To its great credit, Pikmin 4 does a gentle job of rolling out new Pikmin, items, and abilities at a pace that won’t overwhelm with too many options too soon. It’s not a full-on real-time strategy game like StarCraft, since there’s no base-building and outside of the newly added night missions you don’t have to worry about an enemy army attacking you back, but there’s always a lot happening on screen when you have dozens of these multicolored minions doing things like digging tunnels and carrying treasures and you’re literally hurling them into combat.įor those jumping into Pikmin for the first time, it can seem like a lot, especially with nine types of cutesy creatures to master, having to split your attention between multiple objectives, and learning to manage your resources. Much of the fun and strategy of Pikmin games comes from collecting and commanding different types of obedient little plant creatures to do your bidding, and generally avoiding sending them to their doom. A sandy beach reveals new paths to navigate and enemies to battle after the tide recedes, and a house with multiple sets of stairs becomes mountainlike until you find a way to create ramps so your tiny followers can recover the treasures hidden inside.

A simple garden filled with (literally) larger-than-life insects and flowers that tower over you is filled with obstacles like a broken potted plant that blocks a passage and a puddle in the dirt that becomes a small lake.

Įverything from the soil on the ground to the foliage everywhere on the maps is vibrant, and each location feels distinct. Pikmin may not be as popular as Nintendo’s other biggest names, but what it often lacks in mainstream popularity is the intensity that some fans have for the series including renting out ad space on a billboard in Times Square to promote it.

Thanks to all of the Pikmin games being made available on the Switch, it made it very easy to see just how far the series has come. Charmingly most of the treasures you end up collecting are named after their appearance, so “Space Spinners” and “the Stone of Advancement” are really just fidget spinners and a Game Boy Advance SP. Pikmin 4 continues the series’ tradition of playing as an alien the size of an ant exploring an Earth-like planet that is probably actually Earth. However, I spent far more time taking in the beautiful worlds of Pikmin 4 than checking out my own character.

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