This review contains spoilers
That's it. I've done it. I've 100%-ed the entire Pikmin quadrilogy (fuck Hey Pikmin). So now we come to the most important question: is Pikmin 4 the best one? Answer: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh...
I might need to replay Pikmin 3 Deluxe again to know for sure, but I think I miiiiiiight prefer that one. But 4 is definitely top 2 Pikmin games, no question.
Let's start with Pikmin 4's strengths. Graphics? Beautiful. The settings are so lovingly detailed and the art direction is arguably the strongest its ever been. Theming the entire campaign around the outside of a once lived-in suburban house was already plenty fun, but finally letting us fulfill the ultimate "little people in our relatively big world" fantasy and explore the INSIDE of the house, from the living room to the kitchen? Muah. When it comes to the environments, I think I just slightly prefer 3's hyper-realistic nature settings, but in terms of art direction, Pikmin 4 is the cream of the crop. The quality of life features also makes this the most accessible Pikmin game. The little buffer that prevents you from throwing more than the required number of Pikmin at an object, being able to move bases, free camera movement, and the best Pikmin AI to date. It's all good... maybe too good...
Once again, I may have to replay 3 Deluxe to confirm- especially on the Ultra-Spicy mode I haven't tried yet- but I think 4 might be the easiest game in the series. Autolocking removes a good chunk of the strategy when it comes to combat, and not even having an option to disable it means you're always laser-focused on your enemies so long as they're within your line of sight. And when you unlock Oatchi's stun charge? Forget it. If you're not one of the big jumbo bosses, you're getting a dog rammed straight up your ass with a barrage of Pikmin DPS-ing your face into ground beef. Combat is never boring, since the act of throwing or even charging at enemies is still inherently fun, but I was definitely the least threatened by enemies I've ever felt in a Pikmin game. And maybe it's unfair to levy that entirely against 4, since part of the reason I feel threatened by enemies in Pikmin 1 is because the AI is so shit that game, I have to factor that into fights, but between stun charging and auto-locking, I only ever lost groups of Pikmin to new bosses with unfamiliar patterns or an occasional mistake, either from my own error or auto-lock prioritizing something else from what I wanted.
Speaking of Oatchi, I'm mixed on if his inclusion was an a net positive. On one hand, putting a dog in any video game automatically makes it better, especially one that has good AI and is the MVP of your team (Dandori clutch god). On the other hand, his upgrades can turn him from a good boy helper to a nigh unstoppable god. Stun charge, powerful DPS, swimming, the ability to carry 100 weight, and carrying 100 Pikmin at once, even over water removes a lot of the agency of the Pikmin. Sure, you can have 100 Pikmin vs just one Oatchi, but if he wasn't transporting my entire squadron on his back with no downsides (should've had a weight limit) he was a canine trebuchet for my little kill legion. I think on my next playthrough in a few years I will purposefully not buy certain upgrades for Oatchi... but then Dandori stages would get crazy hard so I'm kinda stuck.
This may be a minor gripe to some, but I'm not a fan of Pikmin 4 wiping its ass with the series canon. We literally JUST GOT 3 Deluxe adding in story content and introducing a whole new install base to Pikmin, only to wipe the slate clean and create a new timeline where the events of 1 were altered, and 2 and 3 never happened at all, lmao. I certainly hope you weren't wishing for the decade-long comebacks of Alph, Brittany and Charlie, cause they've been retconned out of existence, replaced with impostors (or descendants, idk it's weird and dumb). These new characters are okay; the only standouts being the slightly timid captain Shepard and the dubious doctor Yonny, but even then they're pretty one-note. Being able to create your own character is nifty but doesn't really affect the game in any meaningful way.
The postgame is meaty. Truncating the entirety of Pikmin 1 to a remixed Pikmin 4 reskin/mod with a 15 day time limit is easily the best part of the game. Two additional maps and the first multi-phase boss fight in the series squeezes a good number of hours that's just as fun at the other four maps, and completing them 100% is addicting. Including old mechanics as post-game rewards is cool, but feels less special since you get them after you've done pretty much everything. Pluckophone is back, Pikmin 1/2's old swarm feature is back, and the funniest prank in the entire series (outside of Hey Pikmin's announcement/existence) is Louie's post-postgame side questline reward. Fucking outstanding troll.
I could go on, like with caves and side quests, and while it seems like I've been hard on the game this whole time, it's still a Pikmin game, and the core gameplay loop of Pikmin is stupidly addicting, and this game sucked away a good 50 hours of my life to 100%. It's in desperate need of a patch/DLC that offers hard options/harder modes, but as far as being an evolution of Pikmin 2 goes, it's a godsend. Hopefully we don't have to wait another decade before Pikmin 5 :))))))))))))((((((
I might need to replay Pikmin 3 Deluxe again to know for sure, but I think I miiiiiiight prefer that one. But 4 is definitely top 2 Pikmin games, no question.
