This review contains spoilers
There's kind of A LOT I have to say about this game, and the direction Pikmin as a series is going in. I'm sorry for myself for writing this and for you if for some reason you subject yourself to reading it.
Very long story short, this game's praise is incredibly overblown. It's nice that Pikmin has found a new audience, but at what cost? I think this series has lost it's soul and hollowed into a corporate mess that has rounded off so many corners that it now fails to evoke any sort of emotional response. It's not a bad game, but it is often boring, and makes me feel empty and sad.
It's probably useful to start by prefacing that I don't care for 3 very much at all, I never really understood the praise it got. In contrast I'm at least fairly conflicted when it comes to 4, but how in the world are people praising it as the peak of this series? I don't know what planet you're from but it sure as hell isn't PNF-404. This game IS confidently better than 3, and how middling I felt about it only served to push my opinion of 3 further down. I don't know why I bother but it's just hard to watch a series I care about flounder while Nintendo pins it down to lobotomize, declaw, and defang it.
So before I dirty myself and climb into the muck, I'll start with what good I found in Pikmin 4.
The game is pretty meaty. This is the most Pikmin bang for your buck that you're going to get in this series. That praise comes with some caveats, however. Depending on your outlook more isn't always better. Besides, art shouldn't be judged from the cynical perspective of value judgements based on cost. Do better and judge things based on the overall experience of engaging with it.
I'm really glad to be ditching the 3rd captain. I never personally cared for how much it complicated planning and management, 2 was just enough. Making the 2 captains asymmetric is also a nice change of pace, splitting up has more strategic weight to it. But it's a great idea that is clumsy in it's execution. (we'll GET to talking about Oatchi)
Loading zones were removed from 3, which is good. They broke up levels to much and tended to spoil and signpost boss encounters before they even began, they also tended to over incentivize the use of the "go here" map screen commands. (I don't want a game that plays itself for me, OK?)
Moving the ship to new bases is an interesting albeit odd addition. Sometimes a cool tactical option, and does allow more sprawling level design I guess? I think I like how it effects cave design more than main stages. It's a mechanic that has the strong potential to bolster puzzle and scenario building... But doesn't really get used for such, mostly operating as yet another design that feels as if it's there more out of a desire to keep the player comfortable than to give their brain a workout. If it has any merit, it's that it may be interesting in time challenges and speedruns where people are attempting to maximize their efficiency.
Bosses were returned to how they used to operate in 1 and 2. Pikmin 3 added phases, damage caps, and cutscenes which slowed the gameplay down and stole away the Pikmin series' unique experience of running into bosses in a diegetic fashion. Thanks to the removal of the damage phase caps, bosses once again reward skillful play by letting you kill them faster. Well, almost all the bosses, anyhow. 4 still committed this sin right at the end, just to spit in my dinner.
Dandori battles feel a bit arbitrary at times but are sort of fun, the versus mode from previous games having now been rolled into the primary experience.
On the other hand, Dandori CHALLENGES may be my favorite addition. It's really satisfying to work under tight restrictions and execute a plan to clean house, barely bringing in the final few items as the last few seconds tick down. (A feeling the series used to work towards facilitating more often). And these aren't afraid to get difficult either, refreshing!
There's actually some really cool new puzzle and environmental hazard additions that give both old and new Pikmin a lot of new strategic options and spice up the level design. Fire pinecones, deep water, pipes, fans, basically everything Ice Pikmin can do, fences and buttons. But they never quite get used to their full potential.
The Piklopedia is finally back. It was a gaping hole in Pikmin 3's overall experience, and it was sorely missed. It has new features too! Being able to fight anything is great. The new characters (we'll get to them much later) aren't interesting to listen to... But Olimar and Louie's logs remain as entertaining as they were in 2.
Olimar says sperm, we take those.
I love Groovy Long Legs. Best thing in the game. See, I don't just hate fun.
The Olimar mode almost makes me feel as If I'm playing a real Pikmin game, if only for the tension of a true time limit and the nostalgia bait it evokes with music and other references to Pikmin 1, but it's shallow praise that says more about Pikmin 1 than it does 4.
This is where that praise ends. Pikmin 4 inherited a lot of problems from 3, changed or fixed only some of them, but introduced some problems of it's own in the process. I can't help but use the word degenerate to describe the way this series has developed, in the most traditional sense of the word. There's so many little touches where in an effort to make the series more accessible or easier to play, they've sacrificed what made it special in the first place, rendering entire systems at the core of Pikmin pointless.
Controls are a big part of this problem, it's quite a can of worms. But I'm opening it, deep breath...
I'm going to start by calling out lock-on as a problematic addition to the Pikmin series. Pikmin is a game that's difficulty and intrigue is predicated on MANAGED CHAOS, and aiming your Pikmin to land where you need them was always a huge part of that. Maps full of hazards, large enemies for which what part of the body you throw Pikmin onto makes the difference between life or death, throwing Pikmin was always a focused and nuanced challenge that rewarded accuracy under pressure.
Then 3 added lock-on... and threw that all out the window. No longer do you need to split your attention between avoiding hazards and throwing Pikmin, or carefully aim to keep your Pikmin from soaring off cliffs or into water. Simply lock on, run in circles, and mash A. It's easier, less stressful, more friendly to new players! ...But you've now rendered enemy and map design as an afterthought you can mentally disengage with due to the confidence you now have that your Pikmin will just go exactly where you expect them to. What's even the point of snitchbugs, skitter leafs, dwarf bulborbs, snagrets, breadbugs, beady longlegs (and the family), honeywisps, iridescent glint beetles, ( I think you get the point ) in a world with lock on? Almost all the enemy design of Pikmin is RELIANT on the skill based aiming, and fighting these enemies went from engaging to literally mindless since 3 came out. Yet they're still here for some reason.
4 Is no different in this regard, but somehow they've managed to make it worse. 4 has an aggressive auto lock-on that is our first example of the many ways in which this game attempts to guess and/or assume player intent, and make choices FOR YOU. Throwing a Pikmin will often trigger the game to eagerly and automatically lock on to objects. The lock-on is also sticky, often frustratingly refusing to unlock from objects. When under pressure from time or enemies, you'll often find yourself mashing lock-on in a futile attempt to wrestle control back from the game, as it jumps to locking on to other objects you didn't intend... you might start to see the problem, but it doesn't end there.
The other half of this problem is the THROW CAP, one of the most baffling additions in Pikmin 4... So someone at Nintendo thought it was a little sad that you had to count out the Pikmin you threw onto objects, and decided a friendly change would be that when locked onto an object, the game will STOP LETTING YOU THROW once you hit the default Pikmin count required to interact with that object. Sure, it lets you mash indiscriminately without thought, but also removes an entire vector of control by which you could make strategic choices (or fail to do so). Also pressing throw and having NOTHING HAPPEN is one of the grossest gamefeel faux pas I've experienced in a long time. Just another way in which you can mentally disengage with the things in front of you, and let the game play itself. But it also completely fails to acknowledge that there is perfectly valid reasons to throw extra Pikmin onto an object.
Pikmin has always had the concept of "overloading", in which you would commit Pikmin beyond the minimum pickup count. A tradeoff to move the item faster in exchange for keeping more of your Pikmin busy. A feature I often strategically made use of to maximize the games precious Dandori. But the game tells me this is invalid (despite the feature still being there) and puts on the training wheels to prevent me from making mistakes. But you know what? It was also just downright satisfying to skillfully count out the exact amount of Pikmin to pick up a part, and it was also memorable when you flubbed it. Of course, you can still achieve overloads by not locking on... But recall the aforementioned issues with lock-on, and you can see that doing so has become so inconvenient as to render an entire staple feature present since the first game nearly unusable. The game fights being played in the way you want.
To add insult to injury, I've observed that idle Pikmin don't treat nearby tasks with equal weight, prioritizing certain tasks over others, and that overloading not only has a lower awareness range, but is lowest priority for idle Pikmin. So that is to say that the game continues to fight back even when you try to play around the lock on and do overloads in other ways. While this sucks for overloading, it's worth calling out how this exemplifies a change in priorities in this series away from player agency and planning, and towards convenience and pre-descriptive play.
The fact that Pikmin tasks aren't treated equally and neutrally based on distance means that the game is making value calls for the importance of tasks beyond the player's means. Not only does this degenerate design continue to undermine the original goals of the series, but it means the player now has to play around these predictions. I can't just throw 2 Pikmin down and expect them to move to the nearest task, I have to somehow guess the games preferences for the "better" task, and base my plans around that. A great example of this in action? Try to fight just about any enemy in the presence of slime molds, and note how your Pikmin will aggressively prioritize destroying the molds over the enemy.
To me changes like these are so obviously flawed that it's shocking to see a modern Nintendo game making them. Sometimes simple is better, the honest and raw heuristics by which this series historically operated on has always prioritized player agency. Why would you want to change that? Why over engineer and re-invent the wheel?
Speaking of which I now have to get on my soap box to similarly dismay Pikmin 3's addition of CHARGE. Charge sure is convenient! But I'm going to once again argue that managed chaos is the point of this series. Charge is to reliable, it's to good. Getting Pikmin on enemies was once a huge part of the challenge. And for that, we had SWARM. Swarm was exemplary of what Pikmin is supposed to be about, it could accomplish what Charge does, but only if you were a skilled player which carefully considered your Pikmin's positions and speeds, and were diligent in clumping them up and moving them to safe positions around enemies.
Plenty of enemies were also designed with swarm counters or immunities, in which hitting an enemies ankles versus their upper body did not reward the same amount of damage. Additionally since swarm took no account of Pikmin types, it was a TRADEOFF compared to throwing, in that it didn't allow you to be as selective with which Pikmin you were using. But Charge has no downsides, you can make sure to only charge with the type of your choice, and don't have to worry about Pikmin speed or clumping. Swarm was also not instant, more akin to a flow of Pikmin as apposed to a wrecking ball. I think it should be pretty obvious how charging the enemy reliably with a large group of exactly the type of Pikmin you want to use trivializes most encounters, and runs counter to this idea of Managed Chaos.
And just to kick me while I'm down, Pikmin 4 brought back swarm!... but stuck it in the post game. You get it so late that there's no time to use it. But also it's worth noting you can't use it on Oatchi... and well, when we get to talking about Oatchi it will become clear why even once you get swarm you STILL don't use it.
