Least Favorite Third/Enhanced Version

[TechSkylander1518]

Yellow because what's the point? It barely improves on the originals and doesn't even reflect the anime that it's supposedly an adaptation of in any meaningful way. Oh so Pikachu follows you around and can't evolve. Whoopee.

None of others are perfect, but they all add increasing amounts of new features and concepts, and generally improve upon certain imperfections in the originals. Any one of them is more worth your money than Yellow.

Admittedly I haven't played Gen 1 games (I could never survive without my beloved running shoes), but while I get that Yellow isn't great as an extra purchase, I feel like it's still a good improvement over the others as a first purchase. Letting players get all three starters is a nice way to let someone have a feel for the idea of starter Pokemon without missing out (although they should've done that with every Pokemon), and the sprites of the Pokemon look a lot nicer IMO, and more vibrant with those new colors.

Spoiler

Something else I did not like about it is that while Suicune does become kind of crucial to the updated storyline... Entei and Raikou still don't which seems kind of pointless.

That's actually something that makes me really love Crystal's storyline- if they're not on a cover, legendary groups never have any story relevance in the main games beyond being part of a set (Swords of Justice, Lake Guardians, Regis), so it's fun to have a moment where you just connect with one individual one. It's a bit of step back from the high-stakes stories we usually get now while still keeping that mystique and rarity- Suicune isn't getting captured by an evil team, it doesn't have a giant dungeon all its own, but it's still special, you still stumble across this and get this awe, there's this person pursuing it- it's a fun kind of experience. Obviously it would get old if you did it all the time, but it was nice to experience at least once.

 

[SammyW27]

A possible issue about Gen 7 is that Gamefreak may or may not have hurried SM development to get it out for the 20th Anniversary (and holiday season).
Though I still think the content from the Ultra dou should've been released in patches or DLC to help.

 

[Daenerys]

A tie between Yellow and Crystal. I didn't like the anime elements of Yellow version and Crystal didn't add anything that I liked other than the animated sprites but even that was just kinda meh compared to the innovations that other games brought. :/

 

[SamurottMan]

I voted Yellow, though USUM came close

I would've checked USUM, but playing SM after finishing USUM the originals felt "empty" to me. USUM added stuff to the region that just made Alola complete.

On the other hand, I'll never forgive them for butchering Lusamine...

 

[AlienXotic]

Easy one, Yellow. But that's not saying its bad its just that its the only one that I don't feel strongly about

 

[Esserise]

I will say that going back and playing vanilla Sun feels kind of weird now. I keep habitually looking for Totem Stickers and NPC sub-events and they're just not there. It is odd to think that I'll eventually catch a Necrozma in the post-game, but it will remain forever unexplained and incomplete. USUM may not have introduced a ton of new areas to explore or a very divergent story path like B2W2 did, but the changes that they did add were pretty nice. Though that's not to say that I excuse their existence in the first place.

Edit: still irrationally angry that the version-exclusive divide is Heatran in US/Regigigas in UM instead of Heatran in US/Cresselia in UM

 

[Puddle]

I will say that going back and playing vanilla Sun feels kind of weird now. I keep habitually looking for Totem Stickers and NPC sub-events and they're just not there. It is odd to think that I'll eventually catch a Necrozma in the post-game, but it will remain forever unexplained and incomplete. USUM may not have introduced a ton of new areas to explore or a very divergent story path like B2W2 did, but the changes that they did add were pretty nice. Though that's not to say that I excuse their existence in the first place.

I haven't replayed my copy of Moon since USUM came out, but when I do, I wonder if my experience will be the same? Although I prefer the story in the originals, it'll definitely feel a little strange not having access to all of Alola's features, especially Ultra Warp Ride. Complete Zygarde is a nuisance to obtain in the originals games, too. I don't think it'll be too much of a problem for me though, because I still enjoy playing all of the other primary paired versions in spite of the missing content.

I've actually just started a new playthrough of Ultra Moon, inspired in part by this thread. This time, I'm going to try and pretend I've never played an Alola game before, so that my judgement of the story isn't clouded too much by what I know of the original games. I suspect that if USUM had been my first Alola game, I would have appreciated the story a lot more. Even if it's not as good as the original story, it's still way above average for a Pokemon game. (Did I mention that I think the Ultra Recon Squad are super cool? They're essentially aliens, or "Ultra People" you could say.)

