Nauty
2001
"This is the sound, that glorious sound...we'd forgotten this sound for so long..."
I listened to the Legendary Theme, and from then I knew I had to play this game for myself, and despite the damage I probably did to my thumb, It was SO worth the trip. From the opening movie alone, I don't think anyone could resist being hooked. It's fun, it's got so much charm and style, and the ENTIRE soundtrack is great; toss that all up together and you get what's one of the best games of its genre
This game isn't afraid to immediately dump you into the den of bloodthirsty rhythm demons out of nowhere, and you'd better believe getting the best ratings will give your hands permanent blisters. With that in mind, this is a must-play for anyone who loves rhythm games and niche PS2 titles.
I listened to the Legendary Theme, and from then I knew I had to play this game for myself, and despite the damage I probably did to my thumb, It was SO worth the trip. From the opening movie alone, I don't think anyone could resist being hooked. It's fun, it's got so much charm and style, and the ENTIRE soundtrack is great; toss that all up together and you get what's one of the best games of its genre
This game isn't afraid to immediately dump you into the den of bloodthirsty rhythm demons out of nowhere, and you'd better believe getting the best ratings will give your hands permanent blisters. With that in mind, this is a must-play for anyone who loves rhythm games and niche PS2 titles.
A cute little story made to establish the setting for the rest of the DLC, but unfortunately ends way too soon; I probably would've preferred if they just released the entire DLC at once
Ogerpon is very cool btw I love them
Ogerpon is very cool btw I love them
this is probably one of the least funny games ever written, and with only a two hour run time, nothing this game does justifies the whole "innocent looking game but the twist is that it's actually fucked up" trope; really the game COULD'VE been something interesting, it had OK things going on beyond lame comedy early on, but then it just bailed on all of that in favor of jumping the shark BIG time
besides that the game just isn't very fun, not a lot of interesting puzzles and combat is a chore when changing tools takes way too long
i feel bad being so harsh to an indie game, it's these kinds of people who are putting themselves out into the world amidst the odds, but i just can't recommend this game at all, ESPECIALLY not at a $15 asking price
much like spoiled produce, this game's dated-on-arrival writing and clunky gameplay are way past its expiration date
besides that the game just isn't very fun, not a lot of interesting puzzles and combat is a chore when changing tools takes way too long
i feel bad being so harsh to an indie game, it's these kinds of people who are putting themselves out into the world amidst the odds, but i just can't recommend this game at all, ESPECIALLY not at a $15 asking price
much like spoiled produce, this game's dated-on-arrival writing and clunky gameplay are way past its expiration date
where's the rest of dancing mad
2023
This review contains spoilers
Addendum to my last review:
Olimar's campaign was pretty fun, the limitations to your team size felt more meaningful in this mode where there was a hard time limit, but I don't really like how it just retcons the entire series.
Anyway, I 100% the game (unless side quests count? IDK I didn't care too much for those) and not much has really budged about what I think about the game, but I do think the upgrades I judged as being overpowered are justified in the game's dondori challenges and postgame gauntlet for the Pikmin 2 onions. If you want to get all the platinum ranks, some of these are invaluable. In doing some of these challenges, I also realized how annoying it is that auto-aim can't be turned off. Seriously, it's a HUGE burden sometimes.
One extra nitpick I ended up having was that the formation horn should not have been an unlockable from a random NPC quest; I get this game doesn't really need it c'mon that's a series staple
BTW Pikmin 3 captain fans are going to be in shambles when they reach postgame
Olimar's campaign was pretty fun, the limitations to your team size felt more meaningful in this mode where there was a hard time limit, but I don't really like how it just retcons the entire series.
Anyway, I 100% the game (unless side quests count? IDK I didn't care too much for those) and not much has really budged about what I think about the game, but I do think the upgrades I judged as being overpowered are justified in the game's dondori challenges and postgame gauntlet for the Pikmin 2 onions. If you want to get all the platinum ranks, some of these are invaluable. In doing some of these challenges, I also realized how annoying it is that auto-aim can't be turned off. Seriously, it's a HUGE burden sometimes.
One extra nitpick I ended up having was that the formation horn should not have been an unlockable from a random NPC quest; I get this game doesn't really need it c'mon that's a series staple
BTW Pikmin 3 captain fans are going to be in shambles when they reach postgame
there is a SINGLE missable soul and it's near the end of the game so if you miss it your compendium will be a copendium
this is pretty much THE toontown server to play, active playerbase, it trims down most of the obnoxious parts of TTO, and introduces several fresh and interesting concepts
2023
There's a lot to take in with this game, and to be frank I don't think I like all of it.
