Bethany Plays: 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.

We begin the game in a manner introduced in Pokemon XY: Selecting your language. Since the 3DS is no longer as region-specific as the DS was, this became a slight necessity, and I probably wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise, except there is one thing about this menu worth commenting on.

The game sorta dovetails into implying our language settings are actually a diagetic part of the interface here. What we are looking at is a computer display our protagonist is also looking at! I assume she wasn't fiddling with language settings, though.

Once we have done that, we are sent a video call from the local Professor to the Alola region, Professor Kukui. Every Pokemon game to date has included an opening spiel from the game's Professor, and while this game is partaking in tradition, it is also playing with the formula in such a way that would lead to a retooling of the spiel's function: All new games after this one change the way it works.

By the way, yes, it's an actual app on the side of the screen. We never get to use this particular interface elsewhere in the game, strangely, so I have no idea what the other two buttons do.

This small diagetic touch, of Kukui adjusting his camera while it's running, is one part of what the new speeches have that the old ones lack- previous opening spiels are set in a featureless void and directly address the player. Kukui's speech is the first one to be made, diagetically, to an in-universe audience.

Say hi, Professor Kukui. Note the wedding band, by the way: while most Professors previously have been basically "just" experts in their field, Kukui is also the first one to get an expansive look at his personal life, including the fact he has a wife. While he is not the first Professor to be plot important, it's also worth commenting on.

Kukui is a) addressing us personally (this is not a pre-recorded message meant for all comers) and b) already familiar with us. b) doesn't actually matter that much, but a) is kind of the main differentiator between this and later opening spiels- those ones are addressed to a non-specific audience.

The Alola region is is based on the islands of Hawai'i, and features mainly the four biggest of its landmasses: Melemele (based on O'ahu, the Gathering Place), Akala (based on Maui, the Valley Island), Ula'Ula (based on Hawai'i, the Big Island), and Poni (based on Kaua'i, the Garden Isle). Hawai'i proper has eight major islands and a larger quantity of small atolls and islets, but presumably for simplicity's sake, we're going to be sticking to just these four. Plus that special one you can see in the middle- as far as I'm aware, that one's not based on a real place.

This part, right here, is the part of the spiel that stands out the most. The opening spiel's primary job is more or less to explain "in the world of Pokemon, the presence of a diverse, semi-sapient array of powerful and poorly understood creatures is considered normal, you are going to be allowed to tame them with nobody batting an eye, and we're not interested in asking too many serious questions on the topic" to the player. As a game aimed primarily at children, this topic is just complicated enough that a dedicated spiel is probably necessary over just presenting it naturally and letting the player draw their own conclusions, although it does get goofy seeing them basically rewritten with each new game. I do love Kukui getting the chance to meaningfully rephrase what he has to work with.

One thing that the old speeches loved to do was actually send out a Pokemon to demonstrate, and I love how little the speech focuses on the act this time. If the animation didn't need to be timed to the manually-advanced textboxes, Kukui probably wouldn't even pause to do it.

Incidentally, most games send out a Pokemon new to the game's region, and Rockruff here is no exception- this guy is the friendliest little guy in terms of "Pokemon you want to have as a pet", and we'll see plenty of them in that role. We won't actually be able to get him until a little ways in, but that's also been fairly traditional.

This part, right here, is the main issue with the Kukui speech, and it's not one that's a big deal- since we're now talking to an in-universe audience, we're talking to people who were raised around Pokemon and understand their in-universe cultural status. The newer speeches approach the subject in a slightly different way to smooth over this weird little foible, but it was a benefit of the older style that is being lost in the translation. Since our protagonist hasn't yet begun their journey, though, a little brushover of the basics doesn't go amiss, and he seems to more be saying "yeah, Alola isn't like other regions, but Pokemon are still basically the same here"- a message also important to the viewer, since the Alola games do play extensively with the traditional Pokemon journey.

When the time to demonstrate Pokemon is over, the Pokemon traditionally fades away. Since this speech is diagetic, Kukui just tells Rockruff "I need to finish this conversation before we have playtime, do you mind?"

Rockruff gives a little bark and jumps off the table. Good boy.

This part of the conversation is the major divergence between the old speeches and the new- the old Professors also took the time to ask the main questions of "who are you, as a protagonist?" This is where the series' memetic "are you a boy or a girl" question comes in- the game needs to ask you this question before your character actually physically appears, and they include it in the opening spiel. After this game, though, the opening spiel and the "create your character" options got separated, which is why the new spiels are so dramatically different. Considering the breadth of options afforded to the character designer in Scarlet and Violet, though, I can only imagine how tedious this would be if it was done on the professor's prompting.

This is a part of why the series kinda split the two jobs apart- with the introduction of just the "choose your race" question, the questions the Professor has to ask to generate your avatar get more clunky to construct and navigate. The option to choose your race was added in XY, and that game's Professor Sycamore asked it as a separate question to your gender (in the order gender -> race)- the way Kukui manages to cover the question by lumping them both in a single question gives him a much smoother way to obtain the same information, but it's something that presumably didn't work well repeatedly.

Note that, unlike SV, you are still choosing a gender, and there are still some differences between playing as a male and a female protagonist. Although the question no longer asks "are you a boy or a girl", we're not at that level of accommodating gender non-conforming identities yet.

While you can change your hair and eye colour later, the skin tone is permanent. While Pokemon does have a racially diverse cast with this game, there is no real relationship between your skin tone and your identity- Pokemon is not a franchise in any way equipped to deal with racial conflicts, it struggles to deal with conflict in general. As a result, while you will see lots of black and brown characters, like Kukui himself, alongside the series' default "white" (as a Japanese game, the distinction between "like us Japanese" and "like us English/American" is pretty hazy at times), they're not from anywhere other than Alola.

(Well, OK, our protagonist is moving in from another region.)

Similar to the above question, Kukui is also asking for information he ought to know, if he got as far as this conversation, but since he is taking care of our important documentation, he asks us to clarify, exactly what name we should be using- and in the process gives the player the opportunity to name their character. Earlier professors simply asked "What is your name" directly- unlike the gender question, this one isn't a weird question out of context (unlike your gender, it's impossible to even guess from just a glance), so it's not as much of an issue, but hey, they were doing this sort of thing anyway...

The game has two options for how you type letters into your keyboard. The default option is more or less an in-game version of the standard QWERTY keyboard, while the other one is the more traditional design Pokemon has used across the games, with all the letters in alphabetical order. I have a personal preference for the latter (it feels better when navigated as a touch screen), but I won't be showing these again anyway, so who cares?

The default names of the protagonists are variable levels of "easy to find", depending on game to game. GSC, RSE, DPPt, B2W2 and XY include the gender you didn't pick as an encounterable character in the story, so they got it easy, while other games have to make do with peripheral material, fan convention, and a lot of simply calling the protagonists by the names of their versions, as done in the manga. The female protagonist's canonical name is "Selene", but this was used only in promotional material and merchandise before she was formally dubbed such in an actual game with Pokemon Masters (the mobile gacha) in 2021. She has also been shown as Moon (also promotional material, manga), Ailey (USUM promotional material- probably just for that game's version of her), and Mizuki (a transliteration of her JP name that was presumably used by accident on the figma). Internally, she is just "Heroine".

