Pikmin 4 Reviews
While it fails to recapture a lot of what has made the series special and addictive over the years, Pikmin 4 is still a unique and fun experience despite its shortcomings.
Pikmin 4 contains some fresh ideas and quality of life features, but it still feels a little too simplistic from a gameplay and story point of view.
Pikmin 4 isn’t quite the best game in the series, but it’s certainly the most confident. With this new entry, Nintendo has decided to wipe away much of the past tedium in favour of ensuring moment-to-moment gameplay is more enjoyable than ever. But eradicating its past frustrations also removes much of the challenge and depth from the game’s battles and puzzles. Commanding its multicoloured armies and pilfering this planet of its treasures while gathering a motley crew of comrades kept me enraptured for hours, just don’t come into this expecting the harsh journey back home to be little more than a leisurely stroll.
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.
Pikmin 4 is an incredibly charming and fun experience for the most part, but its new additions aren't quite revolutionary enough to stave off a feeling of repetitiveness in the later hours.
Pikmin 4 is a pleasant, relaxing game that serves as a nice entry point for newcomers, with occasionally odd high-pressure segments.
The new and returning creatures of Pikmin 4 are charming and delightful in every way possible. The new entry in the franchise is about as casual as a real-time strategy game can be with a handful of visual upgrades, calculated boss battles and a variety in Pikmins that will keep you treasure-hunting for hours on end. It is, without a doubt, a very solid addition to the Nintendo Switch catalogue.
A mostly-good collectathon with some occasional leaps into greatness that showcase its true potential as a series, but it doesn’t commit enough to these to become truly great.
A curious world of delightful wonder, Pikmin will never fail to be a series that invites warmth and joy with its vibrant world and colourful companions. New gameplay ideas are plentiful with Pikmin 4, many of which work towards expanding the game in interesting new directions. Not every new mechanic lands as elegantly as others, with Night Expeditions and co-op mode being two notable disappointments. Though overall, Pikmin 4 still finds a way to bring about that same glee that has lasted within this series since its inception.
Although the core mechanic is not unique anymore, Pikmin 4 proves that it can still be fun and engaging to control your little army through a variety of nicely designed levels thanks to a few tweaks to the series formula.
Pikmin 4 is a delightful continuation of Nintendo’s adorable strategy franchise. An expansive set of maps to explore with well-thought-out puzzles above and below ground make for an incredible adventure with your little pluckable allies. Apart from a few monotonous dungeons and a lack of boss variety, Pikmin 4 substantially improves upon the standards set by previous entries and sets a new standard for the series.
Pikmin 4 is the best and most entertaining RTS game of Nintendo Switch. It is a game that deserves to be tried by the players with the innovations it adds without harming the structure of the series.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Pikmin 4 lets go of the reins and just lets me do my thing. The mixture of discovering, puzzling, fighting, collecting and multiplying Pikmin works perfectly and excited me because the variety and level structure always motivated me intrinsically. And oh, is it all cute. The night sections fit in just as well as the Dandori matches. Even better, though, is the integration of Ochin the dog, who feels so incredibly natural as part of Pikmin 4 and actually enriches the gameplay. This also lets me overlook the stale visuals. However, it's less easy for me, especially when it comes to the introduction and the dialogs in general. So much blah. So much blub. It unfortunately interrupts the flow over and over again and instead somehow tries to tell some kind of plot, but unfortunately in the end it's a mixture of dull and stupid. But that's not why I'm playing Pikmin 4, I'm playing it because action-strategy is served up in such a likeable, fun and creative way that I rarely get to experience elsewhere. Anyone with even a hint of affection for the genre should not miss it.
Review in German | Read full review
Pikmin 4 emerges as a vibrant evolution of a beloved franchise. While it might not be perfect, its array of innovations, accessibility, improved gameplay, and delightful narrative make it a journey worth embarking upon. Its horticultural world has grown into a formidable forest in the gaming landscape, proving that this franchise is no mere garden variety.
Pikmin 4 is a smart and content-packed refinement of one of Nintendo’s most underrated series, but long-time fans may be put off by how long its generous campaign takes to get going.
Pikmin 4 exhibits the most demanding and multifaceted use of the series mechanics yet, with several situations and game modes that push your ability to strategically think and plan ahead under pressure. Pikmin 4 deftly accomplishes several things: staying true to the challenge and identity of the Pikmin series while expanding its ideas, making its concepts and obstacles more approachable, and simply being a beautiful and charming realisation of the Pikmin world.
Pikmin 4 is largely a strong step forward for Nintendo and is a game that both longtime fans of the series and newcomers should find a lot of enjoyment with. Even though some new aspects that Nintendo opted to include in Pikmin 4 got stale quickly, the basic gameplay loop remains quite satisfying and features far more than ever before for you to sink your teeth into.
The finest execution of the Pikmin philosophy to date. With any luck, Nintendo will see this as an opportunity for a dedicated spinoff, and continue to build on the excellent foundations it has established here.
Pikmin 4 may not be GOTY candidate, is not on everyone's lips and will probably not gather a massive following. However, its simple, carefree pleasure in great quantities is more than enough to make it worth your time.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Though faithful fans might be put off by a more laid-back sequel that’s over-eager to hold players’ hands, Pikmin 4 is a purposeful reconstruction of Nintendo’s most niche series. A stressful comedy of errors becomes a digestible puzzle-strategy hybrid that gives players valuable organization strategies that are just as useful in real life as they are on their Nintendo Switch adventure.