After feeling burnt out at the end of Pikmin 2, I needed a break from the series. Pikmin 3 does the opposite, and I am left craving more after exhausting all content available.
The quality of life improvements made in this entry make controlling pikmin not an anxiety inducing frenzy, like when you accidently launch all your pikmin in the water instead of just your blue pikmin. Moments like this were common in the first two games with the limited abilities to swap between different pikmin colours. Finding a space wide open enough to separate all your pikmin and then delicately blowing your whistling on the one colour you wanted became too tedious for me and I would find myself just brute forcing areas at the expense of killing off considerable amounts of pikmin.
The new lock-on feature and swapping Pikmin types make management a breeze, and my careless casualties were minimized in my play through to only taking place when I spammed the new charge function.
The main campaign is a joy to play through but errs on the easy side. A time limit is placed on you to find food before you run out, but you build up a ration supply so quickly that this doesn't become much of an issue after the first handful of days. The ability to accurately select Pikmin on the fly makes most fights a simple, but still satisfying task to accomplish. Levels feel more like a Zelda dungeon that you have to untie like a knot, slowly revealing new paths and shortcuts as you use your pikmin to complete puzzles. There is less of an emphasis on combat and more about managing your pikmin between 3 leaders. The most satisfying parts are when this is executed well, but it does take some tedium to setup your task forces as you the quickest way I found to divvy up groups was by flinging pikmin one by one.
The biggest surprise was seeing the credits roll as quickly as they did. The campaign caps out at around 10-15 hours which seems average for a Pikmin game, but the game did not do a great job of informing me I was approaching the final area, and so I had no idea I was facing the final boss until afterwards. There is a lack of central objective in Pikmin 3 that the other games did a better job of conveying. First you must find fruit and your partners to survive, and then the narrative shifts to finding Olimar and Louie. I guess the new crew came to the planet for food to bring back to their home world, but there isn't a clear idea of how much food you need.
If I had bought this back in 2013, I would feel a bit underwhelmed with the content, but thankfully the Deluxe edition packs in some more. The Olimar missions are a breath of fresh air and test your pikmin management skills. Only starting with a handful and needing to build up an army to take on each levels objectives within the short time limit they offer. I managed to clear each one on the first try, usually with a platinum medal, but I still walked away feeling accomplished. It seems like they hit the sweet spot of challenge and accomplisments with the shortened time limit and limited pikmin resources.
I don't need a break after this game, give me Pikmin 4.
The quality of life improvements made in this entry make controlling pikmin not an anxiety inducing frenzy, like when you accidently launch all your pikmin in the water instead of just your blue pikmin. Moments like this were common in the first two games with the limited abilities to swap between different pikmin colours. Finding a space wide open enough to separate all your pikmin and then delicately blowing your whistling on the one colour you wanted became too tedious for me and I would find myself just brute forcing areas at the expense of killing off considerable amounts of pikmin.
The new lock-on feature and swapping Pikmin types make management a breeze, and my careless casualties were minimized in my play through to only taking place when I spammed the new charge function.
The main campaign is a joy to play through but errs on the easy side. A time limit is placed on you to find food before you run out, but you build up a ration supply so quickly that this doesn't become much of an issue after the first handful of days. The ability to accurately select Pikmin on the fly makes most fights a simple, but still satisfying task to accomplish. Levels feel more like a Zelda dungeon that you have to untie like a knot, slowly revealing new paths and shortcuts as you use your pikmin to complete puzzles. There is less of an emphasis on combat and more about managing your pikmin between 3 leaders. The most satisfying parts are when this is executed well, but it does take some tedium to setup your task forces as you the quickest way I found to divvy up groups was by flinging pikmin one by one.
The biggest surprise was seeing the credits roll as quickly as they did. The campaign caps out at around 10-15 hours which seems average for a Pikmin game, but the game did not do a great job of informing me I was approaching the final area, and so I had no idea I was facing the final boss until afterwards. There is a lack of central objective in Pikmin 3 that the other games did a better job of conveying. First you must find fruit and your partners to survive, and then the narrative shifts to finding Olimar and Louie. I guess the new crew came to the planet for food to bring back to their home world, but there isn't a clear idea of how much food you need.
If I had bought this back in 2013, I would feel a bit underwhelmed with the content, but thankfully the Deluxe edition packs in some more. The Olimar missions are a breath of fresh air and test your pikmin management skills. Only starting with a handful and needing to build up an army to take on each levels objectives within the short time limit they offer. I managed to clear each one on the first try, usually with a platinum medal, but I still walked away feeling accomplished. It seems like they hit the sweet spot of challenge and accomplisments with the shortened time limit and limited pikmin resources.
I don't need a break after this game, give me Pikmin 4.