I went with a custom name, mostly because it felt more appropriate. Our protagonist isn't really a character in her own right, but rather our vessel. While avatars have some questionable use as protagonists of other games, they're right at home in monster tamers, and especially in Pokemon, where the hero's journey is to do what many children all over Alola have the chance to do.

Somewhat hilariously, considering how the plot is about to be framed, this is kind of a hilarious sign-off. I think we're on the doorstep of moving in, in-universe, although this premise is about to be called into question.

As a character, Kukui, once we actually meet and get to know him, is big on learning about Pokemon moves (his doctoral specialty) and is a very loud personality. This is typical dialogue for him.

Despite the use of the term "cousin", there is no actual relationship between Kukui and the protagonist; this is merely a term of endearment in Hawai'ian culture that Pokemon is going to adopt. While it's nice to see the cultures of the locales Pokemon is being set in make an appearance, it is something I'll have to specify in advance- "cousin" is not a word you can look at and fill in the blank "oh, he's just calling us mate".

~~...I don't actually know the American version of the word and I'm not sure "mate" is entirely free from that kind of baggage...~~

This is the big "the conversation was actually diagetic" reveal. I assume we're still in our home region when this is happening- I honestly thought this conversation (and honestly, the interface) made more sense for us being in transit, but no, we're still packed up.

Although we're on the way out.

As we stand to move on, the camera pans over to a guidebook open to the page on Alola. Aside from the four island map, we also prominently features of the fifth island- an entirely artificial one. In the bottom-right corner is also an image of a character we won't meet for some time.

Also our plane tickets are on the book. Yeah, this is definitely close to the actual move.

We're zooming in to this rather generic image of an artificial interior- from context, presumably on the artificial island. I don't actually know why this particular place is in a guidebook- surely they'd advertise the place with some of the cooler parts of the building? It is, however, where our opening sequence is going to start, though.

A chase sequence! This is unusual for Pokemon games- most dumped you immediately in the protagonist's lap following the opening spiel. The closest Pokemon ever came to a dramatic opening was the Orre games, which opened with Wes exploding the Snagem Hideout (Colosseum) and XD001 kidnapping the S.S. Libra (XD). SwSh and SV following did keep the idea of an action-y opening, but didn't have plots that required one this dramatic.

(As a side note, the Alola games love introducing characters by focusing on their legs before panning up to their upper body. It's not exactly noticeable enough that I'm suspecting developer fetish, but it is noticeable when you're actually paying as close attention to these things as I am to take these shots. Maybe they were just shooting the fact that characters actually get to have properly defined legs now.)

Our heroine runs into the centre platform and the lift activates independently, taking her up a level.

In terms of where she physically is in the space (we can explore this place later), her best bet on making her exit is either where she's running from or the floor below where she is. This running direction does not seem fully thought out. I also wonder why she's running in this direction- maybe this is supposed to be a different room and is just using this room for better camera angles?

She is hauled to the top floor, a nature preserve. See, why wasn't this in the guidebook?

The camera briefly zooms in on her bag, to show that she has a passenger in there.

She chooses to run away from the lift. To my knowledge, there is no other way out of this room, but also, everyone on the floor knows where she is if she stays on it, and if it activated automatically, odds are she can't take it back down.

Case in point, there are some pursuers now.

There's a long sequence of just running going on here, which is cool and dramatic, but not so cool to discuss purely with screenshots. Suffice it to say that this girl is definitely not shaking her pursuers well.

Case in point. The narrow walkways and few branching paths of this preserve make it an ideal place to plan and execute ambushes- if you chase someone into a path, you know exactly where she'll be in five second's time.

This grin makes some sense in context, although I'm not 100% clear on how much sense, but it is absolutely not the expression you want to see when the victim is a young girl.

As the girl looks around fearfully and prepares for the worst, her bag starts to glow. It seems her passenger is willing to contribute to the situation.

Clearly, these grunts were not aware of what exactly they're dealing with. Working with some need-to-know basis stuff here.

There's a large explosion and a beam of light heading skyward. This is implied, and later confirmed, to be the girl and her passenger making a miracle escape. Although from whom they were escaping and why they were in danger are questions we're going to be sitting on for a while yet.

And title. Right away you can tell this is a story with actual JRPG-level meat to it, or at least just structure.

And this is the part that confuses me. The protagonist had one foot out the door, surely it didn't take three months for her to arrive in Alola? The most logical explanation is that the chase sequence we saw was the only thing to happen three months ago, but this feels like an odd way to present the story- if anything, I would expect Kukui's spiel to come after the chase intro if that were the case. Although even that would probably be pushing the game's ~~traditions~~ pacing.

The island we start on is Melemele, seen here in a big dramatic overhead view. The sights we see here are actually very similar, if not identical, to the views we'll see in the actual gameplay, if at a great distance. A few missing obstacles here and there, though- most obvious is a line of rocks blocking us getting to that small islet in the south-east. The permanent stuff like the tall grass, though, that's all there.

This is our house, as seen in a panning shot. That's the same Youngster, running by with his Rockruff.

Say hello to our Mum. Every protagonist begins the adventure living with Mum and not Dad, and the series rarely considers explaining why to be a high priority- unlike most JRPGs, our dad isn't going to show up dead or at the scientifically selected least convenient time. Funnily enough, the Ultra games apparently did slip in a mention of what our dad's up to (he's fine, he just didn't want to come to Alola.)

It wasn't until SwSh that your mother changed her design to reflect your character's chosen race.

It's a beautiful day, but a new house requires its furnishings. One cannot sleep on boxes, after all.

Our Mum owns a pet Meowth, and while she has been suggested to have no small skill in battle, this Meowth is mostly a domestic fixture.

Surprisingly, despite Meowth being an iconic character in the Pokemon anime, this is the first new region since Johto to actually include Meowth in the local regional Pokedex. This one doesn't talk.

There's a Pokemon POV cam as Meowth enters the room, looking around at our place (which is actually pretty unpacked, all told), before coming to the protagonist still asleep. I'm not sure what time it is plot-wise, although Pokemon is set to a clock that progresses in real time.

Meowth just yells at you, and you have to manually input to crawl out of bed. I dunno why, I always think Meowth is going to scratch me to get me out of bed first- maybe I'm thinking of XY and the Fletchling pecking you awake in that game.

Despite looking somewhat like PJs, those are our waking clothes. We can get new ones later, but it looks a lot better when she's completed her design in a bit.

There's a few cute details you can pick up around your room. This one, not so much.

Our TV is displaying an old classic- the same movie that was playing on Red's family TV in the original RBY, Stand By Me (1986). As something that harkens back to the original RBY, it's a reference that loves to crop up in Pokemon anniversary celebrations. Perhaps one day I'll actually watch that movie.

As a side note, while the reference is still in FRLG, it's only for male avatars. The female equivalent sees Wizard of Oz instead. Sadly, it doesn't seem like this got kept.

