My first Pikmin game was Pikmin 3 on the Wii U, I got if for Christmas in middle school. I said fuck it one day and downloaded the free e shop demo, a decision I honestly almost didn’t make. I genuinely didn’t think I would enjoy it, but from the demo alone, I became hooked for life. I beat the game 100% and consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time, during Covid, my first year of college probably I picked up pikmin 1 and 2 on the Wii U e shop. I loved 1, put it not too far behind pikmin 3 in my favorite games, and thought pikmin 2 was really good, but could never get behind the lack of a time limit and holy shit the caves.

Ever since that fucking interview in like 2015 or something where Miyamoto said they were pretty much done with pikmin 4 I was sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for them to announce and release the game soon. While I probably shouldn’t have, I held on to hope and continued to believe in this one comment Miyamoto made almost a decade ago, and Pikmin 4 easily became my most anticipated game of all time.

When they finally announced it I was over the moon, and decided to go into the game completely blind. The game actually released in the middle of the drum corps season, so I had to wait an extra month to play it. I actually played a few minutes of a kiosk demo I randomly came across on our free day in Austin, but honestly didn’t find it that enjoyable, but paid no mind to it. Then I found out after almost a decade of waiting, that there were fucking caves in this game.

This game did every single thing, even if there were only a few, from Pikmin 2 that I didn’t like. And going in blind, I wasn’t aware of the upgrades or anything, so I was under the assumption that features from pikmin 3 like go here and the charge whistle were nowhere to be seen. And then I could only have 20 pikmin and like 3 types at a time? I figured that whole game was sure to still be really good, it wouldn’t be close to Pikmin 3 or worth the decade wait. But that was fair, it’s a really hard ask to do either of those things.

But quickly, the game picked up big time. I found out about upgrades, got used to using Oatchi, and I started to be amazed with this game. Having two captains with all the multitasking options, plus some, from pikmin 3 felt great, and each of them having different movesets was super cool. Now not only do I have to divvy up which pikmin go where but also had to determine which captain goes where based on what I need them to do, and not just based off liking alph because he’s cool and Charlie because he’s green. It however, does blow that you do just play as an avatar, I do miss the personalities that all the captains from the other games had (this is honestly a preference of mine for any game with a story). The overworked were great, the huge sandcastle set piece especially was cool, the caves were never more than 3-5 stories as opposed to the ones in pikmin 2 that were a grueling almost 10 sometimes (thank fuck), and there were loads of super cool bosses, both new and ones I loved from the first three games. I remember the feeling of dread the first time the cutscene of the Smokey prog egg was shown in the night mission.

Also, night missions are sick! People always wanted them and I never agreed because I thought it would defeat the whole purpose of not going out after the day ended, but they actually went about it in a super cool way. The glow pikmin are super cool both because it makes sense you wouldn’t be able to use your actual pikmin, and they’re just fun to use with all of their abilities. The tower defense style missions feel different to the point where it makes sense to be there, and is executed in a way that still feels like you’re playing a pikmin game. Plus the detail where the night missions take a whole day is a nice touch even if it really amounts to nothing with no time limit, wouldn’t make sense to have your captain explore all day, pull an all nighter, and go out again. A detail that is entirely inconsequential, but makes the game feel all that much more polished.

As time went on though, there were a lot of things that started to bother me a little bit. The fact that you can only have 3 pikmin types is a cool limitation, but not even having one chance in the entire game to have every type is kinda lame. It also shoves the recommended 3 types in your face, and with the design of the areas only being around those 3, there’s never a reason to take out any others. The aforementioned avatar character is pretty devoid of any memorable personality, I sometimes even forget what he looks like and I fucking made the guy. And of course, the dog is way overpowered. I feel like the pikmin series does this anytime they introduce something new. I love all of the options the dog offers you, but the fact that he can basically one shot not only the emperor bulblax, the final boss of pikmin 1, but also the Smokey prog, an enemy that had only been met with fear in the past, is kind of rediculous. Not to say those enemies are completely free, if you aim very poorly at the prog with a rush attack you can still have him kill every single one of your pikmin instantly.

This game, while much fewer and farther between, still has those classic pikmin moments where half of your party dies for no reason, and honestly towards the end of the game these were the moments I had by far the most fun. The disco guy steps on you one time and all the sudden you have to do the whole fight with just 11 red pikmin. An arctic canon beetle barely clips you and upwards of 30 pikmin are launched into a bottomless pit. In the final cave (20 fucking floors btw god dammit) The empress blublax in the tiny space killed every single one of my pikmin immediately, leading to me having to play as just Oatchi and fight the sovereign bulblax one on one, making it feel like almost an entirely different video game. (It’s ridiculous that he’s able to do that but I’ll let it slide this one time because it created that memorable moment). However, any time anything even slightly bad happens you’re prompted to rewind time. This usually isn’t an issue, as I was able to just ignore it, until the final boss. You need a hard minimum of 15 pikmin to damage him, and if you drop below that, which there’s a fair chance of given the instant death puddles everywhere, there is no way out of the arena, and no possible way to progress other than opening up a menu and hitting a button that respawns your pikmin, which quite frankly feels like cheating. Kind of an anticlimactic way to beat what otherwise is a great boss and amazing game.

There are still some moments that feel like cool challenges even among how easy the main story feels at times, like the night missions and the dandori challenges and battles. I haven’t even really attempted the sage’s trials yet other that failing the first one a few times before I was fully upgraded, and I’m sure those are going to be fun. The obvious spotlight of course, is olimar’s shipwreck tale. I had no fucking clue that when I talked to the guy I would be met with a full multiple hour long challenge mode that’s basically a redo of pikmin 1 in the pikmin 4 areas. This mode feels like it was made specifically for me, with it all being under a strict time limit all in the overworld. This moment was what cemented just how high quality of a game this really was.

In the end though, with all of the things in this game that bothered me combined with my huge amounts of nostalgia towards pikmin 3, I still have to give this game the cake for best game in the franchise. There were so many moments I was pissed that I wasn’t playing pikmin 3, (sometimes it even felt like there was pikmin 3 erasure, there was a trio of koppaites, a little blue guy a pink girl and a big green guy that just blatantly weren’t alph Brittany and Charlie, none of the bosses, and in the final cave every single pikmin type appears except for the two introduced in pikmin 3, even though every single feature from the first two games get to parade around pnf 404 like crazy) but with almost every moment this game just beats out pikmin 3 time and time again fair and square. This game is filled to the brim with great new ideas and loads of polish. It’s something both completely different and in a lot of ways better than what I spent a decade ridiculously hoping for, and I have to concede it a spot a bit ahead of pikmin 3 for one of my favorite games of all time.