Coelacanis
16 reviews liked by Coelacanis
My favorite thing about Nintendo platformers - or at least the very best ones - is that each level throws a new concept or challenge at you. Super Mario Bros Wonder does such an amazing job of this, constantly introducing new elements and then putting an additional twist on top of them with the wonder flowers. I never quite knew what to expect going into a level.
The whole experience was just so much fun! I know some people might say it’s too easy, but I thought it was just right. I don’t really go to Mario games looking for a tough challenge; I go to them looking to bounce on mushrooms and take in the colors and cheerful music, and Wonder absolutely delivers in those areas.
If I have one complaint it’s that I’m not the biggest Bowser Jr. fan (and I prefer to have more varied bosses) although he works well enough here and the boss fights were all pretty fun. The last couple of bosses were especially great! So yeah I basically have nothing bad to say about this game.
The whole experience was just so much fun! I know some people might say it’s too easy, but I thought it was just right. I don’t really go to Mario games looking for a tough challenge; I go to them looking to bounce on mushrooms and take in the colors and cheerful music, and Wonder absolutely delivers in those areas.
If I have one complaint it’s that I’m not the biggest Bowser Jr. fan (and I prefer to have more varied bosses) although he works well enough here and the boss fights were all pretty fun. The last couple of bosses were especially great! So yeah I basically have nothing bad to say about this game.
Chants of Sennaar
2023
This game rules. It’s all about decoding languages to solve puzzles and climb a tower (based on the Tower of Babel myth). The process of using context clues to identify words and translate phrases is very satisfying, and I can’t imagine how much thought and creativity went into designing the player’s experience. The developers found some really brilliant ways to introduce certain words and concepts, and everything comes together beautifully by the end of the game. The game’s aesthetic - visually and musically - is also very much my kind of thing. I love how each area has its own distinct character and tone. I enjoyed the fixed perspective a lot, and it’s used really well throughout the game.
It’s not a perfect game. While some words are introduced in very creative ways, others could have used some more effort (there are a few times where you’ll just see things like a giant picture of a book with the word for book written next to it). Other times you might need to just use process of elimination to find definitions, which isn’t the most satisfying.
I’m also not sure how I feel about how much the game translates for you once you’ve defined all the words in a language. For example, if you figure out that someone is saying the words “me seek key,” the game translates that to “I’m looking for a key.” I think it’s cool that it gives you a little more context for how the different peoples in the tower talk, and it definitely makes the game feel more user friendly, but sometimes I wished the game would have let me figure out the meanings of translated phrases myself.
My last gripe is that the final section of the game feels kind of unnecessary. It was pretty cool but narratively I don’t really get the point of it, especially since it comes at a time when the story is wrapping up beautifully. Just seemed like a weird choice.
None of these flaws really impacted my enjoyment of the game, so I’m still giving it 5 stars. I’m so impressed by what the developers accomplished here and I desperately want to see more games like this.
It’s not a perfect game. While some words are introduced in very creative ways, others could have used some more effort (there are a few times where you’ll just see things like a giant picture of a book with the word for book written next to it). Other times you might need to just use process of elimination to find definitions, which isn’t the most satisfying.
I’m also not sure how I feel about how much the game translates for you once you’ve defined all the words in a language. For example, if you figure out that someone is saying the words “me seek key,” the game translates that to “I’m looking for a key.” I think it’s cool that it gives you a little more context for how the different peoples in the tower talk, and it definitely makes the game feel more user friendly, but sometimes I wished the game would have let me figure out the meanings of translated phrases myself.
My last gripe is that the final section of the game feels kind of unnecessary. It was pretty cool but narratively I don’t really get the point of it, especially since it comes at a time when the story is wrapping up beautifully. Just seemed like a weird choice.
None of these flaws really impacted my enjoyment of the game, so I’m still giving it 5 stars. I’m so impressed by what the developers accomplished here and I desperately want to see more games like this.
This review contains spoilers
Still working on beating this game, but I have enough to work with to give a fair review. Ultimately it's got some pretty big issues, though I'm still having a great time with it despite the problems.
The Good Stuff:
-The music is amazing and they really nail some of the audio beats with matching the energy of each area and especially the ExE Fusions in battle.
-Collecting residents for the town unlocks a ton of unique and different features - Sometimes new facilities pop up that allow you to interact with the game world in different ways, and also occasionally unlocks key mechanics.
-The NPC Digimon are really entertaining and very endearing. I found that I was more engaged by the sidequests and what the Digimon of this world were up to more so than any of the main characters.
-Move sets become very customizable later on and add variety to the combat.
The Neutral Stuff:
I have mixed feelings about this part, but the game doesn't do a great job at explaining how to use basic functions or what some things mean (for example, what any of the stat icons are. I ended up googling these when it became important for planning Digivolution paths).
On one hand, it feels like they intentionally want you to figure certain things out on your own, like how the first few times you raise your partners, digivolution is largely random and there is no way to specifically target one option if your partner meets the requirements for multiple. After getting access to the Digivolution Dojo, you can block off the paths you don't want.
I do like how this allows the player to get used to Digivolution and how it works without stressing about optimizing a Digivolution path right from the start, and to just enjoy the game until things slowly get more complex. Others might understandably find this frustrating though.
The Bad Stuff (There's a lot):
-The story is... not good. Very boring for the most part, some cool things happen, but this really could have been a lot better. Digimon in general has a TON of lore, lending depth and emotion to the worlds and characters in the series which Next Order just drops the ball on SO hard.
-The life cycle mechanic for your partner Digimon is really unique, but upon death, your progression in the game is effectively paused while you train and re-level your partners. They just aren't strong enough to immediately pick up where you left off at the time of their deaths.
-I also keep running into an issue with getting my partners all the way to mega, and they still aren't powerful enough to beat whichever boss is necessary to move on, meaning I have to let them die again, reincarnate with slightly better stats, and try again.
-There are things you can do to increase the effectiveness of training, but those are locked behind progression in the game or by purchasing better training equipment which is expensive - something that is fueled by another problem where money isn't collected quickly enough to keep up with your expenses, and is hard to accumulate at any point.
-Travel is tedious at all times. The game world thankfully isn't really large enough to get lost at any point. The problem is that most of the time, you're just hoofing it from one side of the map to the other - no quicker by-foot options like rideable mounts or even sprinting, just one running speed and it's SLOW. You do get the option to travel directly from the town to a specific area of your choosing eventually, but it is expensive (again, the money issue) and doesn't save that much time imo, so I just chose to walk most of the time anyways.
-An unfortunately huge part of the more difficult fights and bosses is just repeatedly throwing recovery items at your Digimon while you pray that they keep attacking opponents.
