DAY 1 - November 18

Fade in. Luna wakes up in her bed, grabs her three starter Pokemon, and heads to the nearest Pokemon Center to prepare for her journey.

...Or at least, that's what I wish happened. Nope, we've got about four or five hours of prep work before we can get to that. I was not prepared in the slightest for this much of a rocky start, though honestly I probably should have seen it coming.

Ok, so I should probably explain what actually happened. Going into this game, I knew that I wanted to use all three starters on my team. This was mainly because I went through Y version with only one starter (Chesnaught), and figured I'd use the other two on a subsequent playthrough or in Z version, once that came out. Well, Z never happened, and although I did play through X, I did so with a team of other Pokemon, none of which were starters. So I've not used Delphox at all, and Greninja was only used as a Battle Maison minion, bred to perfection and then never really used successfully.

Actually, on that train of thought, I should mention - I usually like to finish everything possible in a generation before the new one comes out, so the week or so before Sun/Moon's release, I obsessed over finishing my high-standard living dex. I'm still missing a couple minor things (for instance, I'd like to have a second Amaura that was revived from a fossil by me specifically, since I currently have one that was hatched from an egg, and my Poke-OCD prevents me from allowing this), but for the most part, I'm happy with it. The last thing I finished doing was getting every single Pokemon that can appear in the Friend Safari, all of them specifically with Hidden Abilities, and all caught by me. The last thing I planned to do was get a streak of 50 wins in the Battle Maison, which I attempted several times, but was never successful with.

So getting back on subject, my plan for this game was to use all three starters from the beginning. Now what I could have done was just pick one of the three and then get the other two from someone online. There were plenty of people who got the games early, and I could have just asked on GameFAQs or reddit for eggs of the other two starters, but I like to make things more difficult. Mainly because I don't like relying on online trading for anything. Old habits die hard, I suppose. So what I did was far more annoying.

I decided that I wanted to use the girl character and name her Luna. The first part of this is not surprising, since I almost always pick the girl on the first playthrough. Since the customization options in X/Y were much more extensive for girls than they were for boys, and Sun/Moon didn't change this, I was fine with this decision. The whole "Luna" thing required a bit more thought, because I knew that a ton of people were going to use this name. I still feel unoriginal picking it, but Luna Lovegood is my favorite character in Harry Potter (I totally had a crush on her when I read through Order of the Phoenix when it first came out), so whatever, it's justified. I named my character ASH in Gen 1 (and I think Gen 2, also, now that I think about it), so unoriginality isn't a new thing for me.

The reason I explained all that is because I decided that since I'd have to restart for all the starters, it would be a nice-yet-stupid touch if all of them had relevant OTs. So what I did was start the game as a boy named Harry, get Rowlet, trade it to Joel, then restart. Repeat the process with Ron/Litten and Hermione/Popplio, then restart one final time as Luna. Now you may ask why I didn't only restart twice instead of three times, but doing that means that I'd have two starters that gain an experience boost and one that doesn't, which would be annoying. Depending on your familiarity with Harry Potter, you may also realize that Harry having an owl makes sense, but the other two don't. My logic here was basically that Hermione has an otter Patronus, and otters and seals are almost kind of similar. Ron having a cat doesn't make as much sense, since he hated Crookshanks, but whatever, I already put way too much thought into this and just need to move on with my life.

So now to finally get on with this and explain what happened in the game. Unlike every other Pokemon game, this one begins with a flashback, showing a character that is not actually the main character. The girl (whose name we don't know yet) seems to be running away from some scientists in a lab of some sort, and has a MYSTERIOUS THINGUS in her bag. Knowing a bit about some of the more basic story elements, I know more than I'm letting on about this scene, but I'll just leave it at that. She runs away from some dudes and teleports away.

