There is a world where 10-year-olds are let out of their homes and into the world unsupervised. Then, in this world, the kids catch extremely dangerous creatures and use them to fight against other dangerous creatures. In this world called Pok?mon comes a game that rises above the rest. The three reasons why Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are better than Pokemon Sword and Shield are because shiny Pokemon are a dime a dozen, O-Powers are great, and Battle Points (BP) are easy to accumulate at any skill level.
First of all, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are better than Pokemon Sword and Shield because shiny Pokemon are a dime a dozen. While the only best method to obtain shiny Pokemon in Pokemon Sword and Shield, which is Masuda breeding, does give fair odds, it still does not compare to the odds that Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon provide via the Ultra wormhole. All a player has to do to get insane shiny odds of a whopping 36%, is travel at least 5000 light-years before entering a specific wormhole.
Secondly, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are better than Pokemon Sword and Shield because O-Powers are great. O-Powers are helpful because they speed up the process for a limited time for doing common in-game activities like hatching eggs, finding wild pokemon from inside grass or caves, and leveling up pokemon via in-game battles. O-Powers can even take the place of a repel by stopping the player from encountering wild pokemon for a limited amount of time. In Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, O-Powers have gotten even better by becoming tangible items you can obtain regularly from rotomdex. This allows a player to store up the powers they want to use for a later time.
Finally, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are better than Pokemon Sword and Shield because BP are easy to accumulate at any skill level. The only way to obtain Battle Points in Pokemon Sword and Shield is through competitive battling either through online play/participation or via the Battle Tower and the occasional mystery gift. However, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon allow for an alternative way to obtain consistent Battle Points that has nothing to do with battling at all through a method known as Mantine Surfing. To explain, Mantine Surfing is a fun minigame that unlocks as early in the game as the first island where a player is tasked with scoring points while surfing on a mantine. To score a good amount of points, a player will need to bring up their speed by avoiding different obstacles, mobile and immobile, and then jumping off of a wave to the side once they get their speed up enough to perform tricks through the various button and circle pad combinations while also landing properly. Lastly, when the minigame is concluded, the player is rewarded with BP depending on how many points they scored. In summation, Mantine Surfing is a fun minigame that does not require a player to train a team of competitively bred Pokemon.
Although all of the above reasons are convincing, there still are people who may not agree with them. For example, some opponents may say that the shinies obtained from the Ultra Wormholes are too common to be valuable. While this may be true, not every Pokemon player owns Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon or has the capability of transferring Pokemon from 3DS games to the Switch because they will not be getting Pokemon Home. What this means is those kinds of players will still see Ultra Wormhole shinies as valuable, and therefore it is not hard for anyone who does own Ultra Sun and/or Ultra Moon to acquire other valuable Pokemon through trading even if an extra step is needed to be taken. Another way people may rebut is by saying that the way Rotom gives out O-Powers in Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon is so random that it can not be deemed as particularly useful when a player is only looking for one specific benefit. They may further argue their case by saying that there are items in Pokemon that can achieve the same thing or close to, such as the Lucky Egg item and the Oval Charm already making the egg process a little easier, without having a random factor attached to it. While this may be sound logic, since O-Powers in Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon can be traded, a player can simply trade with another player for O-Powers that benefit each of them, which in turn eliminates some of the randomnesses. Furthermore, it is worth getting O-Powers when they can stack with the items that accomplish the same thing, like the Experience O-Power in combination with the lucky egg, or even when they further improve gameplay in combination with other items, like how the Oval Charm increases the chance of finding eggs and the egg hatching O-Power can further improve breeding by increasing the rate at which they hatch. Last, of all, some may argue that since you can simply rent a team for the Battle Tower in Pokemon Sword and Shield, you do not need to train a team of competitive pokemon. While this is an alternative that one can partake, I still see a few flaws with this objection. First, if one needs to borrow a team just to score BP, the process of grinding loses some of its glory because the player is not using their resources to grind for Battle Points. On the other hand, in Mantine Surf, the player has complete freedom in what tricks they pull off in whatever pattern they want to score the maximum amount of points. Second, since competitive battling requires a degree of skill and a fond understanding of one's team, it gets difficult to score high wins with a rental team. In contrast, Mantine Surfing does not require competitive thinking to get good at and never really gets to a level where it seems overwhelmingly difficult. It is not that hard to score an average of 5+ BP for each consecutive attempt at Mantine Surfing even with running into a few obstacles on an attempt.
In a world where adults make unwise decisions and Pokemon are all the rage, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon stand strong in their respective series. Throughout the essay, I have proven that because shiny Pokemon are a dime a dozen, O-Powers are great, and Battle Points (BP) are easy to accumulate at any skill level, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are better than Pokemon Sword and Shield. In summation, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon truly do stand above their competition and I would suggest either Ultra Sun or Ultra Moon as a new player's game of choice if they want something recent.
