It took me a minute to wrestle with how I felt about Pikmin 4 because while playing it, I really didn't know where it stood with me. I love Pikmin to death and waited so long for this game but weirdly felt so "meh" with it at first. The limit to 3 types on the screen at once really threw a wrench in my face, I'm not gonna lie.
The tutorial is a bit of a slog and there's a ton of QoL changes they made that didn't sit well with me at first. I was wanting the game to challenge me a bit more with every passing minute and those challenges weren't really hitting. I was pretty annoyed the game would constantly ask if you wanted to restart when you messed up or lost some Pikmin.. at first.
All of those things are optional so I just said, "No" to those things and went on my merry way. I remembered how torturous the older games can be and I think those times really hardened us Gamers for a future dystopia, but we in turn got a utopia instead. There's no need to fight our demons anymore, we can just accept the light and bask in the glory. I realized how fucking awesome it is that this game even came out in the first place and I slowly dropped my guard and just let this game take me for a ride. I do HOWEVER, wish that you could turn the side character tips off. If I could do anything, I would beat Colin to a pulp. That dude never shuts up and we gotta stop letting the side characters spoil puzzles for you if you don't figure it out in .3 milliseconds. That was the only thing that truly aggravated me about this game.
I do still wish that the game had a bit more challenge, like a hard mode maybe. But, it turned out that the challenge was mostly packed into the incredibly gigantic post-game that I wasn't expecting. Basically the 2nd half of the game is after the initial plot ends and I found some of the caves in that section to be exactly what I was looking for. Yeah, the game is basically Pikmin 2: The Second One, but Pikmin 2 was hard as fucking balls to play as a kid and I rather enjoyed the remix on it.
If I could change anything, I would make the Ice Pikmin appear later in the game since they tend to end fights incredibly quickly. Their ability to freeze water is extremely useful but you also get Blue Pikmin fairly early as well, so the freezing water ability gets reserved mostly for Dandori. You need to use Ice Pikmin in most levels so it was hard to not use them to attack literally everything. The downside is you can't harvest the enemy bodies for more Pikmin, but that never proved to be an issue for the ones that get their own Onions early.
Oatchi is a great addition to a fault. He is outrageously powerful, which is nice in a pinch but he suffers from my same complaints as the Icy boys. He is however incredibly useful during Night raids and Dandori, on top of just being a goober so I can't complain too much about him. I did like the upgrade system that came with him, but I hope if they bring it back it gets fine tuned a little bit. It was so easy to become immune to literally everything. Most of my complaints about this game is literally just it not being torture porn and I should probably talk to someone about it.
The post-game really sealed the deal for me though. Most of my Pikmin deaths were during that phase of the game. Some of the post-game Dandori missions really made me want to toss my joycons into a volcano. The final dungeon was asking for quite a lot. I was so happy to see it all.
I will not fault it too much for the lack of challenge though. Pikmin 4 left me very excited to see where a possible Pikmin 5 could go and hopefully I'll be alive in 2048 to see it. More and more people got into the series because of this game so I have a lot of hope. The QoL changes were not made for me, those changes were made for them and I can accept that. This game is beautifully well done and I still enjoyed every second of it, even if it took me a minute to realize.
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
The tutorial is a bit of a slog and there's a ton of QoL changes they made that didn't sit well with me at first. I was wanting the game to challenge me a bit more with every passing minute and those challenges weren't really hitting. I was pretty annoyed the game would constantly ask if you wanted to restart when you messed up or lost some Pikmin.. at first.
All of those things are optional so I just said, "No" to those things and went on my merry way. I remembered how torturous the older games can be and I think those times really hardened us Gamers for a future dystopia, but we in turn got a utopia instead. There's no need to fight our demons anymore, we can just accept the light and bask in the glory. I realized how fucking awesome it is that this game even came out in the first place and I slowly dropped my guard and just let this game take me for a ride. I do HOWEVER, wish that you could turn the side character tips off. If I could do anything, I would beat Colin to a pulp. That dude never shuts up and we gotta stop letting the side characters spoil puzzles for you if you don't figure it out in .3 milliseconds. That was the only thing that truly aggravated me about this game.
I do still wish that the game had a bit more challenge, like a hard mode maybe. But, it turned out that the challenge was mostly packed into the incredibly gigantic post-game that I wasn't expecting. Basically the 2nd half of the game is after the initial plot ends and I found some of the caves in that section to be exactly what I was looking for. Yeah, the game is basically Pikmin 2: The Second One, but Pikmin 2 was hard as fucking balls to play as a kid and I rather enjoyed the remix on it.
If I could change anything, I would make the Ice Pikmin appear later in the game since they tend to end fights incredibly quickly. Their ability to freeze water is extremely useful but you also get Blue Pikmin fairly early as well, so the freezing water ability gets reserved mostly for Dandori. You need to use Ice Pikmin in most levels so it was hard to not use them to attack literally everything. The downside is you can't harvest the enemy bodies for more Pikmin, but that never proved to be an issue for the ones that get their own Onions early.
Oatchi is a great addition to a fault. He is outrageously powerful, which is nice in a pinch but he suffers from my same complaints as the Icy boys. He is however incredibly useful during Night raids and Dandori, on top of just being a goober so I can't complain too much about him. I did like the upgrade system that came with him, but I hope if they bring it back it gets fine tuned a little bit. It was so easy to become immune to literally everything. Most of my complaints about this game is literally just it not being torture porn and I should probably talk to someone about it.
The post-game really sealed the deal for me though. Most of my Pikmin deaths were during that phase of the game. Some of the post-game Dandori missions really made me want to toss my joycons into a volcano. The final dungeon was asking for quite a lot. I was so happy to see it all.
I will not fault it too much for the lack of challenge though. Pikmin 4 left me very excited to see where a possible Pikmin 5 could go and hopefully I'll be alive in 2048 to see it. More and more people got into the series because of this game so I have a lot of hope. The QoL changes were not made for me, those changes were made for them and I can accept that. This game is beautifully well done and I still enjoyed every second of it, even if it took me a minute to realize.
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.