-The battle camera is AWFUL no matter which setting you choose.
-The game is VERY hard, even after switching to Easy mode. Enemy accuracy is definitely lowered on Easy, but it also feels like the difficulty changes how much HP your opponents have and not necessarily how hard they hit you. Easy mode makes a fight actually take a more reasonable amount of time instead of dragging on for minutes longer than each fight really needs to. The balance here definitely feels pretty off.
Conclusion:
I feel like I'm being generous by giving this game 3 full stars, but 2 1/2 feels too low with how much I'm actually loving it even considering the massive list of issues I could probably keep adding to.
Ultimately, I'm having a lot of fun and it feels really good to chill with it for an evening to decompress, so I would recommend giving it a try for those who like monster collecting games or anyone who grew up with Digimon like I did. Just meet the game on it's own terms and don't expect a riveting story.
The Good Stuff:
-The music is amazing and they really nail some of the audio beats with matching the energy of each area and especially the ExE Fusions in battle.
-Collecting residents for the town unlocks a ton of unique and different features - Sometimes new facilities pop up that allow you to interact with the game world in different ways, and also occasionally unlocks key mechanics.
-The NPC Digimon are really entertaining and very endearing. I found that I was more engaged by the sidequests and what the Digimon of this world were up to more so than any of the main characters.
-Move sets become very customizable later on and add variety to the combat.
The Neutral Stuff:
I have mixed feelings about this part, but the game doesn't do a great job at explaining how to use basic functions or what some things mean (for example, what any of the stat icons are. I ended up googling these when it became important for planning Digivolution paths).
On one hand, it feels like they intentionally want you to figure certain things out on your own, like how the first few times you raise your partners, digivolution is largely random and there is no way to specifically target one option if your partner meets the requirements for multiple. After getting access to the Digivolution Dojo, you can block off the paths you don't want.
I do like how this allows the player to get used to Digivolution and how it works without stressing about optimizing a Digivolution path right from the start, and to just enjoy the game until things slowly get more complex. Others might understandably find this frustrating though.
The Bad Stuff (There's a lot):
-The story is... not good. Very boring for the most part, some cool things happen, but this really could have been a lot better. Digimon in general has a TON of lore, lending depth and emotion to the worlds and characters in the series which Next Order just drops the ball on SO hard.
-The life cycle mechanic for your partner Digimon is really unique, but upon death, your progression in the game is effectively paused while you train and re-level your partners. They just aren't strong enough to immediately pick up where you left off at the time of their deaths.
-I also keep running into an issue with getting my partners all the way to mega, and they still aren't powerful enough to beat whichever boss is necessary to move on, meaning I have to let them die again, reincarnate with slightly better stats, and try again.
-There are things you can do to increase the effectiveness of training, but those are locked behind progression in the game or by purchasing better training equipment which is expensive - something that is fueled by another problem where money isn't collected quickly enough to keep up with your expenses, and is hard to accumulate at any point.
-Travel is tedious at all times. The game world thankfully isn't really large enough to get lost at any point. The problem is that most of the time, you're just hoofing it from one side of the map to the other - no quicker by-foot options like rideable mounts or even sprinting, just one running speed and it's SLOW. You do get the option to travel directly from the town to a specific area of your choosing eventually, but it is expensive (again, the money issue) and doesn't save that much time imo, so I just chose to walk most of the time anyways.
-An unfortunately huge part of the more difficult fights and bosses is just repeatedly throwing recovery items at your Digimon while you pray that they keep attacking opponents.
-The battle camera is AWFUL no matter which setting you choose.
-The game is VERY hard, even after switching to Easy mode. Enemy accuracy is definitely lowered on Easy, but it also feels like the difficulty changes how much HP your opponents have and not necessarily how hard they hit you. Easy mode makes a fight actually take a more reasonable amount of time instead of dragging on for minutes longer than each fight really needs to. The balance here definitely feels pretty off.
Conclusion:
I feel like I'm being generous by giving this game 3 full stars, but 2 1/2 feels too low with how much I'm actually loving it even considering the massive list of issues I could probably keep adding to.
Ultimately, I'm having a lot of fun and it feels really good to chill with it for an evening to decompress, so I would recommend giving it a try for those who like monster collecting games or anyone who grew up with Digimon like I did. Just meet the game on it's own terms and don't expect a riveting story.
its like armored core but with crabs and shrimp, except incomprehensible and presumably made on a budget of like 1000 yen. Kinda fucks though. Barnacles are top tier.
Starfield
2023
It's been a while since I was pleasantly surprised by a AAA game. My expectations were low going into this, but after the first few hours I was completely hooked on this game.
Having played most Bethesda games, I am happy to report Starfield is much closer to The Elder Scrolls in presentation than Fallout. Aside from the dragon-shout like abilities, the amount of customization you have for your character's abilities and gear is reminiscent of Oblivion, where creativity with your kit can make you overpowered in the most fun ways imaginable. The faction sidequests and campaigns are some of the strongest Bethesda has created, with the Crimson Fleet quests a standout amongst them. The main story is also quite strong. While it is, naturally a series of fetch quests (as is most MSQ's in Bethesda games), the story as a whole has good twists that caught me off-guard, and some awesome stand-alone quests that can stand with some of the best Sci-Fi writings and films (the quest "Entagled" might just be my favorite in the game).
Like most AAA games coming out this year, it's not without it's technical problems. The game will (surprisingly) only work if installed on an SSD. With a 100gb+ install size, It's going to be painful on many smaller SSDs, especially on computer. Bugs, a staple of Bethesda games, tend to be less funny and more game-breaking this time around. I've noticed bugs will happen more frequently the longer your play session is, and they can range from your ship landing at funny angles, to straight on soft-locking you out of menus until you relaunch the game (I've only had one crash in my playthrough). The NPCs and creatures are coded and pathed shockingly well, there may be one or two instances of a guard getting the zoomies during a stealth mission, it's nowhere near as much of an issue compared to Bethesda's previous offerings.
I have several game recommendations if you enjoyed your time with Starfield! If you enjoyed the rpg elements of this game, I highly recommend The Elder Scrolls games, my favorite being IV: Oblivion (It's a very janky game in the most endearing way). If you wish there was a bit more depth to the spacefaring elements of this game, I highly recommend The Outer Wilds. If you were someone that spent hours building ships and bases, then Kerbal Space Program is my recommendation to you.