The player always has the most recent Nintendo console with a mildly amusing comment for examining it. Yes, despite the console's reputation, Sun and Moon are correct for having the Wii U in this role- the Switch won't be out until next year.

We also have this little toy in the corner, although it seems like Meowth has claimed it for his own.

Out into the living room. Also pretty furnished for a new arrival, although those bags look a lot like take-out. Sampling the local restaurants, Mum? ~~Any good ones?~~

Must've done a lot of unpacking last night.

Oh hell yeah, Alola has some cool choices to try out.

...Eh.. they are still wild animals. They'll be cool, but friendly is a brave assumption.

He must be here on housewarming.

...So how long ago did he get here?

Kukui lets himself in when you get this close to the door. This is a bit of a habit of his, and there's a bit of a running joke on the topic.

...So did we actually talk to Kukui before the game began or not? Or is Kukui's memory just that sloppy? I would not put it past him to be option 2.

While Selene isn't the first protagonist to move in from somewhere before the events of the game, she is from a specific place, and it is thus possible to notice that her old home and new home are indeed a great distance apart. For comparison's sake, the protagonist of RSE moves from Kansai to Kyushu, while the protagonist of SV moves from England to Spain.

Selene is from the Kanto region, the region visited in RBY, and based on the Kanto region of Japan. Japan is in the timezone GMT +9, while Oahu is in the timezone GMT -10, giving the two regions a nineteen hour time difference. Which actually means that Hawai'i is five hours ahead of Japan when exclusively considering time, but the previous day. As a result, I'm not 100% sure this "it's still daytime!" quip fits. Perhaps if you incorporate what I believe is the eight-hour flight between Tokyo and Honalulu, but at this point I think what time it is is the least of your worries.

Oh, good, someone's cleared that up. We sure did a lot of unpacking yesterday.

...Is that one also a Hawai'i thing? No, Kukui and our mother are not related, and Kukui certainly isn't our brother, although he's doing his best to raise the possibility.

And now we get to the reason the protagonist's family moved to Alola- some time ago, Kukui visited the Kanto region with the purpose of completing the Indigo League. I assume for research purposes- although Kukui is a fan of battling for it's own sake and probably had fun doing it.

Mum was a spectator of those battles, and was so smitten with Kukui's rare Pokemon that she decided to go to Alola to see more of them. As reasons go, not the strongest, but certainly not one to begrudge her for.

Ah, yep, definitely "technically research" reasons. I wonder how many people across both Kanto and Alola believe him.

Kukui failed his Indigo League challenge. This has a narrative purpose in the grand scheme of things, but from a mechanical perspective, Kukui's team is pretty robust and the Indigo League as found in RBY is pretty lacking (admittedly because, as the first Pokemon games, the devs didn't exactly understand teambuilding yet). Presumably the Kanto League is better in narrative than they are in mechanics- either that or Kukui's cool team that we see was made after his failed Indigo League challenge.

Anyway, that's enough talking about Kukui's failure, it's time to talk about our turn. We are of the Standard Age for receiving Pokemon (I was going to make a joke about being somewhere between nine and sixteen, but it turns out we know for a fact that we're eleven this time), so a new region represents a good opportunity to do a Pokemon Challenge.

Alola has its own tough customers- it's not quite equivalent to the Indigo League of the Kanto region, but that's not reason to call it inferior.

This has, by series tradition, largely been a duty of the local Professor, but Alola decided to experiment with the idea and said no, this time, it's the local kahunas who have that responsibility- although the exact societal position of the Kahunas isn't nailed down. They seem like some kind of... island chief, but not actually the government? They're more or less the people you go to bring an issue to somebody's attention.

Looks like we've got something to do to get out of the house!

We could've found both earlier, although we couldn't have put on the hat, and would have been sent back regardless.

...I'll be the judge of that...

Our room was the one on the right, of course. There's nothing stopping us from going to the room on th left, though.

It's Mum's room! The house designs got sophisticated enough to give her a dedicated bedroom at last! (She had a sleeping space in XY, although it was tucked out of the way and barely had room to move about in).

Mood. Mum's a cat person (well, Meowth person), so I don't think she minds. If this wasn't her idea to begin with.

There's nothing else to interact with in the room, but one can see her dress rack, and note she does have more than one outfit. I've never seen her in the blue dress, though.

We can also go onto the balcony where Mum started the game, but there's nothing to click on here.

Right, let's see those things Mum asked us to look at...

Our dad gave us our copy of Adventure Rules. This was an actual item in XY and got expanded even further in SwSh and SV, but elsewhere in the series, its sole purpose is to tell you to open the menu and Save your game. It does feel very wanting.

Anyway, yes, here is our X Button menu. There are twelve options in all, but we currently only have access to, and use for, Save and Options.

These are our Options.

Text Speed is obvious and I won't be mentioning it again.
Battle Effects allows you to toggle whether or not you want to watch the animations for performing moves in battle. If this option is off, a move being used will immediately skip to the part where the target's HP starts counting down.
Battle Style will allow you to toggle whether you have the option to make a free switch after defeating a Trainer's Pokemon to respond to their next. It is rather unbalanced to play on Switch from the perspective of a 1v1 (the AI never gets to play by Switch rules), but I find it makes it easier to deal with EXP management.
Button Mode: Allows you to set the L Button to have the function of the A Button when pressed. Note that this will also make it impossible to use the R Button, even in contexts where there is no matching action for the L Button. I think it's for one-handed gameplay, but L and R are just useful enough that it hurts to lose them.
Party/Box: New to this game, if you catch a Pokemon with a full team of six, you have the option to check its stats and choose whether to send someone else in the party to your box, adding the new catch directly to your team. It's a very handy feature to leave on Manual, although if you're just catching things to "catch them all", it's probably OK to put this on Auto.

Our stuff is in these boxes. It's not like we were planning on leaving the house until we were unpacked, after all!

There's a full panning shot around her legs, waist, and head, showing her shoes (she already had those) bag and hat before we get the full look. It's nice and dramatic, although we are planning on changing our look relatively soon-ish anyway.

While we were off doing that, Kukui and Mum were either laughing at one of their stories, or laughing at what Meowth was doing. It's kinda hard to tell.

Hopefully, this first trip is just crossing the street to talk to someone responsible. You reckon the odds are in my favour?

No better motivation than that.

...I'll take your word for it. It really isn't flattering from this angle.

The cat does an emote, and then the adults start laughing again. Is he laughing at me or Kukui? The cat is definitely making fun of someone here.

I think it's moreso an exciting time in both child and parent's life, rather than something we should be worried about.

Alola's starting trio is one I rather like. It's not my favourite- that is and always will be the Sinnoh trio- but I like all three of them well enough, even if I do have a standout favourite.

Oh, you just want another pet. Well, it turns out the choices aren't exactly the domestic classics.

Welcome to exploring the world of Alola. Brand new feature to the Pokemon series: This world does not have the rigid, grid-based system demanded of the Game Boy and DS games and their D-Pads. XY maintained the grid while allowing full analog control, but SM's world was fully designed with analog control in mind.

