After having not beaten Pikmin as a child because Puffstool turned all of my darling boys into violent delinquents who beat me up and got eaten, and then I decided "that's enough" and never came back to it, going back to play it is a fascinating task. What I'm presented with is essentially a simplified RTS where you simply drag one of your three units to the proper location for them to be useful, fulfill their function, and then repeat across a map before a time limit runs out. But sometimes they get caught on geometry or drown for no reason, because they have no idea what a bridge is and choose to dive into lethal amounts of water instead of following safety regulations that they themselves established. And it's here where Pikmin is at its weakest - its environmental puzzles are fairly rudimentary, the Pikmin themselves are clumsy, your actual throw is clumsy because it's tied to your walk so sometimes you'll just toss boys directly into the mouth of a lil' dwarf bulborb, and the actual matter of traversal is solved as simply as "did you make all the bridges and bomb the walls that are in your way?" Or just by throwing boys at the problem, typically nothing - enemies or puzzles - knows what to do when you throw Pikmin on its backside.
But it's that element - the enemies - that brings Pikmin to life. Due to the combination of the constant time limit and the fact that you have such limited resources - and they're ALIVE and make sad noises when they die and it's your fault like 70% of the time - every encounter with a new enemy type is a nerve-racking experience. You need to properly discern their behavior before they end up killing the battalion of boys you brought with you, and often times, ANY form of aggression ends up being an incredibly scary prospect! Things can turn from bad to absolutely untennable in Pikmin with just a single move, and god help you if more than one enemy is coming at you! Bosses, likewise, become a wager on how quickly you can figure out their gimmick before they wipe your squad and make you completely ineffectual. And this level of anxiety, trying to prevent things from going from bad to worse and failing constantly, is the heart of what makes Pikmin such an engaging experience. When you finally learn an enemy's patterns and manage to take 'em down no problem, using them as fuel for the fire, THAT'S the best of the game.
Ultimately, Pikmin isn't quite sure what it wants to be at this stage. It's an ultimately survivalist narrative with fantastic characterization for Olimar as this bumbling salaryman who's easily scammed but earnestly fascinated by the world around him, but it's presented as a score attack game where you wanna get better to have awesome speedruns with minimal losses. It wants to pressure you with a constant time limit, but there's true beauty in its world to appreciate. It wants you to be able to multitask between squads for ideal set-ups, but the learning process of enemies is the most fun part about the game! Ultimately, I think that Pikmin needed to grow from this first title - and I know in the future it did grow out from what this game set out to do - but I appreciate the unique little adventure all the same. It's clunky, but oddly accessible; if it didn't end up as an entire series, it'd be this fascinatingly unique cult classic! As-is... it's kind of that within its own series, anyway! A fun time to learn, but I eagerly await what future games hold for this series!
But it's that element - the enemies - that brings Pikmin to life. Due to the combination of the constant time limit and the fact that you have such limited resources - and they're ALIVE and make sad noises when they die and it's your fault like 70% of the time - every encounter with a new enemy type is a nerve-racking experience. You need to properly discern their behavior before they end up killing the battalion of boys you brought with you, and often times, ANY form of aggression ends up being an incredibly scary prospect! Things can turn from bad to absolutely untennable in Pikmin with just a single move, and god help you if more than one enemy is coming at you! Bosses, likewise, become a wager on how quickly you can figure out their gimmick before they wipe your squad and make you completely ineffectual. And this level of anxiety, trying to prevent things from going from bad to worse and failing constantly, is the heart of what makes Pikmin such an engaging experience. When you finally learn an enemy's patterns and manage to take 'em down no problem, using them as fuel for the fire, THAT'S the best of the game.
Ultimately, Pikmin isn't quite sure what it wants to be at this stage. It's an ultimately survivalist narrative with fantastic characterization for Olimar as this bumbling salaryman who's easily scammed but earnestly fascinated by the world around him, but it's presented as a score attack game where you wanna get better to have awesome speedruns with minimal losses. It wants to pressure you with a constant time limit, but there's true beauty in its world to appreciate. It wants you to be able to multitask between squads for ideal set-ups, but the learning process of enemies is the most fun part about the game! Ultimately, I think that Pikmin needed to grow from this first title - and I know in the future it did grow out from what this game set out to do - but I appreciate the unique little adventure all the same. It's clunky, but oddly accessible; if it didn't end up as an entire series, it'd be this fascinatingly unique cult classic! As-is... it's kind of that within its own series, anyway! A fun time to learn, but I eagerly await what future games hold for this series!