10 years after the last mainline game, the beloved Nintendo series about floral strategy and cutesy war PTSD is back with Pikmin 4 for Nintendo Switch, and i was even more eager to get my mittens on it after replaying for review & funsies Pikmin 3 in its Deluxe edition-port on Switch.
Who am i kidding, after devouring the demo, i was ravenous to get into the full game ASAP.
Story is fairly typical Pikmin, as in, you know the deal by now: people keep crashlanding on this damn planet. And by people i mean poor Olimar, that crashlanded on the planet, sent out a SOS call, but then the rescue team itself had troubles with the ship, so its up to you, as the new recruit of the Rescue Corps (an intergalactic rescue organization) and one of its few “non-scattered around” remaining members to get the whole crew back together, then find and save Olimar, whom also sent them various pages of its journal.
Someone seem confused in terms of when it happens, even confusing it for a reboot/remake of the first game’s story (i guess since Olimar here too used Pikmins to get back the scattered pieces of its rundown but beloved ship, the Dolphin)… dunno why, but yep, since Olimar and Louie are involved too, and we get the new group of cute potato aliens also discuss of Koppai, the planet from where the expedition group of Pikmin 3 came from to avoid famine, heck, even an inhabitant from that planet later becomes an important plot point.
There’s a bit more to the story, both in terms of dialogue volume, thanks to the presence of strange leaf-covered people running about the planet, obsessed with something called Dandori, a strange dog-like creature hiding somewhere, and Louie being honestly at his worst ever, i’ll put it like this to avoid spoilers, just know he’s even more of a chaotic, food driven fiend than ever.
The gameplay loop is the same as always, as in you have to command around armies of Pikmin to accomplish your goals, from destroying walls, building bridges, defeating enemies, carry back to your ship enemy carcasses, items like berries, and most importantly treasures, that will add energy needed to eventually discover new areas by repairing the range of the the ship’s radar.
All during a simulated in-game day that soon ends, so you’ll need to plan in which order and way to command around your army of adorable plant animals hybrids to maximize their efficiency and avoid losing them in the maw of a Bulboid creature by the dozens, or banqueeted upon when dusk fall upon the area, making even the pacific enemies grow a glow in their eyes and go uber feral and spelling certain doom for any Pikmin you left to die on the planet.
In terms of new features, the first and obvious one is the dog, Oatchi, which you acquire early in and honestly it’s such a great addition to gameplay, especially as it feels like it has always been there, so good it is, because not only it’s adorable, works as a mount that can jump, break cracked items with a charge run, swim, enhancing the exploration options, but also serves as the second commander unit you can swap control to & fro.
Yeah, we went from the 3 captains of Pikmin 3 to 2 again, but Oatchi is far more useful as its has its own unique abilities, can carry items/carcasses/treasures, has offensive capabilities of his own, alongside the ability to carry, launch and whistle to the Pikmin units, with just a couple of things he can’t do to not completely make the regular commander unit superfluos, instead you are complimentary, not only as you can multitask properly this time, but can issue more specific orders, and Oatchi can smell various types of pikmin, items and more, as you upgrade his abilities via skill points gained by retrieving survivors from the enviroments, and more often than not, caves.
Yes, the fan favourite cave dungeons from Pikmin 2 are back and better than ever, as they also fix the difficulty issues Pikmin 3 had, since caves often limit or restrict the types of Pikmin you can bring into them, but are also where to find loose Pikmins of a type you might need and not have many. They can be challenging but for the most part they are less sadistic in design…. though worry not, some nightmare creatures that haunted many unsuspecting Pikmin 2 players are back.
The level design offers big areas even further enhanced by the caves, but aside being massive, they do feel like a step up from Pikmin 3, where many obstacles where a bit overreliant on using 3 captains to overcome and in turn felt more “restrictive” to explore, alongside the already lamented – see my Pikmin 3 Deluxe review – fact the areas there were a bit too dependant on the fact you couldn’t access Blue Pikmins until late game, making it feeling like a tease, at best.
Not the case for Pikmin 4’s maps/levels, which feel and are massive but always in the right away, i must say, now with the option to move your base camp in various suitable zones in the level, which also comes to play while planning exploration, and the night excursions, which we’ll get to later.
