The Switch is showing its age, but Nintendo still has exciting releases in store for the console/handheld hybrid. After a decade of teases and vague confirmations, Pikmin 4 ($59.99) is finally here, and it was absolutely worth the wait. Featuring a combination of smartly streamlined and greatly expanded mechanics, as well as numerous beautiful locations to explore, Pikmin 4 delivers the franchise’s most exciting and strategic fun yet. It's an easy Editors’ Choice pick for Nintendo Switch games.
Serene Strategy
Aside from spin-offs like Pikmin Bloom, the core Pikmin titles are real-time strategy games. Instead of playing a general who commands soldiers to defeat enemy armies, you play as a tiny astronaut who plucks obedient plant-like creatures (Pikmin) from the ground. Combat helps your troops survive dangerous local predators, but the series is as much about collecting treasure and navigating the map as it is about warfare. Pikmin 4 explains this through the Japanese phrase “Dandori,” which roughly translates to “the art of efficient multitasking.”
Pikmin 4 will feel immediately familiar to Pikmin veterans, even with the developmental switch to the Unreal Engine. Strategy is an inherently tricky genre, especially on a console, but the game's combination of traditional buttons and a motion-control cursor feels as intuitive as in past titles, if not more so. In fact, my Pikmin 3 Deluxe muscle memory instantly kicked upon firing up the game. Subtle, almost unnoticeable tweaks to Pikmin behavior and auto-aiming make the title a smooth play, especially when you replay the older series entries.
Like Splatoon, Pikmin is pretty different from anything else in gaming, so the familiarity feels acceptable, especially considering how Pikmin 4 later builds on this foundation. Nintendo's representatives stressed that this entry should be an excellent jumping-on point, and I agree. Pikmin’s charm has always been repacking overwhelming strategic gameplay in a far more approachable form. It gives you the genre’s joys without the headaches.
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During my treks, I used red Pikmin to cross fiery hazards, yellow Pikmin to disable electric walls, and the new ice Pikmin to freeze enemies. On the surface, you only have so much time to explore during the day, about 15 real-world minutes, so you must plan accordingly to make the most of every second. In Pikmin 4, you can reposition your base so Pikmin don’t have to travel as far to bring back resources, such as upgrades to increase the size of your squad. Be sure not to leave any allies alone at night or you will lose them.
All Pikmin types return in Pikmin 4. However, similar to Pikmin 2, you can’t spawn all Pikmin at will; certain Pikmin species can only be found in the wild. This includes more specialized Pikmin from early games, such as poisonous white Pikmin and tough rock Pikmin. These Pikmin are powerful, but you must carefully manage them, adding another satisfying strategic layer. You can only have three types out at any given time, which also makes puzzles easier to wrap your head around.
Little Big Planet
The Pikmin series loves to play with scale, and that continues here. With the closer camera angle, Pikmin 4’s adventures feel even more intimate in these richly detailed natural settings. Pikmin 4 is an absolutely gorgeous release that captures the mundane beauty of “treasures” like a pile of grapes on the beach or a child’s lost toy caught in a spider’s web. If not for the time limit, I could spend hours marveling at this ant’s-eye view of the natural world, with its calming gentle music and ambient noises.
But Pikmin 4 is also the biggest Pikmin game so far. Although you only play as one captain, you arrive as part of an entire rescue team. As you find more castaways, your community expands with new side quests and details about the Pikmin universe. The areas you visit are deceptively dense overworlds, offering many puzzles to solve, treasures to collect, and challenges to tackle in whatever order you deem most efficient. Even after you see the credits, Pikmin 4 has plenty more to show you.
Pikmin 4 also has caves, a returning feature from Pikmin 2. This time around, the caves feature expertly crafted designs instead of randomized layouts. In these mini-dungeons, time slows so you don’t need to worry about returning to your ship. Instead, you focus on overcoming even more challenging encounters. Like shrines and the depths in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pikmin 4 uses caves to deliver bite-sized bursts of the game’s most intensely imaginative heights. Several boss fights had me hooting and hollering.