I also can't help but lament that due to 4's lock on issues, assigning Pikmin to pick up large groups of small objects has become excessively annoying. A problem that used to be solved through swarm, and that charge can't account for. As it stands the best solution in 4 for this problem is to dismiss your Pikmin, but that requires you to then wait for the others to move before calling the rest back.
Oh and speaking of calling! Let's discuss the whistle. I think a lot of people would likely respond "what's there to complain about with the whistle?, it's no different than in 1 and 2." Well, the main thing to note is that the minimum radius of the whistle has been increased since 3. Basically, tapping the button to do a small whistle no longer allows you to pinpoint and select small groups of 1-3 Pikmin. The whistle starts so large that you'll almost always select more Pikmin than you intend if you're trying to be precise. Just another way in which the game removes player agency.
Oh but why stop there? The whistle now has verticality as a factor. It's no longer infinitely tall along the Y axis. I believe this was an addition inherited from 3 due to the addition of flying Pikmin. Basically, the whistle doesn't extend up or down until reaching it's maximum radius, requiring you to hold it for multiple seconds to select Pikmin below or above you. It's not useful, hooray! It just slows down gameplay and makes it frustrating when using flying Pikmin or blues in deep water. Thanks, I hate it!
And that leads into another fantastic addition from 3 that still persists here. The "task pausing" behavior they've graciously added to the whistle. So in 1 and 2, a quick whistle could call Pikmin off any object. And you could be precise due to the small starting radius. But in 3 and 4, Pikmin carrying an object takes 2 whistles to call off. Huh?. Well, first if you whistle anywhere near Pikmin carrying something, they "Pause" their progress. And only after that can you whistle a second time to actually call them off. It's tedious and I fail to understand the advantage this has. The intent must be to prevent you from canceling carrying Pikmin when trying to call other idle Pikmin nearby, but this is a problem they manufactured when they made the whistle less accurate??? On top of that it's so easy to trigger by accident that you'll often find that while performing other tasks, you'll accidentally pause your Pikmin, wasting both their time as well as blocking other carrying Pikmin behind them. Thanks, I hate it!
Needless to say when it comes to Nintendo, but there's no options to tailor this half of the experience. I'd have little to complain about if I could disable lock on, throw caps, toggle whistle height scaling or task pausing. Maybe disable tutorials... But you can't. Thanks, I hate it.
I'll also take a moment to talk about the night missions. It's almost a fun idea? Pikmin tower defense? Sign me up. But they're pretty mindless, repetitive, and easy. There's not much strategy, just increase your glow Pikmin count and spam charge. But frankly the biggest reason I don't feel compelled to play them is something that will feel extremely familiar if you've played a lot of shrines in Zelda's last 2 outings. You can't just play a night mission, you have to talk to a character, watch / skip spam through about 2 cutscenes, wait through a loading screen, skip 2 more cutscenes, and then when you're done, you'll skip 2 more cutscenes, watch another loading screen, then skip 2 more cutscenes, watch the characters cure a captain, skip that, and then finally skip the cutscene to begin the next day. It's as excessive as it sounds and frankly I have a hard time emotionally telling you whether the mode really is that boring or if I'm just so sick of skipping through this much fluff that I have PTSD.
Y'know when I first saw some rumors that Pikmin 4 would allow you to play at night I was excited at the prospect of this being a broad change to the formula that would allow for more intricate strategies in stages and was well integrated into the story. But what we actually got is dissapointing. To top it off glow seeds are handed out like candy and while using glow Pikmin in caves is a fun idea as well, the reality is that it only serves to place another safety net under the pampered asses of an already outrageously spoiled playerbase.
I'm going to be a little rebel and also bring up the ability to move your ship/base as a negative. As I stated before they don't really do much with it, it could have been cool. But the thing I couldn't help but notice is that it sort of robs the game of the tension inherent to getting really far from your ship in previous games. Maps once used the distance to the ship as a way to wrack up tension, placing difficult enemies, stressfull scenarios, and treasures/ship parts far away where you were at your most vulnerable and most pressed for time. They could still be doing this in 4, even with the ability to move your base, but sort of just don't. So again, it seems to be just yet another way in which the game is simply trying to be friendly and more accessible.
There's a new achievement tracking system by which your are rewarded with currency for meeting small incremental goals. This sucks. I don't need artificial pats on the back for simply playing the game. The ritual of loading up the hub and talking to 6 bland characters and mashing through their dialogue to collect rewards isn't what I'd call fun. It doesn't help that this system literally spoils the game for you. Every time you update the "explore X maps" or "collect X onions" goals, it actually signposts that the game isn't over before the story has a chance to do this naturally. Good job guys, sure you thought that one through.
The game is full of shallow callbacks to Pikmin 1 and 2. Things they seem to be doing out of tradition or homage without understanding why that thing left an impression in the first place. What if we did the submerged castle again! Doesn't matter that the Water Wraith was effective for being a SURPRISE in 2, let's use the same name, same theme, same music, same floor layouts, and have a description that literally signposts that he's going to show up to remove that surprise. Also let's handicap his AI and make him incredibly unimposing thanks to how Oatchi works (we'll GET TO IT). Oh let's bring back Smokey Progg! But lest he be to difficult let's give him a slow projectile move and make him move around less so his smoke trail doesn't make anybody sad. Man At Legs! Puffstool is back! But he practically can't kill your Pikmin since we removed it's ability to inflict the novel and unique curse status that was so memorable... eh oh well. It's just frustrating to see all your favorite moments defanged and dragged out in display to dance for your amusement.
Making a spiritual successor to something should be about trying to reproduce the feelings the original made you feel by providing NEW, NOVEL experiences that feel motivated by a similar set of developer goals. Not simply a best hits track. And for all it's gallivanting about trying to be Pikmin 2, what NEW is there in 4 that exemplifies the spirit of Pikmin 2 in any way, shape, or form? I fail to think of anything.
As alluded to earlier the final boss of 4 for some reason commits the sins of Pikmin 3's bosses. It has phases, damage caps, cutscenes... It doesn't even let you carry Louie to the ship at the end. It's also just continued character assassination for Louie while also just not being a very cool setpiece? The fight's slow and cycle driven and gives the player no control over the pacing. Also isn't part of what always made Pikmin unique fighting bugs and strange creatures? Straying from the contemporary? How did we end up fighting dogs while rock music plays? I'll give it props for being possibly the only thing in the game with an effect that can insta-kill Pikmin. But all this really incentivized was doing the entire fight with Oatchi. Maybe that was intentional?
Oh hey why not take a moment to also wine about the farlic system? I like collecting the various colored onions to add new Pikmin to my lexicon, but lowering the maximum Pikmin count so aggressively just makes half the game feel like you've got training wheels on. Well, because you do.
A comment helped remind me of something I had a hard time putting my finger on. Which is why it is Pikmin 2 manages to feel moderately tenser and more time sensitive despite the lack of any true time limit. It's because enemies respawn. You'd always feel pressure to finish raking in treasure under threat that you'll have to clean out the level again if you failed to finish doing so before nightfall. Pikmin 4's friendly choice to never respawn enemies removes this tension, while also thematically sacrificing a bit of Pikmin's relation of the indifference of nature. Hell, they used to destroy your bridges and structures over subsequent days as well, keeping you ever vigilant to the idea that any progress you've fought for can and will be scraped back by nature's cold embrace if you don't keep a watchful eye.
Oh this is a big one, I almost forget to mention the "3 Pikmin type limit" slumped on this game. What in the hell were they thinking here. What does this... I don't, I just don't understand. It has so many knock-on effects. In prior games you would plan ahead and try to have enough of each type to have a versatile team of your favorites ready to take on any challenge... but you can't do that now. As such, the level designers had to assume you only had 3 types and design around that explicitly. Well with the designers hands tied, might as well just tell the player which 3 Pikmin types to take... so they do. So now team building is removed as a factor as well. Each level just prescribes what you should take.
You know in 2 I always brought whites in all situations because I enjoyed how fast they were, and saving time by using them to move most treasures was part of my strategy, at the trade off of having less Pikmin for other uses. That was a playstyle I chose and the game empowered me to explore. But the possibility space for how you play 4 has now been chucked in the bin, and for what? More restrictive level design? Well I know the answer is accessibility and not overwhelming the player in lieu of having 9 types of Pikmin AND Oatchi to contend with. But that's interesting, I'd rather you lean in on that and let me decide whether or not I want to play it simple or come up with complicated team builds. Thanks, I hate it.
Pikmin also "cheat" in these newer games. Their movement and capabilities no longer consistent and tangible in a way you have to play around and manage. Notice how newly called Pikmin rubber band and run faster than their base speed to catch up to the captain, notice how they teleport into your hand when you go to throw them. Notice how they never trip or lag behind when they have leaves. Take account of how they path around the map using the nav network on their own, minimalizing the importance of player management so they don't get "stuck" like they did in 1 and 2. But the pathing is also sometimes pretty bad and Pikmin take longer to get to you than they would have if they just ran in a straight line. Everything is so over-engineered. I can't believe the amount of reviews I see complaining about how unruly the Pikmin were in 1 and 2, and praising 3 for "fixing" it. THAT WAS THE POINT. You people don't understand this series.
A shocking amount of enemies including a lot of the new ones simply can't kill your Pikmin. That's not a new thing, but in past games nuisance enemies would be paired with genuinely dangerous enemies to create interesting scenarios that were genuinely challenging. This game seems allergic to the idea of placing even 2 difficult enemies within any degree of proximity, rendering a lot of the encounters pointless when Pikmin aren't in any danger.
People complain about electricity in 2, but I think there needs to be more consideration in this series as to what actually makes hazards different. Spamming whistle to make your Pikmin essentially invincible when encountering any hazard is yet another degenerative design degradation exacerbated by the more generous hazard timers in 3 and 4. And say what you will about electricity in 2 but you can't say it didn't make your butthole pucker and take those hazards VERY SERIOUSLY. Is it wrong to want to feel something?
This game just wants you to succeed so much. It's so friendly and eager to give you tools and tricks that remove or minimize how much you need to actually plan or pay attention. The obfuscation of upgrades to a shop really exacerbates the problem. In past game's abilities were doled out at a controlled rate and were kept in check from a usefulness perspective, tending to avoid power creep. They were also exciting to retrieve as immediate rewards for defeating bosses or reaching milestones. But now everything you do rewards the same resource and defers the true payout until later, dulling the experience. This is also one way in which the scope and length of Pikmin 4 works to it's detriment, as the designers have been incentivized to invent new abilities to pad out the shop.
