![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
PIK. MIN. FOUR.
Jul. 26th, 2023 03:40 pmPikmin 4 came out! About a century after Miyamoto said it was nearly finished! IS IT GOOD?
YES. YES IT IS. (Mild spoilers)
Firstly, it's a brilliant gathering of ALL OF THE BEST OF PIKMIN. There are direct homages to the premise and objective of the first one, the brutal bosses and memorable cave maps of the second one, and returns of winged and rock pikmin from the third one. Indeed, all previous pikmin appear somewhere in the main game rather than being relegated to side stuff as purple and white were in 3. The game also follows tradition and introduces two new types, and while that aspect is a bit of diminishing returns - purple, white and winged are still best - they do their job fine. Perhaps the central raison d'etre of 4 is incorporating ideas previously found in mission / challenge modes into the main game, thus giving much richer and deeper gameplay than the short and fairly easy story of 3.
Not that 4 isn't a touch on the easy side at first; reaching the first set of credits won't tax most players, and it seems this is intentional, given the TV advert that pitches the game as a casual, Angry Birds-style game ideal for relaxing on the patio with your pets and a nice cup of tea.
But then. HOLY HELL does the game get tougher. There's a final boss which, while not directly comparable to that of 2, is clearly inspired by it. That comes at the end of lengthy cave that is essentially a boss run. There are bosses you've seen before in the series (from 1 and 2, Nintendo seem to agree with me that the bosses from 3 are best forgotten) but the developers know how you cheesed them before and have made changes to prevent that. There's a particular infamous boss that players never want to see again, so HAVE TWO OF THEM AT ONCE.
Which is not to say that the game is not, overall, more straightforward that 2. Locking on and charge return from three, and now locking on is unswitchoffable, and your companion space pooch, Oatchi, has a "rush" move than can one-shot small enemies and even larger ones once it's upgraded. For quite a lot of the game, enemies are just another kind of obstacle like an electric gate or concrete wall. This worried me as it took all of the tactics away from previous games, particularly 2.
BUT THEN, the game introduces the concept of "dandori". From the Japanese word for planning, it means you are essentially rewarded for how efficiently you play. This idea was present in side material such as 3's DLC, but this is the first time it's front-and-centre in the story, unless you count potentially running out of fruit in 3 or failing to find enough ship parts in 1. But those were entry-level dandori challenges. Here - particularly in the "sage leaf" side quests - you'll be punished for every little inadequacy.
It's like how games used to be, where average players were not expected to complete 100% of the game. I'm reminded of Banjo-Tooie and other games that hid deep, skilled challenges behind a colourful, newb-friendly veneer. It's so god-damn refreshing.
Which is not to say that all "dandori" material is of equal quality. The 1 on 1 battles are less about planning and more about grabbing random power-ups and success feels more arbitrary. Then there's the night missions. Now, this was an aspect I was looking forward to. I've never been keen on the fixed day length of every game and relished staying out, meeting new and perhaps bigger challenges similar to in Lightning Returns. BUT that's not how it works. The night missions are simple tower defence minigames that offer little exploration or variation. The problem with tower defence as a genre is that whatever the superficial trappings, the underlying gameplay is stale. I remember playing Magic Carpet back in the 90s, and while the two games couldn't be more aesthetically different, the gameplay is basically identical. So, while not terribly made, I was disappointed and bored by the nighttime content. (It's also a bit silly - instead of interleaving day and night missions, each takes up a full day, so if you select a night mission everyone is idle until it starts. That doesn't make a difference gameplay-wise, it's just a bit odd and feels not fully thought through, suggesting night mode may have been added late in development). I'd also say, on a subjective level, I never quite found the control system intuitive and basic things like getting on and off the dog, commanding the dog when not on it, selecting items to use and navigating the menus felt laborious.
There are other complaints that can be made. The game embraces the modern fad for RPG mechanics, meaning instead of starting with 100 max pikmin, you have to earn every 10-pikmin increment. Other returning features such as fire-resistance or the plucking whistle have to be purchased with in-game currency. A lot of game material is divided between NPCs as side-quests even though many of them are things like "get a lot of treasure" and "explore everywhere", leading to an unwieldy amount of boiler-plate repetition. There's also not much originality to the terrain of the main areas, with only one offering a backdrop that's distinctive and memorable.
These are minor niggles, though. For the most part Pikmin 4 is the game Pikmin 3 should have been and while Pikmin 2 will probably always be my favourite, Pikmin 4 is not far behind it.
