I don't know what I can say about Pikmin 3 Deluxe other than: "Game good". It certainly is better than Pikmin 2, it looks fantastic, it has co-op and the game is overall easier...Maybe too easy.

My only real complaint with this one is that they don't implement the purple and white Pikmin to the main game at all. They are only in the game for the side content, which is so lame.

If you have never played a Pikmin game, I would say that this and Pikmin 4 are great entry points to the franchise. But I think I am more likely to replay this one than Pikmin 4 actually.

While Pikmin 3 Deluxe is outdone by other Pikmin games in specific areas, like 1's narrative, 2's sense of humor, or 4's level design, it remains my favorite in the series. There are a few reasons why, but more than anything I think it's easily the most fun to master.

Pikmin 3 is, in my opinion, the fully realized version of Pikmin 1's design ethos. It's an exercise in learning the mechanics, learning the levels, and finding out how to do everything as quickly and efficiently as possible. Every Pikmin type remains useful both when completing the main objectives and when revisiting areas for cleanup. The increased size of levels and variety of objectives gives the player plenty of room to figure out what to tackle and when (Tropical Wilds especially is really fun to optimize).

And of course, the introduction of the "Go Here" command is quite possibly the best thing to ever happen to the series, opening up a world of possibilities for multitasking. It allows for simultaneous completion of multiple objectives and management of special objectives requiring multiple captains. All this, on top of managing Pikmin counts and Spicy Spray, gives Pikmin 3 a feeling of "Dandori" its prequels couldn't match and its sequel ironically refused to. It's not perfect; the timer's very lax, the balance scale puzzle in Garden of Hope is a little annoying to speed through, and placing exactly two fruits underwater in Twilight River is a bit of a dick move. But I think it comes closer than any other game in the series.

On top of all that, it has some absolutely phenomenal extras. Mission Mode is a fantastic addition that pushes your time management skills to their absolute limits. Bingo Battle is a really fun multiplayer mode, though I haven't played much of it. The option to take photos is a neat extra, especially with a game this beautiful. And the stuff Deluxe adds is no slouch either. The Piklopedia's back, complete with Louie's cooking logs. Co-op in the main campaign is a blast to play with a buddy (and is such an obvious addition I question why it hasn't been a thing since Pikmin 2). And there are so many charming Easter Eggs and little bits of dialogue that add so much to the experience. It's really good! I don't know what else to say.

Pikmin is the Nintendo licence that everybody knows (mostly because of Smash I think) but very few people have actually played it. And I'm like everybody, if a friend had not lent me his cartridge, I don't think I would ever have played Pikmin 3.
But I am thankfull he did, because Pikmin is fun and intersting!

Pikmin 3 is a RTS, and it's the first game of the genre I have ever played I think. I may have played some games that could be categorised as RTS on the DS but I'm not very sure...
When I think of RTS, I always associate the genre with complicated gameplay, precise ressource management and very steep learning curves. But I'm happy to say that I was wrong!

At first I felt a bit lost, because I am not used to this type of game, but the controls are very intuitive and it quickly became very natural to move and command the Pikmins. There is basically 2 actions you can do, call Pikmins to you or throw Pikmins on something. Every other command in the game does something that is similar but a little more efficient depending on the situation. This means that the game is very easy to take in hand!
Same goes with the "go there" command. Since there are 3 playable characters, you can have one go to one spot while you do something else with another one. This lets you be a lot more efficient and I struggled a lot less when I started using it!

The game tries to give you a sense of urgency by using a hunger system. Every day that passes consumes one food ressource, and to get more food you need to bring back fruits to your ship. It felt like a real danger at the very begining of the game, because you only have enough ressources to survive for 3 days, but it quickly became a non-threat as I learned to be more efficient, and I quickly gathered more than 30 days of food (I finished the game in 17 ingame days).

