The Pikmin franchise is one of my all-time favourites for so many reasons. The games have a genuine sweetness that is surprisingly hard to find, are incredibly easy to pick up and play, and engage you fully despite the fact that you’re mostly just collecting items to repair a spaceship. Pikmin 4 isn’t the best game in the franchise, but considering how incredible Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 3 are, it was going to be hard for it to reach those heights. That being said, it’s still a damn excellent game. It’s very rare for me to get a new game and just want to beat it as soon as possible, but this game is just so engaging that I wanted to collect every single item in the game. This game takes the already perfect formula of the previous games and somehow refines it!

The story is not particularly original, but it doesn’t matter when the gameplay is this engaging. There’s no specific way or order to do things and collect certain materials, allowing for an even more carefree playing experience. All the different types of Pikmin that you find throughout the game are all so unique and cute that you genuinely feel pain if you let any of them die. As was the case with the other games, I tried to keep as many alive as possible because it is just awful when you get cutscenes that showcase the Pikmin you leave behind getting eaten. 

There is so much creativity on display in this game, from location designs to creature designs to the animations of the characters. You can tell that Nintendo is firing on all cylinders, and it adds an impossible amount to the game’s heartwarming enjoyability. The boss fights are also, like the previous games, incredibly well made. No one boss fight feels like a repeat of a previous one, and there is some genuine challenge at times to defeating them. Even if it can take you a while to beat a boss, each one is incredibly satisfying to finally conquer. 

This game gave me everything I wanted from a 4th Pikmin game. I can only hope the good sales of this game will ensure we get many more entries in the Pikmin franchise for years to come. 

9/10