Pikmin 4 Review

Pikmin 3 is a decade old now, and even the Deluxe version on the Switch is three years old. This interestingly makes Pikmin 4 feel simultaneously like a long time coming but also like it wasn’t that long ago. Now we get a brand new Pikmin game, is it the treasure you’ve been waiting for?

Pikmin’s favourite and most unlucky explorer Olimar has once again gotten himself stranded on a mysterious yet familiar Pikmin-populated planet. This time a rescue crew is out to save the day, until they, too, crash. It is up to you, a rookie rescue crew member to not only save Olimar, but to rescue the rescuers. If you want any hope of leaving the planet, you’ll need to find all the members of the rescue crew. Collecting treasures provides the ship with Sparkium, a power source needed to help scan for new areas to further your search.

You don’t have to take on this heavy task on by yourself, Pikmin 4 introduces Oatchi, the rescue puppy. If you’ve seen anything of Pikmin 4 chances are high you’ve seen Oatchi, and if you get this game, you’ll be seeing much more of them. This space puppy quickly makes themselves an invaluable member of the team, and in the brief moments they aren’t around, you will find yourself asking, “Where’s Oatchi?” because it’s just not as fun without them around.

I know it feels like hyperbole, but Oatchi works wonders for Pikmin 4. This fuzzy space puppy quickly becomes a vital member of the rescue crew. Given how large the oversized areas can feel, being able to ride Oatchi around gives you more time to get more done each day. Even better is that all the Pikmin travelling with you can hop on board too, keeping the group close and ready to be thrown into action. You can also use a charge attack which bashes into the target, potentially stunning a creature before it can attack back, as well as launching every Pikmin with you into a concentrated attack.

As you rescue crew members and castaways, you’ll be rewarded with pup points so you can upgrade Oatchi’s abilities too. It’s worth checking into the rescue base and talking with the crew there, as they can also unlock new abilities to add to the collection.

Now let’s not forget the titular Pikmin; they are back! Not only are they back, but now there are more than ever. As usual, you start off with one colour/type of Pikmin before you start getting the band back together. Red, Yellow and Blue are here and all very useful in their own ways. Once you venture into the Caves, you’ll start to find all the other types from across the series.

Scattered throughout each area is a series of pipes that lead to Caves; delving into these will take you into underground sections. The timer essentially stops when you enter these areas, allowing you to tackle these ‘mini dungeons’ at your own pace. Some of the Caves are straightforward and just require navigating the environmental hazards, collecting treasures and taking down creatures. Others can be multi-level dungeons, where each level poses different challenges for the Pikmin the Cave limits you to. I found the Caves to effectively break up the exploration and treasure gathering on the surface. It’s also fun to solve challenges using the limited number of special Pikmin. I do wish there was a better way to stock up on these rarer types of Pikmin, but it does encourage being careful with them.

The catch is that you can’t generate new sprouts for Pikmin for whom you don’t have the onion, which means their numbers are more limited as you’ll need to return to the Caves to get more. It does teach you to be more cautious with the specialist types, Ice Pikmin is the only way you’ll be freezing anything, and Rock Pikmin are the only way you’ll be breaking down some of the barriers.

As you rescue more of the crew and other castaways that happen to have gotten caught up in the whole Olimar rescue, they will also issue challenges to you. Not only does it give you an incentive to keep exploring but the rewards help to purchase useful upgrades and items to help out in your expeditions. These upgrades become available as you progress, giving you and Oatchi additional protection against the different elements and a health boost if needed. Because the raw materials are used in the areas to produce clay for completing bridges and climbing walls, you need to weigh up if you want to buy an expensive upgrade or if you want to have enough materials for clay structures to open up the map even further.

Night expeditions are a new addition to the series, with the nighttime often being too dangerous to venture out of the safety of your spaceship. This mode unlocks once you rescue a certain crew member. Will you be brave enough to survive the night?

These expeditions are separate from the day expeditions, where instead of roaming around the area, you need to protect a strange glowing mound called a Lumiknoll. You can either protect the Lumiknoll until the timer runs out, or you defeat all the creatures. In this mode, you only have one type of Pikmin to help out, the new Glow Pikmin. You get more by collecting little star-shaped crystals, and you’ll want to collect as many as possible. The best time for this is in the brief quiet period before all the nearby creatures go into a fever and beeline for the Lumiknoll. You can even have Oatchi guard the Lumiknoll to slow down any attackers while you might be tackling another target.

The Night expeditions boil down to a tower defence mini-game where you need to hold back the creatures from destroying the Lumiknoll. I was initially hoping that the game was allowing us to stay out until after night at greater risk of deadlier creatures, but I don’t mind what they settled on either. Be aware that you will have to engage in these expeditions if you want to complete the story; however, you should be able to complete it by only engaging in the easiest ones. Completionists will have a harder time as the expeditions definitely get harder, and the more night expeditions you complete, the more Glow Pikmin seeds you collect for use in the Cave sections during the day. I enjoyed having the glow Pikmin on my team as they reappear in your party after transporting star crystals to the Lumiknoll, they’re very useful, and it never hurts to have more Pikmin that fly/hover.

