Welcome to Pikmin 4!
If you have no idea what Pikmin is all about, in a nutshell, it's Nintendo's take on a RTS with your units being adorable little plant creatures called Pikmin. They come in a variety of colors, each with their own strengths.
New to Pikmin 4 is a custom character creator, night time missions, new Pikmin types, character upgrades, and a pet dog critter, Oatchi, that helps you in your adventures.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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And this week, I finished playing through Pikmin 3 Ultimate on the Switch with my daughter. Hit me right in the feels.
She's so excited for Pikmin 4 tomorrow that she couldn't contain herself. I told her to paint something and she couldn't think of anything. So I suggested she paint Pikmin and gave her this Club Nintendo Pikmin drink coaster as a reference:
And this is what she created:
Super stoked to dive into Pikmin 4!
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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https://youtu.be/tqpbMLVa9EI
Goes home to sick Dj.
Dj: I'm trying to kill these monsters but I only have my dog.
Also rock co-op is bad.
I can't just unilaterally seize control with my golden flag.
I'm having to resort to semaphore gestures at the TV to guide the adventure instead.
Donburi is ok, but Bingo Battle is better at letting Dj take as long as he needs to actually collect things.
But he didn't crack under the time pressure so maybe he'll be better at it soon enough.
Dash into it with Oatchi and push it over the ice.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
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https://youtu.be/RPiT-s4i0rw
So yeah, last night was like all second area, it was cool Night Missions are fun as hell. I eventually had to stop myself cuz it was 3am and.. work... but excited to play some more I think I'm at like 75% of the second area complete. I saw one more cave I haven't done and I think one dandori challenge and then I'm done on that map? At least that's what it looked like.
I think we're thinking of different onions. This is the blue onion in the first level. That wouldn't have worked because it's is right in the middle of a chunk of land. In fact there's a climbing wall before it so Oatchi specifically can't help with it. Either way I just came back to it once I had 50 pikmin and then 100%'ed the level.
The way I did it was freeze the lake, move to the onion over that wall, call back the ice Pikmin, use them to unlodge the onion and carry it to the platform below, freeze the water again and then use Oatchi to jump up on the lower platform and then dash/push the onion.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
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She recovered the energy objects in the first area and I grabbed my GBA SP (NES edition) from the shelf and her mind was blown.
10/10 game of the year
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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The vibe is a little different from the previous games. It's less lonely. You don't feel like you're stranded and alone on a strange planet. But that's not a big thing to complain about. The music is also not very memorable so far.
But I'm enjoying it a lot.
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Is this an alternative timeline?
Olimar seems normal in the tutorial.
All of it adds up to you sitting watching the credits, just waiting for the shoe to drop. I just unlocked the 4th ice onion, and the sidequest updated with a new one, "Fuse 5 Onions". You ain't fooling anybody with these credits!!!
Then everybody's lovable asshole Louie shows up! And then you turn the ship around because Oatchi's sick, and there's obviously more game.
Also a bit of plot discussion stemming from said credits.
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Don't tell me if you know.
Yeah, that pretty much always works.
I don't know the details on what you're missing, but if you kind of want to know what's going on in general:
I can't really be annoyed by it? The treasure detector still detects them. You still get a star marked on the map. And Oatchi still sniffs them out. Still kind of sucks to miss the completely invisible treasure though.
Regardless, the game is still super good.
That, and I also wish there was an easy way to have Oatchi go with half the nearby pikmin to do two half strength squads in different places.
Anyways, what're folks putting on their shortcut commands? It took a few days for the game to tell me that I could assign non-Tablet shortcuts, but since then, I've just duplicated the Y-hold wheel onto the D-pad. Not sure what I should put on the L-stick click; I'm divided between the Survey Drone or Ultra-Spicy Spray. Any other suggestions worth considering?
I'm thinking the switch between Oatchi and myself on a button will be useful now. At first I didn't use it that much but lately I've been switching more and more. I still need both disband options available though. Maybe I'll put the pack on the L-stick and make switch the down button.
Having just watched the intro, I'm not sure how I feel about this either.
"What if you just failed to beat the previous game" is certainly a brave new direction
And yes, this kinda pisses me off. I'm still hoping for some kind of weird multiverse thing at least (but so far no sign of this). But I can confirm they have 100% retconned Pikmin 1 beyond any doubt at this point
One, Oatchi turns most puzzles/complex setups from using Pikmin in specific ways to switching between Oatchi and the captain for grates/small ledges. With Oatchi immune to most all environmental hazards and able to pull an insane amount of weight, there's fewer situations you need to use your Pikmin in a clever way to grab treasure. Combine that with how most all floor hazards can be destroyed, and you never really get simple but clever stuff like "lift the giant treasure that's on a ledge with a ton of Yellow pikmin, then switch to Red pikmin to haul it back through the fire" or whatever, and just in general Oatchi eliminates the already-pretty-low risk of needing a safe runback path for Pikmin.
Two, Oatchi really trivializes a lot of encounter designs because of his charge + dumping all Pikmin at once. A lot of mid-tier or miniboss enemies feel like they're kind of balanced around either swarming them with a risky Pikmin charge for immediate damage or more safely throwing tons of Pikmin at them in exchange for your damage being limited and ramping up until the Pikmin get shaken off. An Oatchi charge, even without the upgrades, still gives you a better-than-typical charge by dumping all your Pikmin on the target at once, and does so directionally so you don't put anything in the path of an attack to do so. They definitely designed some enemies around this, needing to be thrown to inflict any damage or otherwise being resistant to charge, but then there's stuff like the first Empress Bulbax encounter, where you can either use your 10 rock Pikmin to slowly and safely kill her, more riskily try to throw or charge Red Pikmin at her to deal damage but risk being thrown into the crushing path... or you can Oatchi charge her face, safely dumping all your Pikmin there so there's almost no risk of them dying if it doesn't kill her before she can react, which it probably will. Lame! On the other hand, I do like being able to instantly explode the big crab guys because holy shit they're the most lethal thing in the game by far.
Oh yeah, I sorta discovered this through trial and error. I saw there was an area that I could not get to at all based on the map (like I saw zero path up to it) but that there was a cave entrance there, so I kinda guessed that this might be how you get there based on the one time the game already did this (thank god they at least show this is a thing, even if it's not super obvious). Tried it out and sure enough, spit me out in the new location. Do wish the game would distinguish these caves a bit better - like, different color lid or a symbol on the lid or something to let you know two of them are connected.
As for Oatchi, I honestly really like him. He works as a second captain (and while I miss the third it really isn't needed) but can also double as a Pikmin in a pinch (really he's a second captain that can actually be USEFUL in situations where you don't need a second captain... was replaying Pikmin 2 and some days were literally "Hey Louie, go stand by the berry flowers while Olimar does everything else"). Yeah he does make some things easier but I think they compensate for that by limiting your total number of Pikmin initially. Where I think he really shines are the Dandori battles and also the Night Missions. Basically the Pikmin 4 new(ish) features feel very designed around him (the Dandori battles aren't really new but they aren't side modes this time). I like that he's sort of a captain you can give a few basic orders to that he can do on his own (like "hey there are a couple rando pikmin scattered around the map - go collect them for me while I do this important thing that actually matters" kind of stuff). The rush is really powerful but it doesn't feel much stronger than just telling your Pikmin individually to rush a target outside of the bit of damage Oatchi himself does (and the slightly higher position is sometimes more advantageous than attacking stuff at the legs).
Honestly if you want to talk OP, it's an item you get a little later on that's nuts useful.