The best Pikmin game to speedrun for sure! The gamepad usage is actually good and makes “dandori” lots of fun.

However, the game is pretty easy and makes most of the difficultyhave to come from self imposed challenges like beating the game fast.

But still, it’s a good game

Pikmin 3 is awesome but this game is like really easy to a fault, I had like 500 pikmin deaths from me being careless mostly and playing on hard but still had like 200 of each pikmin type by the end of the game and I never once even grinded to get more pikmin. I would probably have 300 of each if I actually payed attention during the boss fights. I don't think you could even get away with that amount of carelessness in pikmin 1 and 2 and basically walk away unscathed. Not to say being easy is bad and pikmin 3 is still a fun very chill experience but maaaaybe sometimes it feels a little braindead when it comes to enemy encounters. Especially in the switch port where they added a charge button which practically just works as a delete button on most enemies. Still collecting fruit is fun and I highly recommend it.

Having the Wii U gamepad on my lap and holding a wiimote/nunchuck for the first time in years. What a time to be alive 2013 was. The gamepad was definitely Nintendo flying a little too close to the sun with their zany ideas but dang I love this goofy thing. I actually think the controller is really comfortable and I played a ton of games remotely with it back in the day. Pikmin 3 utilizes the gamepad in a fun and compelling way. Getting little calls, reading reports, and directing your companions. It's charming as heck.

Pikmin 3 is all charm. The environments are detailed and beautiful. They are a real joy to exist in. The characters are all fun and them chatting in their fake little language interspersed with recognizable words like "PEEEKMIN" and "CAP-TEN" was really delightful. The Pikmin vibes are all intact. It strikes the balance between the fear of starvation and safety with the joys of exploration and learning. Alph and co. need to get food for their planet, which is a very serious and dangerous mission, but they cannot help but be delighted and curious about this world they are exploring and these little color coded plantmen.

Great vibes, the vibes are good but what about the gameplay. Coming off Pikmin 4 the gameplay had some stuff I liked and some stuff I didn't like. Bosses in this game are very grand. They are a big deal and it feels like a big deal when you beat one. The little halls right before a boss where the camera is fixed and angled up was very cool. I like the bosses in this game quite a lot. They make you feel very small and what I want out of my gameplay in Pikmin is to feel small and perform complex dandori.

Speaking of complexity I liked that aspect too. With the 3 captains and the ability to move them around the map using the gamepad I was able to perform some pretty efficient levels of dandori, directing captains/pikmin on opposite corners of the map. The water pikmin are introduced pretty late and I think that was smart. It made revisiting earlier maps a real fun treat because you could assign all your blue pikmin to one captain and have them explore the water and then have the other two captains clean up any other fruits you missed on your first go around. Swapping between the parties and multitasking is intuitive and feels good.

The maps themselves are varied and look really great. I think there is a lot of work that went into them and it shows but I was a bit disappointed with how many walls there are. The maps feel like a lot of hallways and bridges looping out of and back into the main base. They are not very open. Going down corridors and across bridges that are very intentionally captain/pikmin sized makes the world feel designed for me which is everything I DON'T want in a Pikmin game. Having the world feel designed for me makes Alph and co. feel "normal" sized instead of small and feeling small is kind of what it's all about.

Overall the game rules but I always feel a bit disappointed when I leave a game that has all the makings of a "most favorite special boy 5 star game" just thinking it's "really good". I look forward to revisiting this game in the future though, I think it could grow on me.

With an entire console generation separating the third Pikmin game from its predecessors, it should be the far superior experience, both mechanically and graphically—and to some extent, it is. Pikmin 3 returns to the fundamentals of the first game, zigging where the second game chose to zag. Focus is once again placed on resource management and overworld puzzles, revolving its central collectibles around a survival-based narrative in order to reinforce and incentivize the mission of optimal minute-to-minute gameplay. The mechanics have been refined since the last entry, with more tools at your disposal to command and delegate Pikmin, all of which have been practically begging to be implemented since the first game. The story is a lot more involved this time around as well, expanding our knowledge of the Pikmin world with the introduction of new intrepid explorers from a different planet than we’ve thus far known, as well as an official name for the Pikmin’s Earth-analogue homeworld, PNF-404. The stakes are raised with this increased emphasis on narrative, placing not just your own survival on the line, but that of your entire planet should you fail to accrue enough resources to return with. However, just as with many of the game’s other expanded ambitions, there remains a disconnect between conception and execution.