Three months later, Harry has moved from the Kanto region to the Alola region, or in other words, has moved from Japan to Hawaii. Things seem much different when countries or states are just called "regions" and everyone speaks the same language, and pretty much everyone belongs to the same generic "anime" race. But I digress. Some generic dialogue occurs between Harry and his mom, and then Professor Kukui, a man who has the confidence to pull off the "open lab coat with no shirt underneath, and also really stupid looking shorts" look, decides to invite himself into their kitchen. Blah blah blah, something about getting a Pokemon, it's not really any different from the usual start to any game, but little did I know just how many similar scenes would follow. Harry goes back to his room to grab his hat (since it's illegal for a Pokemon protagonist to go outside without one) and bag, and also to say one final goodbye to his extremely drugged-looking Ditto pillow.

After leaving the house, Kukui's all "yo dawg, you're going off the plot rails, I want you to come this way", and leads me to Iki Town. Usually in Pokemon games, you start out in an extremely small town with like three or four houses, but in this one, you actually live a few yards away from a small town with like three or four houses, so we're breaking standards already. Kukui says to go find the Kahuna, who "looks just like a kahuna", because he'll be able to give him a starter Pokemon. Knowing that he exists for no reason other than to get a starter and eventually get it to Luna, Harry ignores any and all distractions and heads towards Mahalo Trail, the first of many locations that I will never remember the name of. The girl from the intro is there, and her weird cloudy Pokemon is on a bridge being attacked by Spearows, probably because the game developers wanted to remind people of the first episode of the anime.

Rather than actually be useful in any way, the girl (Lillie, though I'm not sure if her name was revealed at this point or not) sends this random stranger across a rickety-ass bridge to save her beloved Nebby. Now, I personally know what kind of Pokemon Nebby is, and I know what two things it can do. One of those things is teleport, which we already saw in the intro, so you'd think it could just teleport off the bridge, but it chooses not to. Instead, it somehow blows the entire thing the hell up, which is ABSOLUTELY not something that it can do, unless it turns out that Splash is secretly one of the best moves in the game. Harry and Nebby fall to their probably-not-doom below, but suddenly, some weird orange and yellow thing flies in and saves them! It turns out to be Tapu Koko, or as it shall be referred to from now on, Top Kek. Top Kek is the guardian deity of the island, as was explained about two minutes ago, because it's important to set stuff up instead of just have them happen out of nowhere. That would be cheating.

Top Kek deposits our "hero" safely on the ground, does a little dance, and then leaves. It also apparently dropped a shiny stone of some variety, which I'm not convinced isn't just some crumpled up tin foil. Lillie seems to think it's important though, so Harry takes it. Now at this point, I had luckily done some reading beforehand, because there's a spot here between cutscenes where you can save. My summary may have not done this enough justice, but unless you've played it, you have no idea how offensively long it takes to get anywhere at the start of this game, and it's only just beginning. So yeah, I save the game, since it'll save me a lot of time later.

After taking another two steps or so, Harry triggers the 87th cutscene and returns to Iki Town. The kahuna-looking kahuna mentioned earlier, Hala (who totally isn't Mayor Bo from Twilight Princess, no sir) has decided to show up. I like to think that he was looking for the four pixels that make up his sandals. He starts an overly long and dramatic ceremony to reveal the three starter Pokemon and let Harry choose one. Rowlet's the first on my list, so whether it wants to or not, it's coming with me. Of course the game likes to pretend that it "chooses" to go with Harry or whatever, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just wasting my time. Especially because... yep, it's male. Time to reset.

After taking another two steps or so, Harry triggers the 87th cutscene... ok, you get the point. I reset about four times and got a female, which to be fair, is a lot faster than I expected. I'm specifically going for a female Rowlet because of the nickname I have planned for it - Fellana. This is the name of a DnD character I made up a few years ago, and it's quite fitting here because she was a druid (which relates to the grass type), was good with a bow and arrow (as we'll see with Rowlet's evolution), and she also had an owl companion. So yeah. Fellana the Rowlet is somehow Serious and "Somewhat of a clown" at the same time, which seems to defy common logic, but there's no time to question this, because it's time for an unavoidable rival battle!

