It's easy to write this game off for multiple reasons. It's safe to say interest in 3DS titles after the Switch's launch went down considerably. And after years of hearing that Pikmin 4 was "almost done", a Pikmin game that clearly wasn't 4 didn't do Hey! Pikmin any favors. That's certainly the camp I was in back when this game was announced.
Playing this years after the fact, however, I think I can approach this title with a clear mind. It's... not bad. I was pleasantly surprised at how they took the Pikmin formula and translated it into 2D. The controls certainly aren't perfect at times, but it did feel like I was playing a Pikmin game. The levels are generally short and sweet, and you can go out of your way for some neat collectibles. The game does throw a handful of frustrating levels here and there, especially towards the later half of the game (looking at you, 8-X) but nothing that soured my experience too much. It's also worth pointing out that the soundtrack is great. I haven't played the mainline Pikmin games in a good amount of years, so I don't know if any of these songs are reused or remixed, but this game does a great job of setting the Pikmin mood with its songs.
I'd say a lot of the flack Hey! Pikmin gets is because it came out at the wrong place, wrong time. Something that came to mind as I was playing is that I probably would've loved this game when I was younger. For me, this is the kind of game that would've released for the DS in the mid-2000s and I would've picked it off the shelf at GameStop and thought "Cool, a Pikmin game on the DS!" and taken it home. Years later, I'd look back at it as one of those weird DS spinoffs in the vein of Super Princess Peach or Wario: Master of Disguise that people kind of forgot about.
Still, where the hell is Pikmin 4?
Playing this years after the fact, however, I think I can approach this title with a clear mind. It's... not bad. I was pleasantly surprised at how they took the Pikmin formula and translated it into 2D. The controls certainly aren't perfect at times, but it did feel like I was playing a Pikmin game. The levels are generally short and sweet, and you can go out of your way for some neat collectibles. The game does throw a handful of frustrating levels here and there, especially towards the later half of the game (looking at you, 8-X) but nothing that soured my experience too much. It's also worth pointing out that the soundtrack is great. I haven't played the mainline Pikmin games in a good amount of years, so I don't know if any of these songs are reused or remixed, but this game does a great job of setting the Pikmin mood with its songs.
I'd say a lot of the flack Hey! Pikmin gets is because it came out at the wrong place, wrong time. Something that came to mind as I was playing is that I probably would've loved this game when I was younger. For me, this is the kind of game that would've released for the DS in the mid-2000s and I would've picked it off the shelf at GameStop and thought "Cool, a Pikmin game on the DS!" and taken it home. Years later, I'd look back at it as one of those weird DS spinoffs in the vein of Super Princess Peach or Wario: Master of Disguise that people kind of forgot about.
Still, where the hell is Pikmin 4?