If that’s not enough, Pikmin 4 eventually lets you play spooky tower defense missions at night. Granted, you revisit old areas, but the gameplay calls for entirely new tactics. Initially, you’ll want to gather as many Glow Pikmin as possible before summoning your ghost mob on enraged enemies heading for your bases. The battles are brief, but they get hairy fast. Think of the Blood Moon, for another Zelda comparison. You’ll only need to play a few missions to advance the story, and you’ll be gifted with overpowered Glow Pikmin to use elsewhere in the game.
Although it isn’t as radical a reinvention as Super Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 4 displays a similar level of blinding polish and generous spirit. Playing thoroughly, it took me about 20 hours to finish the adventure, and the varied experiences kept me constantly entertained. It’s easy to fall into patterns with strategy games, sticking with plans you know work and never deviating. However, Pikmin 4 challenged my brain to see problems from new perspectives. I've always liked Pikmin, but marrying the time-tested tactics with this new and improved breadth and depth made me slowly fall in love with Pikmin 4.
Dog Gone
If Pikmin 4 is a strategy game, then Oatchi is a hero unit. This dog-like creature follows you like Pikmin, but performs its own special actions. For example, you can slam Oatchi into enemies to damage them, or into walls to knock items loose. Additionally, you can mount Oatchi to quickly ride across the map or do some light platforming. Oatchi can even follow various scents to find castaways, treasures, and other points of interest.
Oatchi gains strength throughout the adventure, and you can customize his abilities using a skill tree. Give Oatchi a stronger bite, or buff him so he can carry an army of Pikmin’s worth of cargo. Using Oatchi to complement strategies is a delightful experience. Like the relationship between the protagonist and demon in Bayonetta Origins, Pikmin 4 lets you fully separate from Oatchi to tackle two dilemmas at once. Oatchi is a great (and very cute) way to revamp Pikmin 3’s multiple captains into something simpler and more useful.
In addition, you can spend collected resources on healing items, bridges to new areas, or permanent upgrades like the ability to withstand cold or better spelunking equipment. Casually customizing your playstyle makes Pikmin 4 feel even more like your own personal adventure. It's a pleasing sense of macro strategy alongside the micro Pikmin tactics.
Limited, But Fun, Multiplayer
Multiplayer matches also return. Pikmin 3 had Bingo Battles that tasked you with collecting the correct treasures to fill out a bingo card. Pikmin 4 has Dandori Battles, where the goal is to just collect and earn as many points as possible. The result is much more directly antagonistic, in a fun way, forcing you to compete for the same loot on the same map. As you chaotically scramble to gather as many items as possible, your opponent may activate traps that cause boulders to fall from the sky. I won many matches by delivering a devastating bomb to an enemy base. It's fantastic, and is the closest Pikmin 4 comes to traditional strategy skirmishes like StarCraft II. Even the main campaign features several Dandori battles against AI opponents.
Unfortunately, Pikmin 4’s competitive multiplayer action is limited to local split-screen contests. You still can’t play online, and you can’t even play with two Nintendo Switch consoles via local wireless connections. Multiplayer isn’t Pikmin 4's main draw, but it never reaches its full potential, either. For robust, online multiplayer games on Nintendo Switch, check out Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 3, or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Pikmin 4 also has a co-op mode, but that has limited functionality, too. A second player controls the on-screen cursor and shoots enemy-immobilizing pebbles. It reminds us of old Wii games, like Super Mario Galaxy, that let less experienced players still help out with a second Wii remote. This entry lacks proper co-op play that lets one player control the captain and the other control Oatchi. That’s a missed opportunity.
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In Bloom
Pikmin has always been one of Nintendo’s most underappreciated franchises due to prior entries that felt more like offbeat experiments. But with Pikmin 4's fun and creativity, the strategy series blossoms into a top-tier Nintendo brand. Even with its multiplayer shortcomings, Pikmin 4 is a must-play Nintendo Switch game for veterans and newcomers alike.
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Nintendo's Pikmin 4 beautifully builds upon the franchise’s quirky strategy formula to deliver new mechanics and dense locales that make you feel even more like an interplanetary explorer.
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