Having played most Bethesda games, I am happy to report Starfield is much closer to The Elder Scrolls in presentation than Fallout. Aside from the dragon-shout like abilities, the amount of customization you have for your character's abilities and gear is reminiscent of Oblivion, where creativity with your kit can make you overpowered in the most fun ways imaginable. The faction sidequests and campaigns are some of the strongest Bethesda has created, with the Crimson Fleet quests a standout amongst them. The main story is also quite strong. While it is, naturally a series of fetch quests (as is most MSQ's in Bethesda games), the story as a whole has good twists that caught me off-guard, and some awesome stand-alone quests that can stand with some of the best Sci-Fi writings and films (the quest "Entagled" might just be my favorite in the game).
Like most AAA games coming out this year, it's not without it's technical problems. The game will (surprisingly) only work if installed on an SSD. With a 100gb+ install size, It's going to be painful on many smaller SSDs, especially on computer. Bugs, a staple of Bethesda games, tend to be less funny and more game-breaking this time around. I've noticed bugs will happen more frequently the longer your play session is, and they can range from your ship landing at funny angles, to straight on soft-locking you out of menus until you relaunch the game (I've only had one crash in my playthrough). The NPCs and creatures are coded and pathed shockingly well, there may be one or two instances of a guard getting the zoomies during a stealth mission, it's nowhere near as much of an issue compared to Bethesda's previous offerings.
I have several game recommendations if you enjoyed your time with Starfield! If you enjoyed the rpg elements of this game, I highly recommend The Elder Scrolls games, my favorite being IV: Oblivion (It's a very janky game in the most endearing way). If you wish there was a bit more depth to the spacefaring elements of this game, I highly recommend The Outer Wilds. If you were someone that spent hours building ships and bases, then Kerbal Space Program is my recommendation to you.
I have a long history with this game. I first played the Game of the Year edition on Xbox, probably close to 20 years ago. At that point I was too young to really understand the game and how it worked, but I was endlessly fascinated by the alien world of Morrowind and it had a lasting impact on my imagination. I knew I would want to return to the game at some point and see more of what it had to offer.
I finally did this in 2015, in my first year of grad school. I have fond memories of ordering Chinese food and sitting at my desk in my mostly undecorated on-campus apartment, completing quests for the Mage’s Guild, exploring swamps and ruins and tombs, and searching for any clues of why the dwarves seemed to have vanished from the world. I got pretty deep into the game then, but between grad school and beginning my first serious relationship my priorities shifted and I had the leave the island of Vvardenfell behind again. But recently I picked the game back up and decided I would do my best to get through the main storyline.
My absolute favorite part of this game is how much care and detail went into creating such a unique, believable world. Vvardenfell is full of strange wildlife, countless political and religious factions, and plenty of mystery. It’s a largely hostile and unforgiving setting, but as you talk to characters and learn more about the society and culture of Morrowind, it starts to make sense how people live there. I loved learning about the history and relationships between the great houses, the more traditional/nomadic Ashlander tribes, and external forces like the empire or the various deities influencing the game’s events. One thing I always appreciated about this game (and Skyrim after it) is that they take place in colonized imperial provinces, and they examine what that means and the different ways people react to being ruled by a foreign power. For some reason I’ve always really enjoyed these themes in fantasy and science fiction stories.
Actually playing the game is not always a pleasant experience, but I wouldn’t say it’s bad or that it aged poorly. In a weird way I think the complexity and opacity of the gameplay systems complements/benefits from from the mysterious tone of the game. It definitely adds to the feeling of being lost and helpless, particularly in the earlier parts of the game. (As a side note, these are always my favorite parts of Bethesda games; when you’re lost and overwhelmed and underpowered and there’s nothing you can do but explore and find ways to survive. Especially in combat, these games tend to lose their balance and some of their charm as you get more powerful, in my opinion.) Combat doesn’t feel intuitive and your normal movement speed is excruciatingly slow, which leads a lot of players to abuse a certain magic item that makes you move a lot faster. You can also use spells and potions to help with travel - by the end of the game I was leaping and levitating around the map and running on water to explore smaller islands.
I enjoyed the story of the main quest once things picked up a little, although the pacing was weird toward the end. There’s a long, drawn out series of quests and then you’re rushed straight into the climax. I’ve read that a lot was cut from the finale, and it’s pretty clear that’s true, which is a shame because the stuff they hinted at would have been very cool (it seemed like they wanted the final area to be similar to Hyrule Castle in Breath of the Wild). Still, I liked the game a lot and it feels great to have finished it! I haven’t checked out the expansions yet, and I’m not sure how deep I’ll go with those, but we’ll see.
I finally did this in 2015, in my first year of grad school. I have fond memories of ordering Chinese food and sitting at my desk in my mostly undecorated on-campus apartment, completing quests for the Mage’s Guild, exploring swamps and ruins and tombs, and searching for any clues of why the dwarves seemed to have vanished from the world. I got pretty deep into the game then, but between grad school and beginning my first serious relationship my priorities shifted and I had the leave the island of Vvardenfell behind again. But recently I picked the game back up and decided I would do my best to get through the main storyline.
My absolute favorite part of this game is how much care and detail went into creating such a unique, believable world. Vvardenfell is full of strange wildlife, countless political and religious factions, and plenty of mystery. It’s a largely hostile and unforgiving setting, but as you talk to characters and learn more about the society and culture of Morrowind, it starts to make sense how people live there. I loved learning about the history and relationships between the great houses, the more traditional/nomadic Ashlander tribes, and external forces like the empire or the various deities influencing the game’s events. One thing I always appreciated about this game (and Skyrim after it) is that they take place in colonized imperial provinces, and they examine what that means and the different ways people react to being ruled by a foreign power. For some reason I’ve always really enjoyed these themes in fantasy and science fiction stories.
Actually playing the game is not always a pleasant experience, but I wouldn’t say it’s bad or that it aged poorly. In a weird way I think the complexity and opacity of the gameplay systems complements/benefits from from the mysterious tone of the game. It definitely adds to the feeling of being lost and helpless, particularly in the earlier parts of the game. (As a side note, these are always my favorite parts of Bethesda games; when you’re lost and overwhelmed and underpowered and there’s nothing you can do but explore and find ways to survive. Especially in combat, these games tend to lose their balance and some of their charm as you get more powerful, in my opinion.) Combat doesn’t feel intuitive and your normal movement speed is excruciatingly slow, which leads a lot of players to abuse a certain magic item that makes you move a lot faster. You can also use spells and potions to help with travel - by the end of the game I was leaping and levitating around the map and running on water to explore smaller islands.
I enjoyed the story of the main quest once things picked up a little, although the pacing was weird toward the end. There’s a long, drawn out series of quests and then you’re rushed straight into the climax. I’ve read that a lot was cut from the finale, and it’s pretty clear that’s true, which is a shame because the stuff they hinted at would have been very cool (it seemed like they wanted the final area to be similar to Hyrule Castle in Breath of the Wild). Still, I liked the game a lot and it feels great to have finished it! I haven’t checked out the expansions yet, and I’m not sure how deep I’ll go with those, but we’ll see.
