Game Information
Game Title: Pikmin 4
Platforms:
- Nintendo Switch (Jul 21, 2023)
Trailers:
- Pikmin 4 — Your First Expedition with Pikmin — Nintendo Switch
- Pikmin 4 – Pik How You Play – Nintendo Switch
- Pikmin 4 – Discover What’s Possible with Pikmin – Nintendo Switch
Developer: Nintendo
Review Aggregator:
OpenCritic - 88 average - 100% recommended - 40 reviews
Critic Reviews
Atomix - Alberto Desfassiaux - Spanish - 96 / 100
CGMagazine - Steven Green - 8.5 / 10
Checkpoint Gaming - Elliot Attard - 7.5 / 10
ComicBook.com - Logan Moore - 4 / 5
Console Creatures - Bobby Pashalidis - Recommended
Daily Mirror - Scott McCrae - 5 / 5
Daily Star - Tom Hutchison - 5 / 5
Destructoid - Chris Carter - 9.5 / 10
Digital Trends - Giovanni Colantonio - 4 / 5
Digitally Downloaded - Matt Sainsbury - 4 / 5
Enternity.gr - Nikitas Kavouklis - Greek - 8.5 / 10
Eurogamer - Tom Phillips - 5 / 5
GAMES.CH - Benjamin Braun - German - 89%
Game Informer - Kyle Hilliard - 9 / 10
GamePro - Dennis Michel - German - 83 / 100
GameSpot - Steve Watts - 7 / 10
GamesHub - Edmond Tran - 4 / 5
GamesRadar+ - Sam Loveridge - 4.5 / 5
Geeks & Com - Anthony Gravel - French - 9 / 10
Glitched Africa - Marco Cocomello - 9 / 10
God is a Geek - Adam Cook - 9.5 / 10
IGN - Jada Griffin - 9 / 10
IGN Spain - David Oña - Spanish - 9 / 10
LevelUp - Pedro Pérez Cesari - Spanish - 8.5 / 10
Metro GameCentral - GameCentral - 8 / 10
Nintendo Life - PJ O’Reilly - 9 / 10
PCMag - Jordan Minor - 4.5 / 5
Polygon - Emily Price - Unscored
Post Arcade (National Post) - Chad Sapieha - 8 / 10
Press Start - James Mitchell - 8.5 / 10
SECTOR.sk - Michal Korec - Slovak - 9 / 10
Siliconera - Jenni Lada - 10 / 10
Spaziogames - Gianluca Arena - Italian - 9 / 10
Stevivor - Matt Gosper - 9 / 10
TrustedReviews - Gemma Ryles - 4.5 / 5
VGC - Andy Robinson - 4 / 5
Wccftech - Nathan Birch - 9 / 10
We Got This Covered - Shaan Joshi - 4.5 / 5
WellPlayed - Mark Isaacson - 9 / 10
Well, the other two games are definitely shorter, but the dungeons in Pikmin 2 felt like padding and tedium to me, which is not how I’d like to see a game lengthened. There were a lot of cheap deaths too, like bombs or enemies that just fall from the ceiling and instant game over, and being unable to replenish your forces felt antithetical to the loop that made the game fun. Apparently I’m in the minority though.
I mean it’s been almost 20 years since I played Pikmin 2, so I’d have to replay it to see if I still feel the same way, but from playing the demo of 4 I’m thinking I do still like the dungeons. For me, I like that time stops (or I guess in the new one, it’s slowed way down?). I like to get as much done as I can in one go, limited only by my own survival skills, and hate the constant threat of “OHP HEY IT’S NIGHT TIME, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND GET YOUR ASS TO CAMP!” that you get on the surface. I hate being rushed, it’s why I don’t like true RTS games like Starcraft. Pikmin 1 almost crossed that line, what with it rushing you to find all the treasures in a month or whatever. Almost makes me feel like I have to follow a guide, when I just want to go explore at my own pace instead.
But hey everyone’s different, I don’t think your opinion is invalid or anything, and i’m hoping you still enjoy 4!
I’m so jaded by Nintendo at this point that I don’t think I’ll even play 4 (I haven’t even picked up Tears of the Kingdom), but if there was any hope of me picking it up, it was gone when I saw dungeons. The constraint of how much you could do in a single day was a large part of what made Pikmin fun for me, since you had to plan carefully. That need was dampened but still present in 3, and in Pikmin 2, it was basically replaced with these dungeons instead.
That’s fair. From the demo, I can’t tell how long some of these dungeons will be towards say the end of the game, but the ones I saw so far were much shorter. I think it’s a nice balance in that way. I think Pikmin 2 had dungeons that were what, up to 100 floors deep or something? THAT was a little overkill.
As for TotK, I will say that I got burnt out on BotW before even getting halfway, but this one made BotW feel like an unfinished Beta or something. Much more fun, much more to do. I actually beat it haha