I have been in love with the Pikmin series since day one, being absolutely glued to the screen trying to help Olimar find all his ship pieces, which turned into finding treasure pieces for the Boss, and eventually into various fruits for a dying Koppai planet. I was pretty satisfied with the Pikmin series ending at 3, but I know the online community was especially loud about wanting a 4th one, and to be honest, I was a little curious where they would go with the series after 3, so hey, why not check it out?

I went in fully knowing that this era of Nintendo is no longer what I loved growing up with, but I still wanted to go in with an open mind, and hopefully be happy to find it keeping to its core. But after finishing the game, I couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied and just very… odd about the whole experience. Pikmin 4 isn’t bad, especially compared to other games on the Switch, Pikmin 4 is actually quite good in comparison! But after thinking about it for a little bit, I think I can sum up why I wasn’t quite as happy with Pikmin 4 as I was in the past Pikmin games.

Assistance

Pikmin 4 is too kind to you, so kind in fact, that it takes away the original enjoyment I had with the game. Pikmin 1 & 2, and Pikmin 3 on the Wii U all are games that create an environment with a mission that you need to complete, sounds easy enough, right? Well, no. The whole point of Pikmin is to complete your goal with literally EVERYTHING in the world out against you. It’s you, this tiny little man not even the height of a GameCube disc, and your funny little fellas, out against literally EVERYTHING. Pikmin started as a series called Adam & Eve where you had to control an eventual 100-person tribe of people with their own freewill and get them to complete tasks for you. You were essentially supposed to play God, with your little people as your followers.

I see SO many people complain about how it seems like the pikmin in Pikmin 1 are completely braindead or go against your wishes in order to jump into the water, fall off bridges/ledges, or run right into fire walls, and I can not stress this enough; That. Is. The. Goddamn. POINT. The Pikmin are supposed to be annoying, they’re supposed to go against your wishes, because to put it bluntly, Olimar is finding these creatures and making them into his blooming slaves. They follow Olimar because of the light on his helmet, but in the end, they still have their own wants and desires, and THAT is what makes Pikmin an incredibly amazing and insanely unique game never before seen. It’s a game where you have to fight against nature WITH nature in order to complete your goal.

What Pikmin 4 does that ended up taking the enjoyment away from me was that instead of making it a game of nature fighting AGAINST you, it’s now a game of puzzles that helps GIVE you that push towards completing your goal. Gone is that challenge. Gone is that struggle. Instead, you can rest easy in knowing the game will help you in any way it possibly can. The base is too far, making carrying items back difficult from environmental aspects (water, walls, unbuilt bridges, etc) or there being too many enemies no longer an issue, you can just move the base now. The fear of losing your Pikmin and being low on a certain type is gone, as Oatchi, as undeniably cute as he is, can be trained to withstand any elemental obstacle (minus poison), and can be trained to be as strong as 100 Pikmin to boot! He is a built-in, mandatory handicap to the entire game’s mechanic.

There are other things to critique and there are lots of things to admire, but this review is already long enough, and it’s really not that important. Overall, I would say Pikmin 4 is a good game in the sense that it does what it set out to do, and also seems to have fixed certain aspects that made the game more playable for a wider ranged audience, which I can’t have any serious vendetta against. It’s no longer the game series that I originally fell in love with, but that doesn’t mean I’m upset at people who could never get into the old games and find joy in Pikmin 4, in fact, I feel the exact opposite. I’m very happy to see so many people so passionate and happy about it in a way I felt about the original game, and ultimately, that’s what is most important to me.

P.S. If I was Olimar, I would just kill Louie at this point.

this is very much a me problem, but i've found myself falling out of love with or retroactively disliking the direction taken by many nintendo franchises for years, with big disappointments like paper mario sticker star, luigi's mansion dark moon, animal crossing new horizons, and now pikmin 4. as someone who's love of games stems from being raised on the unconventional and often times unapproachable late n64 and early to mid gamecube eras, i'm ultimately not surprised that in a post-wii world that nintendo is trying to make their games appeal to as many people who own a switch as possible, but it's still pretty disappointing.

in terms of pikmin 4 itself, it's ultimately fine but i have plenty of issues with it. i feel as though pikmin 1's tone and atmosphere of a surviving on an oppressive, lonely, and seemingly abandoned alien world juxtaposed with cute silly creatures while fighting for your life is one of that game's biggest strengths, and absolutely none of that is in pikmin 4 other than the cute silly creatures. everything is so pristine and clean and preserved to give the illusion that these cute little critters could be having silly fun adventures in your backyard to the point where the game being "pretty" means absolutely nothing to me, and the already desecrated tone definitely isn't helped by having a decent amount of characters involved who have nothing that interesting to say. it's like the captains from 3 but more and worse, and all of this combined leaves pikmin 4 to feel shallow in a lot of the aspects that matter most to me. we're no longer fighting for survival completely isolated in a world we aren't familiar with as a race against the clock and anything that was originally tied to that feeling is now completely disconnected from it.

gameplay wise, however, pikmin 4 is not that bad. pikmin's gameplay has kind of become secondary to me in that i find it too accommodating to the player as the series goes on and i can only really get too engaged while playing 1 or 2 because of this, but 4 is still fun at times. i think the forced lock on, throwing stopping when you use the right number of pikmin, and lack of respawning enemies are all insanely stupid and poorly thought out choices that do nothing to improve the experience and i'm still not 100% sold on the 3-type limit, but they're all ultimately minor issues. caves are back and at this point i don't really care about them either way in 2 or 4, they aren't remotely what i've ever liked about the series gameplay but i don't find them as awful and offensive as i used to and i'm sure there's plenty of people who are happy that they returned. oatchi kinda ruins the actual moment to moment gameplay for me though, i feel like he's too centralizing and overpowered and it's weird that character's will say "Where's Oatchi?" when he isn't currently on screen and i really do not care for his design or "look at the new dog character!" additions in general, but if you don't upgrade him too much you can still have a decent amount of fun.

ultimately pikmin 4 is a fine game that does its job, but one made for a completely different audience than me. being alienated by a series aiming for mass appeal isn't a new feeling for me, but in our world a company is going to do what it can to make the most amount of money possible and i'm glad people are making the most out of that and enjoying what comes of that even if i can't.

auto lock on makes me want to KILL MYSELF

i don't know if it's just bias talking since it's been 10 YEARS since the last full game, but i REALLY really could not get super into this game like i could with the previous three. the dog (and ice pikmin) completely annihilate every challenge the game could possibly try and set up for you. the previous games offered a challenge of higher squad = higher risk of death due to having to manage a million babies, but higher power. in pikmin 4, you can just make them all board the designated tiny hitbox and then hold x at a boss until it dies.

i think the characters in this game are the weakest. i was already turned away by the custom character creation, since one of the main appeals of pikmin is how you were playing as people with actual lives and actual personalities. i don't WANT to play as myself, i WANT TO PLAY AS A 40 YEAR OLD MAN WITH A WIFE AND CHILDREN

ok minor complaints time. the music is MEDIOCRE! the fact that the story is [REDACTED] is MEDIOCRE! the rewind feature makes it feel like there's no real sense of FAILURE! and really? they really did that to MY alph? MY brittany? MY charlie? i will KILL YOU

also somehow they managed to make pikmin with gyro control bad.