Pokemon Sun Hau'oli Outskirts: Whisper of the Machine

Now that the festival is over, we can go back to your regularly scheduled time of day.

Yes, she says this at night, too. It's not technically wrong...

Someone else at the door again, it sounds.

Probably not the best idea to let him stay in the habit of that. That's what leads to us ignoring the sounds of people entering the house without us present at the door.

With that said, however, it seems it's not Kukui: We make it to the door without being interrupted.

Pokemon Alola Bonus: Hau (Festival)

So then, let's take a quick foray into seeing how Ailey and Noah handled their respective Hau fights. I appear to have skipped Ray- rather annoyingly- but he wouldn't be too different anyway.

Pokemon Sun Festival: Preparing For Adventure

Right after returning home, we get a timeskip to "the next day". Secretly, what they're doing here is locking the time in place.

In both Sun and Moon, the Festival sequence is artificially locked during sunset hours, regardless of the time on the real time clock. RPGs that don't actually care about the time can do this for free, but it just so happens Alola is also the games making the most use of the real time clock...

Right, so now that it's sunset, what the hell are we doing in the festival?

Pokemon Ultra Moon Introduction: Litten a Fire

So, while some parts of the Ultra games can be shown in tandem with the main file, other parts must be demonstrated separately. And thus, we're going to spend at least some of the time looking at things from a pair of eyes other than Bethany's. We'll also be able to see some of Moon's changes, although I will be making it clear when we're discussing the differences between versions and the differences between vanilla and Ultra. Under the hood, of course, everything is more or less as it is in Sun and Moon.

Alola, Everyone, And Welcome To The World of Pokemon!

Ah, Pokemon. A franchise that has ballooned so massively that it's caught up in its wake and chasing bigger and bigger investments while utterly refusing to form a coherent plan for how to maintain such a large consumer base. For reference sake, while Pokemon is a primarily-Nintendo company and we don't actually know how big it is, we're talking a franchise with buying power on par with Star Wars here. While this is a property known for pursuing the hearts and minds of the youngest video gaming demographic, there has been a passionate core somewhere in the team that bursts out every other attempt. And besides, shouldn't we understand the content aimed at children best?

The four Pokemon games set in the Alola region, Pokemon Sun & Moon (2016) and their improved versions Pokemon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon (2017), form what is known in the Pokemon community as "Gen VII" of Pokemon games. For simplicity's sake, I will say that a "generation" of Pokemon games begins with the pair of games set in a new region with new Pokemon hitherto unusable in prior games, and they also feature the biggest set of mechanical overhauls between game releases. Gen VII was released as a special 20th anniversary celebration of the Pokemon IP, which kinda says a lot about what the Ultra pair of games released the next year might have been. In the long term, these games have taken on a reputation of being slow, bogged down with cutscenes, and with "story issues". As part of this analysis, I will be looking at both the original pair and the Ultra pair, and talking about where the two diverge to explain what's in the story- and what we can see emerge about how the product was presented as a result.

As suggested by the image at the header of the page, the primary playthrough will be in Pokemon Sun. Pokemon Moon is functionally identical, but with some different available Pokemon, a different time mechanic, and some other minor tweaks here and there- this is a tradition of the Pokemon series that you just kinda learn to live with at this point, rather than like. Unless I am specifically going into version differences, we'll be focusing mainly on Pokemon Sun. I will also be playing with a relatively benign gimmick: I will only be using the new Pokemon available to the Alola region. This is a condition I like to impose on myself when playing new Pokemon games, and I think it's a fitting one for this playthrough's purposes. The other versions will also be happy to show us a few things old favourites can do- and some of the new tools they've gotten- where I think they are relevant.