Quest for Camelot
1998
Perhaps one of the games I'm most grateful to see on Nintendo's Switch Online service. Don't get me wrong, I hold no particular love for the source material - the most nostalgia I have for it is seeing marquees for it at, like, Suncoast in the mall, or watching Doug Walker tear into it years after the fact. But I have a soft spot for licensed video game tie-ins, since they were most of what I had access to as a kid. Ever since they announced the Virtual Console for what was then known as the Nintendo Revolution, I've wanted to see licensed games recognized by Nintendo, particularly to satisfy my brother's desire to play the NES port of The Lion King in some official capacity. I dunno if that'll ever happen, but we're one big step closer, bro.
But let's not mince words here, Quest for Camelot GBC is not a very good game. It's easy to see why it's on the service, it trying to be another Link's Awakening-type game (and I guess Ninty owns the rights? Weird). But it fails in a lot of ways that highlight how consistently well-made Zelda tends to be. Case in point, the grid system. 2D Zelda always obeys a loose grid system, where even though Link and other characters can freely move around, all actions they perform are constrained to this grid. If Link makes a jump, he'll always land within the parameters of a tile. If he digs, that will conform to a given tile. So on and so forth. It's a subtle thing that you take for granted, but I found myself thinking about it here trying to jump and dig as Kayley. That jump segment across the scalding lake is particularly dastardly. Kayley jumps just a bit further than two tiles' length, so you're constantly having to orient your sub-position within a tile in order to keep from jumping directly into the boiling water. To say nothing of how inconsistent the game is about where you're able to dig. I wasted a bunch of time in Chapter 2 trying to find the big "turnip" for that ornery horse, enough so that I dug every diggable tile in the village area, and man, did the map not look like I'd dug every tile.
I also have to mention the sword techniques for having one of the weirdest control interactions I've yet run into in a video game. So it's a pretty ambitious idea, having both an RPG leveling system and an expansive moveset with the sword, all on an 8-bit handheld. In most cases, the extra moves aren't worth the trouble, and I found myself leaning into the standard slash and that dash attack (since it's stronger and faster). But that input on the dash attack is deceptively weird! So you have to double tap a direction, then hit the sword button to pull it off - seems straightforward. Only, you don't have to do all that at once. It turns out any time you press the same directional button twice, you "chamber" the input for a dash attack, which gets executed when you hit the sword button. So, for example, if you're trying to chase down a boss and happen to hit right, pause for a moment, then hit right again - it doesn't matter how long it takes for you to hit that sword button, it WILL be a dash attack, even if you hit other directional buttons beforehand! I even tested it out by waiting a good couple seconds between directional inputs, and it still does that! I've never ever run into that! Naturally this means you end up doing the dash attack when you want to do the slash attack, which is an issue because the dash attack doesn't have much knockback. Not a big issue on NSO since you're able to rewind the emulator, but I'm glad I didn't play on original hardware.
Just to touch on bosses really quickly, they all kinda suck. They tend to follow the same pattern of wandering around aimlessly, occasionally throwing out an attack to spice things up. If the arena allows for it, it's pretty easy to cheese their AI. This was particularly funny with the final Ruder fight, where I trapped him in a corner and just eroded two(!) health meters by slapping him with my sword like I was some irritated cat.
So I'm giving this game the same rating I gave Conker's Pocket Tales, but I'll confess I feel way more fondly about this game overall. Quest for Camelot isn't very good, but it's very charming and has a surprising amount of ideas for such a modest release. It experiments a lot with its game design, making each chapter feel very different. Even if these experiments don't always work out (that "Key Dilemma" gauntlet is just mean of the game), that the game's willing to try is honestly pretty cool.
But let's not mince words here, Quest for Camelot GBC is not a very good game. It's easy to see why it's on the service, it trying to be another Link's Awakening-type game (and I guess Ninty owns the rights? Weird). But it fails in a lot of ways that highlight how consistently well-made Zelda tends to be. Case in point, the grid system. 2D Zelda always obeys a loose grid system, where even though Link and other characters can freely move around, all actions they perform are constrained to this grid. If Link makes a jump, he'll always land within the parameters of a tile. If he digs, that will conform to a given tile. So on and so forth. It's a subtle thing that you take for granted, but I found myself thinking about it here trying to jump and dig as Kayley. That jump segment across the scalding lake is particularly dastardly. Kayley jumps just a bit further than two tiles' length, so you're constantly having to orient your sub-position within a tile in order to keep from jumping directly into the boiling water. To say nothing of how inconsistent the game is about where you're able to dig. I wasted a bunch of time in Chapter 2 trying to find the big "turnip" for that ornery horse, enough so that I dug every diggable tile in the village area, and man, did the map not look like I'd dug every tile.
I also have to mention the sword techniques for having one of the weirdest control interactions I've yet run into in a video game. So it's a pretty ambitious idea, having both an RPG leveling system and an expansive moveset with the sword, all on an 8-bit handheld. In most cases, the extra moves aren't worth the trouble, and I found myself leaning into the standard slash and that dash attack (since it's stronger and faster). But that input on the dash attack is deceptively weird! So you have to double tap a direction, then hit the sword button to pull it off - seems straightforward. Only, you don't have to do all that at once. It turns out any time you press the same directional button twice, you "chamber" the input for a dash attack, which gets executed when you hit the sword button. So, for example, if you're trying to chase down a boss and happen to hit right, pause for a moment, then hit right again - it doesn't matter how long it takes for you to hit that sword button, it WILL be a dash attack, even if you hit other directional buttons beforehand! I even tested it out by waiting a good couple seconds between directional inputs, and it still does that! I've never ever run into that! Naturally this means you end up doing the dash attack when you want to do the slash attack, which is an issue because the dash attack doesn't have much knockback. Not a big issue on NSO since you're able to rewind the emulator, but I'm glad I didn't play on original hardware.
Just to touch on bosses really quickly, they all kinda suck. They tend to follow the same pattern of wandering around aimlessly, occasionally throwing out an attack to spice things up. If the arena allows for it, it's pretty easy to cheese their AI. This was particularly funny with the final Ruder fight, where I trapped him in a corner and just eroded two(!) health meters by slapping him with my sword like I was some irritated cat.
So I'm giving this game the same rating I gave Conker's Pocket Tales, but I'll confess I feel way more fondly about this game overall. Quest for Camelot isn't very good, but it's very charming and has a surprising amount of ideas for such a modest release. It experiments a lot with its game design, making each chapter feel very different. Even if these experiments don't always work out (that "Key Dilemma" gauntlet is just mean of the game), that the game's willing to try is honestly pretty cool.
