This review contains spoilers
Pikmin 4 is... weird. I want to preface this by saying that Pikmin is probably my favourite series besides Metroid. I struggled through 1 as a wee lad, was traumatised by the bad ending and accidentally broke my disk later, which is when my parents bought me its sequel. Pikmin 2 is an all-time great to me. I've replayed it tons, it's an overtly cruel RTS that is so special to me and, as you'll see, could never be truly replicated by a modern day Nintendo. Pikmin 3 was the first game in the series I actively anticipated the release of. The wait for it to come out felt like forever, I re-watched the trailers endlessly, consumed any content made for the game pre-release and, stupidly, watched someone play through a good chunk of the game in Japanese prior to its western release. I was 12 then and I'm 23 now, which is important as I did the opposite going into Pikmin 4. I watched the first trailer and then tuned into radio silence. I averted my eyes and ears every time it showed up in subsequent directs, muted words on twitter that could get it onto my timeline and avoided any discussion of the game within friend groups. Ultimately, I did discover certain elements against my will (character creation, glow pikmin, going out at night, Olimar's leafy appearance) but I felt satisfied in how little I knew when the game arrived last friday. I was excited, yet nervous. For as much as I loved 3, it dumbed down certain aspects of the series that I'd come to love, allowing for a much smoother experience than I was comfortable with. I feared 4 would double down on dullng the series' edges, which did end up being the case, yet it also restored some of what made the first two games unique. Pikmin 4 is weird, so let me tell you why.
Before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to make it clear that I love this game. At the end of the day, despite all of my many, many upcoming critiques, it's Pikmin! And I just adore Pikmin. This game realistically does more good than bad because it's Pikmin, but because it's Pikmin, I'm inherently going to be more critical of it. That's why the length of this review dwarfs all of my others. It's a spillage of thoughts that I had to share, so I'm sorry if it's totally incoherent.
Pikmin 4 begins with a recap of Pikmin 1... until it doesn't. Instead of getting all 30 ship parts and leaving the planet, Olimar discovers a dog called Moss and the game throws you into a playable section inside a house. Confused, I plowed forward in search of answers that I would never get.
Ths stories in the first 3 Pikmin games are simple enough. Pikmin 4's plot is simple if you HAVEN'T played those games, otherwise it becomes a convoluted mess of crossing wires that never quite adds up. Despite the 4 in the title, this game is essentially a reboot of the series. It replaces 1 in the timeline, makes things in 2 cease to make sense and even introduces characters that essentially replace those in 3 and can't I like any of it. I kept waiting for an answer at the end, why are things this way, are they really doing some weird plot that'll somehow come together during the final cutscene? And it just didn't, in fact the ending bluntly explains nothing. During the fake out credits (this game is going to copy Pikmin 2 a lot), we see Louie is on the planet. How did he get there? We return to help out our dog, Oatchi, who can no longer stray too far from the planet due to a mutation. Louie is abducting castaways and trying to turn them into leaflings. So when we finally get ahold of him, what do we learn? Nothing at all. We leave the planet, fly off into the space and the game ends. I sat there, bewildered, at the lack of any resolution. The lack of an answer is, in many cases, a good thing, but here it just feels lazy. Louie feels wildly out of character, his want to stay on PNF-404 is consistent with his story in 2, but the abduction just doesn't make an ounce of sense. Pikmin 4's story feels like an offbeat pastiche of the trilogy, trying to cater both to new players by resetting the lore and to veteran players by using returning characters and familiar ideas. I think it falls flat for the latter and while I can't say for certain, I imagine the former would also find themselves confused by the tacked on Louie plotline.