The outsized threat of Pikmin 3’s story should be more effective than the relative simplicity of its predecessors, but it lacks the inherent link between gameplay and narrative payoff the first two games made imperative. While the accrual of fruit in lieu of ship parts as the game’s central survival resource feels like a sound substitute initially, the fact that it has no practical bearing on the mission’s success makes the task feel empty, which is only worsened by the absolute lack of tension it provides as an incentivizing time limit. It’s obvious that Pikmin 3 was designed to be less overtly challenging than the previous games: dampening the difficulty of an already lenient hard limit, trivializing the lethality of every elemental hazard, as well as tempering the regularity of hostile enemies in addition to giving you more tools to deal with them. In a vacuum, none of these changes are inherently bad, and on the whole, decreasing the barrier for access is good. But when combined, all these elements hamper the essence of accomplishment that comes with overcoming the central obstacles of the series’ ethos.

The more technical changes and refinements are, however, one of the game’s most constructive additions. While at first I bemoaned the absence of the swarming feature so vital to controlling your squad of Pikmin in the first two games, the lock-on and charge mechanics introduced here proved such a godsend that I hardly missed what was once my main means of controlling squadrons. This was further helped by the universally improved AI of the Pikmin, which are now programmed to pursue more logical routes and follow the player in such a way that large groups get stuck significantly less often behind unwieldy ramps and other obstacles. These are all vital improvements which prove to be even more significant when considered alongside yet another intuitive new feature expanded upon after the introduction of multiple captain characters in Pikmin 2. Without all these quality of life changes, it’s unlikely the ability to direct captains with squads of Pikmin to and from various objectives would be as seamless and assistive as it is. Despite the evolving complexity of all these systems at play, each one building off every improvement prior games and subsequent re-releases have added to the experience, Pikmin 3 makes its mechanics as practicable as can be—which is critical considering how involved and dispersed the game’s myriad puzzles and obstacles for progression often can be.

The overworld challenges of Pikmin 3 echo the sprawling, frequently multifaceted undertakings prevalent in gathering the first game’s pivotal objectives. You employ the array of Pikmin at your disposal to build bridges, dismantle barriers, and retrieve items from otherwise inaccessible areas. Pikmin 3 expands the scope of these environmental puzzles through a handful of new mechanics, some of which directly tie into the unique power set of the two new Pikmin types. Rock and Winged Pikmin offer the player a host of new interactions between the environment and the enemies thanks to the particular set of powers they hold, which prove mostly balanced despite how disproportionately advantageous they often end up being over the other types available. Glass barriers and an immunity to crushing provide plenty of use cases for Rock Pikmin in the game, while Winged Pikmin prove invaluable for their ability to reach and transport objects with far more ease than even the nimble Yellow Pikmin previously could. They’re even adept in numerous combat scenarios despite an inferior damage output, by virtue of how quickly they’re able to overwhelm targets with the lock on and charge mechanics of the game. Fortunately, the distinct advantages of these new Pikmin types are never so overwhelming to outright invalidate any of the other variants, but even so their utility is such that you feel compelled to keep a squadron of them in your party regardless of whether the obstacle you’re tackling will require their assistance.

Undoubtedly, the most significant benefit to Pikmin 3’s delayed follow up to its GameCube predecessors is the massive uptick in graphical quality the Wii U allowed for in rendering the adventure’s idyllic scenery. The four bespoke areas to explore are distinguished via seasonal theming, with the fall and summer spaces being especially distinctive thanks to their complementary layouts providing more memorable interactions. The other two perhaps suffer from being the introductory areas of the game, with large sections made initially inaccessible thanks to your limited abilities to affect the environment. They’re also, however, more confusing to navigate due to the bizarrely dissected nature of the map layout. Various sections in each area of Pikmin 3 are kept separate from the central landing area you start out in, typically signposted by some kind of transitionary tunnel or cave entrance depicted on the map with an accompanying directional arrow. The disconnected nature of these layouts is already a little confusing, but it’s often made worse by its portrayal on the map screen, making each area look something like an archipelago with all its scattered parts. Some of the spaces aren’t even functional, operating as scenic hallways between sections with no ability to even turn the camera, let alone interact with the space in any meaningful way. These liminal passageways are primarily reserved for the interim between the exploration spaces and the boss arenas, signifying a kind of grandiosity looming on the other side. For the most part, though, these dramatic preludes are all pomp, as nearly all the boss fights in this game—and indeed, combat interactions as a whole—prove significantly underwhelming.