Surely, the best place to start is what I hated most about the game, and I think the most egregious thing in this game is how things are upgraded. In previous installments, upgrades for your crew were unlocked by obtaining specific treasures hidden in the world, and offered buffs that were rarely that game breaking or overpowered (barring a certain five-man napsack). In Pikmin 4, the upgrading system is streamlined to a fault, letting you choose your upgrades by using naturally obtained currencies that you rarely have to go out of the way for. The upgrades are also pretty overpowered, ranging from simple health or walking speed upgrades, to making your dog a force of absolute destruction, one that puts Purple Pikmin in Pikmin 2 to shame. Everything about the upgrades in this game just make it feel like "a modern gaming take on a Pikmin game" and I don't like that.
How many Pikmin you're allowed to have in your current platoon is also tied to its own upgrade system in the form of obtaining Flarlic. I get capping the number of Pikmin you're allowed to have is supposed to be a means to prevent the game from being way too easy early on, but frankly the game is too easy across the board. If you want a game with a challenge on par with 1 or 3 (without reaching levels of bullshit like 2), you'd have to avoid upgrading your dog and deliberately limit your Pikmin capacity. I wouldn't mind them having just done away with the Flarlic system in exchange for making the game acutally difficult.
Speaking of making the game actually difficult, letting you rewind time by minutes at a time seems way too generous, but I guess that's just a matter of accessibility; if you want to have an actual challenge with the game, don't use the rewind feature so much, but if you want to experience a Pikmin game for the first time, go ahead. Besides that, the game just doesn't have a whole lot of stakes when you can just use your dog to destroy anything. It's pretty clear they wanted to do Pikmin 2 but more fair, with the dungeons returning and the lack of a day limit, but they overcorrected for that game's flaws. Instead of being bullshit with random traps and obnoxious fights in randomized dungeons, this game has pretty avoidable traps and not-very-thought-provoking fights. Dungeons having actual level design is a HUGE plus, though.
In general, the game comes off as baby's first Pikmin game, even more so than Pikmin 3. Nintendo wants Pikmin to succeed, and they probably wanted to start reeling new players in by being more accessible, but in a lot of places they went way overboard.
The dog itself also just kinda feels like a step down over similar systems in the previous games. Pikmin 2 gave you an extra captain that you could control in tandem with the other, and allowed you to split up your squadron pretty quickly. Pikmin 3 gave you a third captain and the ability to quickly pause time to direct what you want each captain to do. Pikmin 4 gives you a dog you have to dismount in order to split up from them, and then in order to send them off to do their own thing you have to go into a quick menu to split off from your Pikmin (you have to do this process twice if you want to have the dog take all of the Pikmin, because doing it once only splits the captain away from all but one Pikmin type), and then you have to change to the dog in order to command them where you want their AI to go. Really, the dog just kinda makes this game worse in a lot of ways. The fact that you have two captains that aren't made equal could be good on paper, allowing you to play to each one's strengths or weaknesses to have them do specific things, but in reality what you get is a character with like 15 different powers and then your actual captain who does the generic stuff.
The vibes of this game are pretty immaculate, it stands out against every other game in the series in that regard, for better and for worse. It's a very pretty game, the environments look great, and the game very deliberately makes a point of showing how small you really are in the grand scheme of things, seeing as how the game takes place in someone's backyard. On the other hand, everything feels a little bit too cutesy for its own good. The original Pikmin has a very gloomy, eerie feeling throughout, every environment in that game feels truly desolate and intimidating, a very deliberately alien setting. This game doesn't feel "alien" all that much, it just feels like you're an ant coming to raid someone's picnic. Not really a negative thing, just depends on what kind of atmosphere you're in the market for.
The enemy design on this game is still on point, typical of a Pikmin game, but as for your crew...it's very obvious they were put through the same character creator as you, with a few bonus features. No one feels like a very stand out design in the slightest. Then you have a self insert player character, which really does not suit this series well. In the first 3 games, all the captains had pretty interesting personality quirks demonstrated through their log notes, and in 2's case the emails you'd get from characters related to Olimar and Louie. In this game, you get a self insert who doesn't say anything, and a crew whose personalities and dialogues are even less interesting than those of any of 3's captains. It's like being stuck with 6 different variations of Alph who never shut up. But I like my little skrunkly I made, so it's okay.
