Hey Pikmin is very well-made, polished game which wears it's Pikmin charm on its sleeve, but unfortunately the game is dreadfully boring. It's very pretty, the little Pikmin interactions you get throughout the game are adorable, and it feels surprisingly good to throw Pikmin by tapping the 3DS screen, but still the game put me to sleep everytime I played. it. Its just incredibly slow paced, and for the most part what you get at the beginning of the game is the entire game. The game does add some stuff as you, but not much that really changes the game in any meaningful way. The game ends up feeling like nothing more than an easy-to-make game, made only to sell games to Pikmin fans, not a game made to actually have fun with.

It's easy to write this game off for multiple reasons. It's safe to say interest in 3DS titles after the Switch's launch went down considerably. And after years of hearing that Pikmin 4 was "almost done", a Pikmin game that clearly wasn't 4 didn't do Hey! Pikmin any favors. That's certainly the camp I was in back when this game was announced.

Playing this years after the fact, however, I think I can approach this title with a clear mind. It's... not bad. I was pleasantly surprised at how they took the Pikmin formula and translated it into 2D. The controls certainly aren't perfect at times, but it did feel like I was playing a Pikmin game. The levels are generally short and sweet, and you can go out of your way for some neat collectibles. The game does throw a handful of frustrating levels here and there, especially towards the later half of the game (looking at you, 8-X) but nothing that soured my experience too much. It's also worth pointing out that the soundtrack is great. I haven't played the mainline Pikmin games in a good amount of years, so I don't know if any of these songs are reused or remixed, but this game does a great job of setting the Pikmin mood with its songs.

I'd say a lot of the flack Hey! Pikmin gets is because it came out at the wrong place, wrong time. Something that came to mind as I was playing is that I probably would've loved this game when I was younger. For me, this is the kind of game that would've released for the DS in the mid-2000s and I would've picked it off the shelf at GameStop and thought "Cool, a Pikmin game on the DS!" and taken it home. Years later, I'd look back at it as one of those weird DS spinoffs in the vein of Super Princess Peach or Wario: Master of Disguise that people kind of forgot about.

Still, where the hell is Pikmin 4?

I played this game mostly because all I had in college a few years ago was a Switch and a 3DS, and I needed a Pikmin fix after falling in love with them from Smash Bros.
This game is, yes, very generic. The 2D puzzle-platforming is something that has been done a lot in the past, and I understand the hate of this game given the hype of a potential fourth game in the main franchise.
That being said, playing through Hey! Pikmin was in no way unenjoyable. The gameplay is perfectly fine, and the puzzles are solid. Furthermore, the game is only 7-10 hours long, so the somewhat-monotonous gameplay isn't likely to overstay its welcome.
If you like Pikmin, this game will be just fine as long as you treat it as a separate spinoff rather than a replacement for a new mainline title. I personally liked it, but I'm sure there are plenty of better 2D puzzle-plat games out there. Hey! Pikmin is just there if you need a Pikmin fix in the midst of waiting for a new game.

i was playing a spinoff game of some other series when i realized that treating hey pikmin like it was bad solely because it wasnt a mainline pikmin game was really wack!
so i acquired this game from the freeshop and tried it out and
yeah it wasn't very good
never beat it though i did play through several levels so it's not like i didnt try
but man
theres so many other more interesting and fun games out there
i mean truly this game is in a dilemma
it's not interesting enough to be fun for new players, and it's extremely disappointing to old fans of the pikmin series
so thats sad

Nope, nah uh, fuck you, Arzest. I collected all 30,000 Sparklium to fuel my ship and leave. You never once said that I needed to get a ship piece in World 9 when I'm already preparing the cyanide martini at World 4. I slogged through your dreary and depressing pacing and level design only to be stopped by an obstacle you made up like a bratty child insistent that he didn't get out despite getting hit by the dodgeball. You said 30,000 Sparklium and I was done. Not my fault you implemented once-a-day bonus levels I could exploit using the 3DS's settings or buying the now $80-$100 original amiibo to farm those amiibo statues.

Normally I don't score games unless I have beaten them, but as far as I am concerned, I accomplished what Hey! Pikmin asked me to do. And part of what it asked me to do is play one of the worst games I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It's dreadful. It's a puzzle platformer that takes one thing from the original Pikmin games, treasure collecting, and makes it boring. Gone are the time limits, gone are the real-time strategy elements, gone is the resource management, until all we're left with is a poorly-designed, slow puzzle platformer with puzzles meant for children yet discourage speedy efficiency lest you accidentally destroy the way to a treasure, because God knows Pikmin has never been about managing your time and being as quick and efficient as possible. Hit detection is spotty, so trying to get those stupid "found and saved all 20 Pikmin" medals are for shit.

Only gets a 2 instead of a 1 because of the cutscenes of Pikmin and the characterization of Olimar via his logs. Arlo was right. Fuck this game.