Pokémon Sun & Moon: 10 Exciting New Things You Can Do

Alternate forms have always been a nice way to add some much needed polish to otherwise underwhelming Pokemon between games. Kyurem became worth writing home about, Hoopa stopped being a boldly coloured punchline and grew some teeth, and Deoxys changed from amorphous space goop in to deadly amorphous space goop.

One of the Pokemon on the receiving end of this treatment in Sun & Moon is of course Zygarde, in a move that will surely aid with the grieving process for the never-quite-realised, Pokemon Z.

Like he did in the recent anime series, Zygarde will be getting four new looks; Zygarde Cells, Zygarde Core, Zygarde 10% Forme and Zygarde Complete Forme, while his original state will be known as his 50% Forme. There’ll be some new moves as well and the transformation will be triggered by his new Power Construct ability in battle, but how we get to these new treats is actually quite fascinating.

Dexio and Sina, the assistants to the previous professor, will pop in the Alola region and gift you the Zygarde Cube (which is decidedly not a cube, maybe some kind of hexagonal prism at best) which will suck up Zygarde Cells and Cores scattered throughout Alola, and through as yet unknown means will grant you the power of the new and improved Legendary Pokemon who has otherwise been about as useful as a calculator in an English exam up to this point.

The other new form goes to Greninja, already a fearsome Pokemon thanks to his delightful Protean ability. Still, if you played the Sun & Moon demo you’ll be able to get your grubby hands on a Greninja with the Battle Bond ability that lets him become Ash-Greninja during battle. It’s a stupid fun transformation to have, and it adds value to the demo version beyond simply getting a taste of the game to come.

Nintendo did this before with the ORAS demo and this could be a good indicator that this may become a delightful, ridiculous tradition.