Edit: still irrationally angry that the version-exclusive divide is Heatran in US/Regigigas in UM instead of Heatran in US/Cresselia in UM

That was a weird decision, wasn't it? It's also weird how Regigigas has absolutely no connection to the other Regis, you don't need to have them in your party or anything.

 

[Esserise]

I don't think it'll be too much of a problem for me though, because I still enjoy playing all of the other primary paired versions in spite of the missing content.

As do I, for the most part. I mean, I can only go so far back before the quality of life regressions become too ample for me to cope with, but honestly I think the enhanced versions tend to work as well as they do is because their foundations are already pretty strong. So in theory those foundations should still be able to hold up even after an enhanced edition has added more to them.

I've actually just started a new playthrough of Ultra Moon, inspired in part by this thread. This time, I'm going to try and pretend I've never played an Alola game before, so that my judgement of the story isn't clouded too much by what I know of the original games. I suspect that if USUM had been my first Alola game, I would have appreciated the story a lot more. Even if it's not as good as the original story, it's still way above average for a Pokemon game. (Did I mention that I think the Ultra Recon Squad are super cool? They're essentially aliens, or "Ultra People" you could say.)

I try to imagine this sometimes. While I like the USUM story more than... I dunno, probably anyone else on this board (I will readily proclaim that LUSUMine's character development is Really Good Actually and I still believe that part of the negative reception to what those games do is based on a common misunderstanding of the SM lore; I also really like what USUM do with Hau and Gladion, but I do think Lillie gets the short end of the stick, unfortunately), I tend to feel that it is hampered as a prospective "standalone" or "entry-level" story somewhat because, at least for me, the strengths of USUM's story are a result of deliberate contrasts or alterations of the SM story. The SM narrative informs the USUM narrative quite a bit, and I think that without that, some of the details would feel rather awkward to a hypothetical newcomer (to say nothing of Episode RR, holy god).

That said, yes, I am a big fan of the Recon Squad. I think it was kind of a mistake to split them up between versions and give them they most vaguely divergent of "goals" to justify that, and we don't get to see enough of Ultra Megalopolis, but I really like each of their individual personalities, and it's interesting to see Pokémon deal with a literal alien civilization who aren't familiar with any of how the Pokémon world works. (I'll have to suss out the interview another time, but I remember the producers talking at one point about how they considered putting a language barrier between the people of Alola and the URS as one way to depict their alien quality.) In a way, they parallel the player character, who is equally "new" to Alola (although again, the game is kind of at odds with its own existence here - the novelties of the Alola region were much sharper when SM came out; a lot of people playing USUM are already going to be familiar with Alola's customs and gameplay, and so the concept of the URS is a little late to the party to work as an effective parallel).

That was a weird decision, wasn't it? It's also weird how Regigigas has absolutely no connection to the other Regis, you don't need to have them in your party or anything.

That too is strange, but I don't know that I can complain about that part too much - those "must have x in your party" Legendaries have always felt a little more tedious to me since I don't train up the requisite Pokémon or anything, I just catch 'em, put them in my party, and go back to wherever the third Legendary is. USUM already have such requirements for Suicune, Rayquaza, Giratina, Landorus, and Kyurem, and that's on top of the RNG-ness of the wormholes. You have to make it deep enough in to hope that you encounter the right color and level of wormhole, and not get sucked into a different one by accident. I'm actively hoping that Dynamax Adventures will be less luck-based.

 

[Bolt Strike]

The Ultra Recon Squad storyline was such a missed opportunity to have the gameplay revolve more around exploring an alternate world. I really want to see Pokemon do something like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, and Metroid Prime 2, where the game consists of you jumping between a light world and a dark world. Those types of games are always fun to explore despite them essentially being a copy/paste of the same world. It was always pretty unlikely that they would do something like that with USUM considering it being a third version made within a year, but the lore and general premise lines up perfectly for that sort of setup (with the Ultra Recon Squad being aliens from a world whose light was stolen by Necrozma) so it's still disappointing that they didn't use this kind of story for that kind of game. We did end up seeing shades of that with Ultra Ruin being a destroyed Hau'oli City, but they could do MUCH more than that (probably not as much that's as dark as that, though).

 

[mikechuu]

Oh definitely USUM. They ruined Lusamine for me.