Pikmin 4's Difficulty is Horribly Designed 

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Sadly I don't disagree with anything said here. I love Pikmin 4 very much but its like it actively wants you to stop playing because all the gorgeous maps they designed turn into desolated wastelands after your first sweep through the area. The lack of respawning enemies hit me harder than anything else.

Older games: You were pray surviving in a predator-filled world. Newer games: You are predators in a prey-filled world.

I liked pikmin 4 a lot but the fact that enemies didn’t even respawn in the overworld was just lame. There’s making it easier than Pikmin 2 and then there’s what they did. Totally killed my desire to keep going after I beat the game

After I eliminated all enemies on the surface, I waited for them to respawn… … but nobody came

I quite like all 4 Pikmin games in different ways, but the last couple feel like they're drifting from the idea that Pikmin are the fun part? I don't want a cute alien dog that overrides the Pikmin, I want to have my rainbow army of cute little plant guys that I grew

A subtle but impactful change is 4’s lack of regenerating overworld. Even with 2’s lack of day limit, you were encouraged to not waste time. Enemies would respawn, bridges would be eaten, spiderworts would grow. It felt like the world was constantly fighting back. There’s nothing on 4 stopping you from painstakingly exterminating everything in your way.

i think the biggest issue with pikmin 4's difficulty is that it's balanced around "okay, you will definitely beat this game, but how EFFICIENTLY can you do it" with the focus on dandori over actually being difficult traditionally, which is a fine idea, it leads to a desire to self-improve and learn the game, which is a wonderful way to play pikmin, but pikmin 4 is also the longest game in the series by a HUGE margin and as a result way less replayable in that way. i've done a lot of pikmin 3 runs trying to cut down my day count just for fun, and i think that's what they wanted with pikmin 4's design, making it a lot easier so enemies are more tools of run design/optimization ("do i want to go get more pikmin by killing them", "can i afford fighting these stronger ones in my way", the lack of respawning means they can be treated as specific tasks and not just obstacles), but pikmin 4 is also 30-40 hours long on a normal playthrough and has a ton of secondary things like the night stuff that add unoptimizable time on or the ridiculous tutorials that feel like they're WAY too long even on a FIRST playthrough - it's way harder to think "oh yeah i can keep trying to improve my runs and be more efficient" when one attempt at that takes as long as 5 attempts at that in another pikmin game

I HATE how the characters always guilt trip you for accidentally having 1 Pikmin die once while they're just in their base doing NOTHING!

PLEASE AUTO AIM TOGGLE OFF

I have a lot of friends in Japan who play switch games with their kids, and even their children found the auto lock on super frustrating after just a few minutes

Cant wait for Pikmin 5 to have an auto mode, where the game plays itself

Remember how in the first few games Bulborbs actually used to be threatening

Maybe Oachi's charge wouldn't be so cheap if it scattered the Pikmin around a lot more, throwing a lot of them further away. Then it wouldn't always be the best solition, since they might be tossed into obstacles or other enemies, so you need to be more mindful of when you use it. Then they also wouldn't all immediately land on the enemy. Maybe having a smaller squad on Oachi's back would make the scattering more precise. The more Pikmin on Oachi's back, the further they get scattered around.

admittedly, before release, i thought oatchy was gonna have a max pikmin limit he could carry on his back, so the downside for this crazy mobility was having a major restriction on pikmin choices in specific battles. we got that major restriction from the 3 type limit, but ofc we can just use oatchi with 100 pikmin so it never mattered ig

Nintendo seems to be allergic to giving us gameplay settings, god's sake let us turn off the auto lock on, or give us difficulty settings that actually do something other than increase enemy health.

imagine an alternative universe where we didn't get the dog

It sucks that swarming was basically replaced with the charge mechanic... Swarming actually FEELS like you are commanding and guiding your army. Meanwhile the charge is basically "hey go kill that guy."

pikmin 4 hardmode that just removes all the convience and you actually have to play the game

*So, in a nutshell:* Pikmin 1 is like fighting a guy with the exact same musculature as you Pikmin 2 is like fighting a 6'7" ft buff professional wrestler that also wears brass knuckles Pikmin 3 (specially Deluxe) is like fighting a small premature coughing baby And Pikmin 4 is like fighting a guy with the exact same musculature as you, but you are basically forced to also grab a loaded gun with tons of ammo and a few grenades.

everything in the game is built around you being an ultra efficient dandori master which is done really well, but when it needs to slow down for difficult and precise gameplay the issues are more obvious. Take the water wraith for example, in pikmin 2 it worked so well because you are used to being slow and careful in caves to avoid deaths, but in pikmin 4 it didn’t work so well because you are already used to being quick and efficient so the water wraith doesn’t add much. The water wraith only works when going fast isn’t comfortable but pikmin 4 does everything to make going fast as comfortable as possible, this is both good and bad in my eyes.

What got me is the fact that the game doesn't trust you to do or understand anything on your own. You get somewhere, someone talks at you to tell you what to do. You take ten steps, someone has to talk at you more. Two more steps, oh look at that someone is talking to you. I had them tell me the solution to basic puzzles the second I walked near the puzzle, before I'd even gotten a chance to see what it was. It was obvious from the start that this game wants to treat you like a toddler. It was such an incredibly frustrating experience right off the bat.