The story mode is very chill and fun, puzzles are well balanced. Fights in general are a bit more messy, but the more Pikmin you have and the less trouble you'll have to kill enemies. Bosses on the other hand are good puzzle fights, each one of them requiring you to use the correct pikmins to deal damage to them.

I love how the brutality and cruauty of the player actions is completely ignored in the game. Sending these cute Pikmins to their death is so much fun and it feels right! It's like controlling an ant colony, individuals don't exists, only the group is important. If you have to sacifice a few to reach your objectives, then go ahead! It's no problem, you can always create new ones anyway haha!

While I enjoyed the story, what really hooked me to the game were the 2 side stories with Olimar. In opposition with the story mode, you start with no Pikmins and you will have to play with the ressources you find. You get an objective and a time limit to reach the highest score possible. I found it very engaging and beat every level on the platinum rank, because the levels are really well constructed. It's like figuring out the optimal way to solve a puzzle and it feels really good! Plus the platinum rank is generally pretty generous and allows for mistakes to happen!

So once again I had a blast playing a new video game from a genre I'm not familiar with. If you are like me and only know Pikmin from Smash, you should check out the game, it's a lot of fun! And fruits. Juicy fruits. Very juicy fruits...

Played coop all the way through with my four-year-old kid.

It's the breeziest and easiest of the 3 games so far. Adds the rock pikmin and flying pikmin... Which are not really all that interesting.

But, the game does a great job of just giving you cool stuff to do with your Pikmin.

The full coop was such a good way to play and would be genuinely awesome with two grown players.

With a really young dude it works to effectively train him in 3d environment navigation and button awareness.

I still love Pikmin 1 the most, the 30 day limit really adds stakes to the adventuring that I have missed in the sequels.

But this one just goes down real easy and was a delight to play with my dude.

In its effort to add back sorely-missed content into the somewhat lacking original, Pikmin 3 Deluxe ends up missing the mark on exactly what made the original so compelling. A cumbersome new control system and a butchered Bingo Battle cannot be compensated for by the addition of a (itself somewhat lacking) Piklopedia, and a few bonus mission mode-style stage remixes.

If you can get the original on Wii U, I believe that to be the supreme experience overall. In general, though, Pikmin 3 is still Pikmin 3, and will satisfy long time fans enough, and will certainly satisfy newcomers. If you ask me, Pikmin 3 is still the game to start the series with, and Deluxe does little to shift that position.

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.

Holy cow! Pikmin is as good as they say?!

It took me only a few minutes to fall in love with everything about this game. The level design is absolutely insane! Each stage is jam-packed with goodies, baddies, beautiful scenery, and most importantly, endlessly adorable Pikmin! Working your ass off (or more accurately, the Pikmin's asses off) to collect all of the various fruits might be the most fun I've ever had 100% completing a game, and I only wish there was a little bit more content. As it stands I completed everything in the base game in a little over eight hours, and while there's a lot of fun looking side stuff to do, the core gameplay is so perfect that I can't help but want more of it.

I suppose that means I should move on to the other games in the series, I've heard Pikmin 4 is pretty good!

Pikmin 3 continues the downward slope of intrigue from the previous games. This is about the point in the series where it threw away the survival aspects in favor of a chibi robo-esque miniature collect-a-thon structure. The main merit in this game is the visuals, which are better than that of 4. The textures are beautiful and the water is the best it has ever looked. The sound and animation of the juice being squeezed into the bottle at the end of every day is shit you would see on oddly satisfying TikTok. The Quaggled Mireclops encounter was the peak of my enjoyment with this game and I wish we had more stuff like it.

Fantastic game, but the main story feels like it stops just as it gets going. The side-story content with olimar is fine as a way of remixing the story levels with different goals but isnt substantial enough to feel like its a significant addition. It would be better if it was a madatory part of the story rather than optional. It does strangly introduce/ spoil blue pikmin before you come across them in the main stroy though. The side-missions are also fun at first but when you realise its just 5 levels with different enemy layouts 4 times over it feels less satisfying to play through them all.