Road to Sun & Moon — Two Hours in Alola: What We’ve Learned

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32 days until Sun & Moon release!

Some of our older readers maybe remember our Journey to X & Y and Road to Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire countdowns back in 2013 and 2014. Now, we’re back with Road to Sun & Moon!

Recently, Nintendo invited several people to their San Francisco offices to preview and play the first entries in the 7th Generation of Pokémon – and although Nintendo put an embargo on a lot of what these lucky few got to see and experience, some details about the games have surfaced. For your ease and enjoyment we’ve compiled a list of the biggest new details from multiple people that got the opportunity to play through the first two hours of Pokémon Sun & Moon. The sources of all this info have been linked to the bottom if you’d like to see the articles and videos in full.

Pokémon

  • Several players confirmed that they saw new Pokémon and Alolan Forms, but aren’t allowed to go into detail
  • About “10-15” unique Pokémon (both new and old) were encountered in the two hours by trainer battles and in the wild
  • Original Formes of Alolan Forme Pokémon were not encountered (i.e. Players only encountered Alolan Rattata, not Kanto Rattata)

Mechanics

  • The D-Pad is no longer used for moving in the overworld – movement is no longer gridlocked and only the analog stick is used
  • Default speed for movement in the overworld is now running, not walking
  • The sneaking up on Pokémon mechanic from ORAS has been removed entirely
  • Not as much noticeable framerate slow downs in general as there were in the previous generation (i.e. in battles with animations turned on)
  • 3D has been removed completely from the game other than important cutscenes and the PokéFinder
  • The 3D apparently does slow the frame rate down in cutscenes, but not as bad as it did in Gen VI
  • However the stereoscopic 3D in the PokéFinder slows down the framerate to a very irritating and extremely noticeable degree`

General

  • Sun & Moon is fairly fast paced and throws you into the adventure right away. Players note how you’re able to catch and battle Pokémon and Trainers well before a formal tutorial
  • In the two hours of gameplay, very few people got to the first trial, much less completed it
  • Reward money is plentiful in the Alola Region
  • You are able to change your hairstyle in the first major city
  • The local Alolan Pokédex is split into four sections – one for each island – similar to the Kalos Pokédex
  • The player has a WiiU in their house – not an NX 🙁
  • Confirmation that you do get medals for completing trials
  • Several trials must be completed before challenging the Kahuna of the island
  • When a Pokémon evolves you see its entire evolutionary family on screen
  • Poké Pelago and Poké Ride were not available in the first two hours of the game
  • Tackle has reportedly been lowered down to 40 basepower (as opposed to Gen VI’s 50 BP)

Story/Characters

  • The early events of Sun & Moon take place over several days
  • The protagonist moved to the Alola Region from Kanto and arrived via plane
  • The protagonist’ father is mentioned, however you do not meet him in the first two hours
  • Early in the game  the protagonist falls off a bridge and is saved by Tapu Koko
  • Prof. Kukui previously battled the Indigo Gym Leaders while researching Pokémon moves in Kanto
  • Before choosing your starter Pokémon Lillie gives you a mysterious stone which is revealed to be a Z-Crystal later on
  • However, they did not get to use Z-Moves or Mega Evolution in the first two hours
  • After deafting Hau a second time, Hala gives you the Z-Ring
  • There is a Tauros that blocks the road to prevent you from continuing on to a certain area at one point
  • You meet the first Trial Captain, Ilima, at the Trainers’ School
  • The EXP. Share is given to you at the Trainers’ School and still gives experience to your entire team
  • The Gumshoos trail is the first in the game

Sources: GameXplain, IGN, Gamespot, Nintendo Insider, XGN, VG247, Metro UK

Are any of these new details making you rage, or possibly even more exciting for the release of Sun & Moon? With the demo coming out in a mere two days we’re finally all going to be taking our first (albeit limited) steps in the Alola Region. And with that comes the possibility of leaks…stay tuned!

//ozymandis

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1,275 thoughts on “Road to Sun & Moon — Two Hours in Alola: What We’ve Learned”

    • Turn the Exp Share off then? Unless you’re saying you miss the old Exp. Share, in which case I agree :<

      Also its the first two hours of a Pokémon game, were you expecting it to be hard? XD

      Reply

      • I usually turn it off in normal runs but whenever I do rotating teams the Exp Share is the only thing stopping me from going mental :p

        Reply

        • I turn it off sometimes if everyone’s getting too strong too fast, but other times, I’m like, “You guys need to toughen up fast and I’m sick of sending you out first and switching.”

          And if you’re training a competitive team, it’s a godsend.

