It's fine. The more I think about it, the more issues I have with it, mainly pertaining to Oatchi and his ridiculous arsenal of abilities that make him into a bonafide powerhouse by mid to late game. Combat is more mindless than ever since you can just use Oatchi's Rush attack to instantly latch your squad of Pikmin onto an enemy. I hardly ever felt the same kind of satisfaction I'd get from besting a Wollyhop in the first two games, hell any enemy for that matter. It was all about the timing, knowing when to bait for an attack and then when to back off, how many Pikmin to throw before you gotta whistle them back. That's largely gone in 4, replaced with an utterly dull system with little to no strategy required. There's no real weight to losing Pikmin anymore either. It always hurt to lose Pikmin in 1&2 since every one of them counts, meanwhile in 4 I felt nothing when losing any of my little guys since I have a tank in the form of a dog.
Even the bosses left me feeling underwhelmed (especially considering a good chunk of them are recycled from 1&2). The Water Wraith was neat to see again, although not even half as threatening as it could be in 2. Would've been better if it was a different kind of "wraith" akin to the Plasm Wraith.
I also really hate how you can only have 3 types of Pikmin out on the surface, worse yet it TELLS you which Pikmin you'll need for the area. In prior games, I was always carefully considering which Pikmin types I'd need and how many of each, but in 4 you just have to push X. Would've made for an interesting challenge paired with the new Survey Drone, but oh well. So much for asking the player to think for themself.
I think the areas are okay, but they hardly hold a candle to anything in 1 or 3. It really does feel like a sequel to 2 in that way. The areas in both games largely serve as sandboxes. I honestly preferred the linear area design of 3, because what you got were carefully designed challenges that I felt took advantage of the abilities of the Pikmin in far more interesting ways than what 4 tries to do. By that I mean the areas look nice at first glance but they feel very... empty? It's partially an issue with the fact that there's no day limit, so you're under no stress to explore any faster. That's always been one of my favorite things about Pikmin, working to beat the clock by figuring out which challenges to tackle first. Micromanagement played a key role in 1&3. Yes, you can easily beat them with plenty of time to spare, but it's the fact that the game pushes you to do better with little things like the more triumphant music that plays at the day end cutscene if you've collected a large number of fruit. Stuff like this makes it immensely more satisfying to play my best, learning and adapting my strategies when necessary. It's a core value of 1 that is lost in 2 and lost again in 4. I had some fun exploring the areas in 4 but they're really nothing special.
At the very least the caves are a step in the right direction, they have some neat new gimmicks that make for some fun little puzzles to solve. Miles better than what 2 attempted with its randomly generated cave layouts. The caves in 4 are a bit too short though, most of them don't get enough floors for their gimmicks to be fully fleshed out.
Oh yeah there's also the night expeditions which were rather dull. They're far too easy, even the later ones end just as the difficulty starts ramping up. I've got nothing else to say about these, they're very unimaginative.
Pikmin 4 plays it way too safe for the sake of appealing to new players, to a point where it loses some of that edge the prior games had. Not to say the rest of the series is perfect, I have my issues with each of them. It just happens that 2 is my least favorite, and 4 takes after it in more ways than one.
If you've never played a Pikmin game before, I'm sure you'll love 4. I can't say I did, unfortunately.
Even the bosses left me feeling underwhelmed (especially considering a good chunk of them are recycled from 1&2). The Water Wraith was neat to see again, although not even half as threatening as it could be in 2. Would've been better if it was a different kind of "wraith" akin to the Plasm Wraith.
I also really hate how you can only have 3 types of Pikmin out on the surface, worse yet it TELLS you which Pikmin you'll need for the area. In prior games, I was always carefully considering which Pikmin types I'd need and how many of each, but in 4 you just have to push X. Would've made for an interesting challenge paired with the new Survey Drone, but oh well. So much for asking the player to think for themself.
I think the areas are okay, but they hardly hold a candle to anything in 1 or 3. It really does feel like a sequel to 2 in that way. The areas in both games largely serve as sandboxes. I honestly preferred the linear area design of 3, because what you got were carefully designed challenges that I felt took advantage of the abilities of the Pikmin in far more interesting ways than what 4 tries to do. By that I mean the areas look nice at first glance but they feel very... empty? It's partially an issue with the fact that there's no day limit, so you're under no stress to explore any faster. That's always been one of my favorite things about Pikmin, working to beat the clock by figuring out which challenges to tackle first. Micromanagement played a key role in 1&3. Yes, you can easily beat them with plenty of time to spare, but it's the fact that the game pushes you to do better with little things like the more triumphant music that plays at the day end cutscene if you've collected a large number of fruit. Stuff like this makes it immensely more satisfying to play my best, learning and adapting my strategies when necessary. It's a core value of 1 that is lost in 2 and lost again in 4. I had some fun exploring the areas in 4 but they're really nothing special.
At the very least the caves are a step in the right direction, they have some neat new gimmicks that make for some fun little puzzles to solve. Miles better than what 2 attempted with its randomly generated cave layouts. The caves in 4 are a bit too short though, most of them don't get enough floors for their gimmicks to be fully fleshed out.
Oh yeah there's also the night expeditions which were rather dull. They're far too easy, even the later ones end just as the difficulty starts ramping up. I've got nothing else to say about these, they're very unimaginative.
Pikmin 4 plays it way too safe for the sake of appealing to new players, to a point where it loses some of that edge the prior games had. Not to say the rest of the series is perfect, I have my issues with each of them. It just happens that 2 is my least favorite, and 4 takes after it in more ways than one.
If you've never played a Pikmin game before, I'm sure you'll love 4. I can't say I did, unfortunately.