The release of a Pokemon game in Japan was always going to attract many fans to flock to the nearest store (or in this case, the largest Pokemon Center in Japan), so the release of Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon wasn’t going to be an exception to this rule. In fact, over 500 eager fans lined up outside in anticipation of the latest game’s launch. However, things started to sour soon after.
Credit – NintendoSoup
Just a day after launch, the game was flooded with negative reviews from customers who had pre-ordered the game from Amazon Japan, with early statistics showing that over half of the 124 customers at the time giving it one out of five stars. Meanwhile, 23 users gave it a five star rating, whilst 7 rated it three stars, and 18 gave it two stars. This led to the new release only getting an average 2.5 star rating on the Japanese retailers website, making it the lowest rating that any Pokemon game has received on that site.
Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are the first mainline game in the series to receive more one star ratings than any other star ratings on Amazon Japan, which is bound to come as a massive surprise to many fans around the world. You could argue that Japanese players are more critical than in the west, and that sequels such as these are bound to perform worse than the previous main entries.
However, with the likes of Black/White 2 receiving predominantly five star ratings, as do entries such as other titles such as Pokemon Pearl and Platinum, it doesn’t really support this claim.