To celebrate the release of the long awaited Pikmin 4, i’m revisiting Pikmin 3 in its Deluxe port (that does include all its previously release DLC) on Switch, after originally beating on Wii U (yes, i was one of those who owned the thing when it was yet “current gen”) years ago.
I could have chosen Hey Pikmin!, but i haven’t gotten around to play that yet, and after devouring the Pikmin 4 demo, i’m willing to get some proper Pikmin fix, so Pikmin 3 is it.
An introduction feels kinda superflous since by this point in time Pikmin is arguably a mainstay Nintendo series, not one of the most famous, but far from niche and obscure, yet i guess i could be utterly brief in describing them as a floreal theme space adventure-RTS hybrid where you control one of many “potato shaped” humanoids that explore space for some noble cause or desperate struggle, and crashland into planets where they get saved and helped by a weird breed of “planimals” called Pikmins, which become your little army, ready to pounce on enemies, destroy obstacles, gather resources and basically depending on your decisions to prosper alongside you.
Pikmin 3’s plot follows a new squad of characters (a trio this time around) that hail from planet Koppai and are on a mission to locate a new planet to combat the increasing caresty going on, as they keep scanning planets to no avail, until, at last, they find one that’s full of food, but their ship mysteriously crashlands, ejecting them in various parts of the planet.
Along the way to reunite and gather food resources with the help of the Pikmins, they also need to locate Captain Olimar (the protagonist of the first Pikmin) for a engine key, and stumble upon Louie (introduced as Olimar’s assistant in Pikmin 2) along the way, because this is also a direct sequel, oddly enough.
Yep, the plot it’s a bit more heavier this time around, since it’s not just Olimar’s ass or his company that are at stake, but the survival of an entire planet and its increasing population, though the art style it’s still a mix of adorable “potato men” for the astronauts, and weird ass creepy shit monsters that you’ll send your platoon of “plant manimals” to fight for spoils, food, and using the cadavers to create more Pikmins. Yep, it’s Pikmin, it’s weird alright.
Gameplay it’s familiar as it gets if you played any of the two previous entries in the series, but of course it expandes upon it, with now 3 playable/controllable captains and two new types of Pikmin, alongside the foundational trifecta of Red, Blue and Yellow: with Rock Pikmins as heavyweights necessary to break tougher barries, and the Winged Pikmins, able to fight and hence move over deadly water surfaces (for any Pikmin outside of the Blue ones, as fans already know), carry things while airborne and of course fight winged enemies.
The formula remains the same at the core, as so do the systems, but as you would expect, it builds upon the gameplay of the previous Pikmin titles, expand the types of strategies you can adopt with the new Pikmin types (for example, Rock Pikmins don’t get killed when run over by rocks or similar moving obstacles, but are basically forced into the ground and you have to pick them up from the ground as if they were just borne) that partially replace some of the types seen in Pikmin 2, but also not quite, which helps in making the exploration fresh.
The biggest and yet kinda subtle change is in the level design, where it takes advantage of you having 3 playable leader characters to make the levels themselves even bigger and requiring using all 3 captains (and a mixed platoon of Pikmins) to explore otherwise unreachable areas or solve the various enviromental puzzles.
Which is obviously good, but it comes at the price of the cave levels being completely absent in this follow up, i remember being kinda miffed by this feature not being present in Pikmin 3 when it was one of the best things ever in Pikmin 2, but after years and replaying, it’s clearly a deliberate choice, allievated by the fact the areas are really big and expansive.
Still, not a popular choice, as it makes the game less challenging overall compared to previous installments, and it’s kinda noticeable since the campaign it’s definitely on the shorter side, taking 9/10 hours max if you want to just finish the game. It could have used an extra area to explore, to be utterly blunt, it could have, i’m not including the final one since you’re basically on a costant escape from the boss monster in a gauntlet like tower. Which i kinda like and kinda not.
Another thing that could have been added is the ability to issue some simple orders to the captains you’re not currently controlling, you can have the game help you reach a point in the map by automatically making you walk there, but it works only for the currently using captain/character, and again, it would have helped with the multitasking if you could issue some orders at all to other captain, like giving them some routines, but then again, this is a port of a 2013 Wii U game that Nintendo did so people could play a Pikmin game on their new console that people actually have.