          Reply

  11. “Several trials must be completed before challenging the Kahuna of the island”

    So does this confirm Melemele has multiple trials before the Grand Trial? Because in that case, I feel it’ll be Bug, Normal (confirmed) and Flying because they’re the basic types. But at the same time, that gives Rowlet a STAB Z-Move earlier than Litten and Popplio, 😮

    Reply

  13. Two questions:

    1) Does anyone here play Overwatch? (Just l trying to drum up convo, today seems to of been a slow day)

    2) Can you spoiler tag here? I’m generally curious becuase whenever I post longer posts I want to spoiler tag for convenience.

    Reply

    • If it gets datamined, a few days after the eighteenth but it’s not guaranteed to reveal the full Dex.

      If if doesn’t get datamined/there’s nothing to datamine, either when the game officialy releases or some people get the game before street dates.

      Reply

    • I dunno, we have five confirmed trial Captains already and four appear to be on Akala Island, with three confirmed to be there: and Akala isn’t even the biggest island.

      Some peeps think it’s a misunderstanding.

      Reply

        • I personally think it’ll be Fourteen, getting four Z-Crystals from them and then four from the Kahunas.

          I think it might be distributed 2 (Melemele) – > 4 (Akala) – > 5/6 – > (‘Ulaula’) – > 3/2 (‘Poni’)

          Reply

          • With all that fighting, trials, and the Experience Share, I suspect the Alolan equivalent of the Elite 4 or Champion is going to be insanely high leveled.

          • We still don’t know though if we’ll be able to fight them all, but I hope so. Im just excited to see the fairy, ghost and dragon captains X_X

          • To be honest seeing as all the Guardians may be Fairy-Type I feel it’d be fitting if one of the Kahunas specialises in Dairy-Types.

          • I love Diary types too, Miltank is top notch! XD lol jk, but I truly hope that the one who uses fairy types is a guy because so far its only been used by females

          • well yes and no, I didn’t mean just like gym leaders and such I mean trainer classes as well, like the Fairy Tale Girls, its an issue I have with ghost specialized classes as well, since we only have female Hex maniacs, I always wanted a male counterpart to them like they have for psychic 😛

    • Ehh, that’s been put into question. Those numbers match up with a post on Reddit from someone who also claimed that the first HM was Work up, and the demo was 400GB large. Given other sources have made it clear that they can’t confirm the total number of trial captains, and they clearly say that you challenge several trial captains, and having only seven, and we know that 3-4 are on one island, would mean that the majority of islands would have a single trial captain. Its very likely that a hand full of sites pulled that information from reddit and passed it off as real without checking into it.

      At the very least it would make more sense that the person was told that their are at least 7 trial captains, and the person simply misunderstood.

      Reply

  20. November is going to be such a good month! Sun and Moon come out! Fantastic Beasts is coming out! AND its my birthday! its gunna be a crazy month, too bad I’ll be working two jobs so I probably won’t get to enjoy it, but a guys gotta eat

    Reply

    • – Sun and Moon come out
      – Fantastic Beasts
      – Beauty and the Beast getting a revival at my local theater
      – MOANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      Reply

      • I never liked beauty and the beast I was indifferent to it, but I am beyond excited for the live action version with Emma Watson! And i also really want to see Moana

        Reply

          • Every person I have ever known that was into theatre had Beauty and the Beast as their first play….. its a little odd, but I suppose like every school ever has put on a production of it at one point. Personally Les Mis will always be my fav

          • Mulan, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Mis, Wicked, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Cats, and Holes are my favorites!

          • the only performances my school ever put on where bloody stories about jesus christ being born, wasnt even a bloomin christian school

      • i think the Plaza feature is to be similar to the PSS, i mean it has alot of B2/W2 vibes because of the Join avenue feature they had to upgrade, rank up and had shops in a long tunnel, but in the plaza feature it shows that you can trade and battle players their so maybe that’s also the place where we can wonder trade also. just a theory ofcourse but it makes alot of sense right?

        Reply

    • you forgot the demo being out on the 18th this month 🙂 it’s also my birthday this wednesday so im all hyped for it!!

      Reply

  22. So I was reading the intro summery of what the new Pokemon anime is about and I found something pretty funny. Apparently Ash and his mom are staying at Kukui’s house lol Weird they didn’t just say that they were renting the house that is actually the protagonist’s house in the game or something. Could be pretty interesting to see Ash and his mom live with Kukui. Also I’d be willing to bet Kukui makes some moves on Ash’s mom hahaha

    Reply

  25. We could cruiiiiseeeeee, to the blues, Wilshire boulevard if we choose. Oh whatever you wanna do, we make the rules. Our honeymoon, our honeymoon <3
    Me to my future husband Kiawe

    Reply

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