Pikmin 4 Review: What Is This, a Game for Ants?
I missed the start of the Pikmin series on the Gamecube and, given the platform’s poor sales, I have to assume I’m not the only one. By the time a third game came along it was on the Wii U, an even duddier dud. The games have managed Metroid-like sales of around one million each title, and not even Switch ports could boost them much higher. Miyamoto recently expressed his disappointment that the series isn’t more popular and I agree, so for those of you who don’t know what a Pikman is, I’ll explain it. They look like this: “Now
THERE’S a Pik-MAN” It’s a management game in the same vein as Lemmings… which you also haven’t played unless you’re 40 years old. Let me start over. You lead an army of ant workers to collect materials and fend off dangerous animals, some of which have anatomical buttholes. Let me start over. The fun of the series lies in figuring out the most efficient ways to collect items while minimizing the risks to your squad- the more groups you have working across the map at once, the more satisfying the gameplay becomes, and Pikmin 4’s more open maps allow for
more workers to fan out than ever before. Previous worlds were often full of spindly trails that forced at least some linearity into the exploring, while the new areas
more than the earlier games. The unlimited time coupled with the return of caves makes this most like Pikmin 2 mechanically. Caves work basically the same way as before; they fill a similar role to the dungeons in a Zelda game, interrupting the free exploration and committing you to a more focused challenge that unfolds one floor at a time, often with a boss at the end. They vary between quick two-minute bursts and gargantuan 20-level multi-boss gauntlets, some of which have massive difficulty spikes- which isn’t a bad thing. In fact, my favorite moment of the game is a
cave that sends you in with the wrong pikmin type- and just as you barely get a handle on that an even greater threat appears. After the comparatively mild caves up until that point, this one pulls the rug out from under you… and then pulls the whole damn floor out, but the surprising cruelty of the challenge is what makes it memorable and fun. Even the largest caves can be tackled in short sessions if needed, as the game allows players to leave at the end of any floor and return to wherever they left off later. Caves also
have a minimal impact on each day’s time budget; the longest ones will equate to the passing of just a few minutes on the surface, and you can continue entering them right up until the final ten seconds of daylight, making it possible to knock out large numbers of them each day. The fact that you have to knock out large numbers of caves became a problem for me; in some areas the vast majority of content is hidden within them and they get really repetitive when done back to back. There are just a few cave templates that get
reused again and again and they’re not especially interesting to begin with; it feels like a missed opportunity to have all these caves and not experiment with a lot of different ideas. That problem extends to the surface areas as well- three of which share almost the same theme, with an indoor setting being one of the only big departures. The previous game relied a lot on basic seasonal changes between areas, but that was enough to make them feel differentiated. Most of the boss fights also take place in caves, limiting their scale compared to the usual open air
arenas. The sense of adventure on the surface is also reduced by their absence; coming across a lair unexpectedly was more exciting to me than just reaching one at the last cave level, where it’s fully expected. There was also something satisfying about hauling the post-boss spoils across the map like trophies. The lack of world variety made the vast amount of content start to feel like a bore in the later missions, even if I never completely lost interest. The replay value of the main game is bolstered by dozens of sidequests and a new upgrade shop that provides
helpful items and major ability boosts- my favorite is a beacon that summons all idle pikmin at once, almost eliminating the need to backtrack to your ship entirely. There’s a separate upgrade tree for your dog, Oatchi, who is another positive evolution of the gameplay. Rather than switching between captains to multitask, you can send Oatchi around the map using the extremely helpful “go here” command from the last game and then assume control of him any time with a button press. He’s capable of hauling as much weight as a squad of Pikmin and can also kill most small
enemies in a single dash, which borderline breaks the game… but is so useful that I don’t really mind. Pairing his charge attack with ice Pikmin is especially busted- this new Pikmin type can freeze water hazards to allow any Pikmin to cross them, but can also freeze enemies solid when enough hits are delivered. Loading Oatchi up with a dozen or so is enough to freeze even some bosses on impact. The only thing keeping this from being too abusable is that ice Pikmin can’t reproduce until fairly late in the story. The game is also rounded out by
night missions, horde rushes that mostly remove item collection from the mix and put all of the emphasis on action. The simple intensity of fighting off enemies is a welcome rest from the meticulous planning of the normal gameplay, and the mode can be enjoyed without any risk of losing Pikmin from your main squad. Glow Pikmin, another new type, are used instead, and have the elemental resistances of all other Pikmin rolled together. The low stakes keep the mode fun even when your base gets wiped out- or baseS in the tougher missions- and there’s so much room to
change and improve strategies that I never hesitated to jump back in and retry when things went off the rails. There’s a similar level of forgiveness added to the main game by the rewind feature- whenever your Pikmin are massacred, either due to a cheap hit or dumb mistake on your part, you can go back several minutes and try again. This doesn’t trivialize the difficulty since players could already do this in past games by restarting the entire day; the save scumming fans have always done is just faster and more convenient now. Mass losses are inevitable in these
games, but this feature takes the sting out of them. Those who miss the ticking clock element from Pikmin 1 and 3 can get their fill of it in a sidegame starring Olimar, who is given 15 days to collect 30 parts. Every piece is mandatory and the pressure is pretty high compared to previous Pikmin games, enough that I failed on my first run, so if you prefer more stress there’s plenty to work with here. The battle mode from Pikmin 3 has been incorporated into the main game in the form of dandori battles, which are almost the
opposite of night missions. These focus on fast item collection with combat taking a relatively smaller role. The time trial versions are a lot of fun to replay and improve on if you’re a perfectionist, but the split-screen battles are mostly irritating. The cut field of view dramatically hinders visibility and I found that I was always too focused on my tasks to ever look at the CPU screen anyway. Whenever the split would have been helpful, like when a bomb was inbound, the action was never on-screen. This mode also seems to have the most intense concentration of control