Our rival in this game is Hau, a fairly laid-back looking guy who also is Hala's grandson. The game likes to pretend that you have free range to do what you want here, as you can walk anywhere and attempt to leave the area, but if you do, Hau whines at you to come back and battle him. Also, Lillie says that she doesn't like watching Pokemon get hurt, but she says this with a really weird look of joy on her face, so I'm not sure how much I trust this. So Harry sends out Fellana, Hau sends out his Popplio, and I question why the rival in this game has the starter weak to your own instead of the other way around, as it has always been done in the past. People say these games are harder than most, but this isn't exactly proving that. Anyway, Hau gets his ass kicked, Hala takes an interest in my tin foil, and then I get teleported back to the house.

Mom then presents us with a question that any Animal Crossing player should be familiar with - did you pick that starter because it's cool, or because it's cute? If only that actually determined gender in this game like it did in Animal Crossing, it would save a lot of resetting, but alas. She also completely disregards the answer by saying something along the lines of "you definitely picked well, since it's both cool and cute!". Good.

The next day, about two seconds pass before someone's at the door again. Kukui, not content to let me do what I want, insists on taking Harry to a catching tutorial. A lot of people are complaining about the extreme number of tutorials in this game, but honestly, this is the first one that can actually be classified as that. Everything else has just been overly long dialogue sequences. It's over in about a minute, Harry gets some free stuffs, and we're good. Kukui then proceeds to show off such foreign concepts as "Pokemon being in the grass" and "these are trainers that you can battle". I do my best to avoid all of these distractions, but there is one unskippable trainer, who has an Alolan Rattata. As far as I'm concerned, this thing just is a 1940's mobster, and if it could talk, it would say "nyah, see?" before and after basically every sentence. Harry beats it up, catches some kind of trade bait (I think it was a Pikipek), and proceeds on to Iki Town. Again. I took a different path to get there, but yeah, this is the same destination.

Apparently today is some kind of festival day, and everyone's celebrating the existence of Top Kek or something, I don't really know. All I do know is that I'm forced to battle Hau again, and this time he has a Pichu, which does nothing but spam Charm every single turn. Since Fellana's best move at this point, Leafage (what even is that move name) is physical, this poses a bit of a problem, but he still goes down like a chump anyway. Top Kek is apparently pleased with this clash of the titans, makes a noise of some sort, and then disappears from everyone's collective consciousness for an undetermined amount of time. Oh, and Hala turned the piece of tin foil into a Z-Ring, which sure is a thing. I'm not sure yet if I'll be doing much with that in the future, but I'll talk more about it when it comes into play. Kukui then explains the Island Challenge, and holy hell I just want to trade this damn owl and restart the game, please for the love of god, shut up.

Suddenly, BAM, it's the next day and Harry's back at his house. And then - you'll never believe it - someone's at the door again. This time it's Lillie, who managed to either ring the doorbell from about 20 feet away, or just backed up an unnecessarily long way after ringing it. She wants to take Harry to see Professor Kukui AGAIN, and I'm about ready to start beheading people at this point. Trying my best to derail this plot train, I head to the left where there's a clearly visible Pokemon Center, but there's a random Tauros blocking the way.

TAUROS COUNTER: 1

Ok, fine, I'll go down to the beach. There's some more trainers, which I ignore, some grass, which I try my best to ignore, and an extremely ramshackled-looking house. Apparently Kukui spends his time getting attacked by various Pokemon to study their moves, and he also enjoys making outdated references to Nintendo memes. Inside his house, he rambles about some stuff that I stopped caring about ages ago, crams a wise-cracking Rotom into my Pokedex (which probably deserves more attention than I just gave it, but too bad), and then he himself gets interrupted by Hau, because this game is now interrupting its own interruptions. Hau becomes overly excited by the existance of a pink ladder, and I get distracted by the crappy-looking Luvdisc sprite bobbing up and down in the tank in the background. Apparently Lillie sleeps in the loft of this house. No explanation is given as to where Kukui sleeps, so insert your own dirty thoughts here.

Something was said about going to a Trainer's School, which sounds absolutely exciting and not at all like more tutorial, but luckily, I don't have to actually do it yet. Instead, Lillie introduces me to the Pokemon Center, and finally, FINALLY, I have access to trading.

