I have been in love with the Pikmin series since day one, being absolutely glued to the screen trying to help Olimar find all his ship pieces, which turned into finding treasure pieces for the Boss, and eventually into various fruits for a dying Koppai planet. I was pretty satisfied with the Pikmin series ending at 3, but I know the online community was especially loud about wanting a 4th one, and to be honest, I was a little curious where they would go with the series after 3, so hey, why not check it out?

I went in fully knowing that this era of Nintendo is no longer what I loved growing up with, but I still wanted to go in with an open mind, and hopefully be happy to find it keeping to its core. But after finishing the game, I couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied and just very… odd about the whole experience. Pikmin 4 isn’t bad, especially compared to other games on the Switch, Pikmin 4 is actually quite good in comparison! But after thinking about it for a little bit, I think I can sum up why I wasn’t quite as happy with Pikmin 4 as I was in the past Pikmin games.

Assistance

Pikmin 4 is too kind to you, so kind in fact, that it takes away the original enjoyment I had with the game. Pikmin 1 & 2, and Pikmin 3 on the Wii U all are games that create an environment with a mission that you need to complete, sounds easy enough, right? Well, no. The whole point of Pikmin is to complete your goal with literally EVERYTHING in the world out against you. It’s you, this tiny little man not even the height of a GameCube disc, and your funny little fellas, out against literally EVERYTHING. Pikmin started as a series called Adam & Eve where you had to control an eventual 100-person tribe of people with their own freewill and get them to complete tasks for you. You were essentially supposed to play God, with your little people as your followers.

I see SO many people complain about how it seems like the pikmin in Pikmin 1 are completely braindead or go against your wishes in order to jump into the water, fall off bridges/ledges, or run right into fire walls, and I can not stress this enough; That. Is. The. Goddamn. POINT. The Pikmin are supposed to be annoying, they’re supposed to go against your wishes, because to put it bluntly, Olimar is finding these creatures and making them into his blooming slaves. They follow Olimar because of the light on his helmet, but in the end, they still have their own wants and desires, and THAT is what makes Pikmin an incredibly amazing and insanely unique game never before seen. It’s a game where you have to fight against nature WITH nature in order to complete your goal.

What Pikmin 4 does that ended up taking the enjoyment away from me was that instead of making it a game of nature fighting AGAINST you, it’s now a game of puzzles that helps GIVE you that push towards completing your goal. Gone is that challenge. Gone is that struggle. Instead, you can rest easy in knowing the game will help you in any way it possibly can. The base is too far, making carrying items back difficult from environmental aspects (water, walls, unbuilt bridges, etc) or there being too many enemies no longer an issue, you can just move the base now. The fear of losing your Pikmin and being low on a certain type is gone, as Oatchi, as undeniably cute as he is, can be trained to withstand any elemental obstacle (minus poison), and can be trained to be as strong as 100 Pikmin to boot! He is a built-in, mandatory handicap to the entire game’s mechanic.

There are other things to critique and there are lots of things to admire, but this review is already long enough, and it’s really not that important. Overall, I would say Pikmin 4 is a good game in the sense that it does what it set out to do, and also seems to have fixed certain aspects that made the game more playable for a wider ranged audience, which I can’t have any serious vendetta against. It’s no longer the game series that I originally fell in love with, but that doesn’t mean I’m upset at people who could never get into the old games and find joy in Pikmin 4, in fact, I feel the exact opposite. I’m very happy to see so many people so passionate and happy about it in a way I felt about the original game, and ultimately, that’s what is most important to me.

P.S. If I was Olimar, I would just kill Louie at this point.

What we have here is a game that can be described entirely in terms of NES games its copying from. That's both unfair, since it has its own identity, and exactly what you're supposed to do.

First up, though: the soundtrack is all bangers. Chiptunes with instruments like a Anamanaguchi and I can't get enough of that shit. Top tier. Love it.

The first story cutscene also rules since it's obviously aware of how goofy the whole thing is. After that it kind of starts just going through the motions and not being super fun but there's not much of it. You're fighting mythological monsters with a robot and sword's that's all you need. You do a series of levels in various stereotype zones of countries around the world and then a Wily Fortress endgame.

You're in a robot which has a shield and you collect weapons for it to wield, the weapons being the main mechanical draw here. You get them off of enemies and in breakable walls and just all over the place. Tons of them, and no real limit to how many you can hold except that once you go past a certain threshold things get tougher and you have to fight a centaur midboss after the first checkpoint in each level. Beat that guy and he'll drop a weapon that someone made and uploaded, so you'll be getting replicas of other video game weapons and vacuum cleaners and just all kinds of fun crap. Weapons have durability but, like I said, you get way more of them than you'll lose to breakage. This means you're free to throw them or break them. Each weapon has a spell associated with it that triggers when manually broken. They range from some pretty weak powers, stat ups, and the like to some really nice ones like unlimited flight for a minute or two or a full health restore. You can also dump weapons between levels to increase your maximum health by a bit.

There are a good number of moves you can pull off in the robot, including a backdash that has iFrames and can be pulled off in midair and is very fun to use. Once you get used to it, the movement can be very fun. You can also get out of the robot and run around on foot. You'll have to do this periodically. The little robot on foot is actually stronger than you think and can kill enemies no problem, but she has only a tiny health bar.

So all of this feels pretty good, right? The main problem is that there just isn't a lot of variety in the things you actually do. The levels distinguish themselves in aesthetic but not mechanics, there's a lot of them and they're all pretty long. What this means is that everything feels samey. A lot of the enemies are pretty much Iron Knuckle from Zelda 2 and even if they look different, it's all the same thing.

Don't get me wrong this sucker only took like 3 hours to beat so it wasn't boring, I just don't need to go back into it to play the harder remix story mode.

If you look at a screenshot and, like me, think 'damn I'm an absolute sucker for games that look exactly like this' then you will have a good time but it's not life changing. At least listen to the soundtrack though it's good