Honestly I have issues with Pikmin 4 from both a story and gameplay perspective for Story the whole Leafling stuff just sort of glossed over despite the dark implications of the pikmin planet, like I definitely feel the sage leaf should’ve been the main antagonist of the post game instead of Louie (Who should’ve been a red herring.) the story is just too light compared to the other 3 games where they had moments of atmosphere and dark moments in comparison. As for gameplay they ruined dungeons by absolutely neutering them, being able to leave dungeons at any time and being able to choose which floor to go ruins the resource management aspect of the dungeons, it doesn’t help that the dungeons are way longer and focus less on combat they’re just the overworld area’s reduced which just sucks.

Also Glow Pikmin exist. Their spirit bomb move make every enemy, even the Smoky Progg extremely easy. If they restricted them to only being used during the night missions, they wouldn't be so busted.

Pikmin 4 was so afraid of creating interesting friction for players to deal with that it creates its own more annoying friction. However what always bothers me the most about it is how overworld enemies just *don't* re-spawn, making the areas feel depressingly empty after you clear them and taking me out of the world. It's like the ecosystem here just *stopped* which was never an issue with any of the previous titles. After both 3 Deluxe and this, I seriously hope they tone down on the "QoL" features for whatever the next game is because this was absolutely a step too far.

What's with Nintendo's obssesion of taking off options, such as Auto aim on Pikmin 4 or Set mode for Pokemon Scarlet/Violet

One thing this video doesn't touch on that I think is also part of the conversation is how caves work. In Pikmin 2, you had specific floors where geysers would spawn so you could leave the cave if you needed to for some reason, at the cost of being forced to start the cave from the beginning. You couldn't just leave whenever you wanted and come back. In Pikmin 4, when you leave a cave, you're allowed to go to any floor you previously reached, completely nullifying any punishment for leaving the cave prematurely. In addition, they give you an option from the menu to leave whenever you feel like it. They still have geyser equivalents, for some reason, but you can also just use the menu and there's literally no difference. You keep all treasure collected and progress made. Why even bother with the fans then? I could forgive this conceptually if they actually utilized it to make some really long, grueling caves (though, maybe utilize the fans as checkpoints rather than letting someone retread any floor they've reached) but they don't even do that. I don't think a single cave goes deeper than 5 floors until you get to the very last one in the game which is just a poor man's Hole of Heroes since boss fights are a joke.

Man you nailed all my biggest gripes with the game. I think I should also mention that the main maps feel way too big. Previous Pikmin games' had small and tight maps, but they were dense with things to do. Many times Pikmin 4 just feels so empty and barren, especially when you defeat all enemies.

It's funny how every Pikmin game has their own reasons for being the "best in the series", yet the one thing holding Pikmin 4 back from being THE best in the series is all the weirdly forced handholding they decided to do.

Tye difficulty honestly isn't even the worst thing about pikmin 4. The worst thing is that nintendo retconned one of their few series with a coherent storyline.

personally i dont think it helps that alot of the times it feels like pikmin 4 wants to be pikmin 2 in a way or atleast some sort of replacement for it, which kinda also goes into the problems i also have with the story in some way, but i think it really shows with how they rehash some of the returning caves/enemies from pikmin 2, and how they are completely diminished because of oatchi biggest offender of this would be engulfed castle where oatchi really ruins the original submerged castle's fear towards the waterwraith considering that all the pikmin could be on the faster-than-waterwraith oatchi's back, and also easily rush to escape it.

I'm astonished you put exactly into words why Pikmin 4 just kind of felt soulless to me. It seems to have been built around "improving" (and sorta insulting) Pikmin 2, which is still my personal favourite. It actively retcons its plot and introduces the swarming feature as a worthless ability when you already nearly fully completed the entire game. It seems to pretend to be a homage to the more difficult time in Pikmin while actively holding your hand to make sure the big bad creatures don't give you and your Pikmin a boo boo. On top of this is the greatest sin committed by Pikmin 4. Snow Bulborbs no longer have fur. Joke aside, the developers don't at all seem to be in touch with what made Pikmin special and enjoyable. What I hated about Pikmin 4 the most is how it actively meddled with the first game, making its issues so much more apparent. I cannot stand retcons and modern versions of games going back for the nostalgia value only to keep a character around that never wanted to be around in the first place, this being Olimar as the damsel in distress. He's not Peach. Let him see his family. It completely tones down and flummoxes the main stakes of Pikmin one, the dire and tragic situation that this tiny spaceman had found himself in and for that, I'll never forgive Pikmin 4. All of Olimar's achievements have been nullified. While he was fighting for his life, a highly advanced group of space rangers and tourists were just a mile or so away looking for him. He was never alone. This makes Olimar's bond with the Pikmin a lot more unremarkable. Hammering the term "Dandori" into your brain removed a lot of immersion for me and I just know I'll have to put up with the fandom constantly spouting the word themselves for many years to come, perhaps forever. Characters are chatty and obnoxious as well as one note rather than surprisingly complex characters like Olimar and Louie were. Even the President had some depth. Oatchi was a mistake. He's the cute and marketable thing that's super cool and strong and that's all there is. Now that you have an all powerful tool any other game in the future will just be accused of evolving the game backwards. I know that Oatchi was originally going to be a Bulborb which would've at least felt a bit more immersive rather than riding a random "space dog" to collect "sparklium". There are very little stakes to the story, making the story itself sort of boring as a result.