The "Idler's Alert" is super useful and can be used to strategize, I'm torn on it. But It can't be denied that it gives me far less reason to keep track of where my Pikmin are, and gives me far less reason to split up my captains, which was often done in the past to babysit Pikmin and ensure that I am covering more of the map and that a captain would never be to far from a Pikmin in need. But it's really useful during Dandori challenges. The "Homesick Signal" however is so clearly an "easy button" that further degrades Pikmin's identity as a series. Making sure Pikmin didn't get lost and die to nightfall has been a memorable staple in Pikmin since day 1. But this basically can't happen any longer so long as you push this one button in your item menu before the day ends...
There's so many defensive buffs you can pile on, and they're relatively cheap. I think your average Pikmin 4 player will have been long immune to most hazards before the game ever presents them with fire or wind or poison. Why did they even bother? I never got close to getting myself downed.
Top that off with the introduction of consumables. If you want you can just buy your way out of any situation by loading up on bombs in the shop or what have you. But don't worry, the game will rain scrummy bones and spicy spray on you like it's Christmas morning so you won't really need to bother.
Almost every use of spray in Pikmin 2 was a tactical decision with which you committed a vital resource you had harvested yourself. In this game I found myself using spray in every fight and still had an excess of 50+ sprays by the end of the game. This is no longer a tactical choice, it's a game now taken over by dominant strategy. But don't worry if there was any part of you left concerned their might be a chance you have to think or plan ahead, as spicy spray now applies to all your Pikmin at infinite distance, map wide! Sure, why not I guess!
Well speaking of DOMINANT strategy. We have to break down the elephant in the room. Our boy Oatchi. I want to like him, he's a good boy. Asymmetrical captains is a great Idea. But, he's just so good. He's TO good, he single handedly transforms Pikmin 4 from an RTS into a MOBA.
He is so strikingly overkill as a way to manage Pikmin it's shocking they didn't account for it. The managed chaos that I've called out as key to this series ceases to exist when you ride Oatchi. Boss and enemy patterns that once capitalized on the chaotic spread out nature of your Pikmin army as it follows you is rendered mute by this scrummy bingus. All your Pikmin are now packaged up part and parcel into a single unit that you control directly.
Man-at-legs machine gun got you down? Don't sweat, just pack up on Oatchi and run circles around him dodging every shot. Water in your way? No blues truly needed, just toss any Pikmin color into the lake off Oatchi's back and then call them back (rock Pikmin should really just die instantly if they touch water, they're a little to good when tossed off Oatchi). An entire series predicated on enemy and environmental hazard designs based around the presumption that you have an unruly clump of barely compliant children at your heel, but Oatchi so thoroughly solves the problem that you're just not playing a Pikmin game.
The frustrating thing is that it's not an unsalvageable idea. Oatchi just needed to be handled as a tradeoff with upsides and downsides. He already has some great tradeoffs that make sense! He can jump and the captain can't. He can't fit past grates but he CAN go in pipes. This is all good stuff! It adds new nuance to level design. So expanding upon this should be easy, no? Here, I'll start:
Oatchi can whistle, but let's change it so he can't throw. I mean he doesn't have hands, why can he do that anyhow? But in return he can use the Charge Horn! To balance this out, the captain can't use the Charge Horn but they have SWARM, giving him a unique tactical tradeoff incentive to switch between Oatchi and your captain. While we're at it, Oatchi can only carry roughly 10-20 Pikmin, making him useful for scouting and strike teams but not allowing him to render your entire Pikmin army immune to hazards, and making him worse at tackling bosses.
These would be some sensible balance tweaks! But they don't address the true pièce de résistance, the steaming pile sitting under this elephant that I've been waiting even longer to discuss. Oatchi's RUSH. The dominant strategy to end all dominant strategies. If you thought Pikmin 2 had a dominant strategy in the form of Purples, get ready to sweat. At least Purples were a coveted resource you were afraid to lose.
Oatchi's rush allows you to sprint forward and slam through / into obstacles. It's used for gating content in levels, but can also be used effectively in combat. It instantly kills many smaller enemies, and later on can even be upgraded to stun enemies and bosses similarly to purple Pikmin. It's low risk, high reward, as Oatchi takes little damage and can't permanently die. But none of this is the real problem, the real problem is that any Pikmin on Oatchi's back will instantly deathball onto the enemy or obstacle he hits. That's 100 Pikmin, of any color, all hitting an enemy simultaneously (while also stunning them!?). All the nuance and challenge of getting Pikmin onto the opponent in other ways by throwing, swarming, or even charging, can't survive being tactically compared to this.
In my entire playthrough there were almost no threats that could survive long enough when subjected to Oatchi's wrath to even attempt to fight back. Some bosses would be fell instantly by this (particularly when combined with my infinite pack of spicy sprays, which I can generously apply AFTER charging since they work from any distance) , let alone every normal enemy and threat in the game. This was it, this killed Pikmin 4. You don't need to think, just rush, it'll work out. If it's not reliable enough already, toss 20 or so ice Pikmin into the mix so that you can stack Oatchi's initial stun with a follow up icing. What, freezing erases the body and prevents Pikmin propagation? Doesn't matter, you'll only ever need 100 Pikmin since they will never die.
I really don't understand how this made it to ship. It has the same effect on Pikmin 4 as it would any game with an overwhelmingly dominant strategy. It makes it boring. I kind of like Oatchi, but looking at his scrummy little face unfortunately leaves me with a twinge of idle resentment I wish I didn't feel. I never have to ask "how will I kill this enemy?", there's only 1 answer. It turns fun into tedium. With so little resistance, Pikmin 4 quickly stops feeling like a game and starts feels like busy work. The Pikmin equivalent of power wash simulator.
And with that we've finished digging the grave for Pikmin's gameplay. It was a long road but we can finally brush our hands off and discuss the other half of this experience. The worldbuilding, art, presentation, story, and tone.
I just don't understand what this series is going for any longer. Soul may be a nearly meaningless buzzword that gets tossed around with quite a bit of abandon, but if there's anything I can say about Pikmin 1 and 2, it's that the soul of it's developers are on full display. It's a collective effect of the music, art, gamefeel, writing, the odd mechanics and enemies, the small surprising touches that give it character, everything. I feel the fingerprints of the people who made it. And I can tell they cared.
Pikmin 3 and 4 have a distinct corporate stink to them. It doesn't feel like it's being made by people who want to be there. It's cold and sterile. These are products that insisted upon themselves to be made. Everything about them mentally evokes rounded corners, crossed T's and dotted I's. Brand management, audience testing, shareholder appeasement. Miyamoto. There's a strict and enstrangling agenda to be unassuming, cute, unchallenging, light and low on stakes. To evoke only happy emotions and to eschew confusion or surprise.
The cute pup Oatchi, Pink Pikmin, happy sunshine basked forests. A colorful energetic cast of affable gormless goofballs who bumble in and out of problems and a looked up to heroic captain whom everyone knows and trusts guiding them. This isn't what I associate with Pikmin.
Pikmin was about strange inhospitable worlds, about the questionable moral quality of using others for personal gain and corporate greed. About finding comfort and solace in places you least expected it. About uphill battles and managed chaos. Pikmin evoked dark foreboding groves, strange creatures, and a put upon everyman with a scientific mind navigating it through wit and a sheer will to survive and see his family again. It evoked true emotions. You pushed forward because the plot and world compelled you to ask "will this turn out ok?" and "what nightmare will I run across next while trying to make sure it does?".
The stories of 3 and 4 lean on humor, contrivance, and dramatic irony. It's insultingly juvenile and completely lacking that smidge of depth and nuance that made the first two games timeless. The characters ask "where's Olimar", but you the player already know, he's right fucking there. There's nothing to worry about. It's played as a joke but leaves you with no driving cause or concern with which to press ahead, and no mystery to uncover. You know things will be fine. Characters flanderize into tropes of their former selves. Olimar is elevated to a pedestal and became even more competent, also I guess he's famous now (wasn't he just a trucker?), and he must always crash land so we can laugh because that's just what he does! Louie can't simply be a spacey and odd character who makes genuine mistakes, he has to be an agent of chaos who acts with true malice, working against the interests of and endangering the people around him.
The cast of 3 is friendly, affable, and inoffensive. I don't hate them, but they're not exactly interesting. And I never quite understood why they added new planets to the lore, it feels a bit contrived and unnecessary. But 4 really takes the cake with how it dilutes the lore, adding dozens of new random planets to the lexicon. These poor wiki writers. The cast is comprised of a vast array of dozens and dozens of colorful new characters all with the emotional content of a pile of sand. 4 Introduced a character creator, but then used that to generate all the supporting cast. It's understandable to fill out the survivor list with generative characters, but named primary characters I'm supposed to engage with are decently likely to look the same as the character you created. It's quite off-putting.
The game manages to make these new characters all the more unlikeable by forcing you through a sieve of excessive tutorials and dialogue scenes where they state the obvious, make vapid jokes, and literally tell you how useless they are as if it's supposed to be cute that they stand around and do nothing. These scenes never let up, and often come in batches of anywhere from 2 to 6 back to back, with some loading screens thrown in for good measure. Oh and don't forget that characters act as mandatory gateways you have to mash through to access the world map, check the Piklopedia, or turn in achievements. Yeah no way that will get old and leave me somehow resenting them even more. Doesn't help that menus and text have large mandatory delays so mashing through isn't even fast, either.
If that wasn't enough to get you to resent them, they constantly chime in to tell you how to play the game, disrespect your intelligence, and block 20% of your field of vision while making annoying noises. These messages are also incredibly repetitive and prescriptive for how the player should feel. I'm not allowed to have my own emotional response when I lose Pikmin, Colin must chime in literally every single time to make a sad face and tell me to feel bad... :( But don't worry we'll just prescribe that you travel back in time 30 seconds and save scum to fix it, because you're certainly also incapable of having the idea to reset your game of your own volition. You know part of what made this series compelling was how the first 2 games left you to contemplate how to feel about your exploitation of Pikmin. Olimar's plight in 1 evoked an extremely different feeling to the capitalistic exploitation of 2. But the game let you come to those conclusions on your own, and form a personal connection to your Pikmin. If you felt bad when they died, that was on you for having empathy, not something you were ever TOLD to feel.
Well never mind all that, there are sales figures to consider!
And how could I forget! This game randomly decided to retcon the past 3! I really have no words for why they would do this. There's nothing about the events of this game's plot that would have been incompatible with the stories of 1 through 3. But boy I sure am glad that the much more compelling stories of the series roots have been overwritten for this corporate drivel!