Mirror's Edge: Catalyst feels like it never gets talked about except for through lamentations of it being open world instead of level based like the original Mirror's Edge was, or people complaining about how it has a couple movement abilities locked behind a skill tree, or people talking about how EA doesnt make original games anymore. And I get that position on paper, since Mirror's Edge: Catalyst came out right in the middle of the ps4 generation when open worlds were everywhere in AAA and every game seemed to have an obligatory skill tree regardless of whether it added anything of value. I can't blame people seeing a sequel to a really tight, linear, level based game going open world and throwing up their hands about Trends and Bandwagons.
But here's the thing. This game is barely an open world in the Ubisoft sense or the GTA sense. Rather, I think it has a lot more in common with the Metroidvania genre.
Mirror's Edge is about parkour, or free running, in a dystopian future. Everything about the gameplay and theming is centered on these two ideas. What this means for its "open world" design is that you have several decently sized but not huge sections of city, largely rooftops, interiors of buildings, some infrastructural installations, and a construction site, that is all there to facilitate free, expressive movement, often while escaping from The Cops. No matter what route you take, you are always pushed to engage with the detailed and active parkour mechanics. This isn't like the other big Parkour game, Assassin's Creed, where you just hold a button and occasionally another button while moving and your guy does it all automatically (not a knock tho, I love AC). Its stick-shift platforming and it's a ton of fun. The mechanics have been slightly refined from the original game and provide more ways to enter a state of rapid, flowing movement, or recover it if you fuck up. Every route you take becomes a chain of vaults, slides, jumps, wall-runs, impact rolls, and swings off pipes and flagpoles. New to this game is a shift move that works both as a dodge and a way to build, rebuild, or maintain momentum, that I found myself using in a way that almost simulated the rhythmic, controlled breathing of distance running. Tying it all together is the absolutely unparalleled design of full-body presence in its first person viewpoint, where it not only shows your body when you look down but actually makes it feel like you're inhabiting and moving in it, with the weight and momentum and grace of an athlete in motion, instead of just a floating camera with arms like so many other first person games. There are honestly very few AAA games that care about detailed, flavorful movement mechanics to this degree.
The combat is vastly improved from the first game, where clunky fighting or shooting segments often brought the game's beautiful momentum to a screeching halt. In this one, you can no longer use guns, thank god, so its all punching(light attacks) and kicking(heavy attacks). The new shift-dodge means you can more easily avoid damage, and also get behind them to do extra damage or kick them off ledges. But the key to combat is traversal attacks, which is when you attack while doing parkour. Light ones do less damage but preserve your momentum, so they're good for getting enemies out of your way while escaping, or for setting them up for a knockout from a stronger heavy traversal attack. These attacks are snappy and well-animated, and the combat is actually quite satisfying once you get the hang of incorporating parkour into it. There are several enemy types that all require slightly different tactics, so it keeps things from getting stale. The combat is also very frequently optional; you can often simply bowl them over and get the heck out of there instead.
The game does contain a skill tree, but it is honestly quite unobtrusive. It has 3 parts: movement, combat, and gear, and 80% of the movement tree is unlocked already at the start of the game, with the majority of the rest of the actual parkour mechanics easily unlocked in an hour or two of play. The rest of it is all combat skills, damage or defense upgrades, and new gadgets. The gadgets you actually just get from story progression, and they give you new movement abilities that open up new paths and new areas as the story progresses. Its not quite as free-form in its exploration as traditional Metroidvanias, and there's no sequence breaking due to the mission-based story, but it still has that feeling of the world gradually unfolding as your abilities grow. The map contains some of the typical open-world collectables and busywork missions, which are usually time trials, timed deliveries, or small combat challenges followed by escapes. They're fun enough to do, but can be safely ignored without consequence if you aren't interested or just want a more tightly paced game. The story missions themselves, and the character-given major sidequests, are all very solid and bring you to a variety of more linear, contained levels scattered around the city. This stuff is classic Mirror's Edge, and where the game shines brightest. I especially liked the Art Museum level and the under-construction skyscraper you have to sabotage for the mafia.
Like the original game, Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a real looker. It paints its world in splashes of vivid color against stark, sterile white and polished glass. The use of color is a bit more restrained here compared to the first game, but its still very effective. Sometimes you slam open a door from the blindingly white rooftops and are blasted with the most incredible shade of green you've ever seen in a game as you sprint through an office corridor to the closest exit. Huge video billboards or displays cover buildings, with constantly shifting advertisements or news reports lighting up the night. It feels lightly futuristic and dystopian in a way that balances mundane believablility with stylized hyper-reality really well. There are some really lovingly crafted service corridors, corporate office buildings, and infrastructural facilities; mundane places transformed and made stranger by the context of how you move through them and why, which is something I always love to see in games (see also: INFRA, for the ultimate perfection of this aesthetic in games). The sound design is quite immersive, and makes you feel the speed and physical exertion involved in everything you do. The music on the other hand is only OK, as it serves the atmosphere and action well, but isn't especially memorable. They commissioned a pretty solid CHVRCHES song but bafflingly, don't even use it at all other than in a jukebox in the hideout. It doesn't even play over the credits! Why even commission it then!!
The narrative is fine. It's not like poorly executed, but its nothing new either. Kinda feels like a middling TV show from that time period. It provides a solid enough framework for a bunch of cool levels, so I guess it did its job. It is at least, better than the absolutely atrocious storytelling from the original game with its e-surance cutscenes and barely sketched characters. The characters here feel like people with a history in this world, and the presentation is solid, it just lacks a certain extra spark. Even so, it's well-paced and doesn't overstay its welcome by any means.
Mirror's Edge: Catalyst is a seriously underrated game. It doesn't quite hit the transcendent highs the original does, but it also comes nowhere near that game's very low low points either. It is simply a good time, and it really deserved better than the low sales and critical dismissal it seems to have gotten when it came out. If you like deep first person movement I highly recommend it.
But here's the thing. This game is barely an open world in the Ubisoft sense or the GTA sense. Rather, I think it has a lot more in common with the Metroidvania genre.
