Pikmin 3 (Wii U)

The planet Koppai faces a terrible crisis. Having depleted most of their planet’s food, the inhabitants look to the stars in the hopes of not just finding something they can eat, but something they can cultivate to permanently avoid the looming famine. Just when things were looking dour, a far-off planet provides hope with its wealth of fruit that positively dwarfs these pint-sized planet explorers. Alph, Brittany, and Charlie all take off to this new planet to gather up all the fruit they can to help save their homeworld, but at the end of each day, they’ll need to consume some of their findings just to be able to survive the trip. What sounds like a tight pressure placed upon the exploration in Pikmin 3 actually turns out to be less of a concern than what you might think, the original Pikmin game’s 30 day hard limit much stricter because, while finding food is the main objective here, the juice you get from your scavenging is rarely in short supply and Koppai only needs the seeds. While this does mean you’ll likely never be at risk of failing the mission, Pikmin 3 is thankfully not a survival game, instead focusing in on your management of the little plant people called Pikmin.

 

The player will control Alph, Brittany, and Charlie directly while exploring the lovely naturalistic world they find themselves on, able to even swap between the astronauts as they please to help manage the daily workload. However, the trio can’t do much on their own, and with hostile wildlife and many barriers blocking their path, they end up relying on an unusual mix of flora and fauna called Pikmin to accomplish tasks and fight back against predators. Pikmin will usually follow your orders pretty diligently, the player able to toss the tiny humanoid critters wherever they want them to work or attack. The Wii U Gamepad’s touchscreen makes this fairly easy, the player not tapping the destination on the pad so much as tapping a certain distance for the Pikmin to fly when tossed. You can adjust it with ease and only rarely did it feel like there was a bit of fuzziness in the game detecting where I was trying to aim or trying to throw. Up to 100 Pikmin can trail behind your team at one time, any extras staying near your ship’s landing spot and waiting in reserve so you can call them out as needed. To actually collect the fruit the Koppaites need, they’ll have to order Pikmin to carry it, different objects having different requirements for how many must carry them as well puzzles and obstacles keeping them out of reach until you put your Pikmin to work. Sometimes the Pikmin are a bit goofy about their pathing, getting caught on a bit of wall and getting separated, but they are inherently disposable in some ways even though replenishing them requires active work like finding special pellets or bringing animal bodies for conversion into Pikmin sprouts.

There are certain tasks every Pikmin is capable of completing, from building bridges to being used to counteract the weight of scales you’ll need to walk across, but what makes the Pikmin more interesting aides during exploration are their variations. Pikmin come in five main varieties (although there are two additional colorations available in the game’s multiplayer battles and challenge missions) and each one has some unique advantage or performs certain actions better. A Red Pikmin is completely immune to fire while the Blue Pikmin are able to walk underwater without drowning, but the third entry in the Pikmin franchise also introduces two new types: Rock Pikmin and Winged Pikmin. Most Pikmin attack hostile fauna by latching onto them and repeatedly bashing them, but since a Rock Pikmin’s body is literally a jagged rock, they can’t latch onto things easily and instead smash into them. That hard body means they deal more initial damage and can even break through tough crystals or carapaces, but they aren’t very good at long term work like breaking down walls of compact dirt. Winged Pikmin present a more interesting range of abilities, their ability to fly letting them do things like safely fly over a lot of danger like small enemies or bodies of water, but they’re fairly weak in a fight so while they’re flexible in joining varieties like Blue Pikmin, they’re also not going to be the most suitable pick for situations that don’t explicitly require their flight. There are other small differences that can influence even how you manage a group with all colors, a Red Pikmin’s attacks being the strongest while Yellow Pikmin can be thrown higher and further due to their light weight, the game never demanding you micromanage the secondary strengths and weaknesses but you can make your work more efficient and carve out advantages even when the game isn’t explicitly demanding a Pikmin choice through some hazard only one type can handle.

 

The environment of the planet you find yourself on, PNF-404, is a beautiful and mostly natural environment, and with the Koppaites not even being an inch tall you get an interesting perspective where flowers and grass are as tall as trees to the little trio. Your adventures on the planet take you to a good range of biomes as well, the player guiding their Pikmin through areas like a snow-covered tundra and autumnal river while those different locations can have unique considerations like needing to ride lilypads to cross water or caverns with large plants to walk across that only sprout in the light. As you get to work in each of the game’s five major locations, you’ll start doing things that make traversing such spaces easier in the future, breaking down barriers, building shortcuts, and generally learning the lay of the land, the game even allowing you to have your crew automatically walk off towards a destination you mark on your map if you want to start managing multiple small projects across the whole area. When a day ends in Pikmin 3 you do need to get back to the safety of your ship to avoid dangerous nocturnal creatures, but days last around 13 minutes and progress on jobs that alter the environment are saved for your next visit. The fruits that serve as your main goal aren’t too hard to spot but gathering them up will often involve altering the environment or facing foes with your gradually growing Pikmin army, and while throwing your minions or locking onto a foe and ordering a charge is mostly how you’ll engage something dangerous, there’s more to the battles than just rushing them with all your forces.