If some of these "brand new features" really feel weird to have described as a non-Pokemon fan, trust me, they're no less weird to describe on my end.

Kukui requires we go this way, for what will later turn out to be obvious reasons, but I don't believe anything he said in the house indicated which direction we needed to travel. West it is.

I think he's just talking about the ambiance of the Alola region, although this is very curious when juxtaposed with us getting slightly misdirected a few seconds earlier.

In fact, Alola probably puts a bigger emphasis on Pokemon than other regions. Many regions also show off the fabulous new technology that being in a post-scarcity environment (as provided by Pokemon filling in the roles of essential services we have no clean equivalents for) allows. Alola eschews such developments and leans heavily on the kinds of services Pokemon can provide directly. While it does have developed cities, it also has services that other regions might cover with vehicles or gadgets that it actively chooses not to do the same with.

And, more importantly, it's possible to traverse this route without entering tall grass. An important quality of a first route.

Can't even backtrack up here, either. Apart from our house, most of the places we can visit won't really make sense until we have Pokemon to work with- once you get one Pokemon, the game does not want you to be without one.

One cute detail that was added in XY but became a bit more fluid with SM, when the protagonist needs to talk to someone shorter than them (usually a Pokemon, but in this case a child), they will actually bend their knees slightly. It looks better when it's aimed at the Pokemon.

This kid mostly tells us of the existence of the Run button. Running was a feature added in RSE, and required you to acquire the Running Shoes item. It was given to the protagonist by default in XY, but still depended on the actual Running Shoes item. Alola's protagonist is the first to be able to run just... as a thing she could do.

Most Pokemon just play their cry and give a short little line of their name when you talk to them. They're more cute than actually someone to talk to.

We are now, formally, on Alola's Route 1. Traditionally, exploring the regions of Pokemon is done by crossing Routes, a naming convention that was based on Japan's design, I believe. While all four Japanese regions have a series of route numbers that has no overlap, every region from BW onward started the count again from 1, which makes things really annoying for Pokemon guides.

We will be exploring the routes in numerical order. Some earlier games had some quirky numbering conventions, but again starting with BW, the routes are numbered in the order the player encounters them.

Another weird tradition of the series is that there's a man of large proportions in the opening town or area who is fascinated with the power of science. His NPC dialogue, through the series, is usually to comment on how impressive a new feature or design decision of the games he appears in is.

This was a feature introduced in XY and famously made much harder to accomplish with SM. Trading is such a hassle in these games, and I'm glad I can't really do it at all with my setup.

Yep. No tall grass here at all. There is no reason for this comment.

...Well, I already love Alola, but I would like a little more to go on first...

We'll see how things go the further we go along.

The setup sorta implies this is going to be a Trainer battle example, but we don't have a Pokemon yet. This kid is talking to Kukui about business that they have previously discussed, and is otherwise mostly a curiosity.

And also evidence that Kukui does not exclusively mentor us, the protagonist- he shares his advice liberally, with all comers.

As he finishes that conversation, the camera pans over to this Lass with a Pikachu. While he helps many people, the other two examples we'll see are not examples of this, just examples he's showing us- they're otherwise managing on their own.

Wild Pokemon live in the tall grass. In practice, this simply means that tall grass triggers random encounters, while non-tall grass tiles do not. This allows for the establishment of safe and unsafe areas when exploring the overworld, and would not be replaced with overworld spawns until SV, although SwSh was a half-step.

Meanwhile, these two Trainers are engaged in a battle with each other, a series staple that, like with most traditions, it's best if you don't ask too many questions about it. The rules of the Pokemon world are that battles are both painless for their participants and enjoyable on the Pokemon's part to partake in, and while Pokemon does tackle the subject of people that are abusive towards Pokemon as an animal abuse metaphor, typically the actions of such people are worse than merely participating in battles.

...Also, I'm not 100% sure the older boy is using one of the main Trainer Class models we'll be getting familiar with when the gameplay loop kicks in.

Battles typically play out in a separate engine, which we will rarely see unless we're involved. Otherwise, it's just some posturing by the models.

If you want a reference on how culturally acceptable it is to challenge someone to a battle in-universe, this line sums it up better than words ever could.

You can tell a lot about someone by what kind of battling strategies they use. For both ill and good.

And by right over there, he means that quite literally.

We're dragged right in, without even having the chance to even go near that tall grass. The games do not like the player trying to trigger a battle sequence without owning any Pokemon.

There comes a point where you don't really need to keep saying it, Kukui.

The Hawai'ian religion worships four gods, Ku, Kanaloa, Kane and Lono, as I am led to believe. These four gods are represented in Alola in the form of the four Tapus. Although the real gods specialise in particular fields, the four Tapus instead dedicate themselves to specific islands. Tapu Koko is the guardian of Melemele Island, and his place of rest is nearest Iki Town.

Well, so much for being in a rush. Either we've beaten everyone here or they got tired of waiting. Considering the state we started in, I reckon they probably weren't counting on us being here at a set time.

The four guardian deities live in ruins, although I think this is for aesthetic reasons and not symbolic of anything. As weird as it is to stay that currently actively-worshipped gods live in ruined temples.

Although why our company would have spent their time there is anyone's guess. Worship, I assume?

He tells us to go head that way, while he remains here and makes sure we don't chase each other in circles. Although what his plan is once one of us find the guy we're after is anyone's guess.

Very funny. With that said, it's really hard to fault him on this description: You will know, immediately, who the kahuna of Melemele Island is, in a way it is difficult to describe through words alone. This is a quality of Melemele's kahuna alone.

Lots of towns have cute little intros like this on their signs. Mostly just to be cute.

You can enter all the houses and talk to all the people, but for now, it's mostly inane dialogue rather than anything building up the opening gameplay of Pokemon- although that's not to say it's bad, one house talks about how Alolans settled the land the same way the Polynesians did. We're more establishing Alola as a place to live rather than the setting. Although this kid's Rockruff is establishing something about it that makes its value as a domestic pet a shade suspect- it's made of rocks. It can't exactly be the most fun lapdog to give head scritches.

Our stop is on top of the stairs, where we see something plot-relevant.

Well, she may not be a kahuna, but she sure does look familiar. Looks like we know where our mysterious opening cutscene waif escaped to, although we remain in the dark on most of the other details.

This is Hala's house, incidentally. This guy not only tells you he's not home (and that he's probably not even in Iki Town), but he will also turn you around so you can't even try to go behind him. The hint has been taken.

Neither of these two comment on the girl, or anything in particular. Granted, they probably don't find the girl unusual.

"Mahalo" means "thanks", but Mahalo Trail exists mainly as a connection point between Iki Town and the Ruins where Tapu Koko lives.

There is no tall grass, but it's nice and windy. Er, windy as in "winding", although I'm sure it's also the other kind of windy, too.

Well, it sounds like the people pursuing her from the opening are still keeping their eyes peeled, and she has paranoia about that fact. It's three months later, which does not spell good news about how easy it is to keep a low profile.

She's already been discovered by someone new in town.

As you follow her to the next map, the game switches to a more pre-rendered cutscene, with her having no control over the thing in her bag. Speaks highly of how well this situation is working out for her.

It slips away, revealing a brand-new Pokemon. What exactly makes it desirable is anyone's guess, although it's certainly not because of its battling prowess.

The girl clearly knows better than it how it can keep its head down and avoid bad actors, although its capacity to follow instructions is in severe doubt.

Case in point, it's not left her sight for five seconds and already it's in trouble.

Fortunately, this time it's just three wild Spearow coming to investigate if this weird thing is food, but this also looks like a problem that cannot be solved by it. Or the girl.

And if things weren't bad enough, suddenly there's a stranger involved.

You can either be helpful or be... unhelpful. There's no response to make her think you're involved with the people she's running from.

Nebby is the Pokemon's... "name". Names for Pokemon in the same way we have names for pets are an optional feature, with with many preferring to refer to their Pokemon exclusively by species name. Nebby will be referred to almost exclusively by "Nebby" by the people who have its interests at heart, and its species name ("Cosmog") by the people they're running from.

Right, so Nebby is in danger... on a bridge of debatable quality... surrounded by aggressive Pokemon.

And quite frankly, I'm not sure what you could do if you could. Spearow is among the wild birds that's more likely to respond to a sudden expression of aggression by escalating the situaton rather than abandoning it.

...And suddenly I am questioning what I can do to improve the situation.

To make matters worse, approaching the situation causes you to stumble on the rickety bridge three times. This is a scripted thing, not a case of you needing to adjust your movement to avoid falling off.

The Spearow occasionally claw closer as part of their circling animation, although they don't seem to be too sure what to do once they catch their prey.

We take matters into our own hands the only way we can- using ourselves as a human shield.

It doesn't help, but it's all we've got.

As Nebby realises the situation is not resolving itself, it starts to glow, same as it did when the girl was in peril in the opening.

All it seems to have done this time is destroy the bridge we were on. It does also tell the Spearow that maybe they shouldn't be pecking so close, but right now, we have bigger problems.

Namely, the existence of gravity.

Fortunately, it seems we have a guardian angel on our side. This bolt of electricity lets out a burst as it passes the Spearow, fully dissuading them from investigating further. Since Spearow is weak to Electric moves, odds are it also deep-fried them, too.

It also saves us from our "falling" thing. Can't call it a rescue without that.

Say hello to none other than Tapu Koko himself. Much like the Hawai'ian god Lu, he dons the feathers on a rooster and has an association with conflict. I'm not 100% certain how much the four Tapus draw from the four gods in particular, although Tapu Koko as Lu is the easiest comparison one can make. It's also the most prominent one in-game, which makes me suspect the developers also preferred to keep the associations between the Tapus and their Hawai'ian counterparts in broad strokes.

Tapu Koko has nothing more than a non-verbal acknowledgement before it zips off to do more of its business somewhere else. While the Tapus actually have physical forms they can do tangible things in, they typically prefer to do their business indirectly.

Fortunately for us, Tapu Koko is the kind of deity who does this sort of thing more frequently. Probably shouldn't get in the habit, though.

Apparently "glowing and doing things" is a bad idea for Nebby, not that it seems interested in taking that advice to heart.

Ah, that makes sense. Clearly Nebby is a baby of whatever it is. Although I don't think it's ever made clear how it came to be involved in the story in the first place. Presumably, it took the same approach to being wild that it did to being in the care of the girl- very little.

It uses its powers to protect the people it likes. Although the words "it uses" should be taken with a high quantity of salt: It may not necessarily be aware of any of the concepts in that sentence.

The girl claims responsibility for Nebby, although it's hard to be responsible when you can't even protect them from something as common as Spearow.

Nebby ignores this conversation to go look at a shiny thing. See above about assessing Nebby's actions as it being aware of its situation and the potential consequences of said actions.

I dunno, but it wasn't sparkling until Nebby saw it.

That part of the dirt was exposed to awesome electrical power a few sections ago, makes sense.

At this point in the conversation, the girl properly realises that we're still standing here and she should probably answer some questions about what the hell just happpened.

Please, Tapu Koko did all the work. Although certainly, no one can say I didn't try my best.

No matter what we say, she brushes the question aside and decides to give us the shiny stone Nebby found, as both the only thing she can think of to express her gratitude and as a way to get out of this conversation without onboarding us to her problems.

Another thing that becomes more of a thing with the Alola games, when characters give us things, they actually physically "hand them over" (although it is never physically shown in the animation). Many characters have a "take this" animation, and the protagonist a matching "I am taking this" animation, but I am sorry to say they often do not happen to line up correctly. To be fair to Pokemon on this one, that's hardly a common thing in the RPGs it is being compared to.

The Sparkling Stone is the first thing that goes in our Bag, which also means we now have our Bag.

It's a secret to everybody. Although I still have several questions.

Oh, Nebby and that bag. They do not make good friends.

Another quality of Pokemon games that draws a lot of comment, they love fading to black whenever something happens and then fading back in when that thing happens. I think other RPGs also try not to deal with this sort of thing, but I'm not sure what their plan to make it less jarring is- I certainly haven't noticed it.

As far as she's concerned, that's the end of that conversation.

Unfortunately, something else comes to mind.

Her confidence is a bit shaken, and she'd like somebody to make sure she gets back to safety. Not that I'm convinced we're that, but considering we threw ourselves into danger without regard for that a few minutes ago, she can't be faulted.

With this brief pause of gameplay, we can actually look at our Bag to see this Sparkling Stone!

It comes from Tapu Koko, it seems, although we'll have to have it appraised by someone who's... you know... lived here.

For now, business takes us elsewhere.

(Incidentally, if you want to save and reset your starter, now is the time to save.)

That somewhere being back in Iki Town.

That's how it looks, yeah. Although I don't think finding him is an option in this direction.

Oh, she's your assistant?

...That just raises further questions.

Fortunately, Kukui is much less secretive about her whole deal, so he is happy to begin explaining... some of the things.

Mostly, he's just going to corner Lillie into introducing herself. That's the reaction of someone who's realising "oh, I'm not going to be able to completely lock you out of the loop..."

...And a bang-up job she's already done with that. Not that I doubt her capacity to do it at all, but I think solving the Nebby crisis is a full-time job.

In contrast to pretty much everything else, the marketing for Sun and Moon was very reticent on the subject of Lillie- I don't believe they even showed Nebby. As a result, to someone playing the games in that environment, Lillie is a much more mysterious character than those around her, although as the games began to be taken as a whole, she got a different reputation. She is far too important for her mystery angle to be retained, after all.

Hala has chosen this moment to return, allowing us to stop discussing this whole bag of mysteries and focus on what we actually came to Iki Town to do. One thing at a time.

Oh, that one gets funny in hindsight.

For simplicity's sake, I'm trimming them, but there are two leg-up introductions to Hala as he walks up these stairs and turns to face us. I am starting to question, game.

...Um, OK, I suppose Hala probably wouldn't have been much help with what happened to Nebby, but I'm not sure one can say Hala "didn't" miss anything.

So anyway, what's the holdup?

He just had some kahuna business to sort out. Any of our business? No, and it sounds like Hala had a grip on it. He just had to, you know, attend to it.

Yeah, uh, Hala should really be kept abreast of this sort of thing. Seems rather important, you know, considering it concerns the guardian of Melemele... actually doing things. One should probably worry about why, in such circumstances.

...That's not the story I saw. Nebby did most of the "getting us both out of this situation", I had no plan for getting off the bridge with Nebby- or honestly, in general.

Bethany's head even turns to go "hang on", here. Fortunately, the important part of the story is this bit.

I should hope people falling into the ravine isn't a common occurrence. ~~Although with the quality of that bridge...~~

The Tapus do have their own nuggets of personality, although largely tucked in some of the more optional areas. Tapu Koko, in particular, is the most temperamental of the four island deities, preferring to go around and fight things and doing its job as somewhat incidental to the process.

Beyond merely the fact that one of the Tapus going out of their way to do something being in itself remarkable, Tapu Koko doing so means it sees something in us. And that something is something the people in charge are happy to look for, if their guardian has told them to start looking.

Considering its hobbies, I think it's mostly "someone who can start fights I can join in on."

Hala says "this is an opportunity to give her a Pokemon", which would be fine... but weren't we going to Iki Town to get a Pokemon in the first place? Sure, same result, but what happened to the "everything went well" plan?

And he does, indeed, look like the man in charge of a Hawai'ian settlement: He's got the presence, he's got that confident-old-man look, and he's even got the good heart they tend to come with.

...I'm starting to get confused about what you did or didn't know about us before we arrived. What did we do to impress Kukui in Kanto that he's bragging about us to his friends in Alola?

Enough of that, though, it's time to take a gander at the three starter choices for the Alola region.

Grass, Fire and Water, of course, and all three with strong, beloved evolutions. Alola's starters have done rather well for themselves.

First up is the Grass starter, Rowlet. Rowlet is the first starter since Bulbasaur to come as a dual-typed Pokemon when first obtained, being Grass/Flying instead of pure Grass like all other starters. Unlike Bulbasaur, it sheds its typing and becomes a Ghost type when it reaches its final stage. Rowlet is sleek and cool, and it got represented in both Pokken Tournament and Pokemon Legends Arceus after the fact. As an option, it's more of an offensive all-rounder than the somewhat tanky archetype of the Grass type.

Second, the Fire starter Litten. Litten's forehead shows the alchemic symbol for sulfur, but as its progresses, it becomes a very different kind of kitty, bearing its claws and showing its fangs with its Dark-type final stage, one that even made it to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Litten is slightly stronger (and surprisingly, sturdier) than Rowlet, but loses some essential Speed for those advantages. However, when the time comes to see its hidden power, that doesn't seem to matter quite so much.

And last, the Water starter, Popplio. Popplio's second typing is Fairy, and as a design, it hits quite a different niche from its companions, which puts it at the bottom of popularity listings for sure- it's the one without a significant other game appearance, not helped by the final design not being as well-suited to crossovers. With that said, however, Popplio's my personal favourite, and a powerhouse in both Special Attack and Defence (although as an overall tank, Litten kinda has the edge).

Time for us to make our choice. This will be a permanent decision, and while there is no strict compulsion to carry your starter throughout the whole game if your team-building decisions don't require them, the starter does tend to be one of your stronger options early on, and some opponents will change their teams depending on your starter choice. Since this run is likely to keep using the starter, I'm of course going to want to pack one, but which...?

It was a surprisingly difficult choice. Popplio, of course, was the natural pick, but the other starters of course offer their own benefits. Ultimately, however, if you'd like to know what settled my decision, it was the fact that choosing Rowlet as your starter gives one later opponent a Pokemon that particularly suits him.

The starter ceremony in this game is a bit more involved than has traditionally been the case: In the older games, once you picked your starter, that's that- they're yours, in every sense of the word. In Alola, however, the tradition is that we actually ask the Pokemon if that is what they want to receive in turn.

Which leads to us having a staring contest with an owl. The owl almost looks as puzzled as we are.

...So how will I know if it does? Aside from the lack of being pecked in the eyes...

Rowlet probably has the best "its gaze fixed on you" idle animation (Litten and Popplio sway too much), but the effect is ruined when all three immediately look away.

Kukui and Lillie are watching, and Lillie is very worried about what's going on. Kukui seems to know what Rowlet's thinking before Rowlet does, though.

And with that, we have obtained our very first Pokemon! Fortunately, later Pokemon will not be quite so temperamental.

Although that also means they don't get to go quite so adorable.

~~Or until I shove him into a box because there's another cool Grass/Ghost type running around Alola...~~

All Pokemon may be given a "nickname" upon being caught. This nickname will be possible to change freely later, at no cost (but some inconvenience). I usually like to nickname my Pokemon, because it feels only fitting. It's mainly a cosmetic thing, though.

Fortunately, since we're post-BW, we can use sentence case to give our Pokemon a sensibly capitalised nickname.

~~Can you tell what I've been playing?~~ He may not be a Good Dog, but he is indeed a very Good Boy.

You have the greatest timing, Lillie. Yeah, while some characters will comment on your lead Pokemon, they never use your nicknames. While somewhat forgivable, perhaps, what is less forgivable is having an instance in the very first textbox after the option to nickname is provided.

Nebby is here too! To Lillie's eternal surprise and annoyance.

One of these days it'll get through to him, Lillie. One of these days. Until then, just cross your fingers nothing goes wrong.

It won't help, but it will feel like it will, and that's all that matters.

Fortunately, there's not exactly a lot of room not to, in this game.

And now we can actually do things in the world! Well... once we get the requisite secondary supplies, anyway.

We also get a Pokedex. In early Pokemon games, it was a rare gadget, often still a prototype, and the Professor usually gave it to you with the expectation that you would attempt to fill it- Gotta Catch 'Em All, and all that. As the series progressed and the number of Pokemon required to complete that task increased, the series sorta realised this was not a task to assign to the kids playing the game, so the Pokedex has sorta become more of a handy side-tool for new Trainers than an experimental thing still being made with our help. In essence, at some point, someone in-universe took the Professor up on that suggestion, and now no one else has to worry about it.

This whole element of the lore continues to be weird. In the original system, the obvious assumption was that it was the player themselves that wrote up the often-ridiculous entries. Nowadays, it's probably drawing from a central database of Pokemon information rather than everyone's Pokedex having independently-generated information.

All Pokemon that you catch have filled entries, while Pokemon you merely see will have habitats, but not much else.

Also to note, Seeing a Pokemon requires facing it in battle. Despite doing the colloquial equivalent, we have not yet "Seen" Rockruff, Spearow, Cosmog or Tapu Koko.

This is just our player ID, and doesn't really contain much in the way of information worth looking at. But hey, when you do need it, it's there...

Our next destination is going back home- well, OK, it's actually trying to leave Iki- but now we're getting control again, so it's time to do some housekeeping...

Four new options. Some of these I'll go into more than others, although one's for some annoying reasons...