Let's start with Pikmin 4's strengths. Graphics? Beautiful. The settings are so lovingly detailed and the art direction is arguably the strongest its ever been. Theming the entire campaign around the outside of a once lived-in suburban house was already plenty fun, but finally letting us fulfill the ultimate "little people in our relatively big world" fantasy and explore the INSIDE of the house, from the living room to the kitchen? Muah. When it comes to the environments, I think I just slightly prefer 3's hyper-realistic nature settings, but in terms of art direction, Pikmin 4 is the cream of the crop. The quality of life features also makes this the most accessible Pikmin game. The little buffer that prevents you from throwing more than the required number of Pikmin at an object, being able to move bases, free camera movement, and the best Pikmin AI to date. It's all good... maybe too good...
Once again, I may have to replay 3 Deluxe to confirm- especially on the Ultra-Spicy mode I haven't tried yet- but I think 4 might be the easiest game in the series. Autolocking removes a good chunk of the strategy when it comes to combat, and not even having an option to disable it means you're always laser-focused on your enemies so long as they're within your line of sight. And when you unlock Oatchi's stun charge? Forget it. If you're not one of the big jumbo bosses, you're getting a dog rammed straight up your ass with a barrage of Pikmin DPS-ing your face into ground beef. Combat is never boring, since the act of throwing or even charging at enemies is still inherently fun, but I was definitely the least threatened by enemies I've ever felt in a Pikmin game. And maybe it's unfair to levy that entirely against 4, since part of the reason I feel threatened by enemies in Pikmin 1 is because the AI is so shit that game, I have to factor that into fights, but between stun charging and auto-locking, I only ever lost groups of Pikmin to new bosses with unfamiliar patterns or an occasional mistake, either from my own error or auto-lock prioritizing something else from what I wanted.
Speaking of Oatchi, I'm mixed on if his inclusion was an a net positive. On one hand, putting a dog in any video game automatically makes it better, especially one that has good AI and is the MVP of your team (Dandori clutch god). On the other hand, his upgrades can turn him from a good boy helper to a nigh unstoppable god. Stun charge, powerful DPS, swimming, the ability to carry 100 weight, and carrying 100 Pikmin at once, even over water removes a lot of the agency of the Pikmin. Sure, you can have 100 Pikmin vs just one Oatchi, but if he wasn't transporting my entire squadron on his back with no downsides (should've had a weight limit) he was a canine trebuchet for my little kill legion. I think on my next playthrough in a few years I will purposefully not buy certain upgrades for Oatchi... but then Dandori stages would get crazy hard so I'm kinda stuck.
This may be a minor gripe to some, but I'm not a fan of Pikmin 4 wiping its ass with the series canon. We literally JUST GOT 3 Deluxe adding in story content and introducing a whole new install base to Pikmin, only to wipe the slate clean and create a new timeline where the events of 1 were altered, and 2 and 3 never happened at all, lmao. I certainly hope you weren't wishing for the decade-long comebacks of Alph, Brittany and Charlie, cause they've been retconned out of existence, replaced with impostors (or descendants, idk it's weird and dumb). These new characters are okay; the only standouts being the slightly timid captain Shepard and the dubious doctor Yonny, but even then they're pretty one-note. Being able to create your own character is nifty but doesn't really affect the game in any meaningful way.
The postgame is meaty. Truncating the entirety of Pikmin 1 to a remixed Pikmin 4 reskin/mod with a 15 day time limit is easily the best part of the game. Two additional maps and the first multi-phase boss fight in the series squeezes a good number of hours that's just as fun at the other four maps, and completing them 100% is addicting. Including old mechanics as post-game rewards is cool, but feels less special since you get them after you've done pretty much everything. Pluckophone is back, Pikmin 1/2's old swarm feature is back, and the funniest prank in the entire series (outside of Hey Pikmin's announcement/existence) is Louie's post-postgame side questline reward. Fucking outstanding troll.
I could go on, like with caves and side quests, and while it seems like I've been hard on the game this whole time, it's still a Pikmin game, and the core gameplay loop of Pikmin is stupidly addicting, and this game sucked away a good 50 hours of my life to 100%. It's in desperate need of a patch/DLC that offers hard options/harder modes, but as far as being an evolution of Pikmin 2 goes, it's a godsend. Hopefully we don't have to wait another decade before Pikmin 5 :))))))))))))((((((