The levels in Pikmin 3 and 4 have failed to explore particularly new or interesting settings. Pikmin 1 remains the game with the most variety in terms of level theme and design. Nowhere else in the series is as dark, foreboding, and congested as The Forest Navel. Nowhere as open and serene as The Distant Spring. Nowhere as striking as the Wistful Wild or as quiet as the Valley of Repose in 2.
The most notable location in 3 or 4 is Hero's Hideaway. Finally a change of local the series really needed, but Pikmin 4 doesn't utilize the interior of a large house to communicate any sense of tension, nor does it amplify the once questionably apocalyptic nature of the world of Pikmin. Pikmin 4 uses this level to present a clean, sterile, safe, and welcoming location meant to make you go "awww it's like they're running around on my carpet!" rather than create compelling gameplay or narrative engagement. While also seeming almost tactically implemented to dissuade and debunk the idea that the world of Pikmin exists in a world where humanity has met it's downfall. I can basically hear Miyamoto telling his team to ensure it's clean as a way to rain on the fanbases parade and make sure they know that the world of Pikmin is a happy, welcoming place for all. And don't forget to visit Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios in sunny Hollywood, California!
Beyond this one level all the locations of 4 amount to some different flavor of "sunny forest or beach". They look pretty but I sure am bored. The final level in 4 initially peaks interest when it seems to be fungal themed, but once you dig your teeth in you'll find that it's merely another fairly mundane forest with like 3 mushroom themed enemies. I don't understand why it's so reserved, but it's not a very strong note to close 4 out on. Would it kill them to tear the chastity belt off and make something bold and fantastical? I would guess not but maybe it would have been to liberal for Miyamoto's brand integration.
Also the music sucks. It's really weird to be saying that about a first party Nintendo game. I just can't help but feel this really is indicative of how little anyone on this project was inspired to make this. The music is unremarkably passive and constrained. I fail to remember almost any of the music in 3 other than the main theme so perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised. The only highlights were whenever the soundtrack harkened back to better music in 1 or 2.
Oh and this game has the weakest offerings for multiplayer co-op of any game since the first, lacking any sort of mission/challenge mode or a way to play through the campaign with a friend. (for real, not little brother mode with the rocks or whatever that junk is) Frankly this isn't a big problem, and I say that because I gaurentee this game will get support later down the line and recieve these features in the form of an update or DLC. So I'll tweak this review to strike this passage out once that happens.
This game is OK. Sometimes I was sort of having fun. It's better than 3. But this isn't a promising vector on which the series will travel into the future. Even if the gameplay was fantastic and uncompromising in sticking to the series core tenants (which it isn't), I would be left feeling empty and lost from how little humanity and soul is present here. Am I out of touch? To cynical? Or is the praise 3 and 4 have received just indicative of a decline in critical appreciation of the arts? In an era where Nintendo has generally been bringing on fresh young talent and crafting inspired resonant refreshes of their flagship series, I don't know how Pikmin 4 happened. Was the A-team busy? Is Miyamoto's direction just that toxic? I'm just not sure.
Ultimately who cares right? It's just a product. Consume it, get your dopamine, fill out those checklists. But I can't help but feel something is lost here.
Very long story short, this game's praise is incredibly overblown. It's nice that Pikmin has found a new audience, but at what cost? I think this series has lost it's soul and hollowed into a corporate mess that has rounded off so many corners that it now fails to evoke any sort of emotional response. It's not a bad game, but it is often boring, and makes me feel empty and sad.
It's probably useful to start by prefacing that I don't care for 3 very much at all, I never really understood the praise it got. In contrast I'm at least fairly conflicted when it comes to 4, but how in the world are people praising it as the peak of this series? I don't know what planet you're from but it sure as hell isn't PNF-404. This game IS confidently better than 3, and how middling I felt about it only served to push my opinion of 3 further down. I don't know why I bother but it's just hard to watch a series I care about flounder while Nintendo pins it down to lobotomize, declaw, and defang it.
So before I dirty myself and climb into the muck, I'll start with what good I found in Pikmin 4.
The game is pretty meaty. This is the most Pikmin bang for your buck that you're going to get in this series. That praise comes with some caveats, however. Depending on your outlook more isn't always better. Besides, art shouldn't be judged from the cynical perspective of value judgements based on cost. Do better and judge things based on the overall experience of engaging with it.
I'm really glad to be ditching the 3rd captain. I never personally cared for how much it complicated planning and management, 2 was just enough. Making the 2 captains asymmetric is also a nice change of pace, splitting up has more strategic weight to it. But it's a great idea that is clumsy in it's execution. (we'll GET to talking about Oatchi)
Loading zones were removed from 3, which is good. They broke up levels to much and tended to spoil and signpost boss encounters before they even began, they also tended to over incentivize the use of the "go here" map screen commands. (I don't want a game that plays itself for me, OK?)
Moving the ship to new bases is an interesting albeit odd addition. Sometimes a cool tactical option, and does allow more sprawling level design I guess? I think I like how it effects cave design more than main stages. It's a mechanic that has the strong potential to bolster puzzle and scenario building... But doesn't really get used for such, mostly operating as yet another design that feels as if it's there more out of a desire to keep the player comfortable than to give their brain a workout. If it has any merit, it's that it may be interesting in time challenges and speedruns where people are attempting to maximize their efficiency.
Bosses were returned to how they used to operate in 1 and 2. Pikmin 3 added phases, damage caps, and cutscenes which slowed the gameplay down and stole away the Pikmin series' unique experience of running into bosses in a diegetic fashion. Thanks to the removal of the damage phase caps, bosses once again reward skillful play by letting you kill them faster. Well, almost all the bosses, anyhow. 4 still committed this sin right at the end, just to spit in my dinner.
Dandori battles feel a bit arbitrary at times but are sort of fun, the versus mode from previous games having now been rolled into the primary experience.
On the other hand, Dandori CHALLENGES may be my favorite addition. It's really satisfying to work under tight restrictions and execute a plan to clean house, barely bringing in the final few items as the last few seconds tick down. (A feeling the series used to work towards facilitating more often). And these aren't afraid to get difficult either, refreshing!
There's actually some really cool new puzzle and environmental hazard additions that give both old and new Pikmin a lot of new strategic options and spice up the level design. Fire pinecones, deep water, pipes, fans, basically everything Ice Pikmin can do, fences and buttons. But they never quite get used to their full potential.
The Piklopedia is finally back. It was a gaping hole in Pikmin 3's overall experience, and it was sorely missed. It has new features too! Being able to fight anything is great. The new characters (we'll get to them much later) aren't interesting to listen to... But Olimar and Louie's logs remain as entertaining as they were in 2.
Olimar says sperm, we take those.
I love Groovy Long Legs. Best thing in the game. See, I don't just hate fun.
The Olimar mode almost makes me feel as If I'm playing a real Pikmin game, if only for the tension of a true time limit and the nostalgia bait it evokes with music and other references to Pikmin 1, but it's shallow praise that says more about Pikmin 1 than it does 4.
This is where that praise ends. Pikmin 4 inherited a lot of problems from 3, changed or fixed only some of them, but introduced some problems of it's own in the process. I can't help but use the word degenerate to describe the way this series has developed, in the most traditional sense of the word. There's so many little touches where in an effort to make the series more accessible or easier to play, they've sacrificed what made it special in the first place, rendering entire systems at the core of Pikmin pointless.
Controls are a big part of this problem, it's quite a can of worms. But I'm opening it, deep breath...
I'm going to start by calling out lock-on as a problematic addition to the Pikmin series. Pikmin is a game that's difficulty and intrigue is predicated on MANAGED CHAOS, and aiming your Pikmin to land where you need them was always a huge part of that. Maps full of hazards, large enemies for which what part of the body you throw Pikmin onto makes the difference between life or death, throwing Pikmin was always a focused and nuanced challenge that rewarded accuracy under pressure.
Then 3 added lock-on... and threw that all out the window. No longer do you need to split your attention between avoiding hazards and throwing Pikmin, or carefully aim to keep your Pikmin from soaring off cliffs or into water. Simply lock on, run in circles, and mash A. It's easier, less stressful, more friendly to new players! ...But you've now rendered enemy and map design as an afterthought you can mentally disengage with due to the confidence you now have that your Pikmin will just go exactly where you expect them to. What's even the point of snitchbugs, skitter leafs, dwarf bulborbs, snagrets, breadbugs, beady longlegs (and the family), honeywisps, iridescent glint beetles, ( I think you get the point ) in a world with lock on? Almost all the enemy design of Pikmin is RELIANT on the skill based aiming, and fighting these enemies went from engaging to literally mindless since 3 came out. Yet they're still here for some reason.
4 Is no different in this regard, but somehow they've managed to make it worse. 4 has an aggressive auto lock-on that is our first example of the many ways in which this game attempts to guess and/or assume player intent, and make choices FOR YOU. Throwing a Pikmin will often trigger the game to eagerly and automatically lock on to objects. The lock-on is also sticky, often frustratingly refusing to unlock from objects. When under pressure from time or enemies, you'll often find yourself mashing lock-on in a futile attempt to wrestle control back from the game, as it jumps to locking on to other objects you didn't intend... you might start to see the problem, but it doesn't end there.
The other half of this problem is the THROW CAP, one of the most baffling additions in Pikmin 4... So someone at Nintendo thought it was a little sad that you had to count out the Pikmin you threw onto objects, and decided a friendly change would be that when locked onto an object, the game will STOP LETTING YOU THROW once you hit the default Pikmin count required to interact with that object. Sure, it lets you mash indiscriminately without thought, but also removes an entire vector of control by which you could make strategic choices (or fail to do so). Also pressing throw and having NOTHING HAPPEN is one of the grossest gamefeel faux pas I've experienced in a long time. Just another way in which you can mentally disengage with the things in front of you, and let the game play itself. But it also completely fails to acknowledge that there is perfectly valid reasons to throw extra Pikmin onto an object.
Pikmin has always had the concept of "overloading", in which you would commit Pikmin beyond the minimum pickup count. A tradeoff to move the item faster in exchange for keeping more of your Pikmin busy. A feature I often strategically made use of to maximize the games precious Dandori. But the game tells me this is invalid (despite the feature still being there) and puts on the training wheels to prevent me from making mistakes. But you know what? It was also just downright satisfying to skillfully count out the exact amount of Pikmin to pick up a part, and it was also memorable when you flubbed it. Of course, you can still achieve overloads by not locking on... But recall the aforementioned issues with lock-on, and you can see that doing so has become so inconvenient as to render an entire staple feature present since the first game nearly unusable. The game fights being played in the way you want.
