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[Marvel14]

I loved Pikmin 3. Multitasking and organising with 3 protagonists to achieve Dandori heaven was joyous and hugely satisfying- both in the main game and the extra modes.

So how does Pikmin 4 compare? Well it ups the ante in terms of "modes": night missions, dandori battles, as well as the regular main mission, cave and dandori challenge modes. There's a lot to do, a new "on the ground perspective " that is more immersive and the different modes have a different feel.

- the main mission is a fairly relaxed affair. Rewinding time, having plenty of time and no limit on how many days it takes let's you take things easy without guilt.

- caves are fairly self contained but I found them a little tiring after a few sub levels. There's something about the design of these that doesn't make you look forward to them.

- night missions are stressful survival mode. Fun done once. And I guess cool that the challenge is affected by what you do in the day but not really taken advantage of.

- Dandori battles are OK.. a bit chaotic and difficult to follow and fully grasp at first but even once youve got them they don't grab you and encourage replays to get higher medals.

- Dandori challenges are classic Pikmin and still very satisfying but in my opinion Pikmkn 3 Deluxe's additional challenges are better. More intricate and more strategic with more moving parts to have to work with.

Overall, the game is a lot of fun..There's a lot of content and a lot to do but it doesn't evolve and become more advanced and sophisticated as you progress - which makes progress less satisfying than it should be.

Somehow it's not fully satisfying- the parts of the game don't quite all hang together and lack an additional layer of difficulty/mastery to keep you wanting to keep playing. The use of.non Pikmin weapons which can replace Pikmin to complete boss fights is also a bit weird. It is definitely NOT an"essential" or 10/10 and I'm a big Pikmin fan. Pikmin 3 felt more cohesive and more fun to replay with a real incentive to improve your skills and performance.

This is perhaps best illustrated by a sidequest with Olimar where you have a limited number of days to complete his story and I was so excited. I thought it was going to be really challenging and i would fail a few times and have to have several goes at it and improve my performance gradually. I completed it on my first go..and it became a very fun but far too limited distraction.

That summarises my overall assessment nicely.

Also Nintendo you have to get better at:
1. not repeating the same cutscenes.and completion animations ad nauseum. They need to vary if you're going to.have the player see them dozens of times (TOTK, BOTW have this too).

2. Give us more to do with resources if you're going to have us collect lots of them. To.end the game with loads of unutilised resources degrades the value of those resources and part of your play experience (Luigi's Mansion's cash is another good example)

3. Please give us a Pikmin 5 with lots of replay value and layers of challenge that builds on the best of Pikmin 3 and 4.
 

Pretty please.

 

[zombrex]

I agree with everything you said. On one hand Pikmin 4 is great game, you can tell they finally listened and tried to add back all the things fans wanted like old enemies, longer game, dungeons and collecting real world items. The biggest problem with the game unfortunately is just the difficulty is simply far too easy and for a variety of reasons including player stats / enemy stats / lower complexity of levels / low enemy placement and overall just very conservative game design. As the game progresses the difficulty does not increase at all.
Unfortunately it seems to be because of top down Nintendo oversight as it is a trend across all Nintendo games. Pikmin has also been heavily marketed to women and children in Japan and I think they now see it as a game series that needs to have accessible difficulty.

For me best part of the game was the dandori battles / challenges but, most of them I beat first try then a second to get the platinum medal. Most of them don;t need maximisings trategy to win. Pikmin 3 challenges were more interesting / challenging.
My hope for the game is we can get a hard mode DLC and new DLC challenges but considering the bloated playtime of the game it seems unlikely. Pikmin 4 could have easily been the best in the series had they just got the difficulty balance right. It doesn't need a time limit just to have actual problem solving and the player having to actual think and make choices where there isn't always a obvious best approach and instead trade offs that need to be considered.

 

[Woopah]

It's my favourite game of the year so far, loved the huge amount of content and all the different things to do. I did find challenge in getting platinum, and in going for the best times in the post game.

But I agree the main story was too easy.

 

[RoboFu]

I slept on this on released but recently bought it and damn!!! ... its another stellar Nintendo game for 2023! so much better than 3.

 

[sloppyjoe_gamer]

Just recently played the demo and im loving it so far.....based on my time with the demo, can someone confirm that in the final game:

-The main missions or ones where you have the timer.....is it a pain in the ass and you have to rush, and is there a limit on the number of days you have to finish things?
-Is there the same timer on night missions, or are they like caves with no timer and more relaxed

 

[Woopah]

Just recently played the demo and im loving it so far.....based on my time with the demo, can someone confirm that in the final game:

-The main missions or ones where you have the timer.....is it a pain in the ass and you have to rush, and is there a limit on the number of days you have to finish things?
-Is there the same timer on night missions, or are they like caves with no ⁶timer and more relaxed

No limit on the number of days, but there is a limited amount of time available per day (time goes slower in the caves).

There are still various mission types where you have a time limit, or you need to do things in an efficient/quick way (Dandori!)

There are timers on night missions, but it isn't the timers that are challenge. Night missions are not designed to be relaxing.

The beginning of the game is the worst part, so you should love the rest.

 

[Yoshi97]

Just recently played the demo and im loving it so far.....based on my time with the demo, can someone confirm that in the final game:

-The main missions or ones where you have the timer.....is it a pain in the ass and you have to rush, and is there a limit on the number of days you have to finish things?
-Is there the same timer on night missions, or are they like caves with no timer and more relaxed

1. It's pretty chill and even when a day ends you can hop back in for another day right afterwards. 2. Night missions are pretty much like a tower defense mode. They're short but chaotic (not super challenging though), and a lot of fun imo. But keep in mind it's not like being able to walk around the overworld at night its more like a seperate challenge mode (that you have to do some of to beat the main story). I'd recommend getting the game if you loved the demo, it's more of that and never gets boring. A borderline 10/10 game for me.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

If FF XVI didn't exist this would've been my most disappointing game of 2023.