Pikmin 4 likes to throw out the term “Dandori” – the art of being organised and maximising. This boils down to learning how to manage your team the most efficiently; its importance mostly comes up in Dandori Battles/Challenges.

Dandori battles occur in each area, which pits your cadet against a mysterious ‘leafling’. You start off with a few Pikmin, and the challenge is to get more points by managing the time you have to collect as many items as you can. You’ll need to be able to keep multiple collectibles on the move and steal away some from the opposition. It becomes more chaotic when items are introduced, as well as a bomb, which creates a race to who has the Pikmin numbers and power to drag the bomb to the opposition’s base. If you manage to bomb the base, you reduce their points and get the opportunity to steal them away. The items you collect out on the battlefield can help your team with extra Pikmin or hinder your opponent. Items can rain down meteors on the opposition or shock them, or give you a boost with some bonus Pikmin.

The Dandori challenges place you in a Cave where you have very limited Pikmin; it’s up to you to quickly build your numbers while collecting that precious treasure. You are graded with medals depending on the number of points you finish with, but you only need a bronze to progress. Between the battles and the challenges, these time-based sections force you to act quickly and really build on your multitasking skills in a way that the main areas don’t require of you.

Pikmin 4 will likely be divisive. In the lead-up to its release, there have already been grumblings regarding the game’s difficulty and lack of time limit to complete the game. I would say that Pikmin 4 is the most approachable game in the main series while still retaining a good challenge. I personally found the removal of the day countdown to be freeing, knowing I won’t be shooting myself in the foot for trying to fully explore each area. Just because the 30-day limit wasn’t, there didn’t mean I didn’t try to squeeze the most out of the day, whether it was collecting every treasure I could while leaving enough time to take on the underground levels. If there was still that looming deadline, I imagine it would make it harder to have all the extra challenges to juggle, along with collecting treasures.

The new rewind feature also helps with reducing some of the old stresses when playing a Pikmin game. You can either rewind to the start of the day or back a few minutes. It still doesn’t take much to have a more deadly enemy unleash an attack that wipes out a large number of your team. Even handier is that you can see what your Pikmin numbers were at before going back to a previous moment.

While there isn’t a countdown of days, the game won’t stop you from giving yourself 30 days to complete every area, just as you can easily ignore the rewind option. While I can’t discuss it, there is a mode for the hardcore fan who really misses having that countdown hanging over their heads, having to put all their Pikmin skills to the test to make the most of every day. The Dandori battles and Night expeditions can really ramp up in difficulty too.

With Pikmin 3 Deluxe still essentially being a Wii U game, Pikmin 4 gets to show how good the series can look on the Switch. As with the other games in the series Pikmin is built around large natural environments, with all of the explorers, Pikmin and creatures existing on a smaller scale. Pikmin 4 has no shortage of fun and highly detailed ‘treasures’ to look at, whether it’s as it’s being carried by a bunch of Pikmin or taking a much closer view in the treasure log. In this game, it feels like the camera is much closer to the ground, letting you see all the detail that goes into these diverse areas.

Even better is that Pikmin 4 runs well at the same time; if the performance struggled, I never noticed it. Whether it’s having multiple groups of Pikmin all around the area doing their thing or the chaotic split-screen Dandori battles.

For those who want to share the Pikmin adventure with someone else, there is a Co-op mode included. Keep in mind that this isn’t two players controlling their own little explorers as you both command groups of Pikmin around the map. The co-op mode here is closer to Mario Galaxy/Odyssey, with the second player shooting pebbles to help deal with the creatures. There is a bit more to it than that, but not much more.Players can go head-to-head in Dandori battles, though. Here you both get to control someone as you compete in a race for the most points.

I have always been a fan of the Pikmin series, even if I have not always been a fan of the first and third games’ time limits. Pikmin 4 feels like there’s more to do overall, whether it’s the day expeditions, Cave exploration, night expeditions or the Dandori Battles/Challenges. That’s not even all! It manages to have something for everyone who is either a long-time fan or still not sure about Pikmin, with something for the hardcore fans too. Pikmin manages to keep a good balance between more zen exploring and treasure hunting, along with the tense race to the end of the day and chaotic battles against the many creatures of the world.

It feels like Pikmin 4 revitalises the Pikmin series. Bringing Oatchi along for this new adventure improves navigating the oversized world and its many dangers. Nintendo has managed to make the series more approachable than ever whilst not holding back on swiftly wiping out your entire party if you get caught up in a surprise attack. Not only is there plenty to do, but it’s all enjoyable enough you want to 100% every area. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a fair wait until the next Pikmin game, but it’ll be hard to top Pikmin 4.

Rating: 4.5/5