To add insult to injury, I've observed that idle Pikmin don't treat nearby tasks with equal weight, prioritizing certain tasks over others, and that overloading not only has a lower awareness range, but is lowest priority for idle Pikmin. So that is to say that the game continues to fight back even when you try to play around the lock on and do overloads in other ways. While this sucks for overloading, it's worth calling out how this exemplifies a change in priorities in this series away from player agency and planning, and towards convenience and pre-descriptive play.
The fact that Pikmin tasks aren't treated equally and neutrally based on distance means that the game is making value calls for the importance of tasks beyond the player's means. Not only does this degenerate design continue to undermine the original goals of the series, but it means the player now has to play around these predictions. I can't just throw 2 Pikmin down and expect them to move to the nearest task, I have to somehow guess the games preferences for the "better" task, and base my plans around that. A great example of this in action? Try to fight just about any enemy in the presence of slime molds, and note how your Pikmin will aggressively prioritize destroying the molds over the enemy.
To me changes like these are so obviously flawed that it's shocking to see a modern Nintendo game making them. Sometimes simple is better, the honest and raw heuristics by which this series historically operated on has always prioritized player agency. Why would you want to change that? Why over engineer and re-invent the wheel?
Speaking of which I now have to get on my soap box to similarly dismay Pikmin 3's addition of CHARGE. Charge sure is convenient! But I'm going to once again argue that managed chaos is the point of this series. Charge is to reliable, it's to good. Getting Pikmin on enemies was once a huge part of the challenge. And for that, we had SWARM. Swarm was exemplary of what Pikmin is supposed to be about, it could accomplish what Charge does, but only if you were a skilled player which carefully considered your Pikmin's positions and speeds, and were diligent in clumping them up and moving them to safe positions around enemies.
Plenty of enemies were also designed with swarm counters or immunities, in which hitting an enemies ankles versus their upper body did not reward the same amount of damage. Additionally since swarm took no account of Pikmin types, it was a TRADEOFF compared to throwing, in that it didn't allow you to be as selective with which Pikmin you were using. But Charge has no downsides, you can make sure to only charge with the type of your choice, and don't have to worry about Pikmin speed or clumping. Swarm was also not instant, more akin to a flow of Pikmin as apposed to a wrecking ball. I think it should be pretty obvious how charging the enemy reliably with a large group of exactly the type of Pikmin you want to use trivializes most encounters, and runs counter to this idea of Managed Chaos.
And just to kick me while I'm down, Pikmin 4 brought back swarm!... but stuck it in the post game. You get it so late that there's no time to use it. But also it's worth noting you can't use it on Oatchi... and well, when we get to talking about Oatchi it will become clear why even once you get swarm you STILL don't use it.
I also can't help but lament that due to 4's lock on issues, assigning Pikmin to pick up large groups of small objects has become excessively annoying. A problem that used to be solved through swarm, and that charge can't account for. As it stands the best solution in 4 for this problem is to dismiss your Pikmin, but that requires you to then wait for the others to move before calling the rest back.
Oh and speaking of calling! Let's discuss the whistle. I think a lot of people would likely respond "what's there to complain about with the whistle?, it's no different than in 1 and 2." Well, the main thing to note is that the minimum radius of the whistle has been increased since 3. Basically, tapping the button to do a small whistle no longer allows you to pinpoint and select small groups of 1-3 Pikmin. The whistle starts so large that you'll almost always select more Pikmin than you intend if you're trying to be precise. Just another way in which the game removes player agency.
Oh but why stop there? The whistle now has verticality as a factor. It's no longer infinitely tall along the Y axis. I believe this was an addition inherited from 3 due to the addition of flying Pikmin. Basically, the whistle doesn't extend up or down until reaching it's maximum radius, requiring you to hold it for multiple seconds to select Pikmin below or above you. It's not useful, hooray! It just slows down gameplay and makes it frustrating when using flying Pikmin or blues in deep water. Thanks, I hate it!
And that leads into another fantastic addition from 3 that still persists here. The "task pausing" behavior they've graciously added to the whistle. So in 1 and 2, a quick whistle could call Pikmin off any object. And you could be precise due to the small starting radius. But in 3 and 4, Pikmin carrying an object takes 2 whistles to call off. Huh?. Well, first if you whistle anywhere near Pikmin carrying something, they "Pause" their progress. And only after that can you whistle a second time to actually call them off. It's tedious and I fail to understand the advantage this has. The intent must be to prevent you from canceling carrying Pikmin when trying to call other idle Pikmin nearby, but this is a problem they manufactured when they made the whistle less accurate??? On top of that it's so easy to trigger by accident that you'll often find that while performing other tasks, you'll accidentally pause your Pikmin, wasting both their time as well as blocking other carrying Pikmin behind them. Thanks, I hate it!
Needless to say when it comes to Nintendo, but there's no options to tailor this half of the experience. I'd have little to complain about if I could disable lock on, throw caps, toggle whistle height scaling or task pausing. Maybe disable tutorials... But you can't. Thanks, I hate it.
I'll also take a moment to talk about the night missions. It's almost a fun idea? Pikmin tower defense? Sign me up. But they're pretty mindless, repetitive, and easy. There's not much strategy, just increase your glow Pikmin count and spam charge. But frankly the biggest reason I don't feel compelled to play them is something that will feel extremely familiar if you've played a lot of shrines in Zelda's last 2 outings. You can't just play a night mission, you have to talk to a character, watch / skip spam through about 2 cutscenes, wait through a loading screen, skip 2 more cutscenes, and then when you're done, you'll skip 2 more cutscenes, watch another loading screen, then skip 2 more cutscenes, watch the characters cure a captain, skip that, and then finally skip the cutscene to begin the next day. It's as excessive as it sounds and frankly I have a hard time emotionally telling you whether the mode really is that boring or if I'm just so sick of skipping through this much fluff that I have PTSD.
Y'know when I first saw some rumors that Pikmin 4 would allow you to play at night I was excited at the prospect of this being a broad change to the formula that would allow for more intricate strategies in stages and was well integrated into the story. But what we actually got is dissapointing. To top it off glow seeds are handed out like candy and while using glow Pikmin in caves is a fun idea as well, the reality is that it only serves to place another safety net under the pampered asses of an already outrageously spoiled playerbase.
I'm going to be a little rebel and also bring up the ability to move your ship/base as a negative. As I stated before they don't really do much with it, it could have been cool. But the thing I couldn't help but notice is that it sort of robs the game of the tension inherent to getting really far from your ship in previous games. Maps once used the distance to the ship as a way to wrack up tension, placing difficult enemies, stressfull scenarios, and treasures/ship parts far away where you were at your most vulnerable and most pressed for time. They could still be doing this in 4, even with the ability to move your base, but sort of just don't. So again, it seems to be just yet another way in which the game is simply trying to be friendly and more accessible.
There's a new achievement tracking system by which your are rewarded with currency for meeting small incremental goals. This sucks. I don't need artificial pats on the back for simply playing the game. The ritual of loading up the hub and talking to 6 bland characters and mashing through their dialogue to collect rewards isn't what I'd call fun. It doesn't help that this system literally spoils the game for you. Every time you update the "explore X maps" or "collect X onions" goals, it actually signposts that the game isn't over before the story has a chance to do this naturally. Good job guys, sure you thought that one through.
The game is full of shallow callbacks to Pikmin 1 and 2. Things they seem to be doing out of tradition or homage without understanding why that thing left an impression in the first place. What if we did the submerged castle again! Doesn't matter that the Water Wraith was effective for being a SURPRISE in 2, let's use the same name, same theme, same music, same floor layouts, and have a description that literally signposts that he's going to show up to remove that surprise. Also let's handicap his AI and make him incredibly unimposing thanks to how Oatchi works (we'll GET TO IT). Oh let's bring back Smokey Progg! But lest he be to difficult let's give him a slow projectile move and make him move around less so his smoke trail doesn't make anybody sad. Man At Legs! Puffstool is back! But he practically can't kill your Pikmin since we removed it's ability to inflict the novel and unique curse status that was so memorable... eh oh well. It's just frustrating to see all your favorite moments defanged and dragged out in display to dance for your amusement.
Making a spiritual successor to something should be about trying to reproduce the feelings the original made you feel by providing NEW, NOVEL experiences that feel motivated by a similar set of developer goals. Not simply a best hits track. And for all it's gallivanting about trying to be Pikmin 2, what NEW is there in 4 that exemplifies the spirit of Pikmin 2 in any way, shape, or form? I fail to think of anything.
As alluded to earlier the final boss of 4 for some reason commits the sins of Pikmin 3's bosses. It has phases, damage caps, cutscenes... It doesn't even let you carry Louie to the ship at the end. It's also just continued character assassination for Louie while also just not being a very cool setpiece? The fight's slow and cycle driven and gives the player no control over the pacing. Also isn't part of what always made Pikmin unique fighting bugs and strange creatures? Straying from the contemporary? How did we end up fighting dogs while rock music plays? I'll give it props for being possibly the only thing in the game with an effect that can insta-kill Pikmin. But all this really incentivized was doing the entire fight with Oatchi. Maybe that was intentional?
Oh hey why not take a moment to also wine about the farlic system? I like collecting the various colored onions to add new Pikmin to my lexicon, but lowering the maximum Pikmin count so aggressively just makes half the game feel like you've got training wheels on. Well, because you do.
A comment helped remind me of something I had a hard time putting my finger on. Which is why it is Pikmin 2 manages to feel moderately tenser and more time sensitive despite the lack of any true time limit. It's because enemies respawn. You'd always feel pressure to finish raking in treasure under threat that you'll have to clean out the level again if you failed to finish doing so before nightfall. Pikmin 4's friendly choice to never respawn enemies removes this tension, while also thematically sacrificing a bit of Pikmin's relation of the indifference of nature. Hell, they used to destroy your bridges and structures over subsequent days as well, keeping you ever vigilant to the idea that any progress you've fought for can and will be scraped back by nature's cold embrace if you don't keep a watchful eye.
Oh this is a big one, I almost forget to mention the "3 Pikmin type limit" slumped on this game. What in the hell were they thinking here. What does this... I don't, I just don't understand. It has so many knock-on effects. In prior games you would plan ahead and try to have enough of each type to have a versatile team of your favorites ready to take on any challenge... but you can't do that now. As such, the level designers had to assume you only had 3 types and design around that explicitly. Well with the designers hands tied, might as well just tell the player which 3 Pikmin types to take... so they do. So now team building is removed as a factor as well. Each level just prescribes what you should take.