Something else new to Pikmin 4 is the mini-hub, where you can talk to the survivors you rescued, undertake occasional task and objectives they can give you, talk to the Rescue Squad members to access various upgrades, depart, etc. Nothing special but this set up helps later to access various facilities, like the Piklopedia, the Dandori stages and battles, a system of in-game achievements and it’s just nice as it’s actually meant to fill up the more you rescue people, making it more lively, unlocking more items, getting some material in returns, and contributing to the overall idea you’re playing as part of an intergalactic “rescue rangers brigade”.
Alongside the classic trifecta of red, yellow and blue Pikmin types, there’s the brand new Ice Pikmins (which can be encountered in the demo as well), one of the only 2 new Pikmin types introduced here, but the “ice boys” alone already offer another way around exploration, as they can be even used to freeze water surfaces, alongside enemies, items that are sensitive to temperatures, and they are useful but don’t replace the other types of Pikmins.
even better, all the previous Pikmin types return here, which is great but some appear only in the late part of the game, like the good old Violet Pikmins, which are more useful than i expected, as new enemies can only be properly damaged by them and them being super heavy and superpowerful is always useful. Even the Poison and Flying types do return and have their specific old or newfound utility, so they don’t feel like they overlap, but complete each other,
The game also sports some clever design choices to avoid the issue of the difficulty curve plummetting when you ammass a decent number of Pikmins, as you can bring with you any kind of Pikmin you find, BUT only 3 types at the time AND you can’t create them via the “onion” until you get their specific “breeding onion”, so you will find yourself being more careful with them.
And while you can choose the quantity of Pikmins you can bring in cave explorations, the types are often restricted and inside the caves you can’t spawn more, instead bringing to the pod dead enemies nets you extra Luminium, which eventually unlocks more areas to explore.
So items are more useful than ever, and a thoughtful use of those can avoid dozens of Pikmin being wiped out in one or two attacks by bigger enemies or bosses, but to avoid you overstocking the crafting/purchase of items and suits and power ups via the ship’s scientist, you use a new currency that’s also required as building material for bridges, climbable walls, machinery, etc.
Regardless, you’re realize how a couple of bombs and traps can help avoid troop decimation thanks to the other new big addiction: Night Missions/Raids.
After a while you’ll be able to also explore the areas at night, thanks to the other new Pikmin type: Glow Pikmins. The night levels are set up as defense missions of one or more hives of Glow Pikmins, which are a bit different than the usual ones, since they’re invulnerable to any elemental status, can charge up a strong “Genkidama” style energy ball that damages and shocks all enemies caught in, and can be bred only by having them bring star gems items left around or dropped by enemies to either the main hive or the many connected mini-hives, that also serve as distraction to the many creatures that almost immediatly go extra feral and make course for the main hive.
So they’re tower defense-ish missions where you win by either decimating all the foes present, or most likely ensuring the hives stay up till dawn, when they produce a syrupy goo that is needed to cure many of the leaf covered survivors obsessed with “Dandori battles”.
What’s a Dandori battle? The new competitive multiplayer component, which is similar to the Bingo Battle of Pikmin 3, but this time around is not sectioned off as a multiplayer only mode, featured as either challenge levels against the clock, or competitive battles where you and another captain of sorts must get the biggest score in 3 minutes, by means of collecting treasures-fruits, killing enemies, spawning Pikmins, with random power-up items to shake things up and the option to sabotage your opponent by fighting over the loot carried by its Pikmins, attacking his “Pikdog”, or worse. Be efficient, plan well, get good, get quick. Become Dandori itself.
It’s great fun, it’s good for variety, there are also challenge types of these (not against a CPU player) and they knew it was good since it has a dedicated mode, local multiplayer only though.
Back on the subject of accessibility, the game does streamlines some elements in order to be more approchable and less punishing to potential newcomers, like the new “rewind features”: if during a cave/dungeon you get all Pikmin of a type destroyed or wiped off, the game will ask you if you wanna rewind to the beginning of the level, but you can also load more intermediate save states , which is optional and useful if you wanna undo a stupid mistake that had your entire platoon wiped out. Sure, you’ll have to often redo a level or stratum of the cave or portion of the level but save states aren’t infinite and it’s an useful option that purists can outright ignore.
I mean, Pikmin purists might not like it, but like the help for difficult Dandori battles, you can ignore it (like i did), but undeniably the rewind feature does help in mitigating frustration and avoid completely throwing away long cave dives.