I hate to put most of the blame for difficulty on Oatchi but call me Eustace with how much that stupid dog makes me look bad.

The Switch generation will go down as the era Nintendo finally learned about Twitter and game journalists. It's nothing but auto aim and wholesome doggos from here on out 😔

I feel like this ties with with something else that upset me about Pikmin 4, and that’s the brutally slow pacing of the game. Thanks to night missions, as well as the bloat of objectives, the day count spikes rapidly compared to other games, but it feels like you don’t progress nearly as much. Like, for a series about being quick and efficient, why must the game slow me down at every turn? Also, it shows that for all the heavy reuse and referencing of Pikmin 2 in the game’s caves, they always feel like cheap knockoffs instead of remasters.

As soon as I saw the trailer where they showed Oatchi, I thought "there's going to need to be some creative limitations for him in order to prevent him from trivializing game design elements/building the game around him." If nothing else, the ability to carry a maximum capacity squad all in one condensed package is already taking the orderly marching that Pikmin did in Pikmin 3 to another level, but showing him being able to transport Pikmin over bodies of water, up ledges that used to be used as one-way gates, having him be a low-risk way of attacking enemies since he can't die, it was not handled well. Nintendo seems so obsessed about making it so that every player is able to beat their game, that they don't care whether or not the player is having fun while doing it. Remember Phi in the original Zelda Skyward Sword? Remember how the game would tell you what all of the items did whenever you collected one after turning the console off, just to make sure you knew what they did? They were so worried that you weren't going to have fun, that they made the game no longer fun. Overcoming a challenge and discovering/mastering a mechanic is satisfying, but if there is no challenge and there is no way to master anything, then they're just making the game unsatisfying.

Another thing about caves is that the caves will just give you the elemental pikmin you need even if you don't have the onion. It removes any sense of progression and strategy to caves because they just give you every pikmin you need anytime a hazard shows up

game was still super easy even when i never used an item, but let's be real: i just chose never to buy them beyond the free prototypes and only messed around with them in the piklopedia and the real challenge -was getting the best scores in each challenge- fighting the auto aim when getting the best scores

Imagine an alternate universe where pikmin 4 ACTUALLY got a hard mode of any kind

People complain about the purple Pikmin being overpowered but the ice Pikmin are somehow worse like purples are nerfed by being pretty scarce you gotta scrounge for them but ice Pikmin are passed out like candy in almost every cave. My only problem with ice Pikmin is that they just obliterate the bodies afterwards which wouldn't be a problem if enemies respawned but someone at Nintendo decided to nix a basic gameplay feature so if an ice Pikmin kills an enemy outside of a cave it's gone nobody gets it not even the ice Pikmin. It gets worse when you get ice Pikmin during a dandori challenge you gotta watch them very carefully to make sure they don't kill an enemy you needed to bring back to the onion, anytime the game recommends bringing them I go back and bring the fun Pikmin instead most times when the game says "bring ice Pikmin dumbass." It's usually if there's a puddle they can freeze or an ice wall and they usually recommend blue Pikmin at the same time so who cares about the ice cubes

The blowhogs issustrate the speed problem so well. Unchanged since Pikmin 1, the point of them was that your squad was so slow and Pikmin does so fast to hazards you had to stratemgize and remove them beforehand. Now all your squad fits compact on a FAST dog that can run 2 laps arounds it before the fire / water animation even completed. If a Pikmin ever did get caight out youcan basically ignire it and kill the hog with the amount of time they run around on fire. All that assumes you didnt just charge the poor thing from downtown offscreen and kill it with an instant, perfect accuracy swarm before the first stun ends!!! Lock on is annoying sure, but to me the core problem is that we're solving unchanged problems (enemies) with solutions developed decades after the fact.

I agree with everything you said, and I hate when people say "if you think that makes the game too easy, just dont use it lol". If that is a valid argument, then every single game can be hard. Kirby for example is an easy game, but if you never fly, never inhale enemies and never jump, then of course it isgoing to be hard, but that doesnt mean the game is hard

I personally never noticed the game's balancing being outta wack, but that's probably because I grew up with Pikmin 3. But yeah I do agree with your points here, even if I still had lots of fun with the game regardless

Pikmin 4 is Nintendo overcorecting something that just needed a lil polish in Pikmin 2 To not scare off new players I just hope next game we go back the strategy roots

One big issue I have with these reductions in difficulty is how it contributes to the reduction of the game's atmosphere. The first two Pikmin games did a fantastic job of presenting the Pikmin planet as a hostile and alien place, where the air itself wants you dead. No matter how much you conquer the area or master the mechanics, you can't survive after sundown, and there's always a sense that you are never truly safe. You can survive the planet, but you cannot tame it. The difficulty of the experience plays a big part in creating this vibe, like the planet isn't tailored for player's benefit. With Pikmin 4, it feels almost like we could build a house and live here in relative comfort. From the big things like the Waterwraith no longer chasing the player down to the small things like the Pearly Clampclamp being killable, the planet feels too tame. I can't think of a better example of this issue than being able to demolish swarms of Smoky Proggs at night.