You know in 2 I always brought whites in all situations because I enjoyed how fast they were, and saving time by using them to move most treasures was part of my strategy, at the trade off of having less Pikmin for other uses. That was a playstyle I chose and the game empowered me to explore. But the possibility space for how you play 4 has now been chucked in the bin, and for what? More restrictive level design? Well I know the answer is accessibility and not overwhelming the player in lieu of having 9 types of Pikmin AND Oatchi to contend with. But that's interesting, I'd rather you lean in on that and let me decide whether or not I want to play it simple or come up with complicated team builds. Thanks, I hate it.
Pikmin also "cheat" in these newer games. Their movement and capabilities no longer consistent and tangible in a way you have to play around and manage. Notice how newly called Pikmin rubber band and run faster than their base speed to catch up to the captain, notice how they teleport into your hand when you go to throw them. Notice how they never trip or lag behind when they have leaves. Take account of how they path around the map using the nav network on their own, minimalizing the importance of player management so they don't get "stuck" like they did in 1 and 2. But the pathing is also sometimes pretty bad and Pikmin take longer to get to you than they would have if they just ran in a straight line. Everything is so over-engineered. I can't believe the amount of reviews I see complaining about how unruly the Pikmin were in 1 and 2, and praising 3 for "fixing" it. THAT WAS THE POINT. You people don't understand this series.
A shocking amount of enemies including a lot of the new ones simply can't kill your Pikmin. That's not a new thing, but in past games nuisance enemies would be paired with genuinely dangerous enemies to create interesting scenarios that were genuinely challenging. This game seems allergic to the idea of placing even 2 difficult enemies within any degree of proximity, rendering a lot of the encounters pointless when Pikmin aren't in any danger.
People complain about electricity in 2, but I think there needs to be more consideration in this series as to what actually makes hazards different. Spamming whistle to make your Pikmin essentially invincible when encountering any hazard is yet another degenerative design degradation exacerbated by the more generous hazard timers in 3 and 4. And say what you will about electricity in 2 but you can't say it didn't make your butthole pucker and take those hazards VERY SERIOUSLY. Is it wrong to want to feel something?
This game just wants you to succeed so much. It's so friendly and eager to give you tools and tricks that remove or minimize how much you need to actually plan or pay attention. The obfuscation of upgrades to a shop really exacerbates the problem. In past game's abilities were doled out at a controlled rate and were kept in check from a usefulness perspective, tending to avoid power creep. They were also exciting to retrieve as immediate rewards for defeating bosses or reaching milestones. But now everything you do rewards the same resource and defers the true payout until later, dulling the experience. This is also one way in which the scope and length of Pikmin 4 works to it's detriment, as the designers have been incentivized to invent new abilities to pad out the shop.
The "Idler's Alert" is super useful and can be used to strategize, I'm torn on it. But It can't be denied that it gives me far less reason to keep track of where my Pikmin are, and gives me far less reason to split up my captains, which was often done in the past to babysit Pikmin and ensure that I am covering more of the map and that a captain would never be to far from a Pikmin in need. But it's really useful during Dandori challenges. The "Homesick Signal" however is so clearly an "easy button" that further degrades Pikmin's identity as a series. Making sure Pikmin didn't get lost and die to nightfall has been a memorable staple in Pikmin since day 1. But this basically can't happen any longer so long as you push this one button in your item menu before the day ends...
There's so many defensive buffs you can pile on, and they're relatively cheap. I think your average Pikmin 4 player will have been long immune to most hazards before the game ever presents them with fire or wind or poison. Why did they even bother? I never got close to getting myself downed.
Top that off with the introduction of consumables. If you want you can just buy your way out of any situation by loading up on bombs in the shop or what have you. But don't worry, the game will rain scrummy bones and spicy spray on you like it's Christmas morning so you won't really need to bother.
Almost every use of spray in Pikmin 2 was a tactical decision with which you committed a vital resource you had harvested yourself. In this game I found myself using spray in every fight and still had an excess of 50+ sprays by the end of the game. This is no longer a tactical choice, it's a game now taken over by dominant strategy. But don't worry if there was any part of you left concerned their might be a chance you have to think or plan ahead, as spicy spray now applies to all your Pikmin at infinite distance, map wide! Sure, why not I guess!
Well speaking of DOMINANT strategy. We have to break down the elephant in the room. Our boy Oatchi. I want to like him, he's a good boy. Asymmetrical captains is a great Idea. But, he's just so good. He's TO good, he single handedly transforms Pikmin 4 from an RTS into a MOBA.
He is so strikingly overkill as a way to manage Pikmin it's shocking they didn't account for it. The managed chaos that I've called out as key to this series ceases to exist when you ride Oatchi. Boss and enemy patterns that once capitalized on the chaotic spread out nature of your Pikmin army as it follows you is rendered mute by this scrummy bingus. All your Pikmin are now packaged up part and parcel into a single unit that you control directly.
Man-at-legs machine gun got you down? Don't sweat, just pack up on Oatchi and run circles around him dodging every shot. Water in your way? No blues truly needed, just toss any Pikmin color into the lake off Oatchi's back and then call them back (rock Pikmin should really just die instantly if they touch water, they're a little to good when tossed off Oatchi). An entire series predicated on enemy and environmental hazard designs based around the presumption that you have an unruly clump of barely compliant children at your heel, but Oatchi so thoroughly solves the problem that you're just not playing a Pikmin game.
The frustrating thing is that it's not an unsalvageable idea. Oatchi just needed to be handled as a tradeoff with upsides and downsides. He already has some great tradeoffs that make sense! He can jump and the captain can't. He can't fit past grates but he CAN go in pipes. This is all good stuff! It adds new nuance to level design. So expanding upon this should be easy, no? Here, I'll start:
Oatchi can whistle, but let's change it so he can't throw. I mean he doesn't have hands, why can he do that anyhow? But in return he can use the Charge Horn! To balance this out, the captain can't use the Charge Horn but they have SWARM, giving him a unique tactical tradeoff incentive to switch between Oatchi and your captain. While we're at it, Oatchi can only carry roughly 10-20 Pikmin, making him useful for scouting and strike teams but not allowing him to render your entire Pikmin army immune to hazards, and making him worse at tackling bosses.
These would be some sensible balance tweaks! But they don't address the true pièce de résistance, the steaming pile sitting under this elephant that I've been waiting even longer to discuss. Oatchi's RUSH. The dominant strategy to end all dominant strategies. If you thought Pikmin 2 had a dominant strategy in the form of Purples, get ready to sweat. At least Purples were a coveted resource you were afraid to lose.
Oatchi's rush allows you to sprint forward and slam through / into obstacles. It's used for gating content in levels, but can also be used effectively in combat. It instantly kills many smaller enemies, and later on can even be upgraded to stun enemies and bosses similarly to purple Pikmin. It's low risk, high reward, as Oatchi takes little damage and can't permanently die. But none of this is the real problem, the real problem is that any Pikmin on Oatchi's back will instantly deathball onto the enemy or obstacle he hits. That's 100 Pikmin, of any color, all hitting an enemy simultaneously (while also stunning them!?). All the nuance and challenge of getting Pikmin onto the opponent in other ways by throwing, swarming, or even charging, can't survive being tactically compared to this.
In my entire playthrough there were almost no threats that could survive long enough when subjected to Oatchi's wrath to even attempt to fight back. Some bosses would be fell instantly by this (particularly when combined with my infinite pack of spicy sprays, which I can generously apply AFTER charging since they work from any distance) , let alone every normal enemy and threat in the game. This was it, this killed Pikmin 4. You don't need to think, just rush, it'll work out. If it's not reliable enough already, toss 20 or so ice Pikmin into the mix so that you can stack Oatchi's initial stun with a follow up icing. What, freezing erases the body and prevents Pikmin propagation? Doesn't matter, you'll only ever need 100 Pikmin since they will never die.
I really don't understand how this made it to ship. It has the same effect on Pikmin 4 as it would any game with an overwhelmingly dominant strategy. It makes it boring. I kind of like Oatchi, but looking at his scrummy little face unfortunately leaves me with a twinge of idle resentment I wish I didn't feel. I never have to ask "how will I kill this enemy?", there's only 1 answer. It turns fun into tedium. With so little resistance, Pikmin 4 quickly stops feeling like a game and starts feels like busy work. The Pikmin equivalent of power wash simulator.
And with that we've finished digging the grave for Pikmin's gameplay. It was a long road but we can finally brush our hands off and discuss the other half of this experience. The worldbuilding, art, presentation, story, and tone.
I just don't understand what this series is going for any longer. Soul may be a nearly meaningless buzzword that gets tossed around with quite a bit of abandon, but if there's anything I can say about Pikmin 1 and 2, it's that the soul of it's developers are on full display. It's a collective effect of the music, art, gamefeel, writing, the odd mechanics and enemies, the small surprising touches that give it character, everything. I feel the fingerprints of the people who made it. And I can tell they cared.
Pikmin 3 and 4 have a distinct corporate stink to them. It doesn't feel like it's being made by people who want to be there. It's cold and sterile. These are products that insisted upon themselves to be made. Everything about them mentally evokes rounded corners, crossed T's and dotted I's. Brand management, audience testing, shareholder appeasement. Miyamoto. There's a strict and enstrangling agenda to be unassuming, cute, unchallenging, light and low on stakes. To evoke only happy emotions and to eschew confusion or surprise.
The cute pup Oatchi, Pink Pikmin, happy sunshine basked forests. A colorful energetic cast of affable gormless goofballs who bumble in and out of problems and a looked up to heroic captain whom everyone knows and trusts guiding them. This isn't what I associate with Pikmin.
Pikmin was about strange inhospitable worlds, about the questionable moral quality of using others for personal gain and corporate greed. About finding comfort and solace in places you least expected it. About uphill battles and managed chaos. Pikmin evoked dark foreboding groves, strange creatures, and a put upon everyman with a scientific mind navigating it through wit and a sheer will to survive and see his family again. It evoked true emotions. You pushed forward because the plot and world compelled you to ask "will this turn out ok?" and "what nightmare will I run across next while trying to make sure it does?".
