There are two Pikmin 4s. There's the cozy, kid-friendly potter around gardens that lasts until the initial credits sequence, and then there's the game that creeps up afterwards. Adding full camera controls, a lock-on system, Splatoon/New Horizons character editor and a host of cuddly, chattering NPCs may worry traditionalist GameCube/Wii/Wii U fans, but they just have to hold their horses and push through the relatively brief introductory campaign.

Look, I welcome them opening up the franchise to new players. Nintendo want to explore the full potential of these mechanics and the depth of strategy that they offer, but the most important members of the audience have always been the kids. In his time as a kindly member of his local community, Miyamoto has encountered children who like Pikmin, which is evidence enough to convince him that there is an appeal for the under-8s. The harsh, ecological subtext is one of the main qualities I love the series for, and I think it's important for kids to start thinking about this stuff from a young age. I don't want them to be put off by complicated controls and stressful resource management, and if it takes a credits sequence to persuade them that they're worthy Pikmin fans, so be it.

I do want to stress that the old guys should stick with it. This is the biggest Pikmin game ever made, with the most stuff for those people. They're not littering the game with GBA and N64 references for Generation Alpha. They know we're here, and we want to play the game that Eurogamer's been teasing since September 2015.

You get a hint of this early on. Pikmin 4 somewhat obnoxiously adopts the mantra of "Dandori"; a suggestion that players should prioritise efficient planning and quick strategy in their approach. That's how Pikmin's design has always encouraged players to approach the game, but they're making it text here, and it's a fancy foreign word/compound kanji for kids to glom onto. Putting it in such focus has given the designers the freedom to explore some really taxing challenges. The Dandori Challenges themselves start out fairly easy, but there's rewards for doing them as efficiently as possible, with Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum rankings for meeting certain criteria. They're as hard as you want them to be, and the post-credits ones are often pretty bloody hard to start out with. If you want to meet every challenge the game has for you, you're going to be playing Pikmin 4 for a very long time.

The entirely distinct "Dandori Battles" are another beast altogether. Pitting you against an opponent, you have to fight them to acquire the most resources within a time limit. There's random power-ups and a lot of fluked victories. They're playing with Pikmin stuff, but they don't really feel like part of a Pikmin campaign. They feel like a silly multiplayer mode that you can play against a bot, because that's what it is, except they're mandatory parts of the main levels. I don't mind too much. They're not too much work. Just a little out of step with the surrounding design.

Again, this is a game that wants to appeal to veteran fans. 4 pulls so much from the previous games. Often in an "oh fuck, that's back??" way. Not the genuinely bad stuff, mind. 2's multi-level dungeons are back, but they're not tedious, randomly generated guff anymore. They're consistently clever, inventive and attentively designed. Series fans will be aware of how distinct each of the first three games are, and there's been real effort to incorporate as much of their appeal into one game as possible. Personal favourite, 3, gets the least attention in this regard, and I do miss just how much you were able to get done at one time with three Captains actively performing tasks at the same time, but you do get a hint of that gameplay with the big new doggy partner.

This isn't a retread, though. Acting as part of an expanding rescue operation, as opposed to fragile survivors, changes the vibe. It's not so lonely or harsh, there's no strict deadlines, and you don't feel the same gutpunch when you lose thirty Pikmin to a cackhanded decision. It's just a number that went down. It'll go up again after a bit of harvesting. Maybe that's stripping something out of the series that I love, but it makes me thankful that Nintendo are keeping the previous games relevant with Switch rereleases, and not shying away from making this a - somewhat intimidating - numbered sequel. If you want that harsher tone, play the earlier ones. They're just as easy to access. We don't need to hold the series back and keep it to ourselves. Let it expand. Let the new people in. Let it be the thing that gets new generations captivated with nature, space and science. Let it be the friendly face that subversively worms these thoughts into households that might be dismissive of them. Let it save us.

It's still a ton of Pikmin, mind. If you like that, you're in for a feast.

Nintendo’s most under appreciated series put out one of the best games Nintendo has ever produced. Pikmin 4 took everything great from the first 3 games and put them together to make a special game that is easily the class of the series, which is really saying something. This is one of the most just pure fun game that I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.

