VGChartz’s Paul Broussard: “I wind up coming away from Pikmin 4 generally happy, but not as much as I wish I was. There’s a lot of good here, and it’s clearly a game of immense passion. If you’re someone who holds up Pikmin 2 as the high-water mark in the series then you’ll probably unabashedly love this game, as it can be crudely described as ‘Pikmin 2 with most of the rough edges smoothed out and a variety of mostly-positive new features’.
For me, however, I’d argue the first Pikmin is still the high-water mark for the series. Despite the quality of life features that game lacked, it was unquestionably about efficiently using your time, or “Dandori,” if you will. I’m frankly not sure what the main focus of Pikmin 4 is. Nintendo claims it’s about Dandori, but with the exception of an (admittedly great) side story mode, there rarely seems to be much in Pikmin 4 that encourages efficient time usage. Pikmin 4 is a mostly-good collectathon with some occasional leaps into greatness that showcase its true potential as a series, but it doesn’t commit enough to these to become truly great.”