Before I get to the gameplay (which I have way too much to say about), I want to touch on the environments, atmosphere and music. The original Pikmin had 5 areas, though only 3 were fully fleshed out. Each one was distinct, from the pleasant optimism of The Forest of Hope to the oppressively dark Forest Navel and then the quiet solitude of The Distant Spring. The music contributed heavily to making these areas stand out and darkness and fog did a commendable job of making these areas feel more expansive than they actually were. Pikmin 2 followed on effortlessly with remixes of the areas from 1, yet they all feel different enough. Each of the four areas represent a different season, with my favourite being Wistful Wild, an autumnal aesthetic accompanied by an thrilling yet foreboding track that embodies finality and danger. Pikmin 3 did a decent enough job with its areas, though I felt that Tropical Wilds and Garden of Hope were a little too similar looking. Musically, I also feel 3 dropped the ball, with none of the area themes sticking in my head after I finished the game.
Unfortunately, 4 accentuates 3's issues. Sun-Speckled Terrace, Blossoming Arcadia, Giant's Hearth and, to a lesser extent, Primordial Thicket all felt like different parts of a single level. This wasn't helped at all by the gentle, lowkey tracks that accompanied these locales which I cannot recall at all. This music direction extends to the caves which scarcely even have music unless they decide to steal from 2, which is the case for the Engulfed Castle. What baffles me most of all is that Olimar's side story, which you can access after the first ending, has much more Pikmin-y tracks for the first four areas. It's certainly a preference thing, but seeing Breath of the Wild, Metroid Dread and now Pikmin 4 switch to these more atmospheric soundtracks has been largely disappointing.
To give some credit where it's due, Serene Shores and especially Hero's Hideaway were very fresh. It was exciting to finally be able to explore a house's interior outside of Pikmin 3's mission mode and the changing tides were a neat addition to a beach level. While I think even these areas could have done a little more to set this game apart from its predecessors, they were certainly highlights of the adventure. The interiors of caves were also beautiful, with the aquarium being my personal favourite. While most of the aesthetics were ripped directly from 2, they look fantastic in HD.
I'm left a touch disappointed with the way Pikmin 4 looked and sounded. Texture quality is obviously the best it's ever been, but I found the art direction widelylacking, even when compared to 3 which I already believed to be a bit of a step down from its predecessors.
Now... the game. The thing I immediately noticed and immediately hated was the automatic lock on. I didn't like the lock on in Pikmin 3, but at the very least it was never forced. Even if you were standing next to an enemy, you could throw Pikmin elsewhere. In 4, this isn't an option. It dumbs down the gameplay for sure, but it also has some severe downsides that genuinely hamper basic playability. Here's an example: I'm standing next to a treasure on a small islet, surrounded by water. I have ice pikmin in hand, I want to chuck them into the water so they freeze it. This isn't physically possible because, try as I might to create some distance between me and the treasure, I cannot aim them away from it. Small instances like this are some of the most infuriating control issues in the series. If you're fighting multiple enemies and you want to go for a specific one, you best hope that the target switch mechanic can read your mind! And if there's a treasure among the enemies? Good luck.
The controls are, to put it bluntly, awful. They simultaneously make the game easier and harder (but not in the good way). The smart stopping for tossing Pikmin (there's a delay after you throw the required number of Pikmin at an object) can be helpful, but I often found it to be hindrance. Why can't I turn these things off? Then there's leaf Pikmin vs flower Pikmin. From what I can tell, there's no way to manually select what maturity of Pikmin you want to throw. It's handy in that, if you throw them into a candypop bud, it'll always use leaf Pikmin. But, and I have no idea why this is the case, leaf Pikmin seem to be the default 90% of the time. Why would I want my leaf Pikmin to carry a treasure back? Why can't I select flower Pikmin? Let me turn this off. Let me turn all these "smart" features off. Let me control the game myself!!
Anyhoo.
Pikmin 4's structure is a familiar one, blatantly copying Pikmin 2's homework. I am fascinated by this decision, 2 always struck me as a black sheep, a formula that I loved but never expected to see again. The treasures are brilliant, I'm a little sad we can't have the branded treasures that grounded 2 in the real world, but that's mostly a non-issue due to how packed it is otherwise. The best ones are the music boxes, playing three iconic tracks from Nintendo's history, delighting me each time. Besides the treasures, you also have onions, flarlics, castaways and raw materials to gather. This gives each area a ton to find and I never felt an area was lacking nor did it ever drag on. The onions were particularly interesting as you initially only have access to 20 Pikmin on the field, which is a fantastic decision! It's satisfying to build up to 100 over a fairly long period rather than getting there in just a few in-game days. You're now also restricted to just 3 types of Pikmin on the field at a time, which I also feel was the right call. After all, every single Pikmin is in this game (except Bulbmin, my heart yearns for you) so it could be overwhelming to use them all simultaneously. My only gripe is that the areas are usually designed around those 3 types, and the game blatantly tells you which they are so there's no room for surveying the land to figure out what you might need, or even using alternative Pikmin types to accomplish tasks rather than what the game intends.
There are a few notable additions to Pikmin 2's structure which set this game apart. Instead of a world map, you have a hub where your crew and all the castaways gather. Many of them have side missions to complete which, if you're already looking to collect everything, you'll breeze through without issue. You can upgrade your equipment with materials and even train Oatchi, which I'll touch on later. It's pleasant having so much to do at home base, though part of me wishes we could have been more involved in the expansion, even if it was as simple as commanding a group of Pikmin to build some structures or something. From here, you also get access to night expeditions which left me underwhelmed. You use the new glow Pikmin to defend your base(s), but it's easy and a tad monotonous. It feels disconnected from the main game and never asks much of you, so we're still a ways off from having the a brutally difficult option to continue exploring during the night. They use these missions to reintroduce the Smoky Progg from Pikmin 1 and as much as I enjoy a little fanservice, it loses a ton of its mystique in this setting. A solid threat for a mode like this, but a meager shadow of its former self.
Lastly we have the Dandori Battles and Challenges. The challenges are ripped straight from Pikmin 3's mission mode, which was the best part of that game. To no surprise; they're great here too! Not quite as enjoyable due to lack of a third captain, but I was never disappointed to come across one. The battles are competitive collection jobs, the multiplayer of the game taken and moulded into singleplayer. They're not very good but largely inoffensive, which is what I would say if they didn't punctuate big story moments! In 3, these would be scored by impressive boss fights, the best in the series. Besides the final boss, 4 reverts back to 2's philosophy of quantity over quality. This was reasonable back then, but after seeing what was possible, their absence here was sorely missed. A mix of the two would have been perfect!
Most of the bosses this game does have are plucked directly from 2, in many cases to their detriment. When you have such an easy comparison point, it's poor showing when it's clear that what you've made is a blatantly pale imitation. The prime example for this is the Engulfed Castle and the Waterwraith. This iconic enemy is a terrifying threat in Pikmin 2's Submerged Castle, stalking you through this 5 sublevel nightmare. In 4, the music is the same, the aesthetic is the same, even some of the layouts are the same, but the kicker is that it's a total breeze. The Waterwraith showed up 2 times during the first 3 sublevels, once while I was leaving the first sublevel and again while I was transporting the final treasure on the second sublevel. Apparently I cleared the third so quickly that he decided not to appear. And sublevel 4 was the boss fight, which was identical to Pikmin 2. Pardon the pun, but why copy that game if you're just going to water down its toughest challenges? The cruelty of the Submerged Castle was what gave it so much charm! The answer is that they wanted to appeal new players with 'Pikmin's Greatest Hits' which is fine, but as a verteran I can't help but feel deflated by its new incarnation.
This is the case for many of Pikmin 2's bosses, though exact replicas of its caves are thankfully uncommon otherwise. 4 tends to shorter cave lengths, with much more forgiving design throughout. Alongside the rewind function (which, again, would be nice to disable), you're unlikely to have a situation where you don't have enough Pikmin to finish a cave. It's a stroll in the park, I'd always march around each sublevel with 100 Pikmin in tow instead of splitting them up, which I did constantly in previous games. This is partially due to the difficulty (lack of instakill threats), but also due to Oatchi, who we'll get to soon. I liked a lot of the new gimmicks, such as the conveyor belts from 3 and the fire you had to carry between torches, or whatever they're called. I'd like to see more of this, go all out with the weird stuff! 3 had plenty other great ideas to steal, like the 2D portions in Beastly Caverns or the oddly absent electricity conducting properties of the yellow Pikmin. Anything to set these caves apart from 2 would have been brilliant, because they were at their best when trying something new. Below Grade Discoteque is one of the most distinct dungeons in the game, concluding with one of my favourite fights in the series. It needs to be seen (and heard) to be believed.
So there's bits of 2 and 3 in this game, but what about 1? Pikmin 4 has you covered with Olimar's Shipwreck Tale, a miniature game within the game that sees you collecting 30 ship parts in just 15 days, mimicking what you did in the original Pikmin. It's great, there's little to say about it but the areas are remixed just enough, it's plenty nostalgic and as mentioned previously, the music is better than the main game! It's not that long but not too short either, just another layer on this gargantuan multi-layered birthday cake of a Pikmin game.
At last, I am ready to address the canine in the room: Oatchi. Every game prior to Pikmin 4 has increased the number of captains by one. 4 bucked this trend, which I think was probably the right thing to do. We've gone back to two, as much as I enjoyed how much you could micro-manage in 3, I believe it's best off a little simplified. You still have the 'go here' function, yet I rarely found myself using it. Perhaps that's partly due to the lack of a Wii U gamepad, but I think the more likely cause is Oatchi. He's very cute, but he fundamentally destroys Pikmin. While you do have to upgrade him to get there, Oatchi is both the ultimate captain AND the ultimate Pikmin. He lacks the ability to charge Pikmin forward but makes up for it with his own charge (which eventually stuns enemies) that flings all of his Pikmin onto whatever he headbutts, MELTING enemy health. He can also jump, swim, jump while swimming and do almost anything a Pikmin can, the major exception being that he can't be thrown. He's eventually immune to all elements and has a final carrying weight of 100, with the ability to swallow objects becoming one of the quickest ways to transport massive treasures.
These features alone would make Oatchi the ultimate companion character. Your create-a-character (I called him Bill) is outclassed in every way, with only a few areas off limits to the dog. However, there's one more aspect of Oatchi that tears apart the fabric of Pikmin: Oatchi can carry not only the captain, but the Pikmin too. This means both captains and the Pikmin can get up small ledges and cross any body of water all the while not being held up by their movement speed. Water rarely feels like an obstacle to Pikmin now, nor do other hazards such as poisonous or fiery floors. The biggest issue this creates, though, is that Pikmin is no longer messy. The Man-at-Legs is in this game with virtually no changes. The challenge of this fight came from deciding which Pikmin to bring into the fray; leaf Pikmin may not be able to make it to cover in time, therefore being risky prospects. So you'd position one captain in cover while the other took on the beast, potentially having to move cover if the beast got too close. In 4, the Man-at-Legs is a completely non-threat as even the slowest Pikmin hop onto Oatchi's back and can run circles around the helpless critter. There are countless instances of this as Pikmin scattering about in the prior games caused a majority deaths. You had to be patient, careful about your approaches, restrictive with the number of Pikmin you brought to a fight. Squeezing a full group of Pikmin under the Beady Long Legs' feet was nigh impossible - not anymore. Of all the criticisms I've leveraged against this game, this, alongside the controls, is the most damning and contributes to why I don't see myself replaying this one like I do the first two.
And yet, despite everything, I love this game. I know this is jarring, and I'm confused by it too. This game is the sum of its parts, and its parts are taken from 3 of my favourite games ever made. Even if each part is worse in this entry, it's Pikmin, and I fucking love Pikmin. Pikmin 4 was a joy from start to finish, I'm a fan and I was serviced! I may not replay this one, but I more fun with that single playthrough than I did playing 90% of the games on the system. I hope Pikmin can course correct somewhat for the fifth entry, yet despite the direction things are heading, I will be there, day 1, no matter what.
Some disjointed final thoughts I forgot to include above (I promise my reviews aren't usually like this):
-The Piklopedia is great here, though I wish they'd brought back the music too. Writing for both it and the treasure catalogue is fab. Character writing is decent, though the story has far too much dialogue in the beginning.
-Why is there no jingle when I reach the final sublevel? And why put Pikmin 2's boss theme in this game if you're going cut out the best part of the song?
-Glow Pikmin are very cute. Ice Pikmin are a strong addition but similarly to rock Pikmin, they don't look like what I think a Pikmin should look like.
-I enjoyed the final boss, but it felt like a Mario boss more than a Pikmin boss.
-Enemy variety is amazing, I love the Miniature Snootwhacker and want to be friends with him.
-Seriously, why no Bulbmin?
Before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to make it clear that I love this game. At the end of the day, despite all of my many, many upcoming critiques, it's Pikmin! And I just adore Pikmin. This game realistically does more good than bad because it's Pikmin, but because it's Pikmin, I'm inherently going to be more critical of it. That's why the length of this review dwarfs all of my others. It's a spillage of thoughts that I had to share, so I'm sorry if it's totally incoherent.
Pikmin 4 begins with a recap of Pikmin 1... until it doesn't. Instead of getting all 30 ship parts and leaving the planet, Olimar discovers a dog called Moss and the game throws you into a playable section inside a house. Confused, I plowed forward in search of answers that I would never get.
Ths stories in the first 3 Pikmin games are simple enough. Pikmin 4's plot is simple if you HAVEN'T played those games, otherwise it becomes a convoluted mess of crossing wires that never quite adds up. Despite the 4 in the title, this game is essentially a reboot of the series. It replaces 1 in the timeline, makes things in 2 cease to make sense and even introduces characters that essentially replace those in 3 and can't I like any of it. I kept waiting for an answer at the end, why are things this way, are they really doing some weird plot that'll somehow come together during the final cutscene? And it just didn't, in fact the ending bluntly explains nothing. During the fake out credits (this game is going to copy Pikmin 2 a lot), we see Louie is on the planet. How did he get there? We return to help out our dog, Oatchi, who can no longer stray too far from the planet due to a mutation. Louie is abducting castaways and trying to turn them into leaflings. So when we finally get ahold of him, what do we learn? Nothing at all. We leave the planet, fly off into the space and the game ends. I sat there, bewildered, at the lack of any resolution. The lack of an answer is, in many cases, a good thing, but here it just feels lazy. Louie feels wildly out of character, his want to stay on PNF-404 is consistent with his story in 2, but the abduction just doesn't make an ounce of sense. Pikmin 4's story feels like an offbeat pastiche of the trilogy, trying to cater both to new players by resetting the lore and to veteran players by using returning characters and familiar ideas. I think it falls flat for the latter and while I can't say for certain, I imagine the former would also find themselves confused by the tacked on Louie plotline.
Before I get to the gameplay (which I have way too much to say about), I want to touch on the environments, atmosphere and music. The original Pikmin had 5 areas, though only 3 were fully fleshed out. Each one was distinct, from the pleasant optimism of The Forest of Hope to the oppressively dark Forest Navel and then the quiet solitude of The Distant Spring. The music contributed heavily to making these areas stand out and darkness and fog did a commendable job of making these areas feel more expansive than they actually were. Pikmin 2 followed on effortlessly with remixes of the areas from 1, yet they all feel different enough. Each of the four areas represent a different season, with my favourite being Wistful Wild, an autumnal aesthetic accompanied by an thrilling yet foreboding track that embodies finality and danger. Pikmin 3 did a decent enough job with its areas, though I felt that Tropical Wilds and Garden of Hope were a little too similar looking. Musically, I also feel 3 dropped the ball, with none of the area themes sticking in my head after I finished the game.
Unfortunately, 4 accentuates 3's issues. Sun-Speckled Terrace, Blossoming Arcadia, Giant's Hearth and, to a lesser extent, Primordial Thicket all felt like different parts of a single level. This wasn't helped at all by the gentle, lowkey tracks that accompanied these locales which I cannot recall at all. This music direction extends to the caves which scarcely even have music unless they decide to steal from 2, which is the case for the Engulfed Castle. What baffles me most of all is that Olimar's side story, which you can access after the first ending, has much more Pikmin-y tracks for the first four areas. It's certainly a preference thing, but seeing Breath of the Wild, Metroid Dread and now Pikmin 4 switch to these more atmospheric soundtracks has been largely disappointing.
To give some credit where it's due, Serene Shores and especially Hero's Hideaway were very fresh. It was exciting to finally be able to explore a house's interior outside of Pikmin 3's mission mode and the changing tides were a neat addition to a beach level. While I think even these areas could have done a little more to set this game apart from its predecessors, they were certainly highlights of the adventure. The interiors of caves were also beautiful, with the aquarium being my personal favourite. While most of the aesthetics were ripped directly from 2, they look fantastic in HD.
I'm left a touch disappointed with the way Pikmin 4 looked and sounded. Texture quality is obviously the best it's ever been, but I found the art direction widelylacking, even when compared to 3 which I already believed to be a bit of a step down from its predecessors.
Now... the game. The thing I immediately noticed and immediately hated was the automatic lock on. I didn't like the lock on in Pikmin 3, but at the very least it was never forced. Even if you were standing next to an enemy, you could throw Pikmin elsewhere. In 4, this isn't an option. It dumbs down the gameplay for sure, but it also has some severe downsides that genuinely hamper basic playability. Here's an example: I'm standing next to a treasure on a small islet, surrounded by water. I have ice pikmin in hand, I want to chuck them into the water so they freeze it. This isn't physically possible because, try as I might to create some distance between me and the treasure, I cannot aim them away from it. Small instances like this are some of the most infuriating control issues in the series. If you're fighting multiple enemies and you want to go for a specific one, you best hope that the target switch mechanic can read your mind! And if there's a treasure among the enemies? Good luck.
The controls are, to put it bluntly, awful. They simultaneously make the game easier and harder (but not in the good way). The smart stopping for tossing Pikmin (there's a delay after you throw the required number of Pikmin at an object) can be helpful, but I often found it to be hindrance. Why can't I turn these things off? Then there's leaf Pikmin vs flower Pikmin. From what I can tell, there's no way to manually select what maturity of Pikmin you want to throw. It's handy in that, if you throw them into a candypop bud, it'll always use leaf Pikmin. But, and I have no idea why this is the case, leaf Pikmin seem to be the default 90% of the time. Why would I want my leaf Pikmin to carry a treasure back? Why can't I select flower Pikmin? Let me turn this off. Let me turn all these "smart" features off. Let me control the game myself!!
Anyhoo.
Pikmin 4's structure is a familiar one, blatantly copying Pikmin 2's homework. I am fascinated by this decision, 2 always struck me as a black sheep, a formula that I loved but never expected to see again. The treasures are brilliant, I'm a little sad we can't have the branded treasures that grounded 2 in the real world, but that's mostly a non-issue due to how packed it is otherwise. The best ones are the music boxes, playing three iconic tracks from Nintendo's history, delighting me each time. Besides the treasures, you also have onions, flarlics, castaways and raw materials to gather. This gives each area a ton to find and I never felt an area was lacking nor did it ever drag on. The onions were particularly interesting as you initially only have access to 20 Pikmin on the field, which is a fantastic decision! It's satisfying to build up to 100 over a fairly long period rather than getting there in just a few in-game days. You're now also restricted to just 3 types of Pikmin on the field at a time, which I also feel was the right call. After all, every single Pikmin is in this game (except Bulbmin, my heart yearns for you) so it could be overwhelming to use them all simultaneously. My only gripe is that the areas are usually designed around those 3 types, and the game blatantly tells you which they are so there's no room for surveying the land to figure out what you might need, or even using alternative Pikmin types to accomplish tasks rather than what the game intends.