Of course, being a Pikmin title, this game's shining qualities come from how satisfying it feels to pull off multitasking quickly and efficiently. Whatever the story mode has you doing is satisfying enough, but the real meat of the game comes in when you do the dandori challenges, where there's an actual sense of difficulty, and thus actual sense of achievement when you manage to get a high score. Really, that's probably how you can most enjoy this game, imposing challenges on yourself. Avoiding certain upgrades, going for completion under a certain number of days, there's a lot you can probably do, but playing the game as what feels like intended just doesn't let you express a lot of skill.
Also uhhh night stages? Yeah they're fun I guess I'd probably have more fun with them if I avoided upgrading Oatchi, but I do like the feel of what's basically Pikmin tower defense.
I probably sound like I tore the shit out of this game but I really did enjoy it, it was a very satisfying time that I didn't want to pull out from, had a handful of QoL improvements over previous installments, and despite the things I personally didn't like about it constantly sitting on my mind, I think the good I got out of this game far outweighs it. It still has those iconic Pikmin moments where you're taking in the world around you, getting treasures, when you're suddenly jumped by a group of giant enemies out of nowwhere. I don't think I can call this game a disappointment, even though it was a game that took 10 years to come out despite feeling like it was only in development for 3. I will probably truly appreciate it upon trying to challenge myself on another playthrough. I'll probably end up updating this review if I bother playing it in a more difficult fashion or when I finish the postgame.
At the current moment I think Pikmin 3 is the best game in the series in terms of gameplay, and Pikmin 1 is the best for atmosphere and worldbuilding. I don't think I'll budge on the latter opinion, but this game does have potential to be my favorite in terms of gameplay.
tutorial sucks btw, very bad very long
Surely, the best place to start is what I hated most about the game, and I think the most egregious thing in this game is how things are upgraded. In previous installments, upgrades for your crew were unlocked by obtaining specific treasures hidden in the world, and offered buffs that were rarely that game breaking or overpowered (barring a certain five-man napsack). In Pikmin 4, the upgrading system is streamlined to a fault, letting you choose your upgrades by using naturally obtained currencies that you rarely have to go out of the way for. The upgrades are also pretty overpowered, ranging from simple health or walking speed upgrades, to making your dog a force of absolute destruction, one that puts Purple Pikmin in Pikmin 2 to shame. Everything about the upgrades in this game just make it feel like "a modern gaming take on a Pikmin game" and I don't like that.
How many Pikmin you're allowed to have in your current platoon is also tied to its own upgrade system in the form of obtaining Flarlic. I get capping the number of Pikmin you're allowed to have is supposed to be a means to prevent the game from being way too easy early on, but frankly the game is too easy across the board. If you want a game with a challenge on par with 1 or 3 (without reaching levels of bullshit like 2), you'd have to avoid upgrading your dog and deliberately limit your Pikmin capacity. I wouldn't mind them having just done away with the Flarlic system in exchange for making the game acutally difficult.
Speaking of making the game actually difficult, letting you rewind time by minutes at a time seems way too generous, but I guess that's just a matter of accessibility; if you want to have an actual challenge with the game, don't use the rewind feature so much, but if you want to experience a Pikmin game for the first time, go ahead. Besides that, the game just doesn't have a whole lot of stakes when you can just use your dog to destroy anything. It's pretty clear they wanted to do Pikmin 2 but more fair, with the dungeons returning and the lack of a day limit, but they overcorrected for that game's flaws. Instead of being bullshit with random traps and obnoxious fights in randomized dungeons, this game has pretty avoidable traps and not-very-thought-provoking fights. Dungeons having actual level design is a HUGE plus, though.
In general, the game comes off as baby's first Pikmin game, even more so than Pikmin 3. Nintendo wants Pikmin to succeed, and they probably wanted to start reeling new players in by being more accessible, but in a lot of places they went way overboard.
The dog itself also just kinda feels like a step down over similar systems in the previous games. Pikmin 2 gave you an extra captain that you could control in tandem with the other, and allowed you to split up your squadron pretty quickly. Pikmin 3 gave you a third captain and the ability to quickly pause time to direct what you want each captain to do. Pikmin 4 gives you a dog you have to dismount in order to split up from them, and then in order to send them off to do their own thing you have to go into a quick menu to split off from your Pikmin (you have to do this process twice if you want to have the dog take all of the Pikmin, because doing it once only splits the captain away from all but one Pikmin type), and then you have to change to the dog in order to command them where you want their AI to go. Really, the dog just kinda makes this game worse in a lot of ways. The fact that you have two captains that aren't made equal could be good on paper, allowing you to play to each one's strengths or weaknesses to have them do specific things, but in reality what you get is a character with like 15 different powers and then your actual captain who does the generic stuff.
