Pokémon Sun/Moon - Nov 18, 2016

[Seravi Edalborez]

Mechanics stuff I'm reading from Serebii and Reddit:

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Paralyze now halves speed instead of 1/3rding it.
You can insert Pokemon into your party as you catch them even if it's full, and also check their summary.
Z-moves are power and phys/special depending on the base move. Gigavolt Havoc from Thunderbolt is 175 base power. Nuzzle it has 100 and is Physical. Electro Ball it is 160 and Special
Ash-Greninja's Battle Bond boosts the power of Water Shuriken, which is now Special. If the demo version's is absolute it gets +50 to both Attack/SpAtk (145/153) and +10 Speed (132). So a slightly more potent, less consistent not-Mega Mega. It's basically like just giving it a souped-up Moxie+. Downside is that it seems "Everyone gets the same Greninja: 20/31/20/31/20/31 IVs, 128 Atk / 128 SpA / 252 Spe EVs, Hardy Nature, Souvenir Ribbon"

New moves known
Psychic Terrain: Grounded Pokemon will not be hit by priority moves, and powers up Psychic moves for (probably) 5 turns.
Throat Chop: Prevents target from using sound moves for 2 turns.
Aurora Veil: Halves power of physical and special attacks for 5 turns. (Reflect/LightScreen in one move)
Laser Focus: "Mind Reader/Lock-On" but for auto-crit instead of auto-hit.

Ok really spoilers on new Pokemon

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Really, spoilers

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Serious

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No new Megas
81 new non-Alolaform Pokemon (pic in spoilers)

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-The starter leaks are real, split-evo is not. muscle cat is here folks.
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwpIhRkAlRw datamine vid, very short
18? Alola forms, this number doesn't seem entirely correct (I counted 19 with these new ones but it's what's in a Reddit thread)
-Persian
-Diglet/Dugtrio
-Geodude family
There's a Pikachu wearing Ash hats people are dubbing Ash-Pikachu.
8 total Ultra-beasts

Wimpod's evo is cool as hell.
Kind of disappointing that Komala, Pyukumuku, Comfey, and Minior don't seem to evolve.

[Rooney]

So... 8 ultra beasts, 4 island guardians, 3 legends, and 2 mythics? 17/81 seems kind of high for story/special mons.

[Kaslo]

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So... are those pre-evos for the two box cover legendaries?

[Rooney]

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So... are those pre-evos for the two box cover legendaries?

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Breedable legends would be a cool twist

[Kirin]

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Breedable legends would be a cool twist

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It's more likely they are story pokedex entries and the events of the stories will "unlock" them into their legendary forms. Like the primals but without the stones. And they'll probably be unknown egg group to boot so no breeding.

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I was worried about no more mega evolutions. I hope they don't abandon the mechanic entirely, because it really did make use of some older and lesser used mons. Hopefully they just merge the Z moves under the '1 mon per battle' mechanic.

Anyone not choosing grass owl as a starter is as much as loser as Gary thinks of Ash.

Paralyze was a little broken, so the changes are nice. Will throw some other status effects into the mix for regular use, especially if they utilize some Day/Night procs.

I wonder if Ash-Greninja is breedable and his ability would carry over. I remember the other event ribbon pokemon you could breed.

Overall excited, but certainly bummed about some of the changes and omissions.

[BWYuko]

Mechanics stuff I'm reading from Serebii and Reddit:

Spoiler: show

You can insert Pokemon into your party as you catch them even if it's full, and also check their summary.

Wait, is there no PC storage system in Alola? I don't see an "Add to Box 1" there.
And if "Send Home To Nature" means you can release undesired mons in the field, you glossed right over one of the best new features in the game.

[Akiyama]

So because I've been out of the game for a bit..

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Where ist he Ash-Greninja you guys are talking about? Is it the one we'd gotten from an event a while back or is it special to Sun/Moon?

N/m. I googled it.

[jacobs67]

Am I going deaf or is the sound in the demo even with headphones and max volume really low?

[Destinye]

Am I going deaf or is the sound in the demo even with headphones and max volume really low?

It was pretty low on my 3DS, a tad bit higher on my new 3ds xl.

[Zealot]

Download was going too slow at work, looks like I'll have to wait until I get home.

[Draylo]

Am I going deaf or is the sound in the demo even with headphones and max volume really low?

I feel like most DS games are like that for some reason, have to wear headphones for them. At least comparing them to the sound on my Vita, they are just too low. Also I'm surprised it took them this long to nerf paralyze/thunder wave.

[Kaslo]

I feel with people getting a free Greninja we won't see people picking Poplio as a starter often

[Taim Meich]

There's so many good designs in this one, I'll have a hard time deciding my team. I'll take for sure the munchlax they'll give and the grass starter, but other than that, the other 4 spots have a lot of contenders >_<

[Zealot]

We get a Munchlax too?

[Taim Meich]

IIRC, it's a first month dlc like the speed boost torchic was. And it comes with the Z-Stone for a special Snorlax attack!

Anyway, I've always liked Snorlax but never really used it aside from one I bred for a competitive team I never used, so this is the perfect excuse to do so.

[Kaslo]

There's so many good designs in this one, I'll have a hard time deciding my team. I'll take for sure the munchlax they'll give and the grass starter, but other than that, the other 4 spots have a lot of contenders >_<

I kind of love the new electric/bug tri-evolve

[jacobs67]

I really like the changes to the user interface in the battle system... It's like they took cues from Bravely Default to finally bring Pokemon up to 21st century JRPG standards

[Seravi Edalborez]

Wait, is there no PC storage system in Alola? I don't see an "Add to Box 1" there.
And if "Send Home To Nature" means you can release undesired mons in the field, you glossed right over one of the best new features in the game.

Uh, I was assuming that was part of the new PC system (Poke-Pelago or something) where your PC mons basically go out and do stuff for you (for anyone FFXIV-savvy, retainer ventures, item hunting, EV or EXP gaining, or even finding other pokemon to join up no hassle). But you could be correct also, it might be on-catch release which is equally neat. I assume it is the former though because there isn't another option other than Nature or party.

One neat QoL feature nobody mentioned that I saw: you can adjust Markings on your pokemon from the status menu now, and there are 2 colors (red and blue). So you could mark 0IVs now.

Overall the UI is on point this time around. Switch menu in battle lets you very easily go through different members of your team, much more so than prior gens.
If I have one complaint so far, there is a deliberate slowness in battle animations (compared to ORAS at least). Pokeball shake feels slightly slower, "dead time" between animations feels a half second longer, etc.

Neat touch: getting into a battle while riding a Ride pokemon shows you in battle in the riding outfit.

[Synbios]

Any suggestion on which version to get? I know for the most part it comes down to preference on starters. I haven't played a pokemon game (besides Go), since blue. I have been/still am playing Pokemon Go (don't hate, there's flaws but I'm not hardcore and can deal with them) and it's sparked my interest in trying one of the 3DS versions.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Until we know what the final call is on version-exclusives (which you can basically trade for anyways), the differences we know are

Sun / Moon respective
Normal time / "12 hours ahead"
Solgaleo / Lunala (title legends)
Rockruff's Sun/Moon evos
Passimian / Oranguru
UB-02 Absorption / UB-02 Beauty

Personally I'm going with Sun because I always pick the first or "red" version.

If you really want to whet your appetite and don't want to wait 29 days I think either of ORAS is a pretty fantastic way to start. I'm really biased though; XY didn't really hook me and until OR I haven't been totally hooked since HeartGold in 4th gen.