The long-awaited Pikmin 4 is nearly here. Ahead of its launch on July 21st, you can already download a free demo of Pikmin 4 on the Nintendo E-Shop. Unlike some demos Nintendo has released, Pikmin 4 will allow players to progress from the demo to the full version of the game. There is also a reward for Pikmin Bloom players that can be unlocked by finishing the demo. Being the giant Pikmin nerd I am, I had to try it out.
In the first two Pikmin games, the protagonist is the Captain of the SS Dolphin, Olimar. In Pikmin 3, Nintendo changed how the game is played by introducing new characters. While finding some of Olimar’s notes along the way to give tips and tricks, the story is told from the perspective of Captain Charlie and his crewmates, Alph and Brittany. Pikmin 4 initially felt like we would be returning to the Captain Olimar era of Pikmin games, but oh, how wrong I was!
In fact, after crash landing, Olimar sends out an SOS to the Rescue Corps. The Rescue Corps is made up of 6 people plus their dog Oatchi. Unfortunately, they crash too. Someone should put up some yellow tape around this Bermuda triangle of a planet. Who did they call on? Me, of course! For the first time in a mainline Pikmin game, the protagonist is a product of a character creation tool. I do love a good character-creation tool. I won’t be playing Pikmin 4 as Olimar, Charlie, Alph, or even any of the Rescue Corps veterans. I’ll be playing as myself…or, more accurately, as my gaming persona, Erek.
The first order of business is to find and locate the captain and her crew of the Rescue Corps. After finding the first two people and Oatchi, rescues slowed down quite a bit, but we got some valuable information. This planet is rich with treasures that can have their sparklium extracted and used to repair and power up the Rescue Corps ship. Everything is so big, though. Oatchi can help, but we’ll need a lot more than he can carry on his own. Fortunately, Olimar has sent along some notes that indicate the local wildlife is not all hostile. Small plantlike creatures that he named Pikmin are friendly and very intent on being helpful to us.
Pikmin come in all different types. For the demo of Pikmin 4, I only got to see a sampling of what will be available. I could use Red, Blue, Yellow, and Ice Pikmin. I still fully expect that Rock, Winged, White, and Purple will be available, but in what capacity, I am unsure. Also, it was announced that the game would feature nighttime excursions that no Pikmin game has had in the past, using a new type of Pikmin called Glow Pikmin.
As rescues were made, we saw that, unlike its predecessors, Pikmin 4 hopes to stand apart by providing NPCs to help you progress further in the game. I have some trepidation about this because it tends to flirt with the idea of skill trees. I hate skill trees…with a passion. Despite this, it still made Pikmin 4 feel much more expansive and complex than any Pikmin game before, and I will never be upset about having more to do in a Pikmin game.
One major change from Pikmin 3 is Bingo Battle. Bingo Battle was a 2-player competitive mode where players would each command a group of Pikmin and would have to collect items on a bingo card. The first to get a single-line bingo would win. Some things offered the ability to power up friendly Pikmin or attack enemy Pikmin. It had two major downfalls. The first was that the other player could get blocked from completing a bingo by collecting items in short supply.
After a while, the game would drop golden orbs that filled in a random spot on the bingo card. I called these “welfare orbs” because my wife would grab them when they dropped to give herself an edge. That brings me to the other problem. My wife was literally my only opponent ever because neither the Wii U version of Pikmin 3 nor the deluxe edition available on the Switch had an online play or the ability to play against CPU with different difficulty settings. My wife enjoys Pikmin but can’t beat me in Bingo Battle without welfare orbs. I never had a true challenge in Bingo Battle, and the inability to change that was a huge misstep.
Nintendo looks to fix at least one of these issues in the competitive mode introduced in Pikmin 4, Dandori Battles. Dandori, as Pikmin 4 explains, is the philosophy of time and resource management to get the most done in the smallest amount of time. To that end, Dandori battles are only 3 minutes long, and instead of filling out a bingo card, players work as hard as possible to collect as much as possible, and whoever has the most points at the end is the winner. No bingo cards should also mean no welfare orbs. The demo has a dandori battle to introduce players to the concept. Hopefully, the Dandori Battle mode will feature CPU players, or even better, would be the option for online play. There has been no official word on either, but I believe the fandom stands ready to riot if there’s no way to play online.
The demo ends at the end of the day upon collecting 1500 units of sparklium. There is so much more to explore and discover. There are treasures to be found, hostile alien creatures to fight, people to rescue, and Dandori Battles to win. Pikmin 4 promises to be the biggest Pikmin in the franchise to date, and I am so excited to share my thoughts with you after I get my hands on the full version of the game.
