Pikmin 4

 I just fully 100%ed Pikmin 4!

Not gonna go too in-depth talking about the game this time. Just my overall thoughts on the game.

So Pikmin 4... it was literally 10 years ago Pikmin 3 came out. ... fans have been waiting...and waiting... and waiting for a long long time to get a new game in the series.

So in this Pikmin game, we play as a rescue team who has been tasked with finding Captain Olimar, who has crash-landed onto a mysterious planet. Using the help of the Pikmin, we can recover lots of sparkly treasures that are used to expand the range of the Rescue Corps's radar, helping us on our search for not just Olimar, but also the many other castaways who are lost on the planet as well. ...The story is really just an excuse to run around gathering items again, and I don't mind that one bit. :D

This time around we play as a customisable hero, but the real star of the show is the new Rescue Pup named Oatchi. Oatchi is rather interesting - he behaves like both a Leader and a Pikmin at the same time! You can send Oatchi off to grab items or to attack enemies like a Pikmin, but you can also switch control to him and he will be able to whistle and command groups of Pikmin just like a leader. He's an incredibly versatile tool that adds a lot to your strategic options, and he's very cute too. :3 

Pikmin 4 is like a culmination of everything that made the previous three Pikmin games so good, while also introducing its own interesting ideas into the mix.

The general structure is most comparable to Pikmin 2, where there is no overarching day limit, and each area has many treasures to collect and multiple cave sub-areas to explore.

I would say that everything in Pikmin 4 is a vast improvement compared to how it was in Pikmin 2. For starters, the overworld areas feel much more full and fleshed-out this time around. In Pikmin 2, it often felt like the overworlds were very much secondary to the caves. They didn't really feel all that interesting or important in the grand scheme of things - they mostly just felt like hubworlds that housed the cave entrances, and not much like "real" areas in their own right... But in Pikmin 4, the overworlds really do have their own distinct challenges and landmarks that give them a presence of their own. They now feel just as fully-realised as the main areas from Pikmin 1 or 3 - while also having the cave entrances too.

The caves themselves are also improved - in Pikmin 2, the caves often felt a little bit samey and haphazard, largely due to their randomised layouts. In Pikmin 4, though, the caves are no longer randomised, and are now fully designed. They all feel nicely distinct from one another, and so I found them a lot more interesting to explore.

Additionally, there are two new types of caves that bring back game modes from Pikmin 3.

In Pikmin 3, you had the main story, plus two additional modes: a high-score challenge mode, and a 2-player battle mode. In Pikmin 4, they decided to take these extra modes and incorporate them into the main quest.

Some of the caves you find in Pikmin 4 don't lead to regular underground spaces to explore, but instead lead to either a high-score challenge, or a 2-player battle versus the computer. ....I find this to be a very interesting thing for them to do, because it brings into the main spotlight what was previously strictly side-content. It makes these two alternate styles of gameplay feel less disconnected from the overall Pikmin experience, and therefore less likely to be overlooked by players.

In Pikmin 3, the high score missions were actually my favourite part of the game, yet it seemed like most players never really bothered with them, since they were hidden away in their own submenu. ...I think Pikmin 4 incorporating these challenges into the main story is an ingenious way of making more players actually try them out. Haha. I love it.

This is by far the longest game in the Pikmin series. Pikmin 2 was already pretty long (for Pikmin standards), but Pikmin 4 feels more than double its length! :D 

The game's approach to its difficulty is also interesting - the controls are very much simplified, and the Pikmin's behaviour is much improved (they are less stupid now). This means that the difficulty doesn't come from fumbling and accidentally drowning all your Pikmin anymore, but instead the difficulty comes from the strategy - coming up with a plan and executing it properly. How many of which types of Pikmin to bring? Where to go first? Should I tell Oatchi to go to the far end of the map while I explore nearby? Will we have enough time to fight a boss AND build the bridge as well? ...that sort of thing. It feels more focused on the strategy, and less about the messiness of making sure your army of idiots isn't running off and getting themselves killed.

I kind of prefer this style of difficulty actually. As fun as it was to see the Pikmin get distracted so easily in the older games, I think having tighter control over them makes for a less frustrating game overall. It really is all about the strategy now.

I will say, however, that I think they went a bit overboard with the simplifying of the controls - most annoyingly with the cursor's auto lock-on feature. You can't turn off the auto-target, which can make it rather fiddly if you want to throw a Pikmin somewhere other than where the game thinks you're trying to throw them. It gets especially messy in situations with lots of different enemies surrounding you, as the game doesn't let you easily un-target an enemy. They really should have included an option to turn off the auto-target mode in the game. ...other than this issue, the game is pretty fun and smooth though.

Heh...

It's interesting... Pikmin 1 and 3 are both very short-form adventures, designed around replayability and incremental improvement across multiple playthroughs, while Pikmin 2 and 4 are both longer, more in-depth adventures that have a longer campaign full of challenges to work your way through.

That being said, Pikmin 4 actually manages to integrate the best parts of 1 and 3's replayability into the longer campaign format. It's actually kind of the best parts of all previous games combined into one! ...And there's a cute dog too!

I'm very pleased with Pikmin 4! ...I just wish there was a way to turn off the auto-target cursor lol. Because then it would be perfect. :D