Pikmin 1 is definitely a great time despite its age. It definitely shows its age but with that comes a certain charm in the simplicity and janky mechanics. Pikmin AI is rather bad and can be annoying, however, I mostly found it entertaining to see the little goobers struggle to make their way to my desired location. Often times they get themselves in trouble, potentially leading to their doom, and other times it is the player's own fault. Pikmin has a bizarre mix of cozy and chaos keeping you on your toes. Of course, there are issues but that comes with the game's old age, though I would definitely recommend this as a great warm-up for the newer Pikmin games.

My thoughts on this game are rather confusing. I simultaneously think it both lives up to the hype but also doesn't. To this day I still find myself wanting to go back and replay it. Having grown up with a hand-me-down N64 the games that stood out to me were Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Banjo Kazooie, and Pokemon Stadium. Growing up Majora's Mask was always my favorite and I used to preach about how much better Majora's Mask was than Ocarina of Time. Nowadays, however, I find myself enjoying Ocarina of Time more than I did Majora's Mask. I find it much easier to just pick up and play and the dungeons, soundtrack, and themes just resonate with me on a much deeper level than ever before in the past. The themes feel so generic however they also feel solidly unique to me. It really feels like a pioneer in that sense. Playing through the game I find myself so greatly immersed and in love with the environments, as poorly as the graphics may have aged. I cannot tell if it is due to nostalgic bias, but I can't help but feel like it isn't due to not liking Ocarina of Time as much when I was younger. N64 games are definitely an acquired taste as if you did not grow up with them it is very hard to get into them; the controls are very difficult and the camera will practically be the death of you. This definitely is an issue however the hardware is the only thing that I think holds the game back as I think if those who struggle with the controls did not have that issue the game would likely be loved by them. It is unlikely anyone who has yet to play this game will ever so much as glance upon this review, however, should that not be the case I beg of you to either give this game a chance or its remake on the 3DS as both are an amazing experience.

I want to preface this with the fact that this is an astounding game that still has an update soon to be released even all these years later. That being said I find myself encountering many issues that I can't simply look past which unfortunately makes my rating of the game lower, not because its bad but because it just is not quite what it could potentially be. First of all, the money-making methods are far too unbalanced. There are too many options that are widely better in ever aspect when compared to other methods of making money. For example, animals kept in coops are almost useless barring rabbits who are useful solely for gift giving, and most barn animals are almost useless except for pigs who are one of the best money makers in the game. This leads most players to choose to own almost entirely pigs with nearly no other animals as they are an easy method of making insane amounts of money. This is only one example but there are a few others similar to this as well. Slime breeding is also rather lackluster compared to anything else you can do in the game which is very disappointing as slime breeding sounds like a very fun and unique way to make money in a farming game, however, the profit for slime breeding is just far far too low to justify spending your limited time doing it. Another issue is that once you complete the community center nothing really changes. No one starts using the community center, no events start taking place there, the community center itself is just as useless as it was before you fixed it leaving you feeling as if fixing the community center left little to no impact on the community. On top of this, holiday events that take place every year soon become borderline useless as the rewards for taking place in said event either were already won or there is just no longer a reward to be attained. These events take up almost the entirety of your day, leaving you at your farm at 10pm. Townsfolk also have a lack of depth, as instead of raising your friendship by hanging out with them or chatting with them you are instead encouraged to shower them with gifts every chance you get which can leave the player not caring as much about the villager due to not having significant interactions with them. There is more that I could go into however I still do believe this game is more than worth the money as it has had support for an astonishingly long time and the amount of content and fun you'll have is well worth it. So long as you don't expect to become the richest guy in town from breeding slime or raising bunnies ducks you should be fine.