Pokémon Sun And Moon Review: 6 Ups And 3 Downs

5. Alolan Variants

It's a bit strange putting this in as an Up as, technically, it's made me furious, but having redesigned classic Pokémon as the core of the new additions was brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that I feel genuinely victimised that this idea took 20 years to occur to them.

Why have we been inflicted with Garbadors, Vanniluxes and Binacles when revamping both the look and the type of classics designs was apparently an option. Alolan Ninetails combines Ice and Fairy types, Marowak melds Fire and Ghost, Raichu learns Psychic attacks, Dugtrio has... long... blonde hair? Ok, so it's not all perfect, but overall it's a great idea and it's been executed tremendously.

With a Pokédex now creeping over the 800 mark, if Nintendo had rolled this policy out from the beginning the game's greatest criticism (namely, the new creature designs largely suck) would have been solved. Add a handful of new additions every generation, and make the rest of the new releases altered versions of established classics.