Pikmin 3 was my first and I'll never forget it. But playing it again, there are a lot of problems I never saw when I was a babe (13 years old) and I had no other Pikmin experience. The environments are beautiful, the music is amazing, but this is a short experience.
Despite being roughly the same length as the first game, the linear storyline structure of the main game and the much greater presence of an actual story in general makes it feel more like you're on a theme park ride than playing a videogame at times. Do this thing, go to this area next, fight this boss. It's not like you're restricted from visiting the other areas but apart from gathering fruit there isn't much incentive for exploration and completion until you finish the story.
On that, the more 'official' bosses compared to the plonk them down somewhere and let the player find it strategy of 1 + 2 is quite nice, and as usual the local fauna are so impeccably designed and brought to life, but due to the very low difficulty of the entire game they don't really pose much of a threat or a challenge. Something 3 absolutely does right here is being able to haul back every single one of the big bosses' corpses to base after you slew them.
I replayed this game on the hard difficulty (which is actually just the normal version of the Wii U game in deluxe) but still managed to beat it 10 days shorter than I did the first time round. There are a lot of things removed and brushed up on in 3 that actually added a lot of strategy and satisfaction in combat from 1 + 2 - auto-lock (not toggleable) is intrusive and can get frustrating during a tense situation when you're trying to aim at a specific enemy and you end up cycling through his friend's corpses a hundred times before you throw a single Pikmin. This whole ordeal which happened to me an unimaginable amount of times during my playthrough was very annoying considering I'd just come from 2 where the strategy is just aiming it yourself and spamming A. Another thing I noticed related to that is that the amount of spamming you can do is greatly reduced which was also very annoying.
These features are meant to sort of 'refine' the combat experience for newer players but all they did for me was get in my way, especially when there is literally no possible reason I can fathom for limiting the rate of Pikmin able to be thrown in a row. Both of these things make it harder to play a little more cautiously, holding back with your squad and taking out a bulborb with a single red Pikmin, and make it stressful in combat situations when you have to press B to try and back out of auto-lock (still not toggleable) just to be able to aim yourself at an enemy. It's annoying.
One thing I think Pikmin 3 absolutely excels at more than any other game in the serious is the atmosphere - coming from the low-fidelity smooth bulblax in the previous games to the beautiful and ridiculously high-polygon beasties and environments in Pikmin 3 is staggering. Everything in this game is absolutely stunning, and it's why I fell in love with Pikmin in the first place.
Another is the final boss fight - the Plasm Wraith. Probably in my top 3 favourite final bosses ever, absolutely terrifying and a testament to the tightly designed gameplay which is especially present in 3. Like the Water Wraith on steroids, it takes that concept and makes the Wraith following you much more of an active threat, through an interconnected labyrinth with multiple routes and shortcuts, with the actual fight at the end making you utilise all of the Pikmin types just like the Titan Dweevil. This is the best fight in the entire series, and I wish 4 took a similar route rather than making the Ancient Sirehound a watered down version of the Titan Dweevil.
I love this game, but it sucks a little.
Strong 8
Despite being roughly the same length as the first game, the linear storyline structure of the main game and the much greater presence of an actual story in general makes it feel more like you're on a theme park ride than playing a videogame at times. Do this thing, go to this area next, fight this boss. It's not like you're restricted from visiting the other areas but apart from gathering fruit there isn't much incentive for exploration and completion until you finish the story.
On that, the more 'official' bosses compared to the plonk them down somewhere and let the player find it strategy of 1 + 2 is quite nice, and as usual the local fauna are so impeccably designed and brought to life, but due to the very low difficulty of the entire game they don't really pose much of a threat or a challenge. Something 3 absolutely does right here is being able to haul back every single one of the big bosses' corpses to base after you slew them.
I replayed this game on the hard difficulty (which is actually just the normal version of the Wii U game in deluxe) but still managed to beat it 10 days shorter than I did the first time round. There are a lot of things removed and brushed up on in 3 that actually added a lot of strategy and satisfaction in combat from 1 + 2 - auto-lock (not toggleable) is intrusive and can get frustrating during a tense situation when you're trying to aim at a specific enemy and you end up cycling through his friend's corpses a hundred times before you throw a single Pikmin. This whole ordeal which happened to me an unimaginable amount of times during my playthrough was very annoying considering I'd just come from 2 where the strategy is just aiming it yourself and spamming A. Another thing I noticed related to that is that the amount of spamming you can do is greatly reduced which was also very annoying.
These features are meant to sort of 'refine' the combat experience for newer players but all they did for me was get in my way, especially when there is literally no possible reason I can fathom for limiting the rate of Pikmin able to be thrown in a row. Both of these things make it harder to play a little more cautiously, holding back with your squad and taking out a bulborb with a single red Pikmin, and make it stressful in combat situations when you have to press B to try and back out of auto-lock (still not toggleable) just to be able to aim yourself at an enemy. It's annoying.
One thing I think Pikmin 3 absolutely excels at more than any other game in the serious is the atmosphere - coming from the low-fidelity smooth bulblax in the previous games to the beautiful and ridiculously high-polygon beasties and environments in Pikmin 3 is staggering. Everything in this game is absolutely stunning, and it's why I fell in love with Pikmin in the first place.
Another is the final boss fight - the Plasm Wraith. Probably in my top 3 favourite final bosses ever, absolutely terrifying and a testament to the tightly designed gameplay which is especially present in 3. Like the Water Wraith on steroids, it takes that concept and makes the Wraith following you much more of an active threat, through an interconnected labyrinth with multiple routes and shortcuts, with the actual fight at the end making you utilise all of the Pikmin types just like the Titan Dweevil. This is the best fight in the entire series, and I wish 4 took a similar route rather than making the Ancient Sirehound a watered down version of the Titan Dweevil.
I love this game, but it sucks a little.
Strong 8