While the new Pikmins are cool, i do have some niggles with the level design being often built around the fact the Blue Pikmins are discovered quite late in the game, all to introduce and make useful the new Flying type of Pikmin, as they can bypass watery surfaces and rivers in which all other Pikmin types (aside Blue, of course) drown. All fine but it kinda makes this type feel a bit less useful once you gain access to the Blue Pikmins, as they can survive and operate underwater.
Not really a huge problem, more of a niggle, since the Winged Pikmins do have uses that aren’t overlapped by the Blue Pikmin’s ability to move underwater, but i did wonder if this became an issue in the post-game… until i remembered there’s no post game per se.
Yeah, they could have added that in this port, you can go back to any previous day you’ve played to mop up all the remaining fruits and rare powerups, but it warns you that by doing so you’ll erase all progress done in the following days (fairly reasonable).
And you might wanna do a complete run of sorts since just doing the bare minimum required to finish the story nets you the “almost bad” ending text, in which the narrator wonders if you can actually save the planet Koppai from starvation with such barren “food loot”.
in terms of the “counted days” feature, Pikmin 3 does basically offer a compromise from the time limit seen in the original title and its removal in Pikmin 2, as every day you consume a ration of food, but every fruit or food item you can gather gives you enough “rations/bottles” of juice to keep going, and there are plenty in each area, so unless you specifically plan to do nothing for many in-game days on end (or to see how many days you can actually keep the adventure going for), you won’t have to worry about running out of food/time to explore.
One of the things that one thought would be lost in the port from the original release are some control schemes, as on Wii U you could play all on the Gamepad, use the TV for the main screen and the Gamepad for the map, or use the Wiimote and Nunchuk controls that were first introduced in the Wii ports/releases of Pikmin 1 and 2. Or use the touch controls on the Gamepad’s screen to aim directly where you could launch the Pikmins, for one.
And i was right, there’s also no touch screen style controls not even in handheld mode… which i don’t mind too much, but it would have been nice to have, though you can play coop with each player using a single Joycon, which is good.
Aside from the main story (now being playable in local co-op for 2 players in a drop-in/drop-out fashion, which is also true for most of its other modes), Pikmin 3 Deluxe includes various challenge levels in Mission Mode (with all previously released DLC maps included), but also has a competitive local multiplayer battle mode called Bingo Battle (where you also get to use some Pikmin types missing in the campaign, like the Poison Pikmin), based on item gathering and filling bingo cards instead of Pikmin armies clashing.
No online co-op of any kind but i wasn’t really expecting it, so whatever.
In terms of new stuff there’s a new extreme difficulty setting (nice to have since the game is not particularly difficult for most of the time if you played the previous Pikmin titles), the Piklopedia from Pikmin 2 returns with all his entries and info, but most importantly there’s a couple of mini story campaigns about Olimar and Luoie that you unlock by progressing some days into the game, both exclusive new content of this port, offering some nice challenge style timed missions where you’re given a limited number of Pikmin and time to accomplish tasks ranging from killing as much enemies as you can as gathering food or just growing the number of Pikmins, taking place in restricted and modified areas seen in Story Mode.
Quite welcome because – as already pointed out – Pikmin 3’s main dish it’s arguably one of the shorter games in the series, if not the shortest.
It’s still a damn good game, and while this enhanced Switch port offers new content alongside all DLC for the secondary modes, it’s a pity some of the control schemes (and the features related to using the touch screen) were not brought over here, it still looks good as it did back in 2013 ( a bit better overall as you would expect) and it could have used some extra streamlining in terms of how you can actually make the 3 characters multitask in a better way, but it’s a pretty good deal regardless, and if this is the price to have this one being actually played by people by bringing it to a Nintendo console people actually had, it’s a relatively small price.
I’d still argue it’s not either the best nor my personal favourite in the series, but as all mainline games, Pikmin 3 still “delivers the goods” in terms of quality now as it did back then. Good stuff.
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