Wait, I lied. After going to the Festival Plaza, I get more exposition from a dude named Sophocles, who is probably the best-dressed character in this game. Can't go wrong with a shirt with a picture of a Game Boy and a Link Cable. Also, his name is Sophocles. He makes a human being spontaneously exist, I go talk to him, and I get two points. He then makes two more people appear, I talk to them, and I get more points for doing so. If this doesn't sound like it makes any sense, it's because it doesn't. After doing this, I unlock the ability to use the bottom screen, and therefore can at long last trade Fellana to Joel's game.

So... all of that stuff I just wrote? That took about an hour, maybe a little less. I now get to do it three more times.

For Ron's playthrough, I pick Litten and don't bother to reset for gender, since I wanted a male one anyway. I name it El Grapadura, which is a slight misspelling of "the stapler" in Spanish, and is also the name of a wrestler from Angry Beavers. El Grapadura is Timid (not really a good nature for it, but I really didn't care at this point), and is also "Quick to flee". Towards the end of this run, I decided it would also be worthwhile to pick up the Munchlax from Mystery Gift, since it couldn't hurt to get duplicates of that. I'm surprised to find that you're able to nickname it, since usually Mystery Gifts have a predetermined OT, but not in this case. I'm also surprised to find that you can't actually trade its Snorlium Z, so that was slightly pointless.

For Hermione's playthrough, it's pretty much more of the same. I will point out that I never noticed the girl's bag looks like a slice of watermelon though, and that's kind of amazing. Her starter is Popplio, for which I had to reset about five times to get a female. I name it Lena, after a character from the Fablehaven series. Lena is a naiad, which is kind of like a mermaid-type thing, except they have a tendency to try and drown people. Except Lena, she's cool. And also became a mortal after some dude basically convinced her to leave the water because he has a charisma stat of like, 80. But enough about that. Lena is Relaxed and also "Somewhat of a clown", which is actually fairly fitting.

At long last, that brings us Luna's playthrough. For this one, I actually took my time a bit and talked to people, explored, etc. Here's the only things I really found worth pointing out:

- Checking the TVs will always get you an advertisement for malasadas, and the claims they make about them are great. The sour ones make you scrunch up your face like a Budew, and the bitter ones make your tongue feel like a Togedemaru, apparently.
- If you go in Hala's house, you can find a bathroom with two Pyukumukus on the floor in front of the toilet. I have no idea why.
- There's a bookshelf in Lillie's loft that has a very obvious book sticking out of the shelf, and there's no way to interact with this.
- Poking the center of the screen of the Rotom Dex just causes him to say "try poking the center of the screen for a map!". After doing this like five times and not getting any different results, I tried poking above the center, and that worked. Real good job explaining that one, buddy.
- Festival Plaza is weird as hell and I don't fully understand it. I'm sure I'll play around with it a bit more in the future, but so far I've just tried the lottery thing a couple times (won a PP Up, which is pretty nice) and changed my communication phrases.

So beyond that, I caught another team member - a Grubbin. Knowing what Grubbin evolves into, I named it "Crazy Bus". Is it named after the terrible Sega Genesis game, or the annoying song from Arthur? You decide. This Grubbin is a female, which is fine, because the name is gender neutral. I have a tendency to give female Pokemon more "normal" names, which is TOTES SEXIST, YO, so this will at least kind of change that up a bit. Crazy Bus is Lonely and "Likes to run". Yeah, good luck with that.

Interestingly, I also noticed that Mom will respond to the first Pokemon in your party. Since I wasn't going to use the Rowlet from this playthrough (which for the record, was female on the first attempt... gotta love getting lucky when you don't need or want it), I put Crazy Bus at the front of the team, and any of her lines that referenced my Pokemon always talked about a Grubbin.

Because I had to type up this gigantic mess of a first post, I've put off going any further in the game. I've caught a Yungoos, Pikipek, Caterpie, Metapod, and Rattata (which are all going straight to the PC), and my team of four is all at Level 8 at the moment. I've yet to actually explore the next town with the Pokemon Center - that'll be for next time. Hope you enjoyed my lengthy ramblings!