Pikmin 4 Review: A Beautiful Treasure (Switch)

Fans have waited almost a decade for Pikmin 4 to be released. Although all three previous installments have been ported to the Switch, we finally get to see what a next-gen Pikmin game looks like. This is by far the most beautiful Pikmin game and shows that the Switch still holds up to this day graphically. Pikmin 4 is the perfect entry point for new players and still offers a lot of fun for series veterans. There are plenty of new features to keep things fresh while still maintaining the foundation of what makes a Pikmin game so engaging. Pikmin 4 brings some of the highest highs of the series but also takes a few steps back in certain areas.

Pikmin 4 is now available on Nintendo Switch for $59.99 USD. 

Story – Simple but Sweet 

The Pikmin series has never been known for having a deep story. However, the story in Pikmin 4 while still simple, is light hearted and charming. This time, players create their own character instead of playing as a set character like Captain Olimar in previous titles. Players can choose the gender, skin tone, body type, hairstyle, hair color, and suit color of their character. Character customization is an excellent addition to the series, as players can create their own cute and quirky character that adds charm to the game. 

The character you create is a new recruit of the Rescue Corps. Captain Olimar has crash landed on a mysterious planet and sent out a distress signal for help. Members of the Rescue Corps go to save Captain Olimar but are met with the same fate and crash land on the planet in need of rescuing themselves. It is up to you, the new blood of the Rescue Corps to save everyone that has crashed landed with the help of the Pikmin. 

As players rescue members of the Rescue Corps, they will also find other castaways on the planet. These castaways also received Captain Olimar’s distress signal and all came to the planet for varying reasons. The more players explore the uncharted planet, they will run into a mysterious being known as a Leafling. These leaflings look similar to the castaways but have fur around their whole body and a leaf sticking out of their head similar to Pikmin. There is one Leafling that is capturing the castaways and turning them into other leafings.

Pikmin 4 Leafling

 The goal is simple: save the members of the Rescue Corps and other castaways. Find out what happened to Captain Olimar. And find a way to cure the Leaflings and return them to normal. As players continue to save more castaways, you can have conversations with them. The castaways are all fun and lively characters to interact with. After saving members of the Rescue Corps, they will have charming conversations together at the end of each day. While the story is nothing complex, it is charming enough and perfect for a simple strategy game like Pikmin 4. 

Gameplay – Optimized Foundation

Even though Pikmin 4 introduces plenty of series firsts, it also optimizes the foundation of the Pikmin formula almost to a fault. Pikmin 4 is the first Pikmin game that cannot be played with a Wii Remote. This is a big deal because most fans, myself included, believe that the accuracy of the Wii Remote’s motion controls is the optimal way to play Pikmin. Pointing the remote at your desired location allows for great strategy and fast multitasking that any other control method cannot match. 

The control method for Pikmin 4 is more akin to the original control on the GameCube or playing with the Pro Controller on the Wii U. The cursor always points in the direction the character is facing. When there is an object that you can throw Pikmin at, the cursor automatically locks onto it. This is fine when items are spread out, but the issue arises when fighting a group of enemies. For instance, if you are fighting a Bulborb that has Dwarf Bulborbs following it, things can get chaotic fast. If players take out the Dwarf Bulborbs first and then try to take out the regular Bulborb, the cursor will lock onto the corpses when fighting the Bulborb. 

Optimized Onions 

Like every other game, the Onion houses all of the Pikmin you grow. Like Pikmin 3, you can store every type of Pikmin in one Onion. However, Pikmin 4 has made a few changes to the Onion. This time, you must collect the Colored Onions to sprout the Pikmin color. However, you can store Pikmin in the Onion even if you have not collected their corresponding Colored Onion. This is a great change since it still allows a variety of Pikmin in the early stages, but players must be cautious of losing Pikmin that they do not have the Onion to. 

Onion and Base

Another change made to the Onion is the amount of Pikmin you can take out of it at a time. For instance, at the beginning of the game, you can only take out 20 Pikmin at a time. As you progress through the game, players can find Fralics, which look like pale Onions, which increase the amount of Pikmin you can have in a squad. This makes players decide what to do first since they cannot multitask immediately. It also adds a sense of accomplishment when their squad capacity grows. The best new mechanic of the Onion is that you can now move the Onion and home base around the stage in designated areas. This helps efficiency tremendously since you and the Pikmin do not have to travel across the whole map to bring back resources. 

There is a new type of Pikmin, the Ice Pikmin. These cute little guys can freeze bodies of water you can cross to access new areas. Ice Pikmin can also freeze enemies when they attack them. However, if you kill an enemy while frozen, it will shatter and not leave behind a corpse. This means you cannot bring the corpse back to the Onion to grow more Pikmin.

Ice Pikmin

A big disappointment is that players can only have three types of Pikmin out in the field at once. In previous entries, players could have every kind of Pikmin in their squad and were only limited by the total Pikmin they could have. Only having three types of Pikmin in your squad limits the productivity and multitasking you can do. At first, this was not a big deal since the early stages only required three types of Pikmin to be efficient for the most part. However, in later stages, I constantly ran back to the home base to swap Pikmin types, which wasted time out of my day. And the biggest fault of this mechanic is that we can no longer see every type of Pikmin in a squad together. Seeing the colored Pikmin together was always one of the best parts of a Pikmin game. 

