Theres been a trend over the last few years of indie devs basically taking pre-existing franchises, ones mostly abandoned by the owners, and making their spin on it. This has been a very mixed bag as for every great Bloodstained, theres always a Mighty No 9 to prove that maybe the past is best left behind.
"The Wild at Heart" is obviously made to take elements of Pikmin and for the most part this works very well, the art style is adorable and theres a real sense of exploration, puzzle solving and whimsy at play. While there is combat, there isnt a lot and the focus is instead on the puzzling, getting the Spritelings around to open doors, find artifacts and collectables.
For the most part everything works but there are two major issues which do hamper things quite a bit. Firstly theres the rather slow burn nature of the game. At the start it can feel like a real chore to get just from point A to point B thanks to the limited amount of resources available. You'll frequently just bump into impassable areas and unsolvable puzzles and its quite annoying and flow breaking. As the game progresses and the amount of tools and spritelings expand, this becomes less of a problem and the game becomes much more fun because of it.
The other major issue is the day/night mechanic. Sure Pikmin had this too and it was mostly used to keep the pace of the game and keep track of progress. The day/night mechanic here feels arbitrary and frustrating more often than not and again, contributes to the slow moving start.
Overall 'The Wild at Heart' is an incredibly charming title that any respecting Pikmin fan should check out as long as they are willing to tough through some of that initial slog.
"The Wild at Heart" is obviously made to take elements of Pikmin and for the most part this works very well, the art style is adorable and theres a real sense of exploration, puzzle solving and whimsy at play. While there is combat, there isnt a lot and the focus is instead on the puzzling, getting the Spritelings around to open doors, find artifacts and collectables.
For the most part everything works but there are two major issues which do hamper things quite a bit. Firstly theres the rather slow burn nature of the game. At the start it can feel like a real chore to get just from point A to point B thanks to the limited amount of resources available. You'll frequently just bump into impassable areas and unsolvable puzzles and its quite annoying and flow breaking. As the game progresses and the amount of tools and spritelings expand, this becomes less of a problem and the game becomes much more fun because of it.
The other major issue is the day/night mechanic. Sure Pikmin had this too and it was mostly used to keep the pace of the game and keep track of progress. The day/night mechanic here feels arbitrary and frustrating more often than not and again, contributes to the slow moving start.
Overall 'The Wild at Heart' is an incredibly charming title that any respecting Pikmin fan should check out as long as they are willing to tough through some of that initial slog.