The stories of 3 and 4 lean on humor, contrivance, and dramatic irony. It's insultingly juvenile and completely lacking that smidge of depth and nuance that made the first two games timeless. The characters ask "where's Olimar", but you the player already know, he's right fucking there. There's nothing to worry about. It's played as a joke but leaves you with no driving cause or concern with which to press ahead, and no mystery to uncover. You know things will be fine. Characters flanderize into tropes of their former selves. Olimar is elevated to a pedestal and became even more competent, also I guess he's famous now (wasn't he just a trucker?), and he must always crash land so we can laugh because that's just what he does! Louie can't simply be a spacey and odd character who makes genuine mistakes, he has to be an agent of chaos who acts with true malice, working against the interests of and endangering the people around him.
The cast of 3 is friendly, affable, and inoffensive. I don't hate them, but they're not exactly interesting. And I never quite understood why they added new planets to the lore, it feels a bit contrived and unnecessary. But 4 really takes the cake with how it dilutes the lore, adding dozens of new random planets to the lexicon. These poor wiki writers. The cast is comprised of a vast array of dozens and dozens of colorful new characters all with the emotional content of a pile of sand. 4 Introduced a character creator, but then used that to generate all the supporting cast. It's understandable to fill out the survivor list with generative characters, but named primary characters I'm supposed to engage with are decently likely to look the same as the character you created. It's quite off-putting.
The game manages to make these new characters all the more unlikeable by forcing you through a sieve of excessive tutorials and dialogue scenes where they state the obvious, make vapid jokes, and literally tell you how useless they are as if it's supposed to be cute that they stand around and do nothing. These scenes never let up, and often come in batches of anywhere from 2 to 6 back to back, with some loading screens thrown in for good measure. Oh and don't forget that characters act as mandatory gateways you have to mash through to access the world map, check the Piklopedia, or turn in achievements. Yeah no way that will get old and leave me somehow resenting them even more. Doesn't help that menus and text have large mandatory delays so mashing through isn't even fast, either.
If that wasn't enough to get you to resent them, they constantly chime in to tell you how to play the game, disrespect your intelligence, and block 20% of your field of vision while making annoying noises. These messages are also incredibly repetitive and prescriptive for how the player should feel. I'm not allowed to have my own emotional response when I lose Pikmin, Colin must chime in literally every single time to make a sad face and tell me to feel bad... :( But don't worry we'll just prescribe that you travel back in time 30 seconds and save scum to fix it, because you're certainly also incapable of having the idea to reset your game of your own volition. You know part of what made this series compelling was how the first 2 games left you to contemplate how to feel about your exploitation of Pikmin. Olimar's plight in 1 evoked an extremely different feeling to the capitalistic exploitation of 2. But the game let you come to those conclusions on your own, and form a personal connection to your Pikmin. If you felt bad when they died, that was on you for having empathy, not something you were ever TOLD to feel.
Well never mind all that, there are sales figures to consider!
And how could I forget! This game randomly decided to retcon the past 3! I really have no words for why they would do this. There's nothing about the events of this game's plot that would have been incompatible with the stories of 1 through 3. But boy I sure am glad that the much more compelling stories of the series roots have been overwritten for this corporate drivel!
The levels in Pikmin 3 and 4 have failed to explore particularly new or interesting settings. Pikmin 1 remains the game with the most variety in terms of level theme and design. Nowhere else in the series is as dark, foreboding, and congested as The Forest Navel. Nowhere as open and serene as The Distant Spring. Nowhere as striking as the Wistful Wild or as quiet as the Valley of Repose in 2.
The most notable location in 3 or 4 is Hero's Hideaway. Finally a change of local the series really needed, but Pikmin 4 doesn't utilize the interior of a large house to communicate any sense of tension, nor does it amplify the once questionably apocalyptic nature of the world of Pikmin. Pikmin 4 uses this level to present a clean, sterile, safe, and welcoming location meant to make you go "awww it's like they're running around on my carpet!" rather than create compelling gameplay or narrative engagement. While also seeming almost tactically implemented to dissuade and debunk the idea that the world of Pikmin exists in a world where humanity has met it's downfall. I can basically hear Miyamoto telling his team to ensure it's clean as a way to rain on the fanbases parade and make sure they know that the world of Pikmin is a happy, welcoming place for all. And don't forget to visit Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios in sunny Hollywood, California!
Beyond this one level all the locations of 4 amount to some different flavor of "sunny forest or beach". They look pretty but I sure am bored. The final level in 4 initially peaks interest when it seems to be fungal themed, but once you dig your teeth in you'll find that it's merely another fairly mundane forest with like 3 mushroom themed enemies. I don't understand why it's so reserved, but it's not a very strong note to close 4 out on. Would it kill them to tear the chastity belt off and make something bold and fantastical? I would guess not but maybe it would have been to liberal for Miyamoto's brand integration.
Also the music sucks. It's really weird to be saying that about a first party Nintendo game. I just can't help but feel this really is indicative of how little anyone on this project was inspired to make this. The music is unremarkably passive and constrained. I fail to remember almost any of the music in 3 other than the main theme so perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised. The only highlights were whenever the soundtrack harkened back to better music in 1 or 2.
Oh and this game has the weakest offerings for multiplayer co-op of any game since the first, lacking any sort of mission/challenge mode or a way to play through the campaign with a friend. (for real, not little brother mode with the rocks or whatever that junk is) Frankly this isn't a big problem, and I say that because I gaurentee this game will get support later down the line and recieve these features in the form of an update or DLC. So I'll tweak this review to strike this passage out once that happens.
This game is OK. Sometimes I was sort of having fun. It's better than 3. But this isn't a promising vector on which the series will travel into the future. Even if the gameplay was fantastic and uncompromising in sticking to the series core tenants (which it isn't), I would be left feeling empty and lost from how little humanity and soul is present here. Am I out of touch? To cynical? Or is the praise 3 and 4 have received just indicative of a decline in critical appreciation of the arts? In an era where Nintendo has generally been bringing on fresh young talent and crafting inspired resonant refreshes of their flagship series, I don't know how Pikmin 4 happened. Was the A-team busy? Is Miyamoto's direction just that toxic? I'm just not sure.
Ultimately who cares right? It's just a product. Consume it, get your dopamine, fill out those checklists. But I can't help but feel something is lost here.
7 Comments
overall i pretty much agree with the sentiments here. the controls in particular are a really acute frustration. the game always assuming it knows better than you what you want drives constant episodes of irritation. it's really baffling the lockon is as disgustingly sticky as it is in a game where they love to scatter raw materials in little clumps and then make it impossible to quickly throw pikmin at them. and trying to go for a 0-death run immediately felt pointless the first time one of my pikmin was slowly dragged away by a sheargrub or tiny fish and despite my desperate wrestling i could not get the lockon to unstick from any of the others to stop this one little guy from slowly getting out its bib and fork. and they work so hard to keep you from overloading. not only with the throw cap, but even pikmin who have been dismissed will just stand still and let an oncoming pellet shove them out of the way, instead of grabbing on and helping. the only consistent-ish way to overload is to wait for the object to start moving and THEN throw pikmin in front of its path to get them to help out. for a game trying to eliminate friction entirely it sure adds a bunch of unwanted and unfun resistance whenever you try to do... almost anything besides charge
i think overall i might prefer pikmin 3 a bit more to 4. i think it's a much visually nicer game, for one - it may have overcommitted entirely to "every environment is just gonna be a lush forest that makes you go 'oooh so pretty and nice'" but like, it did at least succeed utterly at that goal (and i'm also sad they toned down the bulborbs' unnervingly real baby blues, they were absolutely uncanny in a way i loved). 4's areas are not only all very samey (having the scope so concretely defined as "one house and its yard and a beach and campsite within a couple blocks of it" really makes it feel frustratingly small and human-scaled, despite the increased size of the maps in a game meant to make you feel like a tiny bug in a massive world) but aesthetically and graphically none of them really shine in their own right either
and i am also, gameplay-wise, more of a pikmin 1 person than a pikmin 2 person, so while 3's "time limit" was a complete and utter joke it did at least make for an experience that didn't overstay its welcome, whereas traipsing through so many caves in 4 on top of the night missions and dandori stuff has made it start to drag as i close in on the home stretch. and while 3's bosses did break from tradition and rob you of the moments where a beady long legs just drops on your head and makes you freak out, they were at least memorable, and challenging on a first playthrough. it was so unbelievably disappointing to see my first emperor/empress bulblaxes in 4 and go "oh shit" then proceed to easily 1-shot them with oatchi's charge
but 3 and 4 definitely both lose the real meat of the magic that made 1 and 2 special. they're just very Modern Nintendo, emblematic of their current family-friendly design-by-comittee mass-appeal-with-no-difficulty-customization approach. and nintendo treehouse/NOA localization has just been utter trite garbage for years and years now
of the boss encounters that have been memorable to me, the first is groovy long legs because as a concept it rules and the music and vibe are super fun (though actually fighting it was kind of disappointingly easy because of oatchi and spicy sprays), and the big version of the gold-crystal anglerfish salamander guys. because they require hitting multiple different weakspots and managing which targets you go for, they actually required at least some thought and execution instead of just literally ramming your face into it til it dies. the first time i fought it i had all of my pikmin going for a gold chunk that it slurped up and put back on... and it swallowed every single one of my pikmin in one bite (then hilariously died from eating a squad of white pikmin) it was an extremely funny memorable experience
...and then sheperd called me to be like "oh no! all your guys died! if only there was some way to rewind time... [WINK NUDGE]" and the game offered me the prompt to do exactly that. which brings me to one major problem that wasn't touched on in this review, the time rewind. being able to redo a whole day is perfectly fine by me, putting in the time to make sure you get a day with results that you're happy with is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff. and being able to redo a cave, maybe even having checkpoints every few floors, also feels reasonable given how much time one can sink into them. but in a game already lacking for any source at all of time pressure, being able to rewind the last 1-2 minutes of gameplay any time you feel like it removes any shred of tension that could've remained. as soon as 1 pikmin dies you can just give it a second try immediately instead of having to painstakingly weigh how much you care about any given loss versus the time you've already sunk into the day. it actively encourages essentially savescumming, leading to a really boring and uninteresting playstyle where you just repeat any micro-challenge over and over until you get a perfect run. and it also resets you with every pikmin grouped back up with you, which can be annoying if you were actively transporting things in a lot of different places but can also be abused to easily gather up your loose pikmin - something you can also do by entering and exiting a cave, which immediately just magically slurps all loose pikmin on the map back into the onion and lets you re-choose your squad
and then there's the multiple base points in each area. the maps in 4 were built pretty big (though they often don't feel that way with how breezy getting around on oatchi is) and multiple base points could have been a really interesting decision, if you were forced each day to choose -one- and structure all your activities for the day around that. but instead you can just move your base instantly as many times as you want, and it'll bring any idle pikmin at the base with it, so you can just always move the base close to whatever objective you happen to be working on and the logistical consideration of devoting a big group to transport an object a long distance simply never comes up
lastly, it's honestly super disappointing how enemies just never respawn no matter how long you wait (unless you've already 100%ed an area and it no longer fuckin matters). you clear out the obstacles in a map once and that's it. the maps become completely barren and lifeless, and there's no longer anything left to throw a single wrinkle or change of plans into your strategy, it's just "ok, time to clean up all the gold stars on my map with no resistance whatsoever"
overall like, as a game it's.. fine. it's enjoyable enough when the controls aren't actively fucking you (and in between the painfully long Nintendo Downtimes), the experience i've had with it can broadly be described as "nice". but as a pikmin game it's just fundamentally lacking a lot of what's important. i'm really glad the interactive piklopedia's back, the weird creatures of pikmin's world are still great and the one aspect i have no real criticisms to bring at, and their funny little behaviors are great to observe and toy around with. and though PNF-404 as a post-apocalyptic earth is i think broadly more interesting as a setting (and tbh if 4 is meant to be taken as a complete retcon/alternate timeline then there's no reason i can't keep thinking of the other games' setting as a post-apocalypse) i'm not wholly opposed to it being a world where human activity is still happening just offscreen and leading to things like the changes in the areas between 1 and 2. but on the whole it really feels like an effort to bring pikmin into the framework of a Modern Game™️. missions and quests doled out by npcs! a big open map of landmarks to check off! generic resources to buy permanent upgrades! create your own character (who then is a silent protagonist for the entire game which just doesn't work nearly as well)!
