of building up a Pokemon League to rival Kanto’s , the most active and lovable professor character by far that the franchise had ever seen up to this stage, including having a pre-existing battle career as the Masked Royale, with all that in mind of course he’d be the one of the best picks to test Alola’s first Champion to see if they could hold the title properly. At the same time though he was also a really cool surprise, especiallhy since again up until this point we were used to professors just sitting in their labs, studying Pokemon and rarely doing much beyond that. Finally, there’s the music, more specifically Hau’s souped-up rendition of his battle theme. Aside from being IMO an inferior composition it also completely misses the point of what made Battle at the Summit so special: Seeing as you were the one to take the throne and defend your title against Kukui, it was YOUR theme, so mixing in the song of this other guy who really isn’t that much more significant than Kukui or Lillie wasn’t a good call. But even all of THAT is nothing compared to by far the biggest boss downgrade in the entire game...
- Ultra Necrozma replacing Mother Beast Lusamine: Yup, I’m not kidding, nor is that a typo. Because as much as people love to jerk off this excuse of a boss fight for its difficulty, its entirely artificial, horrendously balanced difficulty, that is the only, and I mean the ONLY thing it has over Mother Beast as a conclusion to the legendary plot. In every other aspect, it is a pathetic, downright insulting nosedive in quality. Nothing needs to be said about the story aspect and build-up about it, some dumbass light monster that hijacks the plot right at the climax will never be able to trump the backdrop of the progressing decline and damage Lusamine has caused, cumulating in her becoming an unsightly monstrosity and rejecting everything she has worked to protect out of insanity, nor is Necrozma just fucking off to Victory Road to be caught with a basic-ass Pokeball a more satisfying conclusion than Lusamine being freed and Lillie heading off to Kanto to get her cured. As for the fight itself, while Mother Beast’s battle has some flaws like static Pokemon selection compared to fight #1 including a conspicuous lack of Nihilego, Ultra Necrozma projectile shits all over what Gen 7 tried to do with its Totem fights using actual strategies by going full garbage ROM Hack mode and facing the player with a 10+ level higher Legendary from the last boss with +1 to all stats and all its moves just being offensive and nothing more. The difficulty is not created via skillful use of items, a well-balanced team, helpful allies or any kind of unique strategy, it’s literally just “hurr durr big difficulty spike scary strong monster that kills butt with big moves!!!”, a cheap shot and nothing more. All of this is not good design, nor is bottlenecking players into a select few Pokemon like Zoroark just to survive the onslaught and in that particular Pokemon’s case to game the AI. In case I haven’t made it crystal clear by now: HARDER. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. BETTER. If people are legitimately so desperate for a “truly difficult” fight (which imo this series has already produced on multiple occasions, including in Gen 7 itself, without having to resort to such absurd lengths), then WHY ARE YOU PLAYING POKEMON?!
Deep breathing, deep breathing... Ok, so assuming you haven’t already checked out by this point you’re probably wondering when this massive block of text is going to end. Well that end is coming pretty soon, but it seems like there are three more sections to go, right? Well, not exactly. For all intents and purposes, consider the upcoming Ultra Recon Squad portion “optional”, as in it’s just a break for me to rant and “The Releases Stuck In Time” is where the final sliver of actual critique kicks off. Either way you resume reading, let’s get going once more starting with...
