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Nintendo has made its reputation on the kind of approachable fun that would let a child pick up a controller and learn the ropes within minutes–in fact, many millions of children by now. In the case of Pikmin 4, the fourth entry in a relatively niche franchise (by Nintendo standards) that mixes strategy and puzzle elements, the company seems especially keen to prove it’s an entry point for new fans. This was a point made explicitly during a presentation at a recent hands-on demo, and more importantly, it’s woven into the fabric of the game itself.
For starters, the story is no longer following the travails of Captain Olimar. As detailed in a recent trailer and in the game, this time you actually take charge of your own explorer, a custom-created character. While the hands-on didn’t include the character-creator section, the pre-fab characters were noticeably imbued with the off-kilter, Charlie Brown-esque cartoonish style of Olimar. Olimar has crashed on a strange planet, leading to a daring rescue mission that also crashed. Oops. You’re the backup, sent not only to rescue the series’ recognizable mascot, but also the crew sent to save him.
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Now Playing: Pikmin 4 — Venture Forth, Brave Explorer! — Nintendo Switch
As a practical matter that makes it a less lonely affair than its predecessors, Pikmin 4 is bursting with other humanoid characters who can serve to explain its various systems and lend a hand. Instead of an isolated mission surrounded by silent plant-creatures, you’re part of a crew. And given that Pikmin can be fairly dense with systems to manage, that’s a welcome change. They are still largely tutorial givers and systems hubs, but they have some character.
Your human(ish) crew aren’t the only new companions, as you’re also accompanied by a faithful dog-like creature called Oatchi. Oatchi is essentially a Super-Pikmin. It can do most basic, non-elemental Pikmin tasks, and it starts out with the strength of three Pikmin. That means, for example, that if an object takes five Pikmin to lift, you really just need Oatchi plus two Pikmin. Once he grows up, which he did about halfway through my demo, he gets upgraded to the equivalent of five Pikmin.
Oatchi even has its own skill tree, letting you upgrade how efficiently it works or how effective it is at combating enemies. You may be able to max it out over the course of an entire playthrough, but at first, it’s a nice way to make up for any deficits or just augment the best strengths of your strategic approach.
If you do run out of time during the day and think you can squeeze more productivity out of a day, Pikmin 4 makes it easy to rewind time and start over at any point. While Pikmin 3 lets you restart the day after finishing a run, now you don’t have to wait until it’s over to begin again. It’s a small but noticeable quality-of-life feature to help pave over any disastrous mistakes.
On top of the standard surface exploration, the ground is littered with small entrances to underground areas, self-contained puzzle rooms that have no time limit. The one I tried was relatively easy, but these are said to get more difficult the deeper you go. In the wake of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it felt a little like a kid-friendly version of diving into the Depths. You descend into a cavern, spend some time using your tools to resolve issues there, and then emerge with more loot and resources. In Pikmin 4, though, the underground is differentiated from the surface area by pausing the game clock. Rather than the day-night cycle that exists in the surface level, you have as much time as you need to finish these puzzle rooms. That should afford the ability to make them much more complex than your average puzzle on the surface, which needs to be solved within a reasonable amount of time to make progress before it gets dark.
Everything I played in single-player was relatively early in the game, so it had the relaxed cadence of the home gardening hobby that inspired the series. That wasn’t the case for the new Dandori Battles versus multiplayer mode. Dandori was cheerfully described as a Japanese term referring to efficient planning and organization, which makes sense as a central focus of Pikmin. To make the most out of your days, you need to use your time wisely and assign the right types of Pikmin to accomplish their tasks quickly before regrouping for the next treasure hunt. Dandori takes that concept and makes it a split-screen competitive experience, which means being more efficient than your opponent while also messing with each other.
The competitive element makes Dandori Battles much more frenetic than anything else in the game. Not only are you marshaling your Pikmin to collect treasures, you’re also trying to take treasures from your opponent and ramming into them with your Oatchi to throw off their game. You can even utilize randomized item boxes a la Mario Kart and deploy special tools like stink bombs to disrupt your opponent. While this is notably at odds with the usual relaxed pace of Pikmin, it worked well enough thanks largely to the addition of Oatchi as a more directly combat-focused creature. As a relative newcomer pitted against a Nintendo rep, I lost these battles handily–honestly, it wasn’t even close–but it was fun regardless. I think I ultimately spent too much time going after my opponent and not enough cultivating my own treasure, but with a bit more practice, I might be able to hold my own in a rematch.
The contrast between the lighthearted, relaxed campaign puzzles and the frantic Dandori Battles can be jarring, but they don’t feel disconnected from one another. The versus mode is just much more fast-paced, like playing the regular game in fast-forward and juggling more tasks simultaneously. In that way, the inviting, relaxed pace of the campaign feels especially vital. Pikmin 4 is a welcoming experience for newcomers on the whole, while the Dandori Battles show the upper skill ceiling you can achieve if you keep working to perfect your Pikmin skills.