Oatchi, the Space Dog

Oatchi is the best new addition to Pikmin 4, and not only because he is adorable. In Pikmin 2 and 3, players could control multiple characters to divide tasks to improve efficiency. Oatchi acts as another playable character who can go on his own and give Pikmin tasks. However, what makes Oatchi different is his abilities that can be upgraded. He can sniff out Treasure and castaways, jump, dash into breakable objects and enemies, swim across the water, and carry things with the strength of a squad of Pikmin. All of these abilities can be upgraded to make them more efficient.

Oatchi

The best part of Oatchi is the ability to ride him. Not only does this make traveling much easier, but having all of the Pikmin ride on Oatchi protects them from danger. When not riding on Oatchi, the Pikmin will follow behind the player in a large group. This can make it challenging to keep them from being attacked when fighting enemies, especially when the attacks can kill multiple Pikmin at once. 

Tracking More Than Treasure 

The main goal in Pikmin 4 is just like every other Pikmin game: use your Pikmin to solve puzzles, fight enemies, and bring back treasures to the home base. Pikmin 4 has the most variety in gameplay during the main story out of the series. Collecting treasures will increase the amount of Sparklium, which allows you to unlock more stages. This game also has the most Treasure to collect out of the entire series, leaving players with plenty to do. However, he biggest disappointment, though, is the replayability factor. Once a player 100% completes an area, there is nothing to do. The enemies do not respawn, leaving the areas as barren wasteland. 

Along with Treasure, players can also collect resources called Raw Materials. These Raw Materials allow Pikmin to build bridges and other structures to access new areas in a stage. You can use Raw Materials to buy gear from The Lab after players unlock it. The gear is also a new welcome feature to Pikmin 4. Players can purchase gear such as the Treasure Gauge, which shows a meter when close to a treasure. Or the Homesick Signal, which calls all idle Pikmin to return to the base when they have finished a task. 

Russ will use raw material to make new gear

As mentioned, the main objective is to rescue castaways that have also crash-landed on the planet. Saving these castaways will unlock new features like The Lab and side quests that reward Raw Materials. To rescue castaways, players will have to search for them by fighting enemies, going through caves that make a return from Pikmin 2, and completing the new Dandori Challenges and Battles. Some of these castaways have been turned into Leaflings, so it is up to you to return them to normal. 

Take the Night 

Night Expeditions is new to Pikmin 4, where players can explore the surface at night for the first time. Players must collect glow sap in Night Expeditions to cure the Leaflings. During these Night Expeditions, players will team up with the new Glow Pikmin to protect the mounds they live in called Lumiknolls. The Lumiknolls produce the glow sap that cures the leaflings. However, the enemies become more aggressive at night and attack the Lumiknolls. During this mode, you can only use Glow Pikmin. You are given a certain amount at the beginning of the night. Players can grow more Glow Pikmin by collecting piles of star-shaped rocks and returning them to the Lumiknoll. 

Glow Pikmin

You can throw Glow Pikmin at enemies to attack like any other Pikmin. However, they also can charge up into a ball of energy that charges towards an enemy that stuns them. Night Expeditions play like a tower defense game. Protecting the Lumiknolls through waves of enemies is a fun change of pace for the Pikmin series. The nights are also shorter than the regular day cycle, so if you only want a few minutes of gameplay, the Night Expeditions are perfect. 

The Way of Dandori 

Dandori is the art of organizing your tasks strategically and working efficiently to execute your plans quickly. This is the main theme of Pikmin 4 and is repeated to you constantly. Throughout every stage, some caves hold Dandori Challenges and Dandori Battles. During the Dandori Challenges, a Leafling will challenge you to collect Treasure and obtain a certain amount of Sparklium under a time limit. Like the meaning of Dandori, these challenges will test how fast and efficient you are. Upon completing a Dandori Challenge, players will be awarded a ranked medal from bronze through platinum. The Leafling will also give you a castaway upon beating the challenge. 

Dandori Battles are similar to the challenges, except you compete against a Leafling with their own Pikmin. These Battles have a time limit, and whoever has the most Sparklium wins when the time runs out. During the battle, you can throw Pikmin at your opponent to steal the Treasure from them. There are also power-ups that you can find around the stage. These power-ups increase the speed of your Pikmin or even stun your opponent. 

Dandori Battle

Like previous Pikmin games, Pikmin 4 has a multiplayer mode to challenge friends. The multiplayer is just Dandori Battles but against your friend, not a computer. This is fine as a multiplayer mode, but a downgrade from Pikmin 3. The Bingo Battles were loads of fun and unique, with having to collect certain items. In the Dandori Battles, the goal is just to collect more than your opponent. 

Visual and Audio – Beautiful and Grounded

Pikmin 4 also introduces a brand new camera angle for the series. Traditionally, the Pikmin series has had a top-down perspective like most real-time strategy games. This time, Pikmin 4 has an over-the-shoulder camera angle that players can freely control. The new perspective makes the game feel more grounded and immerses players in the world as they explore. The ability to freely move the camera lets you take in all of the beauty and detail that Pikmin 4 offers. 

Pikmin 4 is the best-looking game in the series and maybe even the most beautiful game on the Switch to date. The grass and dirt immerse you in nature, and the dark, barren caves give a sense of unease as you explore them. The most impressive graphical achievement in Pikmin 4 is the water. How it reflects the light and surrounding area and how it ripples as you swim is nothing short of astounding. When players walk through certain terrain, the sound of walking changes. Walking dirt and sticks have a crunch to them while going over a metal brings has a ringing tin to it. 

While the music in Pikmin 4 is not that memorable, it is very atmospheric. the music helps immerse you into the world and does not distract from the beauty of the game. This does not mean that the music is bad, in fact it is a great OST. There is no score that you will be humming to but that’s okay. 

Pikmin 4 was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch.