It's taken me just under a week to finish this game, with my final time invested into the main game being just shy of 50 hours. Although the start of the game was incredibly slow and continued to be slow until the third act (where it went from 0 to 100 real quick), the story, characters, and Pokemon in this game have meshed together so well that, aside from a few minor gameplay criticisms, I can without a doubt say that Pokemon Moon is my favourite Pokemon game of all time.
I guess the first thing you should evaluate in a Pokemon game is the Pokemon themselves? Although the amount of new Pokemon introduced in Alola was quite low, I can't really complain about any of their designs. For a region based on Hawaii, the Pokemon we got were incredibly on point, with some of the best designs for me being Palossand, Shiinotic, Pyukumuku, Shiinotic, Lunala, Alolan Dugtrio, Araquanid, and the greatest of all, Golisopod. Whats more is that it seems these Pokemon were designed to fill specific niches within the Pokemon meta Gamefreak has begun to curb, and none feel out of place or entirely worthless as a result. They're all hella slow though, why? Because fuck your power creep I guess?
As far as the regional dex goes, I can't fully love a game that doesn't let me catch Aron in some way, but compared to the clusterfuck that was X&Y's dex, the Alolan dex is much more tame and the selection of Pokemon is really great (despite there being more Gen 1 Pokemon than Gen 7 Pokemon). However, I will continue to resent the fact that Gamefreak made searching for all Pokemon much more difficult despite giving us an improved minimap and location guide. The in-game identification system is still too vague (unless you resort to QR codes, you still have to search out trainers in dumb locations to be able to view rare Pokemon and their locations in your dex), and rare Pokemon encounters such as Dhelmise are so contrived its a wonder why they even bother making them available at all. It's a massive step down from the DexNav from ORAS, which made searching for Pokemon actually fun and worth doing.
But all in all I was able to train a team of 6+ awesome Pokemon and catch the thing on the box so really there is no downside.
Moving on to the story/gameplay, two words sum up my experience quite nicely: Holy. Fuck.
I don't mean this in a negative way however, the story still maintained the general goal of Pokemon which is to collect weird monsters, battle those weird monsters against tough opponents to get shiny things, deal with an evil team that wants to destroy the world because fuck your happiness, defeat the final boss and become champion, but at its core was so far removed from previous Pokemon games that I can't help but feel surprised and thoroughly impressed.
Gamefreak tried to convince me that this knock-off Hawaii region had a unique culture structured around Pokemon, coming-of-age island trials and mostly living relaxing lives and well, they succeeded. Alola is such a comfortable and well-balanced region compared to places like Kalos and Unova which were in hindsight incredibly generic and mishmashed. Although the cultures within each island seem unusually distanced (Western cowboy ranch town on one island, Japanese pagoda garden town on the next), each town was a treat to visit. Still can't name towns for shit however, but I guess that means compared to Sinnoh each town served a purpose and didn't have to be flown to a million times.
The Island Trial system replacing the usual Pokemon Gyms was a much-needed and welcomed change-up. Utilizing the natural areas and Pokemon around Alola as a base and creating challenges to go with them is a far cry from the rather insular themed gyms and wacky gym leaders of games past, and whilst the trial captains are still very thematic, they blend into the relaxing aesthetic of Alola so well, and as a result every character was much more memorable. Far better than the literally who gym leaders of X and Y, for sure.
Whilst some of these trials did possess an odd lack of additional Pokemon trainers/encounters, for the most part, the final totem battle made up for this omission entirely. There was not a single totem battle that I felt wasn't a challenge. I hope that if the rumored Pokemon game on the Switch turns out to be a sequel/third version of Sun/Moon, the framerate issues will be entirely resolved, because they were the only downside to an otherwise amazing boss battle equivalent.
The other boss-battle equivalent in this game was Team Skull and Team Aether, and man holy shit was the story behind these teams so incredible.
Team Skull starting out as a Team Rocket knockoff was fitting, and they were much more entertaining than the latter. Guzma's plot to ruin the Island Challenge was a little half-baked (and this eventually served to reveal that Guzma was assisting Aether the whole time), but Po Town serving as the exclusive base of operations for them was unexpectedly amazing, and I can't fault Team Skull members because most of the humor in this game comes from laughably sad lines like 'I'm insecure and wasting my youth here' or equivalent.
Team Aether turned out to be far more dark than anticipated. Infiltrating a utopian paradise for Pokemon ruled by a woman with god complex was a surprisingly grim swerve for the game to take, especially with the added weird shit experiments and cryogenic preservation they performed under Lusamine's orders. The main villain, Lusamine, and her goal to protect all Pokemon even from other dimensions wasn't as stupid as say, Maxie's goal to dry out the oceans, but the way it was presented here was so fucked up. Torturing a Pokemon to send you and your lackey to another dimension, acting on perverted perceptions of love, etc. all played part in Lusamine being a really fucked up villain in the end.
Of course, traversing Poni Island with the newly motivated Lillie to ultimately awaken Nebby as Lunala was amazing, but for once I'm glad the goal of the evil team wasn't to use a Legendary Pokemon's power to destroy the world and instead it was the main characters who summoned the Legendary Pokemon for their need. The fight in Ultra Space was some Mystery-Dungeon level creepiness and the story suddenly shifting focus to Lillie and her family was unusual for a Pokemon game, but entirely welcome.
I won't dwell on the story and the way it was presented for much longer, but I did appreciate the extra effort put into the 3D cutscenes and scripted events compared to the game's predecessor. Lot of emotion and sometimes humour in the way the story was presented ("Come, my hiker!")
The Grand Trials of each island were always dramatic and intense, and sometimes unexpected in the case of Nanu being the Ula'Ula Kahuna. Even better was the return of Hala and Olivia as members of the Elite Four, joined by one of the best trial captains and our first Flying type Elite Four member (who was also a golfer, lmao). Either it was a combination of me switching off the expeirence share towards the end, or me having a glaring weakness to rock and flying types on my team, but battling Kukui as the champion was the hardest battle I had in the whole game, and in the whole series as a final champion. Such an incredible battle accompanied by amazing music (as an afterthought I can't really fit anywhere else, the music in this game is superb and has some of the best compositions in any Pokemon game).
As a whole, I feel that a lot of care was gone into writing the characters, lore and story for Pokemon Sun and Moon, and the payoff has been that I have never felt more immersed in a Pokemon game in Pokemon Moon than I have in a long time.