The return of caves, 9 types of Pikmin, the greatest surprise/Easter egg in gaming history (imo of course), and my favorite addition dandori challenges. I honestly would buy a Pikmin spin off game that is just a ton of dandori challenges. Also the Easter egg added about halfway through the game blew me away and made me so happy.

The art is my favorite in all of gaming. It is absolutely beautiful. The Pikmin are beautiful, the characters have a unique design, moss and Oatchi are adorable, the world is beautiful and put together so well. The feeling it gives of making you feel so small, it really makes you feel like you’re viewing the world from a bugs perspective. It’s unbelievable how good the art is.

Pikmin is one of the most replayable series ever and I cannot wait to replay this game again. If you have a switch please do yourself a favor and buy this masterpiece. It’s the first game in the series that is killing it in sales but it deserves even more to bring light to this fantastic franchise.

This game easily made my top 100. Check out where here.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/

The Nintendo Switch is a hardware that allows Nintendo to popularize some of their hidden franchises like Animal Crossing. It's clear that Nintendo tried to do the same thing with Pikmin 4.

Describing Pikmin 4 is not an easy task. I can start by saying it's a real-time strategy game featuring little creatures that resemble ants. You control a captain who gives commands to these creatures, each with different characteristics. Your goal is to increase your army to allow you to carry more items, face enemies, and explore new places.

For me, Pikmin 4 is an easier game compared to the old ones. This new title is more accessible for any type of audience. Despite the old games being really hard and cruel sometimes, Pikmin 4 can be played by a child.

The game is really colorful, and the art and atmosphere are unique. There's nothing bad to say about this aspect of the game.

The only downside, for me, is the gameplay. I know I'm the only one complaining about this, but it was more enjoyable to control your army with the Wii U gamepad in Pikmin 3. It doesn't make Pikimin 4 bad, and if you never had the experience to play the failed Nintendo console, you won't understand what I'm talking about.

Pikmin 4 is a really good game and deserves more attention than it has. I highly recommend this game if you want to play something truly different from everything else.

IMO, the best in the series. I don't understand how when a game is "easy," that means it isn't good. I think the better way to describe Pikmin 4 is that it is "less unforgiving" than other entries.

Night expeditions and Dandori trials were some of the most fun I've had in the roughly 40 hours I spent 100% completing this game. Olimar's Shipwreck Tale was also a nice surprise that added that little oomph I think some parts of the main story lacked.

Hopefully the wait for Pikmin 5 isn't nearly as long.

This is maybe more of a review of the concept of 'dandori' than it is strictly a review of the game, Pikmin 4, a mere vessel for that ethos.

Sometimes there simply isn't a word for the type of work a work of art is. Attempting to take genre classification seriously leads to either the insufficiently academic and endlessly debatable, or mashing together words into meaningless ad-libs. Is Pikmin a puzzle-game? Is it a puzzle real-time strategy with survival game elements? Probably, but neither of these things say much about what the game is. There's no game it's particularly *-like either. We laughed when Hideo Kojima coined the 'strand-type' game, but sometimes, that's all you can do.

The word that the developers of Pikmin 4 decided to use to describe their game is 'dandori', and it's a word that the localizers of Pikmin 4 struggle to translate. Broadly speaking, it's left as is. They describe it in-game as "[organizing] tasks strategically and working effectively to execute plans", which is not inaccurate, but also isn't exactly helpful either. However, the brilliance of Pikmin, and of this game in particular, is that to understand dandori, you don't need words. Pikmin is a game built to teach it to you, the way that Mario teaches you timing and spatial analysis, the way XCOM teaches you to manage risk.

If I were to take a stab at explaining it, dandori is about time management in a workplace. In that workplace, you have tasks, and workers. Those workers take time to complete those tasks, which are varying in nature, and spread out across the workplace. How can you complete as much of what you need to get done as possible before the day is over? Well, you might consider;
- Avoiding idleness. Time spent not working is time wasted (fortunately, in Pikmin your workers do not have needs and never tire, so any ethical concerns with this are neatly sidestepped)
- Knowing your workers, and assigning them the tasks they are best suited for. (Pikmin are pleasingly color-coded, and as of Pikmin 4, have diverse and overlapping strengths. They are also, while error-prone, perfectly obedient)
- Prioritizing tasks that make future tasks easier (You start each day surrounded by a tempting bouquet of flowers, a quick method of bolstering your Pikmin count)
As you can see, the answer is not a number, or a silver bullet. It is a series of principles, applied to each new situation as necessary, taught directly through simply playing the game. The answer is dandori.