I first played Pikmin 1 and 2 on Wii and when I eventually got them again on Switch, I was worried that it button controls would be much worse, but I was genuinely surprised by how well it worked. So, it was crazy that Pikmin 4’s auto-lock makes the game worse to control than games 20 years older than it!

I've always been firmly of the opinion that Pikmin 3 and 4 being easier isn't a big deal, because it gets away from the RNG-based cock and ball torture levels of difficulty that Pikmin 2's caverns had. I think the series changing focus from being extremely difficult to challenging the player to maximize their efficiency is a good direction for it to take. But watching this... man, it's really making me rethink some of that. Finding peak efficiency is a lot less satisfying when the path to it turns out to be "do the same overpowered thing over and over to defeat every single enemy".

The Pikmin 3 on Wii U apology is here! The Wii U version is actually harder than people give it credit for, it just seems easier because it’s endgame area was cut.

ngl oatchi ruined a lot of aspects of the game for me. Feel like the game would be better if the level design didnt revolve around your wholesome keanu reeves big chungus reddit doggo

Im gonna be frank, I was so happy when I got Pikmin 4. But I was really disappointed when I began playing it, despite my love for the Pikmin series. There was even less pressure to get better at optimizing your days outside of Olimar’s side mode, and even then it was a painfully easy 15 days that I could have probably easily cut down even FARTHER. Enemies are weak at best, and just annoying at worst, Oatchi is a good boy, but worse than just getting what I actually was hoping for: 4 Captains in a massive area, artificial difficulty via the Pikmin limit via the flarlic system, Swarm being a POSTGAME ADDITION instead of being able to get both charge and swarm, non-respawning enemies, the great Waterwraith Lobotomizing of 2023, the areas feel smaller and emptier than Pikmin 3, Ice Pikmin just make the bitter spray issue WORSE, aoe attacks are not as effective when your whole squad is on oatchi’s back. And that’s off the top of my head. I’m happy it’s here, but for nearly 10ish years of work? This is almost insultingly underwhelming, and I’m kinda assuming the original project got lost/deleted so they panic made what we got with what was left. I will give the game a few credits: 1. Night missions. Glow Pikmin are an ok replacement for bulbmin, but the horror adjacent aesthetic of this mode was great. 2. Louie returns as the menace we love him for. Edit: another thing for me to fault Pikmin 4 for, the lack of a reason to ever revisit areas with a new Pikmin type, because of wild Pikmin and all of the hazards in an area only being in an area a Pikmin type appears for the first time and future areas.

PIKMIN 4 was the first PIKMIN game I ever played and honestly the auto lock on(and Ochie) make me wish I got PIKMIN 3 instead so I could have a more PIKMIN like experience without feeling like I’m cheating. Next time I play PIKMIN I’m not gonna use otchi….too bad I’m still stuck using auto lock on!

It's a real shame. Pikmin 4 is full of so many creative ideas, and it's one of the few Nintendo games of the past decade that I've found really charming on an aesthetic level. I want to love it, and on a conceptual level I kind of do, but the level structure and mechanical changes are practically a deal-breaker for me. I'm torn between wanting Oatchi to return in subsequent games, but with major changes, and wanting them to leave him here and go in a whole new direction for Pikmin 5. P.S. I know this sounds weird, but in retrospect I'm so glad I played Pikmin 3 on the Wii U and not the deluxe Switch version. The original has a lot of rough edges that I actually like, and all the convenience features of Deluxe seem really intrusive to me.

i want to bring up how they also kind of messed up the flow of caves. in pikmin 2, the point of caves is that they’re a test of the player’s skills by acting as a gauntlet of enemies with loads of treasure. using the ship to escape would guarantee the safety of your pikmin, but you’d lose all treasure you collected. caves were high risk with high reward. geysers midway through caves complemented this idea by giving the player an important choice: you can escape now and guarantee the safety of your treasure and pikmin, but you’ll have to go back through all of the floors again to get the rest of the treasure. OR, you can keep going to get more treasure, but you may lose a bunch of your pikmin and lose everything. pikmin 4, however, must have had this concept fly over its head or something because it added an “escape with no consequence” button that’s accessible at all times. you can ALSO just instantly skip to any floor you’ve already been to. this removes all tension there would be otherwise and makes the game boring. it’s no longer a test of the player’s skills. something i found hilarious, though, is that there’s an escape vent midway through pikmin 4’s final cave. they must’ve just been taking design choices from pikmin 2 without understanding why they were made because there’s literally NO reason for that vent to exist - the escape button serves the exact same purpose