The unique wildlife of PNF-404 have a wide range of attacking styles that mean a fight is often about managing when to pull back and which Pikmin to send in. A Swooping Snitchbug flies high and swoops down to try and grab your Pikmin and plant them back into the earth, but a Fiery Blowhog goes for the more straightforward approach of just belching flame at your army to try and roast them. Some creatures like a Dwarf Bulborb can be taken out immediately with a good throw, but others like the Joustmite have a hard shell that requires you attack from the right angle while they try to spear your Pikmin with a fairly accurate proboscis. Pikmin 3 can be a little too kind at times, if a Pikmin who doesn’t resist fire, water, or electricity is hit by them, they’ll spend some time freaking out and you can use the whistle your characters use to order the Pikmin around to calm them down and help them recover, this making some enemies like the Bearded Amprat that builds up static in its fur to shock your Pikmin less fearsome since you can just whistle to help any shocked Pikmin bounce back. This doesn’t mean the game lacks fauna that pack a punch though, crushing from something like the rocks the Armored Cannon Larva spit out still able to flatten tons of Pikmin in one go if you’re not careful. The bigger animals are what you will come to fear the most though, because while there are boss enemies that usually must be overcome to get valuable items and continue the story, there are also fearsome beasts waiting to be found out in the world. The Sandbelching Meerslug that can make large sand traps to swallow tons of Pikmin with ease is a boss that might strain your reserves and ability to respond quickly, but so can bumbling across the towering Baldy Long Legs spider that can walk to newer parts of the level with ease and even lure you towards more dangerous locations if you want to fight it for the fruit it protects. The game’s final boss in particular feels like a wonderful test of all the actions your Pikmin can do and the type of foe that can wear your army down if you aren’t good at learning when to send Pikmin in or call them back.

 

Pikmin 3’s main adventure provides a good mix of working to overcome the natural terrain and facing down creatures where the right Pikmin choice can sometimes swing the battle a fair bit, but even if you try to grab every fruit on the planet you can carry, Pikmin 3 can feel like it goes by rather quickly. It’s not short, but even when you’re not using the three captains to their fullest to delegate a range of tasks, you can still make a lot of progress in a single in-game day. There are two additional ways to play the game though, mission mode presenting new small areas where you’ll be far more limited in time and what resources are available. While these can take the form of races to collect as many treasures as you can, defeat enemies, or rematch bosses, the game controls which Pikmin you’ll be able to find and making strategic choices on priorities are much more important if you want to earn a good score in these optional challenges. Bingo Battle though is an interesting approach to competitive multiplayer, the battle not just about pitting your Pikmin army against the other player’s in a fight. Instead, you’ll be given a bingo card with a range of tasks on it like finding certain treasure or recovering the bodies of slain creatures. You and your opponent will compete to get a match on the 4 by 4 card first, players able to try and block each other and sabotage work but still have room for adjustment if their plans go awry. There are other factors to spice things up too, like the item roulette for collecting cherries where you can get items like a rock fall on the enemy team or they could get an Ultra-Spicy Spray that briefly makes your Pikmin move and act much more quickly. A Victory Macaroon can be enabled too where each player’s home base has a special macaroon the enemy can try to steal and return home for a different win condition, this game mode much more engaging because you can attempt many strategies or adjust on the fly to keep things consistently competitive.

THE VERDICT: Pikmin 3 lands on a satisfying mix between overcoming the environment with hard work and fighting in battles where smart play can earn you cleaner victories, and while it could have afforded to pressure the player more since the Pikmin can survive a little too much and the fruit collection doesn’t really have much of a chance to be dire, the lovely world you explore still keeps you engaged as you’re always on the hunt for new opportunities. You don’t need to optimize too much to succeed, but the right choices and play will pay dividends in how swiftly things get done and ensure you won’t spend much time rebuilding after a rough encounter, Pikmin 3 easily able to pull you in as you keep conceiving of your adventuring schedule for the next day’s work.

 

And so, I give Pikmin 3 for Wii U…

A GREAT rating. There are some little touches from earlier Pikmin games missing here, the fruits not the most interesting collectible compared to the treasures you found in previous titles. While reading the previous protagonist Captain Olimar misinterpret the use of objects and giving trash and toys lofty titles was amusing, Brittany’s attempts to make the fruit sound interesting fall a bit flat, often only able to speak about their taste save for the rare spark of inspiration like her thinking a kiwi fruit’s furry exterior is an attempt at looking like one of the predators of PNF-404. There is still plenty of charm to be found though despite diverging a touch from its predecessors, Pikmin 3 generally feeling creative and there is room for some personality to come through like the end of day logs by the three astronauts or how they interact should you choose to view their conversations aboard the ship. The Pikmin are versatile but specialized in ways that do influence how you approach even a simple interaction as you figure out how you want to distribute your work force or what you’re willing to risk in a tough skirmish. A boost to difficulty can be found in Pikmin 3 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch which likely helps to balance out moments like your Pikmin not having to worry too much about certain hazards, but you’ll still loose some of your helpful companions in the line of duty because there are definitely encounters that won’t hold back when it comes to crushing and killing Pikmin. Perhaps some ideas like the desert area from Mission Mode could have done better as a full-fledged location in the adventure to make it feel more full-bodied, but while you’re beavering away at your chosen workload, Pikmin 3 doesn’t feel like it’s missing much of anything. You’ll have your mind at work planning what to do, how to do it, and what benefits the current tasks provide that can help more tasks get done. Having three characters available can help avoid the player waiting on jobs to complete as they can split the group and their focus so there’s not too much downtime waiting on a task’s completion, and the range of unique creatures also necessitates frequent shifts in approach so it’s not just a checklist of chores keeping the player occupied.

 

There are little niggling issues that crop up with Pikmin 3, like how you can throw your characters which works for reaching interesting places but can make throwing your Pikmin in a battle unfortunate as the game sometimes cycles you to throw a captain next instead of the next breed of Pikmin. However, the game not demanding perfection from you does mean most little quibbles like that can be recovered from and you’ll definitely spend a lot of the experience thinking on what you want to do while still remaining active and involved since there’s usually plenty of options and the means to keep working on them. It can be quite addictive plunging back down to PNF-404 to start a new day of work, the world the right amount of hostile to oppose your activities but never feeling like the kind of nerve-wracking survival mission that would strain the fact Pikmin are meant to be helpful, adorable, flexible, yet expendable.