The vibes of this game are pretty immaculate, it stands out against every other game in the series in that regard, for better and for worse. It's a very pretty game, the environments look great, and the game very deliberately makes a point of showing how small you really are in the grand scheme of things, seeing as how the game takes place in someone's backyard. On the other hand, everything feels a little bit too cutesy for its own good. The original Pikmin has a very gloomy, eerie feeling throughout, every environment in that game feels truly desolate and intimidating, a very deliberately alien setting. This game doesn't feel "alien" all that much, it just feels like you're an ant coming to raid someone's picnic. Not really a negative thing, just depends on what kind of atmosphere you're in the market for.
The enemy design on this game is still on point, typical of a Pikmin game, but as for your crew...it's very obvious they were put through the same character creator as you, with a few bonus features. No one feels like a very stand out design in the slightest. Then you have a self insert player character, which really does not suit this series well. In the first 3 games, all the captains had pretty interesting personality quirks demonstrated through their log notes, and in 2's case the emails you'd get from characters related to Olimar and Louie. In this game, you get a self insert who doesn't say anything, and a crew whose personalities and dialogues are even less interesting than those of any of 3's captains. It's like being stuck with 6 different variations of Alph who never shut up. But I like my little skrunkly I made, so it's okay.
Of course, being a Pikmin title, this game's shining qualities come from how satisfying it feels to pull off multitasking quickly and efficiently. Whatever the story mode has you doing is satisfying enough, but the real meat of the game comes in when you do the dandori challenges, where there's an actual sense of difficulty, and thus actual sense of achievement when you manage to get a high score. Really, that's probably how you can most enjoy this game, imposing challenges on yourself. Avoiding certain upgrades, going for completion under a certain number of days, there's a lot you can probably do, but playing the game as what feels like intended just doesn't let you express a lot of skill.
Also uhhh night stages? Yeah they're fun I guess I'd probably have more fun with them if I avoided upgrading Oatchi, but I do like the feel of what's basically Pikmin tower defense.
I probably sound like I tore the shit out of this game but I really did enjoy it, it was a very satisfying time that I didn't want to pull out from, had a handful of QoL improvements over previous installments, and despite the things I personally didn't like about it constantly sitting on my mind, I think the good I got out of this game far outweighs it. It still has those iconic Pikmin moments where you're taking in the world around you, getting treasures, when you're suddenly jumped by a group of giant enemies out of nowwhere. I don't think I can call this game a disappointment, even though it was a game that took 10 years to come out despite feeling like it was only in development for 3. I will probably truly appreciate it upon trying to challenge myself on another playthrough. I'll probably end up updating this review if I bother playing it in a more difficult fashion or when I finish the postgame.
At the current moment I think Pikmin 3 is the best game in the series in terms of gameplay, and Pikmin 1 is the best for atmosphere and worldbuilding. I don't think I'll budge on the latter opinion, but this game does have potential to be my favorite in terms of gameplay.
tutorial sucks btw, very bad very long
2011
once you become a demigod it's really hard to find motivation to start another singleplayer playthrough
giant bosses be like wastes 4 minutes off the timer just to do the single attack that makes them vulnerable
nintendo's magnum opus held back by the fact that they really charged $70 for a game that has frequent framerate issues
2022
The developers at Gamefreak made this as a cry for help and it's the most fun cry for help ever
2022
This review contains spoilers
Single player: VAST improvement over 2's base game story mode. Levels are more akin to Octo Expansion than they are 1 and 2's hero modes, and that's much to its benefit; they're short and sweet challenges that have unique ways of testing your skill, introducing mechanics that teach you about the game's weapons without feeling deliberately like a bloated tutorial. Levels being comprised of floating assortments of debris and memorabilia from our modern society, apart from just looking really cool, really helps sell the whole far future society. The overworld is really fun to explore and very nice to look at, and finding every little secret never really felt boring, but having to throw little buddy around everywhere to find the hidden capsule gets a little tedious.
I really wish they hadn't marketed the story mode as heavily as they did, because it really would've made the twist at the start feel more surprising, intentionally designed to feel like the story mode in the first two games as a bait and switch, down to the wasteland aesthetic, the familiar sounding music, and Octavio's boss fight being a miniature copy of his original battles. Beyond that, the writing just had me smiling the whole way through; personally, as a long-time Splatoon fan, I had a dumb grin on my face during pretty much every cutscene.