But the biggest change is definitely in how this iteration does away entirely with the limited number of in-game days to accomplish the main objectives.. and i’ve already said while discussing the demo, i don’t think it’s the deal breaker some fans might think, since you’re still encouraged to be as efficient as possible during your sorties, and it’s not really random, as Pikmin 3 did try a compromise, which didn’t really add much in the way of urgency and pressure, aside from a very specific point late in the story.
It’s not a random choice that comes out of nowhere, clearly the team already wanted to go in this direction, and there is a secondary log about Olimar collecting the pieces of the Dolphin that will be available late game and will test your efficiency, as you need to collect all pieces over 15 days that also go by faster than in the base game. Definitely welcome and stratching quite a hitch.
One thing i didn’t mention in the demo hands on it’s the custom playable character you control, since honestly there’s not much in the way of face types, expressions, suits and such, so yeah, that’s also why i didn’t bother to mention before, there’s really not much to it, it’s honestly kinda disappointing, but it’s the first time the series has this feature and i DID manage to create a close approximation of “Pikmin Josuke Hishigata 4”, so there’s that.
The main storyline can be beaten in 14/15 hours, which is already an improvement over Pikmin 3’s short campaign… or it would be if the campaign didn’t have 15 more hours (with plenty of new areas to explore and for it to reach the actual ending, making for a massive 30 hours one, and thankfully you can simply keep playing because story reasons force you back to the planet, which means we have finally a direct post-game feature this time around.
So you just load the finished save and you can resume from the hub, to finish completing the various tasks/achievements, collect all treasures, save all castaways, play Olimar’s side story, tackle some post-game tough challenges, so there’s still a non-insignificant amount of content still left to do (especially if – unlike me – you don’t try to 100 % the caves during the first run.even if you properly finished the game, making for the biggest Pikmin title ever, and in a good way.
One thing that’s disappointing and it’s worth really lamenting about is co-op basically nonexistent this time around, as this time we have a step-back from Pikmin 3, the only one in the game, as co-op in story mode works like it did in Super Mario Galaxy (or Bubsy 3D, if you wanna be really pedantic), meaning the second player can operate a cursor to pelt rubble at enemies in order to distract them or make units move faster when transporting treasures, and while you can accrue co-op points in order to access random items to help P1… yeah, it kinda sucks big time here.
Such a painfully missed opportunity, i mean, if you re gonna do local multiplayer only (they could patch in online support, but i doubt it, given Pikmin’s history in this regard), it’s not unfair for people to expect the story mode to be fully playable co-op… especially since the previous’ title in the series did have it, heck, even the Olimar story levels can be played in proper local co-op, but not the main game. It just feels absurd, at best, maddening at worse.
Especially because Pikmin 4 it’s as close it get to the perfect Pikmin title for me, as it fixes all the issues i had with the third installment, especially the length as it’s a massive game, and it keeps throwing new things at you, like caves now having low or inferno temperature, requiring specific upgrades to even enter, and with stuff like the Pikmins not made of ice stopping more in icy dungeons due to the temperature, new obstacles that make even the holdover Pikmin types useful a lot more than i expected, new items like burning pinecones, spores, etc.
It’s incredible as its a lot of content with lots of variety all the way through, just a consistent bout of excellent content, and in technical terms i believe it’s a splendid looking game for the platform.
The night missions are a great addiction, my only complain is a good one, as in i want more of those, as they can get insanely tense and require proper planning to even eek out a sloppy victory.
Honestly i’m even hardpressed thinking what even to make for DLC if there’s plans, i would welcome more areas but i wouldn’t mind seeing the days time limit return in some fashion (though the Olimar part of the story is precisely made to get your fix of ol’ style Pikmin challenge) maybe they could patch in online mode for the Dandori multiplayer mode, but otherwise this is a complete package already, just bursting of good stuff.
The new stuff it’s great, sometimes it’s so good that i find it hard to believe it wasn’t a long time feature but a brand new one, like the dog, keep the dog, or something like that, maybe for Pikmin 5 (alongside keeping the dog and expanding the night missions) the series could/should tap even more into the traditional RTS elements, like “technology trees” for the Pikmins, formations,etc.
Regardless, there’s no doubt that for the meantime Pikmin 4 is indeed what one could describe as an excellent return to form for the series and maybe even a new peak.
Pun not intended.
Wise Cafe (International) 