The Pokemon menu will allow us to inspect and make some edits to our Pokemon team. "Summary" will mostly tell you information, while "Restore" will let us use healing items if necessary, while "Held Item" will allow a Pokemon to hold an item. I will explain held items more when we... see things worth holding.

For now, here is a lot of stuff to look at. Let's step back and parse what stuff we care about, then.

Rowlet is a Grass/Flying type. This means it inherits Grass's weaknesses (takes double damage) and resistances (takes half damage), as well as those of the Flying type. We can see examples of all the major combination cases between typings with Grass/Flying:

If both typings are weak to the same type, the Pokemon will be doubly weak to that type (in our case, Ice).
If one typing is weak to a type while the other resists it, the Pokemon will treat it as neutral (in our case, Electric).
If both typings resist the same type, the Pokemon will doubly resist it (in our case, Grass).

Pokemon gain EXP independently of one another- training one Pokemon will not grant any experience to other party members inherently. This is on a per-fight basis- anything Rowlet fights alone represents no EXP being given to anyone else we have on hand. In addition to this, some Pokemon grow faster or slower than others- Rowlet is in the second-fastest group for the levels we care about.
The six core stats Pokemon uses are relatively self-explanatory, although in most cases, the numbers you see are pretty useless to you. The damage formula, rather than a simple "Atk - Def" calculation that Fire Emblem or Paper Mario uses, is a complicated beast of a formula, with fractions within fractions. Even experts leave actually doing the math to calculators.

The only number a human can reasonably be expected to think about is Speed. The Pokemon with the bigger number gets to act first in a turn, with ties being decided randomly on a per-turn basis. You, of course, will not get to see your opponent's Speed score in-game, though.

And the information on the bottom screen! This stuff is the stuff that's more often considered, though.

Above the Pokemon is our name, gender and level. While level is obviously important, gender will only impact a side mechanic and a few moves, most of which we won't see- with that said, there is one important case of it we will see later. Rowlet has a 7:1 chance of being male- most Pokemon will either be 1:1 or 3:1 one way or the other. There's even a few species that are exclusively one gender or the other.
To the right hand side is our current selection of Moves. Most starters will come with these moves- a weak Normal move to be something to count on until a solid team is formed, a weak Typed move to show its strengths, and a move that increases or decreases a stat stage (Growl decreases the opponent's Attack). We can only know four moves at a time, and will not be depending on any of these ones long-term, but it'll be more important once we can actually think about which ones we want.
Our Ability, at the bottom, is Overgrow. The starters always have the "same" Ability, Overgrow, Blaze, or Torrent, and its effect is to increase the power of our Grass/Fire/Water moves (circle one, in our case Grass) by 50% when we are reduced to 1/3 of our HP. We cannot change this- which is a shame, since it's not that great, but early in the game, it can come in handy.

In the second tab, the only information worth looking at is on the top screen. And even this isn't that useful for most players.

Our Nature will increase one of our stats by 10% and decrease another stat by 10%. Adamant gives us a boost to our Physical Attack while decreasing our Special Attack. Starting with, I believe, HGSS, you could see the stats being impacted by your Nature being colour-coded on your main stats page (the increased one in red and the decreased one in blue).
Your Met Location matters for a minor manifestation of an important mechanic, but in practice the bonus is so minor and difficult to benefit from that it might as well just be flavour text.
Your Met Level matters for an incredibly minor boon, and likewise will largely just be flavour text for all but the most dedicated of players.
Our Characteristic is a cute trait of our Pokemon that is actually an indicator of one of our hidden IVs, or Individual Values. These influence the strength of each Rowlet to be slightly different from one another, and while the developers do like the sense of individuality, the fans... have been less fond. While this game does introduce ways to alleviate them, it does not do so well, and I wouldn't say it's until SV that they really fixed it.

Full disclosure: Because the alternative is saving and reloading over and over, I'll be... convincing the game to give me something moderately workable. Not perfect, because that kinda pushes the line, but just... above average. Alola is a game with teeth, and while good Pokemon are part of the key to success, I find the more important step is actually considering my tools. I find that, if the way to get better results is to reroll a random output, it's more of a boundary to fun than a facilitator.

Continuing on to the Pokedex, there's much less actual numbers- or really, things to explain- here. There are 300 Pokemon in the Alola Pokedex, and while it is impossible to catch them all without trading, we can see our progress here. There is a benefit to catching Pokemon, so I will be doing it even for Pokemon I will never use, but it isn't based on Pokedex completion- just number.

Hilariously, looking at the Pokedex now gives us one result. In all regional Pokedexes, the Grass starter is located in slot 1, the Fire starter in slot 4, and the Water starter in slot 7. You should be able to see all the empty slots in numbers before your latest encounter, but since we've only "seen" Rowlet, no such slots exist.

On the top screen of this view, we can see the evolutionary family of the Pokemon we have caught. This tells us that Rowlet has two evolutionary stages- obvious stuff, all starters follow this trend. For Pokemon we meet later, this can be more useful information- particularly to know if the next slot is an evolution or if it's a Pokemon we need to find through other means.

Here is our description. You see mainly in-universe science facts (weight is relevant for like five moves), and can look at your Pokemon's animations, hear its cry, and see where it's located. A lot of battle-relevant information is sequestered elsewhere, often only in external guides.

Every Pokemon actually has four descriptions in the Alola region, one each for Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Some Pokemon recycle these descriptions, but I'm not going to show all four entries for every species. I will show my pick for each one, and for Rowlet, it's the entry it gets for Moon:

Silently it glides, drawing near its targets. Before they even notice it, it begins to pelt them with vicious kicks.

We cannot find Rowlet, or Litten or Popplio, in the wild. While we can ask the Pokedex, all it tells us is to look elsewhere. The four tabs represent the four islands we can visit over the course of the game.

The island-specific Pokedexes allow us to look chiefly at the Pokemon that can be found on that island (every space in the dark area will be filled in a completed Pokedex), as well as showing the habitat for that Pokemon on that island on the top screen. No evolutionary families, but it wasn't that important. Until it is.

The Trainer Passport.

...Honestly, I can't say any of this information is stuff I'd want to look at the card to check.

On the bottom screen are our stamps. There are 15 Stamps to acquire, and while some are based on story progression, others are based on achievements. Because of some of the ways we can get stamps, I won't be getting them all.

As for Pokemon Refresh, I will be using it, but because of an annoying error, I'll have to demonstrate it later. I've explained enough already, surely!

Ha ha, Kukui. I'm sure that somebody finds it funny too.

Been in there, done that.

Sounds good. Does that include my house?

The answer to that question is no. We have one more important character to be meeting, this fellow. He was also supposed to meet us with Hala- so where did he go, actually?

Wherever it was, he is... hardly a model of patience. He's the same age as us, and acts like it.

He's also a relative of Hala (specifically, his grandson), and Hala does rib him for his excitement.

Just... maybe go a little less than a mile a minute, kid.

Hau has already chosen his starter, and as it happens, he's picked the starter with the type disadvantage against our own. Importantly, the type disadvantage is the most important bit here: No matter which one you pick, the Pokemon Hau has will always be the one with the disadvantage. Litten trainers would see him using Rowlet instead, rather than dealing with a difficult Popplio fight.