And dandori is good. Let's assume, for a moment, that there is an inherent joy in the efficient completion of tasks - or at least, that you're the kind of person who thinks so. Pikmin 4 is a wonderful game for getting a lot of stuff done. Your ultimate goals are very straight forward, but the means by which you achieve them involve many different obstacles, cleanly broken down into assignable, varying tasks. They sit there, waiting for you to come and untangle them, wrapped in an overall game structure that wields a gentle, but unwavering time pressure to urge you onwards without ever forcing you to take drastic, unplanned action. That inherent joy I mentioned is found here in spades, and presented to the player with the immediacy typical of Nintendo's flagship titles - aside from a few minor quibbles with controls and pacing.

(There is an awful lot of talking throughout the game, which is time spent not doing dandori. I also found that it was harder than I would've wanted to send more Pikmin to help with a task than were required, which was noticeable, because that is a something you consider doing any time you do literally anything)

These small things cannot keep Pikmin 4 from being an outstanding, enjoyable adventure, that's simple and intuitive to get started with. The Nintendo design philosophy of simplifying player actions and pushing the complexity out into the world works wonders here. Assigning tasks to workers in most any game is at least a couple of interactions. Here, you just mash one button to throw your lil guys at the thing you want until it starts happening. Feedback on the progress of tasks is immediate and clear. Outside of some of the more challenging instances of combat, thinking about something is as good as doing it.
There's next to no barriers between the player and their engagement with the organisational thinking that dandori benefits.

In truth, every Pikmin game has been about dandori, even if the term was freshly coined for the fourth. Every Pikmin game changes the things around that core concept - new tasks, new workers, varying degrees of co-operative gameplay - but dandori has always been there. In all three prior games, you are explicitly graded on how quickly you completed your tasks, which is a direct consequence of how well you managed your workforce, which can only be improved through the application of the principles of dandori. Though the consequences of working too inefficiently have perhaps become gentler in recent games, it is still the thing that drives the player forward.

This is the sort of thing Nintendo has always done, for better or worse. Take some gameplay that's fun and approachable, put class-leading kid-friendly character design on it, and spend the next two or three decades examining it in new contexts, finding new ways to get at that core. Here, in Pikmin, that core is not movement, or combat, or even exploration.It's not any of the actions you perform in-game, though those haven't needed to change much over two decades. The core is the philosophy of dandori, how you think about the actions you're performing in that broader, more malleable context. And unlike previous Pikmin games, Pikmin 4 finds a way to demonstrate how it comes from outside the world of games, exists wherever work and organisation do.

See, Pikmin 4 is actually about half a dozen Pikmin games. Or, it's more like one really big Pikmin game, with a bunch of smaller auxiliary games in its orbit. Each game is presented to you piecemeal as you progress through the story, one level at a time, spread out through a larger story. Most of them are even optional, if you don't like what they're cooking. But all of them, again, rely on dandori. Whether it's a compressed, five-minute version of the base experience, or a survival horror wave defense, or messy competitive battles, you use the same core principles in each and every additional game. Where a game series might normally take entry after entry to explore its core conceit so thoroughly and from so many angles, Pikmin 4 leaps past its predecessors to do it in one. Not only does it teach you dandori - it universalizes it.

That's the wonder of Pikmin 4. It's not that there's so much of it, or that it's so lovingly rendered. It's that it really, truly wants to teach you how fun it can be to make and execute a plan. It wants you to learn dandori, and it will gently hold your hand and lead you directly to it, if you let it. It'll show you dandori from each of its distinct perspectives, whichever ones you find fun enough to dig into. If you're really taking to it, it won't hesitate to let you take the challenge as far as you want. 'How could you apply these concepts in your daily life?' Pikmin 4 asks, in one of many load screen tooltips. Once you've played the game, it might be hard not to look for answers to that question