PEEETMIN'S RATING: EIGHT AND A HALF OUT OF TEN
YES. YES IT IS. (Mild spoilers)
Firstly, it's a brilliant gathering of ALL OF THE BEST OF PIKMIN. There are direct homages to the premise and objective of the first one, the brutal bosses and memorable cave maps of the second one, and returns of winged and rock pikmin from the third one. Indeed, all previous pikmin appear somewhere in the main game rather than being relegated to side stuff as purple and white were in 3. The game also follows tradition and introduces two new types, and while that aspect is a bit of diminishing returns - purple, white and winged are still best - they do their job fine. Perhaps the central raison d'etre of 4 is incorporating ideas previously found in mission / challenge modes into the main game, thus giving much richer and deeper gameplay than the short and fairly easy story of 3.
Not that 4 isn't a touch on the easy side at first; reaching the first set of credits won't tax most players, and it seems this is intentional, given the TV advert that pitches the game as a casual, Angry Birds-style game ideal for relaxing on the patio with your pets and a nice cup of tea.
But then. HOLY HELL does the game get tougher. There's a final boss which, while not directly comparable to that of 2, is clearly inspired by it. That comes at the end of lengthy cave that is essentially a boss run. There are bosses you've seen before in the series (from 1 and 2, Nintendo seem to agree with me that the bosses from 3 are best forgotten) but the developers know how you cheesed them before and have made changes to prevent that. There's a particular infamous boss that players never want to see again, so HAVE TWO OF THEM AT ONCE.
Which is not to say that the game is not, overall, more straightforward that 2. Locking on and charge return from three, and now locking on is unswitchoffable, and your companion space pooch, Oatchi, has a "rush" move than can one-shot small enemies and even larger ones once it's upgraded. For quite a lot of the game, enemies are just another kind of obstacle like an electric gate or concrete wall. This worried me as it took all of the tactics away from previous games, particularly 2.
BUT THEN, the game introduces the concept of "dandori". From the Japanese word for planning, it means you are essentially rewarded for how efficiently you play. This idea was present in side material such as 3's DLC, but this is the first time it's front-and-centre in the story, unless you count potentially running out of fruit in 3 or failing to find enough ship parts in 1. But those were entry-level dandori challenges. Here - particularly in the "sage leaf" side quests - you'll be punished for every little inadequacy.
It's like how games used to be, where average players were not expected to complete 100% of the game. I'm reminded of Banjo-Tooie and other games that hid deep, skilled challenges behind a colourful, newb-friendly veneer. It's so god-damn refreshing.
Which is not to say that all "dandori" material is of equal quality. The 1 on 1 battles are less about planning and more about grabbing random power-ups and success feels more arbitrary. Then there's the night missions. Now, this was an aspect I was looking forward to. I've never been keen on the fixed day length of every game and relished staying out, meeting new and perhaps bigger challenges similar to in Lightning Returns. BUT that's not how it works. The night missions are simple tower defence minigames that offer little exploration or variation. The problem with tower defence as a genre is that whatever the superficial trappings, the underlying gameplay is stale. I remember playing Magic Carpet back in the 90s, and while the two games couldn't be more aesthetically different, the gameplay is basically identical. So, while not terribly made, I was disappointed and bored by the nighttime content. (It's also a bit silly - instead of interleaving day and night missions, each takes up a full day, so if you select a night mission everyone is idle until it starts. That doesn't make a difference gameplay-wise, it's just a bit odd and feels not fully thought through, suggesting night mode may have been added late in development). I'd also say, on a subjective level, I never quite found the control system intuitive and basic things like getting on and off the dog, commanding the dog when not on it, selecting items to use and navigating the menus felt laborious.
There are other complaints that can be made. The game embraces the modern fad for RPG mechanics, meaning instead of starting with 100 max pikmin, you have to earn every 10-pikmin increment. Other returning features such as fire-resistance or the plucking whistle have to be purchased with in-game currency. A lot of game material is divided between NPCs as side-quests even though many of them are things like "get a lot of treasure" and "explore everywhere", leading to an unwieldy amount of boiler-plate repetition. There's also not much originality to the terrain of the main areas, with only one offering a backdrop that's distinctive and memorable.
These are minor niggles, though. For the most part Pikmin 4 is the game Pikmin 3 should have been and while Pikmin 2 will probably always be my favourite, Pikmin 4 is not far behind it.
PEEETMIN'S RATING: EIGHT AND A HALF OUT OF TEN
