this being attached to pikmin is where a lot of the anger comes from, but even completely ignoring that it’s an absurdly boring game that overstays its welcome. there’s some small glimmers of fun (namely any level that focuses on the pink pikmin and changes things up) and the bosses are overall fine, but really only the final boss gets interesting and even then it’s nothing particularly special.

there isn’t anything awful about this game, it has some of the pikmin charm the series is known for like the cute little mid level cutscenes and the names/log entries of treasures. that isn’t enough to fix the insane amount of boredom this game has, if you think the concept sounds vaguely fun just go play kirby mass attack. it’s an infinitely more fun 2d platformer where you throw a ton of little guys around. this game sucked!

i was very apprehensive about this game early on. a lot of small things were bothering me, combat felt a little odd, the camera was annoying, and overall it just felt janky and bad! i was pretty close to quitting honestly, once i ran out of yellow orbs and realized that mechanic i almost decided it wasn’t for me and gave up. i didn’t though, and i’m really glad i didn’t cause after the initial awkward starting phase this game was really fun! once i got ifrit i was struggling significantly less and the game made a lot more sense to me and it was pretty easy and fun the rest of the way through.

the combat is pretty simple but it’s pretty satisfying, ifrit especially feels super satisfying and really opened the game up to me. that and understanding devil trigger and the moves you can buy. the game being so short works in its favor because i can see the combat and gameplay getting super repetitive if it tried to pad out game time but it was like a 4/5 hour experience and that felt like the perfect length.

enemy variety and bosses were not amazing but nothing stood out as obnoxiously bad either. i wish there was some more enemy types and especially bosses to change things up. i liked most of the bosses and to the games credit they do get new moves and patterns each interaction but it doesn’t change the fact that there are like 4 bosses you fight 3 times each. the final boss was new and super fucking cool though, the dumb insane demon transformation starfox section was sick.

the game looks and sounds great, the locations are decently varied considering you just kinda run around the same mansion for 90% of the game but it can get a bit stale and samey occasionally. the whole structure of the game is really odd, it feels like it really doesn’t want to be mission based and yet it still is. it leads to some odd missions where you kind of just go to an area to pick up a key, and backtrack to where you initially were to use the key and the mission ends. it’s not a huge deal or anything it just made me think the whole idea of mission structure was kinda odd.

overall a really solid first entry to a series i foresee myself really enjoying! i was expecting a lot more jank and dogshit but it was a pretty good time once i got past the initial hurdle. gold orbs are still a shit mechanic though, no video game should have lives!

at first I didn't really like it but as I played more and more and saw how the old levels evolve as you unlock more pikmin I enjoyed it a lot,

also the music, atmosphere, characters and everything about it is so good man,

peakmin 3