Fans of the Pikmin series will get everything they could want in Pikmin 4. It takes the best parts of all the previous games and combines them in a way that makes Hey Pikmin! seem like it never happened. This makes it the best game for controlling little plant things. Because it’s good for strategy.
Since fans had been waiting for more than ten years for a fourth game, it makes sense that it’s packed full of references and callbacks to previous games to make the wait worth it. Even though Pikmin 4 is kind of a “soft reboot,” it still has a lot of these references.
Louie’s Treachery
Most of the characters in this show are either brightly colored versions of good or… well, not “evil” per se, but “carnivorous.” Louie is one of the few characters who isn’t that simple. In Pikmin 2, he went with Olimar on his journey to settle Hocotate Freight’s debts until it turned out that he was the one who caused the whole thing. He ate a lot of Pikpik Carrots and racked up a huge bill. Want to be greedy? Yes, but that’s just plain stupid.
But in Pikmin 4, right? That guy is dangerous. Olimar seems nice in real life, but his diary writings make him seem disturbingly distant and childish. He is thought to have turned several crew members into Leaflings against their will by taking them into the Onion to try to get the Rescue Corps to stop caring. That’s a good reason, but when he takes charge of a huge dog and starts trying to kill you, things go horribly wrong. He also forgives very quickly. Long-time players will know that Louie’s downhill spiral is still going strong.
Olimar’s Adventure Deja Vu
The story of Pikmin 4 is a lot like the story of the first three games, and Olimar’s story shows this the most. For most of the game, you’re trying to find the famous captain himself after he sends out a signal for help. Once you find Olimar, you can play a side mode where you relive the events that left him stranded. It’s a very, very familiar game.
Anyone who liked Pikmin 1 will notice right away that Olimar’s story is very similar to the one in Vol. After arriving on PNF-404 (Earth), you’ll slowly catch each type of Pikmin in the same order as the original game. You’ll also have to find the same ship parts that do the same things in a more or less the same order, and you only have a certain amount of time to do it all, unlike the rest of Pikmin 4. In the extra material that comes after the game, Nintendo seems to have hidden a full remake of Pikmin 1. Fans will love it.
Emperor Bulblax and Co. Return
Emperor Bulblax, the last boss in Pikmin 1, was a scary thought. Up until that point, your enemies had either been about average size or had a clear weakness if they were bigger. That’s not true for the Emperor. Besides being huge, he fights you in a small area and is mostly tongue. All of that can lead to a lot of dead Pikmin if you’re not ready.
The Emperor is back in Pikmin 4, but thankfully he is smaller and less important than before. He’s now a recurring miniboss that’s pretty easy to beat if you use the new Ice Pikmin. This is a pleasing turn of events for fans of the series. The new Big, Tough Bulblax is called the Sovereign Bulblax, and it looks more like the Mighty Bulblax that long-time fans remember.
The Smoky Progg, a famous legacy enemy, and the rock-like Mamuta are also making a comeback. Their data entries support a long-running fan theory that they are related.
Pikmin 3 Crew Relatives
If you’re ready to put in the hours, Pikmin 4’s post-game is very generous and lets you play for twice as long. One of the main goals of these extra tasks is to find and save Yorke, Nelle, and Don Bergman (one of their names is different from the others). After you save them, you might notice that they look a lot like the available trio from Pikmin 3.
We mean “blatantly copied” when we say “rather reminiscent.” Yorke looks a lot like Alph, Nelle looks a lot like Brittany, and Don Bergman is probably Charlie’s cousin from the crime family. Even more clear is this in their bios and some flavor text, where it says that Yorke is Alph’s brother. No one knows why the Pikmin 3 gang couldn’t make it to Pikmin 4, which brings back all the important characters from the first three games. They could be on vacation.
Reimagined Dungeons
Dungeons were a big improvement over Pikmin 1 that made the game better than the first one. You could spend about 30 minutes spelunking every time you reached a cave. The normal planning action and the game’s timer would stop. People really liked these caves, and they were missing from Pikmin 3, but they’re back in a big way in Pikmin 4.
One bad thing about the Pikmin 2 caves was that they were randomly and automatically made. This meant that you would often get floors that either didn’t have anything on them or were too hard and full of enemies. I don’t think so in Pikmin 4. Each cave was carefully thought out and shows how clever Nintendo can be.
The Submerged Castle in Pikmin 2 is one that comes back with a new name. It turns out that some real level planning helps a lot. It has everything: Oatchi conveyor belt puzzles, boss floors where you have to change the temperature of the surroundings, and memory tests with buttons.
PNF-404 Revisited
The Pikmin games are set on Earth, which is pretty much a secret at this point. It depends on what fan ideas you believe about whether it’s a world after the end of the world (since there are no humans there) or whether everyone is just on vacation. The point is that it’s Earth, which makes it even more interesting when Olimar and his friends try to figure out what ordinary things are for.
Things get better in Drift Boss. You can now move past the planet’s gardens and farms and into a house for the first time. A house that looks immaculate and clean—take that, post-apocalyptic idea! The things you find also make it clear that time has passed since the first three Pikmin games. You will still find “relics” like GBA disks, but you will also find Switch Joy-Cons and huge 4K TVs. Tech and your Pikmin army keep going.
Hocotate Freight In Trouble
When you get Olimar and Louie back, they’ll sometimes talk about their job as long-haulers for the shipping company Hocotate Freight back on Hocotate. They are the company that Louie’s ravenous hunger hurt, and the CEO and the company’s long-suffering workers get some sly winks and nods in Pikmin 4. And to begin with, the President himself shows up in a conversation bubble.
Even more disturbing, Olimar writes in one of his data logs that he woke up from a bad dream in which a “subordinate” destroyed Hocotate Freight. It’s clear that this is talking about the story of Pikmin 2, but it does make me think about some interesting things. Were all the events in that episode dreams that Olimar had during this adventure? Have at least the first two games been thrown out of the story by retcon? Or does Olimar just not remember things? Honestly, Nintendo is the only one who can answer those. But no matter what the truth is, Hocotate Freight won’t be getting its money back any time soon.