Mirror's Edge is about parkour, or free running, in a dystopian future. Everything about the gameplay and theming is centered on these two ideas. What this means for its "open world" design is that you have several decently sized but not huge sections of city, largely rooftops, interiors of buildings, some infrastructural installations, and a construction site, that is all there to facilitate free, expressive movement, often while escaping from The Cops. No matter what route you take, you are always pushed to engage with the detailed and active parkour mechanics. This isn't like the other big Parkour game, Assassin's Creed, where you just hold a button and occasionally another button while moving and your guy does it all automatically (not a knock tho, I love AC). Its stick-shift platforming and it's a ton of fun. The mechanics have been slightly refined from the original game and provide more ways to enter a state of rapid, flowing movement, or recover it if you fuck up. Every route you take becomes a chain of vaults, slides, jumps, wall-runs, impact rolls, and swings off pipes and flagpoles. New to this game is a shift move that works both as a dodge and a way to build, rebuild, or maintain momentum, that I found myself using in a way that almost simulated the rhythmic, controlled breathing of distance running. Tying it all together is the absolutely unparalleled design of full-body presence in its first person viewpoint, where it not only shows your body when you look down but actually makes it feel like you're inhabiting and moving in it, with the weight and momentum and grace of an athlete in motion, instead of just a floating camera with arms like so many other first person games. There are honestly very few AAA games that care about detailed, flavorful movement mechanics to this degree.
The combat is vastly improved from the first game, where clunky fighting or shooting segments often brought the game's beautiful momentum to a screeching halt. In this one, you can no longer use guns, thank god, so its all punching(light attacks) and kicking(heavy attacks). The new shift-dodge means you can more easily avoid damage, and also get behind them to do extra damage or kick them off ledges. But the key to combat is traversal attacks, which is when you attack while doing parkour. Light ones do less damage but preserve your momentum, so they're good for getting enemies out of your way while escaping, or for setting them up for a knockout from a stronger heavy traversal attack. These attacks are snappy and well-animated, and the combat is actually quite satisfying once you get the hang of incorporating parkour into it. There are several enemy types that all require slightly different tactics, so it keeps things from getting stale. The combat is also very frequently optional; you can often simply bowl them over and get the heck out of there instead.
The game does contain a skill tree, but it is honestly quite unobtrusive. It has 3 parts: movement, combat, and gear, and 80% of the movement tree is unlocked already at the start of the game, with the majority of the rest of the actual parkour mechanics easily unlocked in an hour or two of play. The rest of it is all combat skills, damage or defense upgrades, and new gadgets. The gadgets you actually just get from story progression, and they give you new movement abilities that open up new paths and new areas as the story progresses. Its not quite as free-form in its exploration as traditional Metroidvanias, and there's no sequence breaking due to the mission-based story, but it still has that feeling of the world gradually unfolding as your abilities grow. The map contains some of the typical open-world collectables and busywork missions, which are usually time trials, timed deliveries, or small combat challenges followed by escapes. They're fun enough to do, but can be safely ignored without consequence if you aren't interested or just want a more tightly paced game. The story missions themselves, and the character-given major sidequests, are all very solid and bring you to a variety of more linear, contained levels scattered around the city. This stuff is classic Mirror's Edge, and where the game shines brightest. I especially liked the Art Museum level and the under-construction skyscraper you have to sabotage for the mafia.
Like the original game, Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a real looker. It paints its world in splashes of vivid color against stark, sterile white and polished glass. The use of color is a bit more restrained here compared to the first game, but its still very effective. Sometimes you slam open a door from the blindingly white rooftops and are blasted with the most incredible shade of green you've ever seen in a game as you sprint through an office corridor to the closest exit. Huge video billboards or displays cover buildings, with constantly shifting advertisements or news reports lighting up the night. It feels lightly futuristic and dystopian in a way that balances mundane believablility with stylized hyper-reality really well. There are some really lovingly crafted service corridors, corporate office buildings, and infrastructural facilities; mundane places transformed and made stranger by the context of how you move through them and why, which is something I always love to see in games (see also: INFRA, for the ultimate perfection of this aesthetic in games). The sound design is quite immersive, and makes you feel the speed and physical exertion involved in everything you do. The music on the other hand is only OK, as it serves the atmosphere and action well, but isn't especially memorable. They commissioned a pretty solid CHVRCHES song but bafflingly, don't even use it at all other than in a jukebox in the hideout. It doesn't even play over the credits! Why even commission it then!!
The narrative is fine. It's not like poorly executed, but its nothing new either. Kinda feels like a middling TV show from that time period. It provides a solid enough framework for a bunch of cool levels, so I guess it did its job. It is at least, better than the absolutely atrocious storytelling from the original game with its e-surance cutscenes and barely sketched characters. The characters here feel like people with a history in this world, and the presentation is solid, it just lacks a certain extra spark. Even so, it's well-paced and doesn't overstay its welcome by any means.
Mirror's Edge: Catalyst is a seriously underrated game. It doesn't quite hit the transcendent highs the original does, but it also comes nowhere near that game's very low low points either. It is simply a good time, and it really deserved better than the low sales and critical dismissal it seems to have gotten when it came out. If you like deep first person movement I highly recommend it.
I’ve been trying for years to get into this game, but kept bouncing off it for various reasons. Mostly because it seemed impossibly hard, the systems and stats were confusing, and I was always worried that I was somehow playing it wrong. I came back to it a few weeks ago (inspired by the release of Baldur’s Gate 3) and decided I would do my best to push through to the end. And I did it!
Baldur’s Gate is a really cool experience, and even though it’s old as dirt it still holds up really well overall (I assume part of this is thanks to updates in the 2012 Enhanced Edition). I wasn’t wrong in my initial thoughts though. The gameplay systems are still pretty vague and confusing to me, but now that I have more experience with DND rules they made enough sense for me to get by. And the game is extremely challenging at times, especially early on and in some of the later boss fights. I had two realizations that made it possible for me to overcome that challenge: the first was that there are a ton of ways to approach any combat situation , and the second was that I could make extremely liberal use of the quicksave feature. Constantly loading quicksaves felt a little like cheating at first, but so much of the game is based on luck and dice rolls that it feels pretty much necessary a lot of the time.
Once I got into the flow of things it felt very exciting to use different spells and abilities and potions to overcome new challenges. I was developing new tactics right up until the end of the game. Even though some encounters kinda felt like unfair bullshit, they never felt truly impossible. I’m sure there are tons of ways to optimize your party and character builds, and I definitely missed out on some side quests so maybe my party was underleveled at times. But I actually enjoyed just going with the flow, taking whichever party members appealed to me and not pushing myself to fully explore every zone in the game. Playing it that way really worked for me, and I appreciate how the developers designed the game in a way that assumes the player won’t see everything in one play through.
Overall I enjoyed my time with Baldur’s Gate, and I’m very interested in seeing how they built on it in the following games.
