Hach... Well, the game in its core is Pikmin at its best and plays very good mechanically, but there are some Game Design decisions, i cant really wrap my head around.
1. Since the first rendition, you always had a time limit, be it the days until you suffocate or run out of something to eat. Pikmin 4 tells you, you have a limited time to find Olimar and the others, before they are gone, but thats straight up a lie.
You have all the time in the world. You can just waste a day for the funny. The whole strategic part of managing when where to go is thrown out of the window.
2. The areas in the game are very beautiful and i love that they went more with the apocalyptic part, thats most of the time only hinted in 1 - 3, but now you can literally play inside of a living room.
But as beautiful as the areas are, they are fucking empty. And you know what they did? They thought, hey, everyone loved the dungeons from the second game, lets bring them back. I straight up dislike the dungeons, since you can just go in there and your pikmin are reset, you dont have to manage the time and so on. Also the whole point of designing an area and make it work with the abilities of the pikmin isnt needed as well, since you can just do the mario maker with these dungeons and do what you want.
Something i have to add is, every point of interest is marked on the map. You dont even have to find fruits and stuff on your own, you just have to follow the marker and turn off your brain. I WANT STRATEGY IN MY STRATEGY GAME PLEASE
3. The Night Missions. You can go on Night missions in this game. Sounds cool, maybe you can do stealth missions or fight extra hard monsters.
Nope, you play bloons tower defense in bad. In night missions you get the glowing pikmin (I call them pikaliens) and only them. And they are unbelievably overpowered. If they are finished with something, they just fly back to you. So you dont need to be strategic, you just throw them at everything you see until you win. And you are forced to do those missions.
4. The Dog. This thing makes other pikmin, especially blue pikmin almost useless. The Dog makes everything to easy. He can do everything, he is way to strong and you can upgrade him. The only thing he makes better is, that your pikmin are clumped up and you dont need to manuever around stuff, so you dont lose them. The dog has also a dogflap in some parts of the dungeons, where only he can go through. I thought, oh cool, its to seperate them and do a little coop thingy, where you have to switch between dog and character.
But whoops, slap in your face, all you do with the dog is walk 5 meters, drop something down and they are united again.
Also i hate the fucking dog, he is not cute, he is ugly as shit.
5. Way to many fucking characters. Game starts off with Olimar crashing and then a rescue team gets send. Then the rescue team crashes as well. I found that funny, because its a running gag in the games. But instead that you play a member of the rescue team, another rescue guy gets send to rescue the rescue team.
And then when you start to find the people, you rescue like 70 different people, that crashed on earth. WHY SO MANY. you dont feel isolated like in the rest of the games, you are literally on the central station of earth. And to mention, after every fart you deliver, there is a dialogue, which is wayyy to long. And by the way-
6. -The playable character. You create your own character with a character creator, which is pretty cool, but it ends up like in almost any other game. You are the chosen one for some reason. The dog is said to only listen to the captain, but for some reason to you as well. And in dialogues you just stand next to the chatterboxes like a emotionless robot who can sometimes choose out of 2 options that matter like the piss stain i find on gas station toilets.
In conclusion, i like everything in Pikmin 4 thats not originating from Pikmin 4. Else, this game is made for babies and absolute obliteration of the series. At the start of writing this review, i thought i give the game 3.5 stars, but i got so mad again, thinking about this game, im deeply disappointed.
1. Since the first rendition, you always had a time limit, be it the days until you suffocate or run out of something to eat. Pikmin 4 tells you, you have a limited time to find Olimar and the others, before they are gone, but thats straight up a lie.
You have all the time in the world. You can just waste a day for the funny. The whole strategic part of managing when where to go is thrown out of the window.
2. The areas in the game are very beautiful and i love that they went more with the apocalyptic part, thats most of the time only hinted in 1 - 3, but now you can literally play inside of a living room.
But as beautiful as the areas are, they are fucking empty. And you know what they did? They thought, hey, everyone loved the dungeons from the second game, lets bring them back. I straight up dislike the dungeons, since you can just go in there and your pikmin are reset, you dont have to manage the time and so on. Also the whole point of designing an area and make it work with the abilities of the pikmin isnt needed as well, since you can just do the mario maker with these dungeons and do what you want.
Something i have to add is, every point of interest is marked on the map. You dont even have to find fruits and stuff on your own, you just have to follow the marker and turn off your brain. I WANT STRATEGY IN MY STRATEGY GAME PLEASE
3. The Night Missions. You can go on Night missions in this game. Sounds cool, maybe you can do stealth missions or fight extra hard monsters.
Nope, you play bloons tower defense in bad. In night missions you get the glowing pikmin (I call them pikaliens) and only them. And they are unbelievably overpowered. If they are finished with something, they just fly back to you. So you dont need to be strategic, you just throw them at everything you see until you win. And you are forced to do those missions.
4. The Dog. This thing makes other pikmin, especially blue pikmin almost useless. The Dog makes everything to easy. He can do everything, he is way to strong and you can upgrade him. The only thing he makes better is, that your pikmin are clumped up and you dont need to manuever around stuff, so you dont lose them. The dog has also a dogflap in some parts of the dungeons, where only he can go through. I thought, oh cool, its to seperate them and do a little coop thingy, where you have to switch between dog and character.
But whoops, slap in your face, all you do with the dog is walk 5 meters, drop something down and they are united again.
Also i hate the fucking dog, he is not cute, he is ugly as shit.
5. Way to many fucking characters. Game starts off with Olimar crashing and then a rescue team gets send. Then the rescue team crashes as well. I found that funny, because its a running gag in the games. But instead that you play a member of the rescue team, another rescue guy gets send to rescue the rescue team.
And then when you start to find the people, you rescue like 70 different people, that crashed on earth. WHY SO MANY. you dont feel isolated like in the rest of the games, you are literally on the central station of earth. And to mention, after every fart you deliver, there is a dialogue, which is wayyy to long. And by the way-
6. -The playable character. You create your own character with a character creator, which is pretty cool, but it ends up like in almost any other game. You are the chosen one for some reason. The dog is said to only listen to the captain, but for some reason to you as well. And in dialogues you just stand next to the chatterboxes like a emotionless robot who can sometimes choose out of 2 options that matter like the piss stain i find on gas station toilets.
In conclusion, i like everything in Pikmin 4 thats not originating from Pikmin 4. Else, this game is made for babies and absolute obliteration of the series. At the start of writing this review, i thought i give the game 3.5 stars, but i got so mad again, thinking about this game, im deeply disappointed.