This is probably my biggest issue with 4 that prevents me from enjoying anything else in this game. A few of the new enemies at least feel designed in a way that can at least do something to you while riding Oatchi, like the new Creeping Chrysanthemums, Shellcakes, and Pricklepuffs, but they're only a small handful of enemies. I'm especially annoyed about the loads of returning enemies they brougt back without any care to how they work with Pikmin 4's changes. So many of them are reduced to having zero impact. For example, Anode Beetles are completely trivialized by auto-lock (they hardly even put them in the game anyway), Snitchbugs no longer deflower and aren't put next to enemise in a game without a time limit. Man-at-Legs can literally just be outrun and the enemy was originally designed to take out pikmin that were lagging behind, Pyroclasmic Slooches were essentially fire-walls in 3, and are irrelevant now because Oatchi can just kill them without needing reds (or rocks), Armored Cannon Beetle was brought back but all you have to do now is avoid a slow projectile with your captain because there's no army behind you, etc. Some enemies like Porquillion would actually be very good, just in any other pikmin game, because riding on Oatchi just removes any element of danger with it's concept. Pikmin 4 seriously doesn't even feel like your commanding an army at most times.

you really hit the nail on the head for me with the comparison to purple pikmin in 2, there’s no actual risk of losing any of your buffs in 4 and there’s no strategy really. i really liked 4 but the game is so blindingly easy

As someone who loves Pikmin 4 and It's my favorite in the franchise, this hurt to watch...because I agree with pretty much everything. They designed a great game but added unnecesary features (autolock, Oatchi charge) that have turned several players off and that's probably one of the biggest mistakes that Nintendo games in general make. Enemies being so much weaker in 3-4 than in 1-2 is something that I've noticed and wish it could change in the next game, if they hopefully decide to market it towards Pikmin veterans instead of newcomers for the 3rd time in a row.

I'm so glad that there are some people on this site that are not afraid to acknowledge that Pikmin 3 and 4 are not perfect games and have some pretty serious flaws. And I'm really glad to know that there are still dedicated Pikmin 2 content creators left on this site. I would be really curious to see you make a video discussing Pikmin 2's difficulty and analyzing if it truly is bad game design like some people say it is or just a difficult game in general, personally I don't mind 2's difficulty that much except for a few sublevels.

Oachi could take goku

Not to mention ice Pikmin are crazy overpowered and they give you a metric ton right at the beginning of the game. If they were a late game unlock that might’ve helped the game’s difficulty.

I feel like Nintendo is trying a bit too hard to get Pikmin into casual fans. It would be better if a lot of these features were exclusive to a casual mode, and were disabled/nerfed in some kind of classic mode.

most annoying part is that while these are fundamental issues, the majority are issues that could be fixed incredibly easily with settings for auto lock and a hard mode that nerfs Oatchi, buffs enemies / rearranges their placements, and allows them to respawn

Pikmin 4 hard mode: Oatchi got rabies and is now always actively hunting you, eating your pikmin and mauling you. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Pikmin 5 better be like pikmin 2 really hard

All I want is for Oatchi to have a carry limit of pikmin equal to half his total strength. That automatically stops him from being completely broken while still leaving him strong for various functions. It also encourages you to travel separately from him. Design overworld maps around this, while you encourage sticking together in caves. Actually, I should elaborate more. I did a low-upgrade run and it was much more fun and difficult to deal with challenges where I can't just send Oatchi in but still use him where I have to. The Purple Onion trial was actually really tough because I had to use my Pikmin to carry the onion and use Oatchi intelligently to clear the paths while still getting the platinum. I just want the mechanics of the game to be fun to use and encouraged in a constructive way. No elemental immunities goes a long way (I don't use Glow Pikmin either). What makes me really sad is that 4 is still my second favorite game after 2. (this has nothing to do with no time limit, most of the time you are trying to beat your own records rather than the arbitrary easy to beat limit anyway). If things were a little better this could have beaten out Pikmin 2.

I’m surprised you didn’t bring up any items like the mine or trackonator. They barely cost any raw material, and that stuff is handed out all over the game like it’s nothing; the fact that you can just make, save up, and throw bomb rocks on your own is pretty lame, but that might just be me. The only item I used in normal gameplay was the spicy spray, not because I was so against the new items; I just never found a situation to use them because everything folds so easily. They really felt like they were first made for Dandori battles and shoehorned into the main campaign. I enjoy 4 very much, but man, this game has some questionable decisions.

I kinda wish they kept the controls like Pikmin 3 Deluxe, where the cursor only locks onto enemies when you actually lock on, since, when you hit it twice, it will always change what the locked target is, you can pretty reliably lock and throw pikmin at a patch of 4 or 5 small enemies or pellet posies. Edit: also agree on removing the 3 type limit and having cave hazard indicators on caves, you can choose what pikmin you're bringing anyway before you enter so you don't even have to walk back to the onion first. And while you can use every pikmin type at once you probably don't want all of them at once, since you would have like 12 pikmin of each type, and that's at max flarlic, which could lock you out of certain treasures if there's a type specific roadblock like water or a cold room (the 300 weight ham towards the end of the game comes to mind, where you need a good number of purples, even if Oatchi's carry weight is maxed). This kind of thinking is something I wish Pikmin 4 did more

The only difficulty I ever see when I play Pikmin 4 is in the Leaf Sage’s trial Another thing about the AI of Pikmin when it comes to carrying, sometimes they have that really stupid Pikmin 1 AI quirk of only being allowed down a specific path, even if there’s another path to the ship, my main example of this is if you use Winged Pikmin at the top of the Giant’s Hearth. If you got up there with the Oatchi parkour path and you attempt to use Winged Pikmin to collect the treasures. They just stop carrying stuff once they make it to the climbing wall because it hasn’t been built. *YOU HAVE FUCKIN WINGS JUST FLY YOU NITWITS*

