Pokémon Sun And Moon Review: 6 Ups And 3 Downs

2. The New Pokémon

This train's never late.

Sometime between Generation III and IV (depending on how hard to please you are) the cry from Pokémon fans became a rather unanimous "these new creatures are a bit rubbish". Where Gen I was so well rounded and imaginative that it secured the franchise for 2 decades, and Gen II added 100 monsters that only increased the overall standard, ever since it's been the same pattern of bizarre and soulless designs that appeared to be based on just whatever happened to by lying around the developers office.

The quality of the three starters gave cause for optimism, as all three looked far more in keeping with the simplicity of the earlier generations, but even they evolve in frankly ridiculous ways. As for the rest, there's nothing to really get fans excited or that will capture the imagination whilst playing. And yes, we now have a sandcastle Pokemon to add to the ice cream cone, pile of garbage, and set of keys in the big Please Try Harder file of designs. The less said about Gumshoos resemblance to Donald Trump the better.

It's not all negative though. Rockruff and Salandit wouldn't have looked out of place in previous generations, and the Alolan forms of classic Pokémon mean that, by and large, Sun and Moon has plenty of great monsters to choose from. However it's just a shame that, yet again, the original magic of earlier games hasn't been captured.