Pokémon Moon (and Sun) is the best of the series by far.
I used to just see recent Pokémon games as an EV/IV inheritance simulator wrapped up in passable graphics and an okay story—that is, until I finished Pokémon Moon.
You see, I've been playing this game series for well over a decade now. I could have easily started with Gen 1, but my first console was a Game Boy Advance, so I started from there with Gens 3 to 6 and all the remakes in between. Nostalgia aside, I never really was attached to the story much. I guess the closest I got was with Omega Ruby's postgame, but that's really just some increased interest rather than full attachment. Gen 7, however, just turned everything around.
For the first time in my life, I felt sad after finishing a Pokémon game. I felt attached to the story all of a sudden—and I'm already 23. I couldn't believe it; I'd thought I was well past the age where a Pokémon game's storyline mattered to me. Pokémon Moon proved me wrong in the best way possible. Sure, it's not The Last of Us in terms of story, but it sure has surpassed all the Pokémon games before it.
It won't hook you like your favorite story-driven AAA titles, but it's certainly a welcome change of pace compared to what the series stood for before. The ambiance, the characters, and even the Pokémon themselves all combined to make a game that is not only worth playing for its improvements over its predecessors, but also worth playing for all the new things that it brings to the table. And going by how Pokémon Moon went, I can safely say that I haven't been this excited for the future of the Pokémon franchise before, even if I'm already well past the normal age demographic of the series.
Granted, I didn't like all of the new features (I'm not a fan of player connectivity options being exclusive to the Festival Plaza at all—I would have appreciated that all connectivity options remained in a revamped Player Search System (PSS) instead, which was introduced last generation), but that didn't stop me from enjoying this game at all.
Overall, I will gladly remember this game as one of the best in the series, if not the best of them overall. The drawbacks were there, but those did not ruin my experience of Pokémon Moon, which I'm glad to say is one of the best I've ever played in the series. I honestly can't wait for what this series will do next.
That fanmade commercial was true, after all (https://youtu.be/nkaPpwOhr8Y); I grew up and "evolved," and so the franchise grew up and "evolved" with me.
