This remains my most anticipated game ever and it was... alright. It's a fairly serviceable entry but I don't think it lives up to the GameCube games. One way I can put it is that, while the original put you in an alien planet, 3 puts you in a garden, if that makes sense: it's less epic, less mysterious, less wondrous, but it still works, just not the progression one would've expected after a 9-year hiatus.
Biggest change that I find questionable is the music. Music consists of MIDI files in the GameCube games, whereas 3 uses orchestrated pieces. To me, the former compositions always sound foreign and mischievous, mysterious, whereas the music in 3 sounds cutesy in my ears. It's a drastic change in tonality.
On the gameplay side, as usual, everything is solid, I especially like the inclusion of micromanaging with the interactivity of the minimap; it's good for speedrunning and particularly makes mission mode a lot of fun. Pikmin mechanics work as usual, with the exception that the guiding whistle is gone, and I missed it. As a substitute, you can now lock on things and charge all your squad against them, but sometimes you just want to move a few Pikmin around or put to work just a few. Now it's a little more cumbersome to do this. Further, the equivalent of the C-Stick on Wii U and Nintendo Switch, predictably, now controls the camera, but you can't control neither the camera speed (and it's rather slow) nor the vertical orientation. So, yeah, controls could've been perfect on this one. Speaking of which, I liked the implementation they used for the Wii U, which allows you to launch Pikmin with the Gamepad screen. This feature didn't make it in Deluxe, though. Otherwise, Wiimote + Nunchuck is still the best combo.
There are other missing things as well, namely enemy variety and overall numbers, an area where 2 excelled at. The latter managed to give you the feeling that you were exploring a wild area in the perspective of the protgonists, but 3 gives you very few mobs, which indicates you that they're videogamey obstacles more than anything. I was specifically disappointed when I realized there was only one spotty bulbear in the whole campaign, for example.
The Piklopedia was missing in the Wii U release, and the Deluxe implementation is just barebones compared to 2's, which was a great source for humor, character development and worldbulding. There really isn't a replacement for these in 3.
More than anything, what disappointed me the most is that 3 tried way too much to be like the first game, instead of continue expanding the legacy of the first two games. This time the ship doesn't break apart but you still have to collect the main component in order to escape the planet. Four areas again with the same themes and of similar size, with a final one where the final boss is, who also holds the most important item. A welcome change, to be fair, is that bosses distance from the typical behavior they tend to have in the first two games, they're big, faster, can get out of screen, they have set pieces and you can't escape from them (with one exception), which makes them more similar to classic Nintendo bosses than Pikmin ones. Not enough to break the whole typicality, though.
In the end, you know which games are alsl third entries in their series, too? Super Mario Bros. 3, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid... And sadly, Pikmin 3 isn't the definitive Pikmin experience, still waiting for that... Have been waiting almost 9 years again, in fact.
Biggest change that I find questionable is the music. Music consists of MIDI files in the GameCube games, whereas 3 uses orchestrated pieces. To me, the former compositions always sound foreign and mischievous, mysterious, whereas the music in 3 sounds cutesy in my ears. It's a drastic change in tonality.
On the gameplay side, as usual, everything is solid, I especially like the inclusion of micromanaging with the interactivity of the minimap; it's good for speedrunning and particularly makes mission mode a lot of fun. Pikmin mechanics work as usual, with the exception that the guiding whistle is gone, and I missed it. As a substitute, you can now lock on things and charge all your squad against them, but sometimes you just want to move a few Pikmin around or put to work just a few. Now it's a little more cumbersome to do this. Further, the equivalent of the C-Stick on Wii U and Nintendo Switch, predictably, now controls the camera, but you can't control neither the camera speed (and it's rather slow) nor the vertical orientation. So, yeah, controls could've been perfect on this one. Speaking of which, I liked the implementation they used for the Wii U, which allows you to launch Pikmin with the Gamepad screen. This feature didn't make it in Deluxe, though. Otherwise, Wiimote + Nunchuck is still the best combo.
There are other missing things as well, namely enemy variety and overall numbers, an area where 2 excelled at. The latter managed to give you the feeling that you were exploring a wild area in the perspective of the protgonists, but 3 gives you very few mobs, which indicates you that they're videogamey obstacles more than anything. I was specifically disappointed when I realized there was only one spotty bulbear in the whole campaign, for example.
The Piklopedia was missing in the Wii U release, and the Deluxe implementation is just barebones compared to 2's, which was a great source for humor, character development and worldbulding. There really isn't a replacement for these in 3.
More than anything, what disappointed me the most is that 3 tried way too much to be like the first game, instead of continue expanding the legacy of the first two games. This time the ship doesn't break apart but you still have to collect the main component in order to escape the planet. Four areas again with the same themes and of similar size, with a final one where the final boss is, who also holds the most important item. A welcome change, to be fair, is that bosses distance from the typical behavior they tend to have in the first two games, they're big, faster, can get out of screen, they have set pieces and you can't escape from them (with one exception), which makes them more similar to classic Nintendo bosses than Pikmin ones. Not enough to break the whole typicality, though.
In the end, you know which games are alsl third entries in their series, too? Super Mario Bros. 3, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid... And sadly, Pikmin 3 isn't the definitive Pikmin experience, still waiting for that... Have been waiting almost 9 years again, in fact.