There are a few notable additions to Pikmin 2's structure which set this game apart. Instead of a world map, you have a hub where your crew and all the castaways gather. Many of them have side missions to complete which, if you're already looking to collect everything, you'll breeze through without issue. You can upgrade your equipment with materials and even train Oatchi, which I'll touch on later. It's pleasant having so much to do at home base, though part of me wishes we could have been more involved in the expansion, even if it was as simple as commanding a group of Pikmin to build some structures or something. From here, you also get access to night expeditions which left me underwhelmed. You use the new glow Pikmin to defend your base(s), but it's easy and a tad monotonous. It feels disconnected from the main game and never asks much of you, so we're still a ways off from having the a brutally difficult option to continue exploring during the night. They use these missions to reintroduce the Smoky Progg from Pikmin 1 and as much as I enjoy a little fanservice, it loses a ton of its mystique in this setting. A solid threat for a mode like this, but a meager shadow of its former self.
Lastly we have the Dandori Battles and Challenges. The challenges are ripped straight from Pikmin 3's mission mode, which was the best part of that game. To no surprise; they're great here too! Not quite as enjoyable due to lack of a third captain, but I was never disappointed to come across one. The battles are competitive collection jobs, the multiplayer of the game taken and moulded into singleplayer. They're not very good but largely inoffensive, which is what I would say if they didn't punctuate big story moments! In 3, these would be scored by impressive boss fights, the best in the series. Besides the final boss, 4 reverts back to 2's philosophy of quantity over quality. This was reasonable back then, but after seeing what was possible, their absence here was sorely missed. A mix of the two would have been perfect!
Most of the bosses this game does have are plucked directly from 2, in many cases to their detriment. When you have such an easy comparison point, it's poor showing when it's clear that what you've made is a blatantly pale imitation. The prime example for this is the Engulfed Castle and the Waterwraith. This iconic enemy is a terrifying threat in Pikmin 2's Submerged Castle, stalking you through this 5 sublevel nightmare. In 4, the music is the same, the aesthetic is the same, even some of the layouts are the same, but the kicker is that it's a total breeze. The Waterwraith showed up 2 times during the first 3 sublevels, once while I was leaving the first sublevel and again while I was transporting the final treasure on the second sublevel. Apparently I cleared the third so quickly that he decided not to appear. And sublevel 4 was the boss fight, which was identical to Pikmin 2. Pardon the pun, but why copy that game if you're just going to water down its toughest challenges? The cruelty of the Submerged Castle was what gave it so much charm! The answer is that they wanted to appeal new players with 'Pikmin's Greatest Hits' which is fine, but as a verteran I can't help but feel deflated by its new incarnation.
This is the case for many of Pikmin 2's bosses, though exact replicas of its caves are thankfully uncommon otherwise. 4 tends to shorter cave lengths, with much more forgiving design throughout. Alongside the rewind function (which, again, would be nice to disable), you're unlikely to have a situation where you don't have enough Pikmin to finish a cave. It's a stroll in the park, I'd always march around each sublevel with 100 Pikmin in tow instead of splitting them up, which I did constantly in previous games. This is partially due to the difficulty (lack of instakill threats), but also due to Oatchi, who we'll get to soon. I liked a lot of the new gimmicks, such as the conveyor belts from 3 and the fire you had to carry between torches, or whatever they're called. I'd like to see more of this, go all out with the weird stuff! 3 had plenty other great ideas to steal, like the 2D portions in Beastly Caverns or the oddly absent electricity conducting properties of the yellow Pikmin. Anything to set these caves apart from 2 would have been brilliant, because they were at their best when trying something new. Below Grade Discoteque is one of the most distinct dungeons in the game, concluding with one of my favourite fights in the series. It needs to be seen (and heard) to be believed.