Baldur’s Gate is a really cool experience, and even though it’s old as dirt it still holds up really well overall (I assume part of this is thanks to updates in the 2012 Enhanced Edition). I wasn’t wrong in my initial thoughts though. The gameplay systems are still pretty vague and confusing to me, but now that I have more experience with DND rules they made enough sense for me to get by. And the game is extremely challenging at times, especially early on and in some of the later boss fights. I had two realizations that made it possible for me to overcome that challenge: the first was that there are a ton of ways to approach any combat situation , and the second was that I could make extremely liberal use of the quicksave feature. Constantly loading quicksaves felt a little like cheating at first, but so much of the game is based on luck and dice rolls that it feels pretty much necessary a lot of the time.
Once I got into the flow of things it felt very exciting to use different spells and abilities and potions to overcome new challenges. I was developing new tactics right up until the end of the game. Even though some encounters kinda felt like unfair bullshit, they never felt truly impossible. I’m sure there are tons of ways to optimize your party and character builds, and I definitely missed out on some side quests so maybe my party was underleveled at times. But I actually enjoyed just going with the flow, taking whichever party members appealed to me and not pushing myself to fully explore every zone in the game. Playing it that way really worked for me, and I appreciate how the developers designed the game in a way that assumes the player won’t see everything in one play through.
Overall I enjoyed my time with Baldur’s Gate, and I’m very interested in seeing how they built on it in the following games.
Pikmin 4
2023
This review contains spoilers
Pikmin 4 is a fantastically well made game, it looks incredible, it's bursting with ideas and is a lot of fun to play, but it has a sort of weird relationship to its status as a sequel to the previous 3 pikmin games.
Pikmin 4 makes a pretty rough first impression. The tutorial is very long, limited in player agency, poorly paced, and egregiously, overbearingly talkative in that old way that you would have hoped nintendo would have learned not to do by now. It is also immediately apparent that some kind of weird retcon is happening with the previous games; Pikmin 4 acts as if none of them have happened, and also contains elements and characters from each of them. It sort of feels like they were afraid to move beyond including Olimar, since he's the Brand Mascot, but also couldnt come up with a justification for his inclusion other than "Olimar crashed AGAIN, time to go rescue him." Its a real Modern Nintendo move, the same nintendo that wont let you ever play as Zelda cause Link is the hero and thats just the way it has to be, the same nintendo that wont allow mario characters to have more than a smidgen of individuality in Paper Mario anymore cause it would somehow compromise the purity of the Brand Identity. Alongside this is a shift in tone that does away with most of the melancholy, mystery and menace that remained in the series from the first two games. Its replaced by an optimistic, hopeful whimsy, where it doesn't want you to think about the brutal struggle for survival in a hostile environment, or the unknown fate of the former human inhabitants of the planet that built all these gardens and houses you explore and used to own the objects you collect. There are some body-horror-ish things in the game that raise some truly wild questions about the nature of pikmin, but the game seemingly doesnt even realize this because it does almost nothing with them narratively. It feels like they didnt even notice or care about the implications of what they had come up with. It is the least the Pikmin series has ever been interested in its own inherent weirdness.
But, once you are through the tutorial and the game begins to open up, what you have ahead of you is a genuinely clever, incredibly well designed puzzle game, that is a complete joy to explore. The main areas of the game are huge, theres a lot of them, and there's an excellent variety of modes of play that all feel quite different despite sharing the same basic gameplay. And it is more of a puzzle game than previous entries in the series; those elements were always there, but in Pikmin 4, the struggle for survival and resource management of Pikmin 1-2 takes a complete backseat to exploration and puzzle solving. This is framed in the game by the concept of Dandori, which is the art of efficiently organizing and executing tasks to achieve better results in less time. Its a much more compelling take on strategic multitasking than Pikmin 3's incredibly half-baked 3-captain approach, even if it sacrifices a lot of the larger-scale tension of the older games to get there.
This brings us to Pikmin 4's biggest addition, Oatchi the Rescue Dog. Oatchi is a bug eyed little freak and I love him. Oatchi plays the role of secondary captain, combat and labor backup, and mobile weapons platform. He also has huge staring eyes that he will make unbroken eye contact to NPCs with every time you talk to them. You can command Oatchi to do various things, you can ride him around and throw pikmin from his back or charge into things, or you can assume direct control of him and split away from your primary captain. Oatchi simplifies and streamlines a lot of things that were troublesome in the previous games, without limiting the game design very much, and that's an impressive feat. The simplicity actually enables the design to focus in on what's best about the multitasking approach, the actualization of Dandori, which neither Pikmin 2 or 3 achieved with their attempts at the same ideas.
At the start of each in-game day, you wake up at a hub where all the people you've rescued are hanging out, and from there you can talk to them, upgrade yourself and Oatchi, buy items, and go on missions. The primary mode of play is exploration of large environments, just like in the previous games, and this feeds into all the other modes. There are more of these big levels here than in previous games, and the levels themselves are huge and detailed. It was a real joy to discover them and explore all the nooks and crannies of each in search of treasure, dungeons, and castaways. They look genuinely amazing as well, especially for a switch game. The lighting and shadows as the day passes, the detailed and believable material and texture work, and the immense sense of scale (or feeling of being very tiny) really sells the setting and makes it feel tangible. The monsters are lovingly animated and the sound design is fantastic. Its the closest the series has gotten to feeling like those great stop-motion pikmin shorts nintendo produced way back when. Its kind of wild to think this game looks this nice on the same system where a much less visually ambitious game like pokemon scarlet struggles to run at all.
Pikmin 4 does dungeons better than Pikmin 2 did. They're all hand-designed this time instead of the janky half-procgen setup in that game, and feel like miniature puzzle challenges a bit like the shrines in BotW/TotK, but without being disconnected from the game setting like in BotW/TotK. They split the difference between puzzle and exploration really well, and dive into the mechanics tied to different pikmin types in more detail than the other modes.
Alongside the dungeons are the Dandori challenges and battles, where you are tasked with collecting objects, or collecting more objects than your opponents, as efficiently as possible in given a time limit. These are self-contained tests of skill where you don't bring in your own pikmin and instead have to use the ones given to you, so you in the more difficult ones you have to get pretty good at working effectively within limitations to get a good score, and thats a lot of fun to figure out.
The last mode of play is the Nighttime Expeditions, which are all about defending a base from a stream of hungry monsters. You have to use glow pikmin for these, which are sort of an all purpose super ghost pikmin. The harder ones can get pretty frantic as you try to head off multiple streams of beasts or defend two bases at once, and they're pretty fun as a result.
All of these modes relate to the overall goal of rescuing all the castaways, and due to them being interconnected in key ways it very smoothly incentives you to change up which ones you're engaging with as you play. Despite being fairly open-ended and not enforcing a particular order of doing things besides new areas unlocking at certain treasure score thresholds, it feels very well paced. Its a brilliantly put together framework for progression.