i guess maybe the most telling thing about my experience with 4 is how hard it's made me want to go back and revisit 1 again. to push myself against an actual time and resource challenge and see how well i can do, and put myself back in the shoes of one hapless little trucker dad imminently imperiled in an alien world, who manages to have more personality to him in a handful of journal entries than the entire ensemble cast of 4 in their endless paragraphs of fluff text. the two more recent games just can't quite capture that same indescribable feeling of being a tiny thing in a vast, strange, hostile yet beautiful and intriguing world. maybe it's foolish of me to hope nintendo as it exists now ever could recapture that. stuff like botw/totk's world makes me think otherwise though, and wonder what kind of new magic could be brought into pikmin if they'd done things differently
i think overall i might prefer pikmin 3 a bit more to 4. i think it's a much visually nicer game, for one - it may have overcommitted entirely to "every environment is just gonna be a lush forest that makes you go 'oooh so pretty and nice'" but like, it did at least succeed utterly at that goal (and i'm also sad they toned down the bulborbs' unnervingly real baby blues, they were absolutely uncanny in a way i loved). 4's areas are not only all very samey (having the scope so concretely defined as "one house and its yard and a beach and campsite within a couple blocks of it" really makes it feel frustratingly small and human-scaled, despite the increased size of the maps in a game meant to make you feel like a tiny bug in a massive world) but aesthetically and graphically none of them really shine in their own right either
and i am also, gameplay-wise, more of a pikmin 1 person than a pikmin 2 person, so while 3's "time limit" was a complete and utter joke it did at least make for an experience that didn't overstay its welcome, whereas traipsing through so many caves in 4 on top of the night missions and dandori stuff has made it start to drag as i close in on the home stretch. and while 3's bosses did break from tradition and rob you of the moments where a beady long legs just drops on your head and makes you freak out, they were at least memorable, and challenging on a first playthrough. it was so unbelievably disappointing to see my first emperor/empress bulblaxes in 4 and go "oh shit" then proceed to easily 1-shot them with oatchi's charge
but 3 and 4 definitely both lose the real meat of the magic that made 1 and 2 special. they're just very Modern Nintendo, emblematic of their current family-friendly design-by-comittee mass-appeal-with-no-difficulty-customization approach. and nintendo treehouse/NOA localization has just been utter trite garbage for years and years now
of the boss encounters that have been memorable to me, the first is groovy long legs because as a concept it rules and the music and vibe are super fun (though actually fighting it was kind of disappointingly easy because of oatchi and spicy sprays), and the big version of the gold-crystal anglerfish salamander guys. because they require hitting multiple different weakspots and managing which targets you go for, they actually required at least some thought and execution instead of just literally ramming your face into it til it dies. the first time i fought it i had all of my pikmin going for a gold chunk that it slurped up and put back on... and it swallowed every single one of my pikmin in one bite (then hilariously died from eating a squad of white pikmin) it was an extremely funny memorable experience
...and then sheperd called me to be like "oh no! all your guys died! if only there was some way to rewind time... [WINK NUDGE]" and the game offered me the prompt to do exactly that. which brings me to one major problem that wasn't touched on in this review, the time rewind. being able to redo a whole day is perfectly fine by me, putting in the time to make sure you get a day with results that you're happy with is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff. and being able to redo a cave, maybe even having checkpoints every few floors, also feels reasonable given how much time one can sink into them. but in a game already lacking for any source at all of time pressure, being able to rewind the last 1-2 minutes of gameplay any time you feel like it removes any shred of tension that could've remained. as soon as 1 pikmin dies you can just give it a second try immediately instead of having to painstakingly weigh how much you care about any given loss versus the time you've already sunk into the day. it actively encourages essentially savescumming, leading to a really boring and uninteresting playstyle where you just repeat any micro-challenge over and over until you get a perfect run. and it also resets you with every pikmin grouped back up with you, which can be annoying if you were actively transporting things in a lot of different places but can also be abused to easily gather up your loose pikmin - something you can also do by entering and exiting a cave, which immediately just magically slurps all loose pikmin on the map back into the onion and lets you re-choose your squad
and then there's the multiple base points in each area. the maps in 4 were built pretty big (though they often don't feel that way with how breezy getting around on oatchi is) and multiple base points could have been a really interesting decision, if you were forced each day to choose -one- and structure all your activities for the day around that. but instead you can just move your base instantly as many times as you want, and it'll bring any idle pikmin at the base with it, so you can just always move the base close to whatever objective you happen to be working on and the logistical consideration of devoting a big group to transport an object a long distance simply never comes up
lastly, it's honestly super disappointing how enemies just never respawn no matter how long you wait (unless you've already 100%ed an area and it no longer fuckin matters). you clear out the obstacles in a map once and that's it. the maps become completely barren and lifeless, and there's no longer anything left to throw a single wrinkle or change of plans into your strategy, it's just "ok, time to clean up all the gold stars on my map with no resistance whatsoever"
overall like, as a game it's.. fine. it's enjoyable enough when the controls aren't actively fucking you (and in between the painfully long Nintendo Downtimes), the experience i've had with it can broadly be described as "nice". but as a pikmin game it's just fundamentally lacking a lot of what's important. i'm really glad the interactive piklopedia's back, the weird creatures of pikmin's world are still great and the one aspect i have no real criticisms to bring at, and their funny little behaviors are great to observe and toy around with. and though PNF-404 as a post-apocalyptic earth is i think broadly more interesting as a setting (and tbh if 4 is meant to be taken as a complete retcon/alternate timeline then there's no reason i can't keep thinking of the other games' setting as a post-apocalypse) i'm not wholly opposed to it being a world where human activity is still happening just offscreen and leading to things like the changes in the areas between 1 and 2. but on the whole it really feels like an effort to bring pikmin into the framework of a Modern Game™️. missions and quests doled out by npcs! a big open map of landmarks to check off! generic resources to buy permanent upgrades! create your own character (who then is a silent protagonist for the entire game which just doesn't work nearly as well)!
i guess maybe the most telling thing about my experience with 4 is how hard it's made me want to go back and revisit 1 again. to push myself against an actual time and resource challenge and see how well i can do, and put myself back in the shoes of one hapless little trucker dad imminently imperiled in an alien world, who manages to have more personality to him in a handful of journal entries than the entire ensemble cast of 4 in their endless paragraphs of fluff text. the two more recent games just can't quite capture that same indescribable feeling of being a tiny thing in a vast, strange, hostile yet beautiful and intriguing world. maybe it's foolish of me to hope nintendo as it exists now ever could recapture that. stuff like botw/totk's world makes me think otherwise though, and wonder what kind of new magic could be brought into pikmin if they'd done things differently
(initially just wanted to reinforce and add a few thoughts and didn't realize i'd basically spiraled out into full-length review territory with that comment SORRY)
>What if we did the submerged castle again! Doesn't matter that the Water Wraith was effective for being a SURPRISE in 2, let's use the same name, same theme, same music, and simply signpost that he's going to show up to remove that surprise. Also let's handicap his AI and make him incredibly unimposing thanks to how Oatchi works
Totally agree!
There's a floor in the final cave with two waterwraiths which shows how little they understood what made the creature so threatening.
The battle against the Waterwraith in Pikmin 2 wasn't cathartic because it was hard or mechanically interesting, but because of the build-up to get there. You started out being chased by that thing all the way through, just to get your revenge at the final floor. The waterwraith started out as predator but ended up becoming prey.
Meanwhile in Sublevel 16, you can defeat both of them in less than a minute.
No strategy to avoid them, no tension for not seeing them, just throw purple pikmins and that's it.
Totally agree!
There's a floor in the final cave with two waterwraiths which shows how little they understood what made the creature so threatening.
The battle against the Waterwraith in Pikmin 2 wasn't cathartic because it was hard or mechanically interesting, but because of the build-up to get there. You started out being chased by that thing all the way through, just to get your revenge at the final floor. The waterwraith started out as predator but ended up becoming prey.
Meanwhile in Sublevel 16, you can defeat both of them in less than a minute.
No strategy to avoid them, no tension for not seeing them, just throw purple pikmins and that's it.
This comment was deleted
i agree so much with pretty much everything you've said, especially in regards to the aesthetics and story/tone
Nintendo the all time undefeated grand champion of not understanding the appeal of their own games
"IS IT WRONG TO WANT TO FEEL SOMETHING" damn straight!!!! They rly fumbled this series legendarily so. MANAGING CHAOS rly was the whole point/appeal of those OGs. What was the intent behind these newer games? Making toothless dopamine emitters? Ridiculous........
I AGREE WITH YOU THEREFORE I LIKE YOU
I AGREE WITH YOU THEREFORE I LIKE YOU
Dalaamclouds
9 months ago