The regular drip feed of Pokémon Sun and Moon news continues with another new trailer plus details of how Pokémon Bank will be updated.
The trailer begins by showing new, version-specific primate Pokémon. The first – unique to Pokémon Sun – is a Fighting type Passimian, which takes inspiration from American Football and Rugby players. Passimian has a unique ability, Receiver, which allows it to inherit the ability of an ally that has fainted during battle. The other is Oranguru – unique to Pokémon Moon – which has a spiritual, monk-like appearance. Oranguru is exclusively able to learn the new move Instructu, which enables it to make a selected target use its most recent move again, similar to the move Encore.
In addition, the previously announced puppy Pokémon Rockruff has two different evolutions, depending on the version of the game being played. Pokémon Sun results in the Midday Form of Lycanroc, which can learn the unique move Accelerock, guaranteeing a first strike that damages opponents by slamming into them quickly. The Midnight Form found in Pokémon Moon is the more aggressive. The stronger an opponent is, the more excited this evolution becomes.
Two more Z-moves were also revealed. The first is Pikachu’s Catastropika, a super-powered attack that gives Pikachu extra strength borrowed from its trainer. The second is Eevee’s Extreme Evoboost. With this move Eevee gathers the powers of its eight different evolutionary forms, raising its Attack, Defence, Sp. Attack, Sp. Defence, and Speed stats by 2.
A new feature was also announced called Pokémon Refresh which lets players care for their Pokémon. Where Pokémon Amie let players interact with their Pokémon to increase their bond, Refresh lets the player clean, care, feed and cure status conditions after a battle. Doing so helps Pokémon become more affectionate and will battle more passionately.
[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLWz2YMJSlg” autoplay=”no”]It’s not just Pokémon that get special attention. Character customisation has returned, and improves on the options found in Pokémon X and Y. Clothing can now be dyed, giving more colour variations, as well as more hairstyle options and the ability to select eye colour.
Finally, there was an update regarding Pokémon Bank. The application that allows players to move Pokémon from past games into “cloud based” storage boxes, will receive an update in January 2017. This update will enable compatibility with Pokémon Sun and Moon as well as include a new National Pokédex feature that reads saved data from compatible titles. This allows the player to see Pokémon that can’t be found natively in the Alola region. Poké Transporter is also being updated to provide compatibility with Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow from the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, meaning that Pokémon caught in the Kanto region can be transferred into Pokémon Sun and Moon.
Whilst it is a shame that the Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter updates aren’t coming until after the launch of Pokémon Sun and Moon, it does mean there will be plenty to do afterwards, and it also prevents players from being overwhelmed with the prospect of transferring a Mewtwo into the new games.
