Pikmin 4 Review – Welcome Back

A lone explorer stranded on a deserted planet, surrounded by strange fauna, and dangerous enemies. This concept doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary, but back in 1999, it absolutely was when Nintendo released “Pikmin” to the world. “Pikmin” was quirky little game starring a pint-sized explorer named Olimar who has crash landed on a strange planet. There he discovers a strange alien species he calls ‘pikmin’, that become an invaluable aid on his journey back home. Now after twenty-five years ‘Pikmin 4’ has been introduced to the world.

This latest entry is significant for several reasons. To begin with, the ‘Pikmin’ franchise has always been a challenge of Nintendo. On the one hand, ‘Pikmin’ is one of Nintendo’s most iconic titles, ‘Pikmin’ has never generated the sales to match its status. This time, Nintendo is out to change that by turning number four into a blockbuster release. To further complicate matters, “Pikmin 4” is long overdue. I’m not exaggerating, back in 2015, Nintendo announced that ‘Pikmin 4’ was “nearly finished”. Clearly they took Einstein’s theory of relativity quite literally.

Within the first few minutes of playing ‘Pikmin 4’, it became immediately apparent that this would not be like the other entries. The most obvious change is the absence of Olimar. You play as a member of the Rescue Corps in an attempt to find Captain Olimar, who has disappeared. This allows the player to create their own avatar, which just feels as if Nintendo tried to re-package their Mii avatar designer. The changes don’t stop there, there is another new element to the game, Oatchi, the rescue dog that aids you throughout the game. I haven’t even mentioned the new game modes (we’re getting to that)

The first thing that immediately stuck out for me was the sheer size of ‘Pikmin 4’. All of the previous entries were pretty small, so this new expanded experience is much appreciated. One of the more surprising aspects of playing ‘Pikmin 4’ was just how different this feels from the other games. I can pretty much play however I want. You can spend all your time gathering materials for your base, or you can jump down some caves and explore what leis beneath your feet, or if you prefer a challenge there is the all new Dandori battles. Dandori battles pit you in a one on one match over (wait for it) efficiency. Given a limited number of time and pikmin, how quickly can you gather treasures/materials? At first I thought this was going to be one of those modes I would hate, but to my surprise, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the quirky challenge. Without question, my favorite challenges were the night missions. In the past, the gameplay of Pikmin revolved around you trying to complete missions before the sun went down. Now you are no longer bound by such petty limitations! This was actually my favorite mode because night missions become tower defense games.

“Pikimin 4” gets a lot of things right and a few things wrong. For one there are the absurdly long tutorials. In the beginning I would estimate it was a solid twenty-five minutes before I was able to actually really play the game. Every single time I learned a new skill, the game would force me to watch a mini-video of how this new skill works, when I knew perfectly well how it worked. The videos that played would at random times appear to hang up and I thought the game had crashed. Thankfully the game never crashed, it was just maddeningly slow. This may seem like a minor thing, and it is. Like a splinter underneath your fingernail, the tutorials really aggravated me. Then there’s the dialogue. Look, I didn’t come into this game expecting a deep plot or poignant lines. But seriously, the dialogue was just eye watering at times. And like the aforementioned tutorials, the dialogue also managed to get under my skin.

In summary, ‘Pikmin 4’ is a good game that falls short of being truly great. I certainly enjoyed many of its aspects, along with the colorful animation. ‘Pikmin 4’ is not a game that will stun you in any way. It can be mildly challenging at times, yet I never really felt tested. I would also gently criticize the lackluster score. Yet, I want to point out that I never felt bored playing ‘Pikmin 4’. Just the I thought it was about time time for me to wrap up my session, I would see something that caught my eye and there I would go for another few minutes. Its hard not to smile when you’re doing things like transporting ‘ancient artifacts’ like a Gameboy. At the end of every day, ‘Pikmin 4’ is a genuinely happy video game. Absolutely brimming with positivity and good-hearted innocence.