So there's bits of 2 and 3 in this game, but what about 1? Pikmin 4 has you covered with Olimar's Shipwreck Tale, a miniature game within the game that sees you collecting 30 ship parts in just 15 days, mimicking what you did in the original Pikmin. It's great, there's little to say about it but the areas are remixed just enough, it's plenty nostalgic and as mentioned previously, the music is better than the main game! It's not that long but not too short either, just another layer on this gargantuan multi-layered birthday cake of a Pikmin game.
At last, I am ready to address the canine in the room: Oatchi. Every game prior to Pikmin 4 has increased the number of captains by one. 4 bucked this trend, which I think was probably the right thing to do. We've gone back to two, as much as I enjoyed how much you could micro-manage in 3, I believe it's best off a little simplified. You still have the 'go here' function, yet I rarely found myself using it. Perhaps that's partly due to the lack of a Wii U gamepad, but I think the more likely cause is Oatchi. He's very cute, but he fundamentally destroys Pikmin. While you do have to upgrade him to get there, Oatchi is both the ultimate captain AND the ultimate Pikmin. He lacks the ability to charge Pikmin forward but makes up for it with his own charge (which eventually stuns enemies) that flings all of his Pikmin onto whatever he headbutts, MELTING enemy health. He can also jump, swim, jump while swimming and do almost anything a Pikmin can, the major exception being that he can't be thrown. He's eventually immune to all elements and has a final carrying weight of 100, with the ability to swallow objects becoming one of the quickest ways to transport massive treasures.
These features alone would make Oatchi the ultimate companion character. Your create-a-character (I called him Bill) is outclassed in every way, with only a few areas off limits to the dog. However, there's one more aspect of Oatchi that tears apart the fabric of Pikmin: Oatchi can carry not only the captain, but the Pikmin too. This means both captains and the Pikmin can get up small ledges and cross any body of water all the while not being held up by their movement speed. Water rarely feels like an obstacle to Pikmin now, nor do other hazards such as poisonous or fiery floors. The biggest issue this creates, though, is that Pikmin is no longer messy. The Man-at-Legs is in this game with virtually no changes. The challenge of this fight came from deciding which Pikmin to bring into the fray; leaf Pikmin may not be able to make it to cover in time, therefore being risky prospects. So you'd position one captain in cover while the other took on the beast, potentially having to move cover if the beast got too close. In 4, the Man-at-Legs is a completely non-threat as even the slowest Pikmin hop onto Oatchi's back and can run circles around the helpless critter. There are countless instances of this as Pikmin scattering about in the prior games caused a majority deaths. You had to be patient, careful about your approaches, restrictive with the number of Pikmin you brought to a fight. Squeezing a full group of Pikmin under the Beady Long Legs' feet was nigh impossible - not anymore. Of all the criticisms I've leveraged against this game, this, alongside the controls, is the most damning and contributes to why I don't see myself replaying this one like I do the first two.
And yet, despite everything, I love this game. I know this is jarring, and I'm confused by it too. This game is the sum of its parts, and its parts are taken from 3 of my favourite games ever made. Even if each part is worse in this entry, it's Pikmin, and I fucking love Pikmin. Pikmin 4 was a joy from start to finish, I'm a fan and I was serviced! I may not replay this one, but I more fun with that single playthrough than I did playing 90% of the games on the system. I hope Pikmin can course correct somewhat for the fifth entry, yet despite the direction things are heading, I will be there, day 1, no matter what.
Some disjointed final thoughts I forgot to include above (I promise my reviews aren't usually like this):
-The Piklopedia is great here, though I wish they'd brought back the music too. Writing for both it and the treasure catalogue is fab. Character writing is decent, though the story has far too much dialogue in the beginning.
-Why is there no jingle when I reach the final sublevel? And why put Pikmin 2's boss theme in this game if you're going cut out the best part of the song?
-Glow Pikmin are very cute. Ice Pikmin are a strong addition but similarly to rock Pikmin, they don't look like what I think a Pikmin should look like.
-I enjoyed the final boss, but it felt like a Mario boss more than a Pikmin boss.
-Enemy variety is amazing, I love the Miniature Snootwhacker and want to be friends with him.
-Seriously, why no Bulbmin?