Don't forget the fact that enemies never respawn on the surface and caves don't truly reset

I think it goes a layer beyond that. The Dandori sections are the best part. They're very tight and can be difficult to master toward the end. It gets those same feelings i got when i got really good at some of those challenges in Pikmin 3. Thats the key point though. "Got really good". I think their idea was to get the good feelings going there without the need to git gud. To lower the skill ceiling in those sections. It explains the auto lock-on. The kids can see their favorite RU-vidrs being good with that same easy mode tool. It explains why the Sage Leaf Trials are locked behind so many prerequisites. It also explains why Olimar's story had to be retold despite all other games being on Switch at the same time. It isn't for us. It's for them. Its to extend sales numbers and satisfaction to those not patient or fixated enough to do it without the tools. If the game designs it like this and does not allow the people that would do the spreading to change it, it is more achievable to them. The "they can do it, i can do it too" mindset, just without the extra time needed to get to that level. I know this is not directly proven, but it would fit with their advertising strategy for the game in the US. The universal allure of a dog, the family friendly atmosphere with the female voice (yes, that is a strategy, often used to add more universal draw, but i could see it also trying to reach a female audience), and the cutesy Pikmin hum one they just put out. I am sure someone in marketing could describe it better, but as a computer scientist who is also a woman, these strategies have always been emphasized to me. They dont want it to seem hard.

FINALLY. SOMEBODY GETS IT. I've been arguing with the Pikmin subreddit for MONTHS about this and now I have someone to back me up.

Oatchi in general just doesn't really vibe well with pikmin. Oatchi is resistant to everything after being upgraded like bulbmin but unlike bulbmin, oatchi is available everywhere, all the time. Oatchi can carry up to 100 weight and can swallow some objects to carry them super quick. Purples balanced their higher carry weight by making them slow but oatchi is the same speed as regular pikmin. Whites were fast at carrying but they all counted as 1 pikmin still. Whites and purples were really powerful in 2 but had some balance because you had to find flowers in caves and some of them had logic to despawn if you have more than x amount of the whites or purples. Oatchi is effectively immortal and always around you. The combat has always been super easy in the games if you knew how to approach every fight but with oatchi about 95% of enemies all you have to do is charge and boom they're dead after a couple seconds. I know Nintendo wanted to make pikmin more accessible to casual fans because pikmins design and art style is perfect for it, but Pikmin 4 was ridiculously easy by adding oatchi alone. If pikmin 4 were pretty much pikmin 3 but they added oatchi, it would still run into this problem of being to easy and casual.

The thing is that none of the problems with Pikmin 4 are exclusive to it. Nintendo games don't have difficulty curves anymore, they have difficulty walls. The game is several hours of baby sensory software until -after you've already beaten it- the game smacks you in the face with its only challenge. This has been a thing for years now and it doesn't make a lick of sense, it's trying so hard to appeal to everybody that you end up appealing to nobody. Experienced players will be let down by how easy the first 99% is. Inexperienced players will be frustrated by how hard the last 1% is. I still remember idiot baby me spending an entire day of my life trying to beat the secret level in mario galaxy 2, because the game did fuck all to prepare me for how (relatively) difficult it was. 13 years later and I don't experience an iota of resistance from pikmin 4 until the onion challenges. What's event the point?

generally I don’t think any pikmin game is very hard in the main campaign but it’s a bit mr. uncanny incredible to walk around with no respawns. also they gave all the best music to olimar’s tale

THANK YOU, I hope you do more videos about some of the lackluster elements of 4 because this game while not terrible really underwhelmed One thing that could be a video is about how the Pikmin series art direction has been made quite generic as the series went on, like how the first 2 had this naturalistic bubble text and UI that really stood out. But going into 4 things like the clock that told you how far along the day was and the text have been turned into completely unremarkable assets that could be from anything.

