Earthbound and Dune 27.11.16

I'm only hours into Pokemon Moon (3DS) but I can already say its one of the most pleasing things I've played in a long time, perhaps ever. The ingredients were there when I played Pokemon Yellow earlier in the year, some lovely character design, a deeper story than I was expecting and a combat system that I found more enriching the more I played. Sadly with the first of the series it lacked a lot of the things I've come to expect from a video game, such as objectives or at least clarity on what objects do. The latest game now adds a lot of the features, along with some quality of life things like making Pokeball's easier to navigate to on the menu and pointers to which attacks are stronger against the current opponent and it just feels really good to play. I didn't have any issue going through a very similar opening few hours. Pick a starter monster from an adorable lineup of a clown seal, fire cat or dapper owl, I went with the seal who becomes a lot less adorable when he/she evolves for the first time. Then standard catching of 'em all, the world seems much more littered with variety of catches and they mostly are lovely to look at. I'm taking a lot more care in building a team, or at least treating it all a lot more seriously, building a group which is balanced to a variety of types, meaning I've sacrificed some Pokemon I really like, like the Wingull and Diglett but the additions to the game being as charming as Pikipek and Mudbray so far its been a lot more fun selecting the monsters to take with me. Combat is now a lot more pleasing to the eye with animations which makes the game seem much more alive. On the subject of the look of the game, as with most 3DS titles its only when I'm playing it that I really appreciate how nice it looks, as i've gone with Moon over Sun the evening setting of most of the game has a sheen to it not unlike the Twilight Princess on the Wii. As a large proportion of my time in video games this year has been playing Pokemon games I really appreciate that generation 1 creatures all make the same noises after all this time, the sound of a Drowzee appearing frustrates me so much as I show no remorse beating them to a pulp. On top of everything I'm liking about this game is theres a Pokemon Snap variation added, various beasts to ride about on and so far the progression has been expanded from the standard beat trainers at a gym of the first game. 

I'm still relatively new to these games, and I'm not planning to tackle any of the other games any time soon but this is everything i've ever wanted from a Pokemon game, to the hundreds of wonderfully designed pocket monsters its now added a video game which is a ton of fun to play.