In spite of how the mechanics of Pikmin 3 universally improve combat interactions as a whole, additional changes result in a sense of general dissatisfaction in all but a few select encounters. The main bosses of the game best exemplify this duality, but the sentiment extends to regular enemies and minibosses as well. Bosses tend to have heavily forecasted attack patterns followed by a period of vulnerability. This isn’t poor design in and of itself, and is actually something of a good template for boss designs in general, but the monotonous and obvious signposting for these fights make them a terrible bore, as your strategy boils down to little more than evading obvious attacks and simply bum-rushing the boss when their defenses are down. There’s never a sense of uncertainty, or threat, thanks to their inability to kill any more than five of your Pikmin with any of their easily avoided attacks. The only exception here is the Quaggled Mireclops, an intimidating titan disguised as an earthen mound, whose stomps are disorienting and extremely deadly if you don’t maneuver carefully. It has a number of elemental components to it that make the fight more interesting, giving you an added obstacle to overcome should you wish to take on the boss with your more powerful, but more vulnerable, Pikmin types. It’s also the only fight where the build up sees some kind of impactful payoff within the bout, as you mount the creature’s back after bringing it to its knees to attack its exposed head. Even the final boss falls short of the spectacle it promises, albeit more so due to the excess of its execution rather than any particular let down in challenge. In theory, it’s a sound finale that tests all the skills and abilities you’ve thus far honed exploring the world and gathering its resources, but the drawn-out nature of the climax constantly undercuts the tension of the fight, due to the day timer still being in play.

The disappointments of the game are never so much as to be wholly negative, though. While the many changes made to shear off some of the series’ more unnecessary difficulties have ironically made the game too easy now, the overall experience remains a positive and rewarding one. The more vivid world and involved story are welcome evolutions for the series, and one should hardly complain about the vastly improved interactions the game retains on a mechanical level. Pikmin 3 wavers in consideration only when measured against the unique strengths its predecessors maintain contrary to the refinements present in this more elegant entry. In actuality, Pikmin 3 is a relatively brief experience most comparable to the first game, in terms of objectives, structure, and overall strengths. But it sets itself apart still thanks to its strong mechanics, its more robust narrative, and distinct visual theming throughout. It comes up short in enough places that the overall experience is likely to leave a less distinct impression than its forebears, but it remains a charming, immersive adventure that comfortably improves and consolidates the Pikmin formula into a newly accessible, and still fulfilling, project with boundless potential.

Great game! An improved sequel in many ways, while also having a few things that can be considered a step back depending on what you like from this series.

The biggest improvement in this game is the presentation in my opinion. The game is beautiful - the weather effects, the audio design, the textures, the enemy designs, all top notch. Pikmin has always been shown in a realistic way compared to other nintendo games and this is no different. A lot of work clearly went into designing these areas to be both intricate and realistic to life, which I enjoyed. A true feast for the eyes, especially considering it was designed for the wii u.

The story of this game is cute as well. You need to find olimar from the first game to get a key to get back and save your planet. I like the expanded world and the idea that there is other sentient life in this universe other than Hocotate. The main trio is charming and the story was fun to watch play as you continue the game.

The areas of this game are great, intricately crafted in an interesting evolution of what we saw in the first two games. Caves aren’t long dungeons anymore, rather they are combined into the levels much more naturally. They serve as an extention of the levels rather than feeling disconnected. However, this also makes them much larger, which leads to a criticism I have. I feel like the larger maps make it a bit difficult to get a lot done in this game. Rather, I feel as though there is less time to get what I want done in a particular day. This might be a skill issue on my part but idk. The levels themselves are great however, and I like the use of the different captains to traverse the terrain, which is another interesting evolution of the dual captains idea in pikmin 2.

My primary criticism of this game is probably the difficulty with enemies. I personally really liked how difficult and even unfair the first 2 games could be, and the more accessible approach to this game’s design makes it feel very brezzy to fight enemies. Certain enemies, like the wollywog, were deadly in the first two games, and now feel like a slight pushover. It’s not the worst thing in the world, and some may like how the game is more accessible. I just wish it challenged me a bit more - although the final level was fantastic. Very challenging and fun. I wish there were more sequences like that.

Overall, this game is a wonderful evolution of the first game, while taking the improved aspects of the second. I haven’t played much of the side mode but i’ve heard good things of that as well. This one was probably my least favorite in the series thus far but I did really enjoy my time with it. Good game!

Playing it in the completionist mindset of getting all the fruit, Pikmin 3 feels like the sequel that Pikmin 2 wished it was for Pikmin 1. With the wii u gamepad, the aspect of multitasking is highlighted more than ever, making the day to day process of collecting very fun.

This games focus on more of a linear story works too. Detracts even more from the arcadey aspect of 1, but it proves itself to not require it.

Best pikmin game so far. . .

My only replay of my Pikmin marathon, and thus, the first Pikmin game I ever played. It's still quite good, with pretty intriguing level design that is more preoccupied with managing Pikmin with multiple captains and more multi-step boss fights. It also still looks really nice for a game that's now a decade old! I do wish that it kind of kept the consumerist satire from Pikmin 2 (or, well, a lot of the more cynical personality shown from the previous Pikmin games) instead of the relatively flavorless dynamic between the three captains and the vague environmentalist themes here