This one is still my favorite. I replayed it on the switch right after finishing 4, and it has aged great. It feels a little more wild and dangerous than the recent reinventions. You have less control and suffer a lot more accidents, which keeps everything feeling exciting. I would recommend this to anyone who has found 4 or 3 to be a little too easy/on rails, or are simply looking for more Pikmin. The camera is a little less modern-feeling, but it has a really distinct feeling of "looking down at the ground" that is sustained throughout and contributes a lot to the overall vibe.

Pretty fun taken on its own merits, at least until the credits roll. The auto-targeting renders most of your actions weightless, but it's undeniably fun to move in one direction and throw guys in another. The second half of the game didn't really maintain my interest, but I finished it out of a sense of completionism.

If this is Nintendo's idea of making their game more approachable, I think it's a sign that they should retire this series for a bit and design a new game, because most of what was appealing about Pikmin 1 has been shaved off at this point.

From my experience, this is a secretly a game about failure and disappointment- not just to yourself, but failing others specifically. I never really managed to get over the initial difficulty curve and win more than a couple of races, and the ones I did win were probably, technically, part of the tutorial, so who knows. It's fun, I think! Imagine a Soulsian "tough love" approach to game design, but there's a tragically well-written cutscene after every death where all your friends and benefactors thinly mask their disappointment in you. I couldn't hack it. Gave up and switched back to pic-a-pix or something.

I've played a couple hours so far. The core climbing mechanic is wonderfully realized, but something always feels a little insubstantial about playing the game. I think it has to do with lack of specificity in the scenario/level design. The broad idea of the game world is undeniably cool. But the opening cutscene decides to favor mysteriousness and grandeur over setting up a clear situation for the player character, and so there are no real stakes when you're playing it. It's an approach to story/world that feels nearly identical to something like Journey, which a lot of AA and indie games have taken good and bad lessons.

Speaking of set pieces, the level design clearly evokes Fumito Ueda's games, but I think it fails to have the same dramatic pacing as them. There is set dressing sort of sprayed everywhere. Beautiful as the art style and models are, there's not much contrast in the look and feel of one space from the next. The theme of each area tends to be vague as well, as if all the artists had to go one were two word prompts like "fishing village". There's too much stuff for it to feel minimalistic like a fairy tale, but not enough specificity to feel like a real space. I believe that there will be more dramatically different biomes further on in the game, but I'll be surprised if the general level of purposeless detail diminishes.

Last gripe: you have a cute little blobby friend who rides on your shoulder. I'm definitely barging into the party and pissing in the punch bowl here, but this little cutie grates on me so much.

One good thing: The model of the player character is cool! Love the shin guards.

I recoil at a lot of anime-flavored RPGs, but this one got past all my defenses. Loved: relatively straight-faced-but-fun medieval/fantasy setting, anime aesthetics that don't feel like they belong to any particular era, likeable characters, writing that is generally funny when it tries to be, and most of all, an endless parade of gorgeous 3D pixel art levels which reveal themselves as you pivot the camera around at 90 degree increments. This is really the star of the show. Just walking around these levels with the sound on will make your heart ache. There's something about how they render the little shines on the surface of clear water that is endlessly fun to look at.