Something that I don't think was brought up in the video that i'd like to mention... This isn't anything that affects the difficulty or gameplay outright, but this isn't a Pikmin game, this is Oatchi: a Pikmin Story as another commenter gracefully put it. This is the first time in the Pikmin series that the Pikmin themselves, genuinely, are not the spotlight. The reds are portrayed as a spectacle in the tutorial and then the Pikmin are straight up forgotten about story-wise for the rest of the game. Sure, mentioned in dialogue, but that goes as far as exclusively flavor text between the HQ characters in moments unimportant to the plot like night scenes. In previous Pikmin games, Onions were placed in interesting locations that drew attention to them, gave personality to their resident Pikmin, or told a story through environmental storytelling. You'd often find Onions in deactivated states showing that they've been abandoned or their species colony started to die out only for you to show up as it's last hope, or sometimes you'd find Pikmin living their lives around the onions like the yellows in 2 or the blues in 3. Sometimes the onion would actively be under attack like the wings and rocks in 3. But here? They're just completely random treasure pieces laying about in nonsensical locations that you bring back like they're an inanimate resource. The onions had a REASON to follow the player in past games, like a mutually beneficial relationship -- The pikmin help you, and in return, you increase their population. Not anymore. They're reduced to tools and projectiles, especially with how you no longer have to manage their movement in large squads due to oatchi, or manage aiming them, or manage their location in battle. You just have an inventory of projectiles and you press a button to throw them. The whistle radius is so colossal you no longer have to manage rounding them up either, just whistle once and every pikmin in the area of Forest of Hope's open lake area is immediately on oatchi and safe from all harm. You don't have to manage their numbers either -- squads of 100 are always outright better than smaller squads, and bigger numbers always equals more damage because throw speed and enemy attack pattern openings no longer matter, you can essentially throw 100 pikmin at the same time. I miss the days where the Pikmin were part of the plot. Remember when captains would write eulogies at sunset about lost Pikmin or interesting things they saw the Pikmin do? Remember when Olimar felt genuine regret at having to leave the Pikmin behind? And how much personality they had in 3? When they would think about the Pikmin's purpose and their grim place in the Ecosystem and how their fate is to carry, fight, multiply and be consumed despite them having such playful personalities? Remember when there was a SONG about that?? Too bad! They're soulless tools now that are completely overshadowed in their own game by The Dog. The Dog is the face of all the marketing with the Pikmin off to the side. The Dog is the strongest entity in the entire series and can solo every single enemy with relative ease. The Dog can swim, is immune to every element, has a colossal amount of health allowing them to facetank basically anything, can stun enemies, throw 100 Pikmin at once, carry 100 Pikmin on their back using non-euclidean geometry, can JUMP, and compress any item to be carried with extreme speed. Every rescue officer except Yonny is named after a dog breed. Both ships are named after dog breeds. The entire latter 50% of the story is dedicated to The Dog and Pikmin 1 was apparently retconned to include another dog. The final boss is a dog. I don't get it. Why? The Pikmin just feel tacked on now.

Another thing that dumbs down the game is Oatchi carrying all your Pikmin, meaning you only have to protect one creature instead of dozens of them... And you're controlling said creature, partially destroying the main gimmick of the franchise.

You know the game is unbalanced when you can beat most of the game with the dog and some items only.

spicy spray farming is almost painfully easy. in serene shores for example the berries are right next to one of the bases, and in primordial thicket there's 4 plants. like come on, man.

Honestly, we need more RU-vidrs like you who are critical about Pikmin games, but still like them, and can actually back up their points instead of just "Haha funny RU-vid Reviewer with controversial opinion"

Watching people slowly realize that pikmin 4 is the worst pikmin game as the hype wears off has been very entertaining to watch

Personally, I think that Pikmin 1 and 3 really hammered the difficulty level the series should go for. They aren’t easy, and don’t have many mechanics that feel like a crutch. Pikmin 3’s lock-on and charging were pretty damn good, but it’s not too easy to cheese many enemies using them. The auto choose feature is fine imo, but only for caves as sometimes the hazards could be misleading in 2. The 3-type limit is lame, but understandable, and the auto-lock in 4 is really irritating, and the option to turn it off should’ve been there. In short, Pikmin 4 is way too easy, but Pikmin 2 was still probably way too difficult. The caves were not made well, and should’ve been closer to Pikmin 4’s, just harder.

I would like to start this off by saying I basically 100%'d Pikmin 4, I played the game on my own and experienced everything on my own. I had fun with it, but I also had plenty of problems. This feels like complaining, but also feels entirely justified, so I really don't care. . As much as I loved Oatchi and found him extremely useful, I didn't vibe with the amount of upgrades he got. Like, they made Pikmin 2 except Louie has a shotgun and is your go to for most encounters due to the fact he's now 6'7", can carry your whole squad of pikmin on his back, is immune to every form of damage, can carry objects that need 100 Pikmin, and is overall an unstoppable beast, but it's balanced out because he can't climb or go into certain areas. Fr tho, Oatchi was a neat idea, but he really just made the game so easy, and as someone else said, the fact enemies don't respawn genuinely just made every area feel like more of a chore than a constant threat. Like- 1. Land. 2. Kill as many enemies and open as many caves as possible. 3. Treasure collecting, Cave delving, and Dandori Challenges last, since everything is dead and you don't even have to sit there and be worried about anything going wrong. And I understand they're trying to make the game more accessible to everyone, I get that, but at least add in a mode where enemies respawn or something, add a genuine difficulty option that allows you to pick how you'd like the experience. Idk, It was a good game but overall yeah, 4 felt way too easy and not the most interesting. edit: Also, don't even get me started on the fact the Water Wraith is now 10x slower and doesn't feel like as much of a threat as 2, or the fact that White Pikmin have been relegated to dealing solely with poison hazards now (and looping back to Oatchi, he does this better and faster than them too) since every Pikmin is extremely fast already (even the purples) and aren't the sole way to get buried treasure anymore, I legit left the one buried treasure in the beginning area because I was like "Guess I'm coming back after I get whites!" and then realized that my pikmin AND OATCHI, could dig it up. I was beyond disappointed at that especially because White's are my favorite Pikmin, and they got absolutely stripped of every unique thing they do in 4 except for dealing damage to enemies who eat them.