As a game it's also fucking huge in a way i was not expecting. There is a lot going on in this game and it keeps going on, and going on, long after you expect it to end. But it maintains such a high quality that it never feels like it's overstayed its welcome. It is bursting with gameplay ideas and is very enthusiastic about sharing them with you. I haven't even touched the mode that appears to be a miniature remake of Pikmin 1, timer and all, yet! its wild that something like that is even in there!! Its really a feast of a game.
So once you get past the weird tonal and narrative choices and the generally softer-edged feel of it all, Pikmin 4 might genuinely be the best in the series from a game design standpoint. Its a bit too easy until the endgame finally ramps up, its a bit less strange and compelling tonally, and the characters talk way too much, but its such a joy to play that it overcomes those flaws and then some.
Pikmin 4 makes a pretty rough first impression. The tutorial is very long, limited in player agency, poorly paced, and egregiously, overbearingly talkative in that old way that you would have hoped nintendo would have learned not to do by now. It is also immediately apparent that some kind of weird retcon is happening with the previous games; Pikmin 4 acts as if none of them have happened, and also contains elements and characters from each of them. It sort of feels like they were afraid to move beyond including Olimar, since he's the Brand Mascot, but also couldnt come up with a justification for his inclusion other than "Olimar crashed AGAIN, time to go rescue him." Its a real Modern Nintendo move, the same nintendo that wont let you ever play as Zelda cause Link is the hero and thats just the way it has to be, the same nintendo that wont allow mario characters to have more than a smidgen of individuality in Paper Mario anymore cause it would somehow compromise the purity of the Brand Identity. Alongside this is a shift in tone that does away with most of the melancholy, mystery and menace that remained in the series from the first two games. Its replaced by an optimistic, hopeful whimsy, where it doesn't want you to think about the brutal struggle for survival in a hostile environment, or the unknown fate of the former human inhabitants of the planet that built all these gardens and houses you explore and used to own the objects you collect. There are some body-horror-ish things in the game that raise some truly wild questions about the nature of pikmin, but the game seemingly doesnt even realize this because it does almost nothing with them narratively. It feels like they didnt even notice or care about the implications of what they had come up with. It is the least the Pikmin series has ever been interested in its own inherent weirdness.
But, once you are through the tutorial and the game begins to open up, what you have ahead of you is a genuinely clever, incredibly well designed puzzle game, that is a complete joy to explore. The main areas of the game are huge, theres a lot of them, and there's an excellent variety of modes of play that all feel quite different despite sharing the same basic gameplay. And it is more of a puzzle game than previous entries in the series; those elements were always there, but in Pikmin 4, the struggle for survival and resource management of Pikmin 1-2 takes a complete backseat to exploration and puzzle solving. This is framed in the game by the concept of Dandori, which is the art of efficiently organizing and executing tasks to achieve better results in less time. Its a much more compelling take on strategic multitasking than Pikmin 3's incredibly half-baked 3-captain approach, even if it sacrifices a lot of the larger-scale tension of the older games to get there.
This brings us to Pikmin 4's biggest addition, Oatchi the Rescue Dog. Oatchi is a bug eyed little freak and I love him. Oatchi plays the role of secondary captain, combat and labor backup, and mobile weapons platform. He also has huge staring eyes that he will make unbroken eye contact to NPCs with every time you talk to them. You can command Oatchi to do various things, you can ride him around and throw pikmin from his back or charge into things, or you can assume direct control of him and split away from your primary captain. Oatchi simplifies and streamlines a lot of things that were troublesome in the previous games, without limiting the game design very much, and that's an impressive feat. The simplicity actually enables the design to focus in on what's best about the multitasking approach, the actualization of Dandori, which neither Pikmin 2 or 3 achieved with their attempts at the same ideas.
At the start of each in-game day, you wake up at a hub where all the people you've rescued are hanging out, and from there you can talk to them, upgrade yourself and Oatchi, buy items, and go on missions. The primary mode of play is exploration of large environments, just like in the previous games, and this feeds into all the other modes. There are more of these big levels here than in previous games, and the levels themselves are huge and detailed. It was a real joy to discover them and explore all the nooks and crannies of each in search of treasure, dungeons, and castaways. They look genuinely amazing as well, especially for a switch game. The lighting and shadows as the day passes, the detailed and believable material and texture work, and the immense sense of scale (or feeling of being very tiny) really sells the setting and makes it feel tangible. The monsters are lovingly animated and the sound design is fantastic. Its the closest the series has gotten to feeling like those great stop-motion pikmin shorts nintendo produced way back when. Its kind of wild to think this game looks this nice on the same system where a much less visually ambitious game like pokemon scarlet struggles to run at all.
Pikmin 4 does dungeons better than Pikmin 2 did. They're all hand-designed this time instead of the janky half-procgen setup in that game, and feel like miniature puzzle challenges a bit like the shrines in BotW/TotK, but without being disconnected from the game setting like in BotW/TotK. They split the difference between puzzle and exploration really well, and dive into the mechanics tied to different pikmin types in more detail than the other modes.
Alongside the dungeons are the Dandori challenges and battles, where you are tasked with collecting objects, or collecting more objects than your opponents, as efficiently as possible in given a time limit. These are self-contained tests of skill where you don't bring in your own pikmin and instead have to use the ones given to you, so you in the more difficult ones you have to get pretty good at working effectively within limitations to get a good score, and thats a lot of fun to figure out.
The last mode of play is the Nighttime Expeditions, which are all about defending a base from a stream of hungry monsters. You have to use glow pikmin for these, which are sort of an all purpose super ghost pikmin. The harder ones can get pretty frantic as you try to head off multiple streams of beasts or defend two bases at once, and they're pretty fun as a result.
All of these modes relate to the overall goal of rescuing all the castaways, and due to them being interconnected in key ways it very smoothly incentives you to change up which ones you're engaging with as you play. Despite being fairly open-ended and not enforcing a particular order of doing things besides new areas unlocking at certain treasure score thresholds, it feels very well paced. Its a brilliantly put together framework for progression.
As a game it's also fucking huge in a way i was not expecting. There is a lot going on in this game and it keeps going on, and going on, long after you expect it to end. But it maintains such a high quality that it never feels like it's overstayed its welcome. It is bursting with gameplay ideas and is very enthusiastic about sharing them with you. I haven't even touched the mode that appears to be a miniature remake of Pikmin 1, timer and all, yet! its wild that something like that is even in there!! Its really a feast of a game.
So once you get past the weird tonal and narrative choices and the generally softer-edged feel of it all, Pikmin 4 might genuinely be the best in the series from a game design standpoint. Its a bit too easy until the endgame finally ramps up, its a bit less strange and compelling tonally, and the characters talk way too much, but its such a joy to play that it overcomes those flaws and then some.
