Unsurprising for a game by a studio with a flair for introductions, Pikmin 4 starts out giddily smacking you upside the head with visual splendor and thematic demonstration. But because that same studio is also wracked with anxiety at the thought of a story being misunderstood, the following hour is filled with a lot of rote, over-explanatory dialogue.
In some ways this throat-clearing is understandable, as this strange, fussy game without much precedent outside of the previous entries in the series is more or less geared toward casual gamers. But the decision to dump all this information all at once, especially when the vast majority of it comes via text, will be decidedly un-fun to players of all stripes.
The game’s bumpy early stretch is at least softened by the litany of delectable visual delights, teeming with lived-in details. Gardens are littered haphazardly with hand tools, falling cherry blossom leaves suggest a gentle snowfall, and beaches are dotted with sandcastles and flotsam, with a strandline marking the memory of the tide that rushes in at midday. Though much of the soundtrack lays low in the background (as if not trying to distract you from the tasks at hand), it still deserves some special mention for the way it occasionally pokes its head up from the soil, blossoming into songful, alternately sour and sweet melodic hooks.
Pikmin 4 also has the same convincing tactility that imbues games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons with a fragile sense of life. It’s nifty to find recognizable objects hidden around the world that your minuscule character is exploring, but it’s more important that when you come across, say, an oral thermometer, you can almost feel it squeezed firmly under your tongue.
As in previous entries in the Pikmin series, alien descriptions of otherwise ubiquitous objects are the delightful punchlines that bring the whole concept together. The separated halves of a nesting matryoshka doll become a “Mama Doll Head” and “Empty Vase,” a tennis ball becomes a “Sphere of Fuzzy Feelings,” and a skateboard is now a “Personal-Injury Plank.”
Give Pikmin 4 enough of your time and these small joys work beautifully in tandem with the soothing repetition of real-time planning and execution, sustaining a pleasantly stimulating flow. It’s also a game your mind has a way of drifting toward even when you’re not playing it, such that in idle moments you may find yourself thinking of how a strategic optimization might improve your performance once you dive back in. And that sort of optimization of tasks and organization of your team—think of it as Nintendo’s take on the Japanese concept of dandori—is the core of Pikmin 4’s basic gameplay loop. It’s all very pleasing, but if it sounds an awful lot like, well, every other Pikmin game before it, you wouldn’t be wrong.
So, Pikmin 4 isn’t revolutionary, but it brings to the table new bells and whistles. There’s Oatchi, the adorable dog-like creature who acts as a second commander, a pikmin tansport machine, or extra muscle during tougher combat encounters. He’s a good boy. Then there are the Dandori Battles—head-to-head races in special caves that can be played either multiplayer or against the CPU, complete with random, Mario Kart-style powerups and tug-of-war battles between pikmin. But these are a bit of an unfocused mess, and, if anything, their tendency to devolve into button-mashing disarray is a reminder of how delicate a balance the whole dandori thing is.
As for the unlockable night expeditions, these are relatively straightforward, but they’re also refreshingly sharp and tense. Like an extra shot of espresso in your morning coffee, they’re a perfect change of pace if Pikmin 4’s daily routine is leaving you feeling fatigued or worse.
The game retains the various pikmin, tiny creatures that seemingly only come out of hiding to help you complete tasks, from previous games, and introduces two new species: ice pikmin, which can freeze enemies and bodies of water solid, and glow pikmin, which are only available underground and can stun enemies. In total, these changes add up to some nice refinements and a mixed bag of twists on an established formula, but there’s a little bit more here, and it comes in the form of the evocative visuals that are fetching from beginning to end.
If the Pikmin series has one thing that it wants you to take away from each game, it’s to see the world with the same naïve wonder as its various exploring protagonists. Before now, this message felt somewhat distant, like something you could miss if you didn’t reach out and grab it. But this series’s commitment to realism is better served on the Switch, and its message—that you should approach your surroundings with the intentionality, curiosity, and joy of someone seeing them for the first time—punches you straight in the gut whether you want it to or not.
This game was reviewed with code provided by Golin on July 21.
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