Really just makes me enjoy Pikmin 1 & 2 that much more tbh

I haven't really watched the video fully through so I don't know if this point was made, but let's not forget about the Doomsday Device in Pikmin 2--one of the very last treasures in the game. It needs 1,000 pikmin to carry back to base, which you can _only_ do with 100 purple pikmin--a pretty effective check for how well you've managed your purples. If you've been careless the whole game with your purples and just blew through everything while disregarding losses, the Doomsday Device will force you to go back and find a cave where you can farm purples (usually Subterranean Complex)--a very time consuming task that will take significantly longer and longer the more careless you've been. It punishes you for being careless by taking back all the time you thought you saved when you just aimlessly spammed purples at everything.

I agree wholeheartedly. I don't think I liked a single dog-related thing in this game to be totally honest... After subscribing to the Umibozu theory for a decade, i was legitimately so disappointed that it was just entirely absent in 4. The waterwraith came back as a novelty item. Honestly insulting, i mean it's literally the same cave from 2. This game was just so... Gamey. NPCS giving you quests, a nameless protagonist with no character, retconning the entire story in such an unnecessary way, the pikmin feeling so rigid and fake with how they perfectly take corners and keep formation with ease all the while going faster than they ever have. I knew pikmin 4 could never be what I had imagined after 10 years of waiting, I would still say it was a good game but i would also say I'd rather replay every pikmin game again before replaying pikmin 4 once.

i 100% the game in 30 hours and never played it again note that this game is priced the same as RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2

0:46 "Confirmed, olimar's best helper is a dog"

I will admit unless you actively cheese bosses the boss interactions are still there, but I definitely feel like enemies are the main issue, I don’t have a problem with easier difficulty most of the time due to it meaning you can get done more in a day keeping the progress going, but when too many enemies fall faster than the time needed to dig something up I definitely feel like there needs to be more to them in future titles without being infuriating or boring, enemies like the bulborb, orange Bulborb, and some of the blow hogs can stay how they are because they are simple and have simple counters like ambushing or just attacking before they become a threat, so I think it is mainly if the enemy is meant to be simple or just needs more skill required for some enemies (besides sheargrubs I hope they never get their free kills ever again)

I love Pikmin 3 but 4 just sort of boiled things to mush. 3 Deluxe Ultra Spicy is my favourite Pikmin campaign.

I feel like Oachi should only be able to carry +/- 50 Pikmin

Something that really stands out to me is the waterwraith. In pikmin 2 it is memed to death, its genuinely terrifying. It puts a cave on a time limit, and then this unkillable steam roller of a monster spawns and chases you. However, the way you control your squad means it generally is killing stragglers who just can't quite get out of the way in time. And sometimes you get unlucky and he gets most of your squad, but generally it picks of stragglers and tests how good you are at commanding your army with the c-stick. In contrast, in pikmin 4 the waterwraith is basically the same, except its a bit of a joke, in my first playthrough of 4 i don't think i lost a single pikmin to any of the wraiths. The reason is oatchi, he consolidates the entire squad into the form of a slightly bigger captain, you have no stragglers like this and thus the waterwraith has to run over the captain directly and not the stragglers of a large and unwieldy squad. I hope that in another decade when we get Pikmin 5 they remove the space dogs and return to the format of large squads you have to manage. Part of the risk/reward balance of a large squad in earlier pikmin games is you get more power at the cost of it being harder to control increasing the risk of losing some pikmin.

3 deluxe was a warning

Ill be the outlier and say i absolutely hated pikmin 4, i also hate how often the npcs talk. Just let me explore and take in the levels!

Pikmin 4 shifted the difficulty away from careful play against enemies that can wipe you out if you dont strategize properly, to quick optimized play to maximize dandori. Bad play is only punished with a low score, it's rare to lose a substantial amount of pikmin. But even the hardest dandori levels dont provide the same challenge and tension that some bullshit pikmin 2 floors provide.

Im glad to finally see more pushback on 4, I think a lot of its changes are actively worse for the series. Im happy it and Pikmin are selling well now, but this game being the most successful is potentially scary since now every future game will likely continue the trend of dumbing things down

I am an extremely casual gamer (I play most games on easy mode), and the hardest challenges in Pikmin 4 were about right for me. I can definitely see why someone who wants more challenge can be frustrated.

i wanted to love pikmin 4 so much but when i unironically fell asleep from it because it got so boring and easy its pretty hard to kid myself about it. well its either that or sleep apnea

I will defend Pikmin 3's charge mechanic. One, it's not an instant win button like Oatchi is, if you charge then you have to be sure that your pikmin are not in a situation that kills them. Two, the feature synergizes very well with the game's greatest asset, multitasking. Swapping between captains is a lot faster when i can charge a wall or fruit with the click of a button and swap back to another captain. Pikmin 4 also has a problem in ice Pikmin. They're walking bitter sprays that you can't control and don't need to farm up. They're the first Pikmin you meet after reds, you get them immediately and you get lots of them. Wild pikmin in the caves was an interesting idea, but so many makes raising Pikmin all but pointless.

If i'm being honest, i gotta say that pikmin 4 is a totally different game when you dont use oatchi's stun at all

Wish pikmin 4 had difficulty settings and an accessibility menu, to turn on and off respawning overworld enemies, auto lock on, etc