and AI frustrations in the entire game… There have been tweaks to the mechanics that make sense on paper; the cursor now automatically locks onto any nearby objects, making it easier to target erratic or airborne enemies. Pikmin tossing is briefly locked once the necessary number has been thrown at an object, eliminating the guesswork of counting button presses. As introduced in Pikmin 3, the whistle takes two beats to summon workers engaged in a task and just one for those that are not, allowing you to selectively call idle Pikmin when the screen is cluttered. There are scenarios where
all of these features are helpful, but more often than not they suck an overwhelming amount of ass. Despite the motion option there’s no free gyro aim- the cursor doesn’t move until the throw button is held, and its range is tethered closely to your character. That makes it a lot slower to swing between targets, especially during sudden ambushes. Having the cursor positioned and ready before an enemy even finished jumping out of the ground was a major advantage in Pikmin 3, and it also made it simple to move in one direction while freely targeting in others. Tying
the cursor to character movement is utterly stiff and outdated in comparison. The extreme cursor stickiness becomes a major frustration when multiple targets are close together and there’s no way to disable it; thanks to the overzealous lock, gemstones and pools of nectar become magnetic death traps when enemies are nearby. Instead of urgently targeting the predator that’s eating your squad, the cursor will latch to a nearby treasure or dead bug. And if you want to keep tossing anyway just to flood the area with backup, you’ll be slowed down by the toss limit kicking in. The limit also
gets in the way when you want to send a surplus of Pikmin to quickly move objects out of harm’s way or speed up a time trial. Pikmin need to crawl up the legs of a spider enemy, but the autolock instead gets stuck on the body that most pikmin can’t even reach. To work around it, you have to lock on and then strafe around until a leg is in the way. It’s a totally unforced error in a game that provides players with a manual lock-on system. That lock has problems of its own, like the fact that
it somehow feels less sticky than the auto lock; its extremely frail hold suddenly breaks and leads to Pikmin flying off a ledge instead of at the target. But you’re often forced to rely on the manual lock to fight back against the auto lock, holding the button for dear life when the cursor happens to end up on the correct object. Even when you do lock to the right target the Pikmin will often go to some other object instead. In some boss battles it feels like you’re fighting your squad instead of the enemy, watching them swarm decoy
targets instead of the one you’re engaged with. The whistle delay makes this harder to deal with since you can’t pull your Pikmin away from whatever stupid thing they’ve decided to do without hovering on them for several moments. You know what. Stay. The controls also just flat out fuckin’ bust sometimes, in a non-specific way… and I respect that. These issues started as minor annoyances but made the game feel borderline unplayable as the challenges ramped up; the overpowered assists just get in the way instead of helping, and even when they work the scheme can’t live up to
what Pikmin 3 was doing a decade ago. It wouldn’t quite be a Pikmin game if the AI wasn’t a little stupid, but it’s a little too stupid. They’ll run straight into fire instead of moving slightly out of the way of a hazard. They’ll avoid wide open spaces and make a beeline into a small obstacle, get stuck, abandon their simple task and attempt an impossible one instead. Pikmin that have been ordered to stay put will run off into harm’s way to do tasks they weren’t instructed to and then die. The FUCK are you doing? After clearing
a safe path to deliver items, my Pikmin were dying in droves after abruptly switching to an unexplored path full of dangerous enemies. Once I cleared that path, they went back to using the first path again. In Pikmin 3 I was disturbed enough by squad members dying that I would restart entire days to avoid it… but when the bastards bit the dust in this game it felt like they deserved it. Thank you! The UI and tutorials have always felt intrusive and heavy handed in these games, even causing Pikmin losses by interrupting fights, but 4 may be
the worst in this regard. For lack of a better way of describing it, the menus are “gummy;” every prompt takes a few seconds to respond to input and it makes simple browsing take longer than it should. The Oatchi dismount button has to be held to open the menu for commands and items, and I noticed the presses I made in that interface resulted in the D-pad shortcuts being activated when returning to the game. It’s a fucking mess, and a clear downgrade from where they left off in Pikmin 3. It would have been so much better to
have kept the free aiming from that title, with the auto-lock cursor still available as an option for those who want it. There’s no topping the Wii remote’s infrared aiming but Pikmin 3 Deluxe proved that it could at least be approximated on Switch, at the cost of major calibration drift. The “Ask the Developer” interview shines a light on why the controls regressed: the developers were so concerned with expanding the series to newcomers that they chose to automate most of the basic actions. Flexibility was reduced in favor of the game constantly deciding how to play for you,
and it constantly decides wrong. This could easily be fixed with a patch to make the toss limit and auto-lock optional, but Nintendo isn’t always responsive to fans when it comes to things like this. I should say that the gameplay is still miles ahead of the original, where the controls were even clunkier and the pikmin even dumber; as bad as they are in 4, they don’t phase through floors or randomly trip on a flat road, get lost, and then die. But there are isolated cases where the aiming is easier to control even in those early games.
Pikmin 4 is a fine game with a lot of content and charm to offer but I found it harder to enjoy than 3. Nintendo overengineered it in a way that will probably frustrate experienced players, and I question whether the assists will really help newcomers or just piss them off too. Pikmin 3 was my introduction to the series and, having since played the others, I still think it’s an excellent place to start. So if you’re new to the series I’d recommend beginning there, and with the Wii U version if possible, for the eight of you that
have one. Pikmin 4 is still a better entry point than the first two and is well worth playing in general, but it might be best to wait and see if a control patch materializes first, or at least a patch to remove the buttholes, or to add buttholes to every other creature to make things consistent. PICK A SIDE. Eh, never liked him anyway.