He doesn't seem to mind the subject. When it comes to the classical starter trio, if we have different Pokemon, one of us has to have the disadvantage...

Welp. There was only slowing this kid down, not stopping him entirely. Oh well. A battle will be a good chance to look around anyway.

Ah, so that's where you were.

...

Good thing you didn't find us, I guess. Maybe your Popplio could've helped, but it would probably be hurt.

Lillie is not a Trainer, and for personal reasons, seeing Pokemon in risky situations is upsetting to her. This is something she works on as the story proceeds, but that core will remain.

It makes a stark contrast to Kukui's "just throw everyone into a pile and let fate sort it out" philosophy.

Good. I hope you won't be too disappointed...

We get a chance to save and chat with the other three before the actual challenge begins.

Not that there's much to hear.

Time to have our First Battle.

Yes, battles can just happen in the middle of roads. Nobody will yell at us, perhaps just wait until we're done, shouldn't take long.

Pokemon Trainer Hau is this game's major rival character, and as such he has a full 3D model in his challenge animation as well as a unique battle theme. While I have gone into some detail on the strengths, and weaknesses, of the "rival" character in this era in the past, I only lightly touched on Hau in specific. Hau is... not one of the more beloved examples. He manages to exemplify many of the stereotypes of the "nice rival (derogatory)", and while this is a story with strengths, Hau is often peripheral to those strengths. I'm told Hau was one of the beneficiaries of the Ultra games, although how much that is the case doesn't seem obvious to me- and I'm hoping I'll see that improvement here.

For now, it's time to see that opening battle, and also something else new to this game- opposing Trainers are now visible on the field when in a Trainer battle. Some of them are rather animated, but surprisingly, Hau is not one of them.

The same is true of us, but we'll mostly see ourselves during camera pans.

The default field of view hides us behind the camera. We can see our current HP and EXP on our side, but apart from level, all we know about Popplio is roughly how close we are to defeating it. With that said, he does have fixed numbers- they're just completely unremarkable ones.

Oh great. More buttons. Since it's on the touch screen, all of these menus can be operated by touch, but you can use buttons for most of them. I think touch is needed for the secret option.

Fortunately, Pokemon and Bag are dead options right now. We don't have any other Pokemon or any Bag items. I'll mostly not be using Bag items at all, because opposing Trainers almost never do, while Pokemon can be important in the right situations.

Running allows you to leave a wild encounter if you don't want to deal with it. It is not allowed in Trainer fights.

Secret option! If you touch the icons of your Pokemon in the middle of the screen, you can see the stat stage changes that have currently been applied, as well as any field effects that might be affecting you. This is information that, before SM, you had to memorise, so it's nice to have the reference memo. It won't matter to us unless we know why we want to know this information, but still, it's good to know.

Fight allows us to choose one of our moves to use on our opponent. We can tap the blue i icon to see a description of the move's various stats and effects, but Leafage is unremarkable in its unremarkabaility and has none worth commenting on.

Actually, there is one thing I can comment on: It's brand new to Alola. While Fire starters use Ember and Water starters use Water Gun, Grass types haven't had a defined first-stage move to call their own, and Leafage was designed to be that move, at long last. Except Vine Whip is mostly the same? Maybe it's because Rowlet doesn't have vines.

Right, time to click Leafage.

Super effective is right. Since the Water-type Popplio is weak to Grass moves, we deal double damage, and land over half HP- which is just perfect, because that means we don't have to worry about Popplio's Torrent Ability! Despite the memetic status of the text, "super effective" only means we landed a hit that struck at the opponent's weakness- while this does typically do good damage, it will still say that even if our attack didn't do much because of other factors.

Popplio's counter-attack, Water Gun. I missed the pop-up, but that attack was indeed "not very effective"- Grass types resist Water moves, and poor Popplio has an uphill battle. Note that weaknesses and resistances are not always perfectly reciprocal like this- the Grass < Fire < Water triangle teaches it like this, but think it a rule and you're in for some bad times later.

A common point of criticism against modern rivals is their choice to use the starter weak to yours. I think it's entirely because they don't want to deal with the first fight against your rival having the opposite situation- that is a one way trip to the floor that might prove very discouraging to a young player. Later on, the fact our Rowlet beats his Popplio on the type chart matters less and less.

I'm faster, so I get the first action next turn to a predictable result. Rowlet has a slight speed advantage over Popplio, so if your Rowlet has above-average speed, it will outspeed. Of course, nothing Popplio could've done if it had the first action would've stopped us, but it's an extra nail in the coffin.

When a Trainer's Pokemon is defeated, it starts its fainting animation, but is sent back to the Poke Ball before it completes it. In this state, it cannot be sent back out until it has been healed, but is at no risk of dying, in-universe. It's more like you're exhausted after a hard workout.

The experience we get for defeating Popplio gets us to level 6. Experience is a product of what we just fought (some Pokemon give more EXP than others) and our relative levels. Strangely, for the first time in the series, there is not a multiplier for Trainer battles- a wild Popplio of equal level would have given the same reward.

While level ups increase our stats, this is honestly the least important thing it does for us. Stats are determined formulaically, based on the Pokemon's base stats and all the various secret IVs and EVs, so this screen is pretty pointless other than reminding you of your stats. More important, however, is that levelling up will occasionally allow us to learn new moves or evolve. This happens at set levels, and Rowlet does not do either at level 6. Something to watch out for later, then.

Hau only had Popplio, so its defeat grants us the victory. Rival fights are the first to get longer, but they don't want to throw one at us until we have the chance to respond in kind.

Prize money! Prize money is the product of a Trainer Class constant and the level of the Pokemon we fought. It is also the main source of money we get. Fortunately, however, we will rarely, if ever, be in serious danger of having less money than we want. Despite the fact that prize money is technically finite, I have no idea how Pokemon manages this. Probably by being bad at making economies, but what RPG isn't?

Hawai'ian slang. Also means he liked it, but I think that was obvious.

"Tomorrow", in-universe, there will be a proper battle with Hau. We haven't heard any details of this, mostly because it wasn't relevant yet, but it's about to be.

This discussion is interrupted by the Sparkling Stone in our bag doing a sparkle.

Hala, as the local expert on such topics, is probably who we should have been asking about our souvenir from Tapu Koko, and it seems like now is the time to ask.

The protagonist even has a giving animation, although it's possible that it's literally just her taking animation played in reversed, especially considering her palms are still pointed up.

Whatever this rock is, Tapu Koko really liked us.

(Tutu is Hawai'ian for "grandpa"- and unlike "cousin", is typically addressed to men who are actually the speaker's grandfather.)

The Tapus giving stones to people isn't unheard of... but most people who receive such stones are typically people that have put in time and effort to prove themselves.

The fact that we got one proves to Hala that he should be taking us seriously.

The stone is useless to us in its current form, and Hala is one of the people who knows how to change it into something else. He'll volunteer to put this stone through that process on our behalf.

(Note Kukui and Lillie talking to each other behind Hala there.)