Multiplayer: Also huge upgrades over 2 on pretty much every aspect. The squid form has always been one of its outstanding mechanics over other shooter games, driving home the game's emphasis on movement options, but despite that, there wasn't really a whole lot to it other than swimming and sneaking. The introduction of the squid surge and the squid roll raises the skill ceiling of the game pretty significantly, making walls less awkward to maneuver and making strafing more interesting. Salmon Run has also gotten some technique improvements in the double-edged sword that is throwing; it feels incredibly satisfying when your whole team is passing along eggs from the shore to the finish amidst all the salmonoids trying to get in your way. If you were hoping SR would be more chaotic, I'd say this game delivered. The new specials are much better balanced overall than the previous games, with the best ones no longer serving as panic buttons or a free shot to advance. Much more strategy is involved with each one, and because of that, they all feel more rewarding to use and fair to compete against. My biggest gripe beyond the constant connection errors is that some weapons just have pretty bad specials/sub weapons to compliment them, so plenty of weapons just aren't going to be that good until they get their variants.
With gear, there seems to be a lot more convenience involved overall, with the opportunity to change the main ability of gear now available, and an easier time grinding out ability chunks, looking stylish and playing optimally is now on the table.
Also: MPU is gone. Thank god.
Also also: Ranking up isn't super annoying, it seems, which is another plus.
With lockers and titles, you can really tell that this game was handled by the Animal Crossing dev team, with the locker system functioning a lot like a tiny AC house that peers into the player's personality (unless they just threw a moyai in there), and titles work just about identically to how they do in New Horizons.
Overall, I'd say this is a very worthwhile purchase, and will probably be even more worthwhile when/if they figure out all the problematic disconnection issues. It may be too soon to judge the game on its multiplayer front when it's only been out for a few days, but I've still been having a good time. For old fans, this is a no brainer, and for everyone who was interested in Splatoon before or might've been pushed away by the flaws of the previous titles, this might be worth checking out.
I really wish they hadn't marketed the story mode as heavily as they did, because it really would've made the twist at the start feel more surprising, intentionally designed to feel like the story mode in the first two games as a bait and switch, down to the wasteland aesthetic, the familiar sounding music, and Octavio's boss fight being a miniature copy of his original battles. Beyond that, the writing just had me smiling the whole way through; personally, as a long-time Splatoon fan, I had a dumb grin on my face during pretty much every cutscene.
Multiplayer: Also huge upgrades over 2 on pretty much every aspect. The squid form has always been one of its outstanding mechanics over other shooter games, driving home the game's emphasis on movement options, but despite that, there wasn't really a whole lot to it other than swimming and sneaking. The introduction of the squid surge and the squid roll raises the skill ceiling of the game pretty significantly, making walls less awkward to maneuver and making strafing more interesting. Salmon Run has also gotten some technique improvements in the double-edged sword that is throwing; it feels incredibly satisfying when your whole team is passing along eggs from the shore to the finish amidst all the salmonoids trying to get in your way. If you were hoping SR would be more chaotic, I'd say this game delivered. The new specials are much better balanced overall than the previous games, with the best ones no longer serving as panic buttons or a free shot to advance. Much more strategy is involved with each one, and because of that, they all feel more rewarding to use and fair to compete against. My biggest gripe beyond the constant connection errors is that some weapons just have pretty bad specials/sub weapons to compliment them, so plenty of weapons just aren't going to be that good until they get their variants.
With gear, there seems to be a lot more convenience involved overall, with the opportunity to change the main ability of gear now available, and an easier time grinding out ability chunks, looking stylish and playing optimally is now on the table.
Also: MPU is gone. Thank god.
Also also: Ranking up isn't super annoying, it seems, which is another plus.
With lockers and titles, you can really tell that this game was handled by the Animal Crossing dev team, with the locker system functioning a lot like a tiny AC house that peers into the player's personality (unless they just threw a moyai in there), and titles work just about identically to how they do in New Horizons.
Overall, I'd say this is a very worthwhile purchase, and will probably be even more worthwhile when/if they figure out all the problematic disconnection issues. It may be too soon to judge the game on its multiplayer front when it's only been out for a few days, but I've still been having a good time. For old fans, this is a no brainer, and for everyone who was interested in Splatoon before or might've been pushed away by the flaws of the previous titles, this might be worth checking out.
2022
get 3 friends with you to play what can be only described as "fall guys if it wasn't shitty"; warning, if you or one of your friends is into inflation they will be the center of every joke about this game
1994
Very dated combat and inventory system, but the game has so much personality in its writing, visuals, and music that I could honestly not care a whole lot less about its flaws