 I want to talk about Pikmin 4. You know, it's funny, leading up to Pikmin 4's launch, I really didn't think I needed another Pikmin game. It'd been a long time since the last one, and I liked Pikmin 3 Deluxe. It was one of the best games on Wii U, but I mean, look at the rest of them. I mean, Nintendo did great job on their first party IPs. It was about the only reason to have a Wii U. It's just, at the time, it was one of the only games worth playing on the console, so I thought it probably wasn't as good as I remember. Surely Pikmin isn't that much fun. Yeah, I was wrong. I gotta eat this because it's dripping everywhere, and if I get sugar on me, I'll get ants. That's how you get ants! Which would be a cool look for the video, but I don't really want to be eating alive today. So a couple weeks before Pikmin 4 released, Nintendo dropped the demo on the eShop, which if you didn't know, you can play that first. It starts you at the start of the game, and then all of your progress is saved if you decide to pick up the actual full thing, which is really cool, and I love that this has happened so much on the Switch. There was a rock right in the back of my head, and there's a wasp flying around the tripod. None of this is gonna be on camera! As I started playing the demo, I had that same thought of, why am I here again? Why do we need another Pikmin game? Like, I get it, I'll really want one. Oh, it's happening! But does the rest of the world need one? And it only took me about half an hour to realize how wrong I was. Sure, the tutorial was a little boring, but once you get stuck into the game, and you start collecting your Pikmin, and you're sending some over here, and some over there, and they give you the puppy this time, and you can start micromanaging between your Pikmin, Pikman, Pikman, Pikmin Man. I don't know what you call these guys. Once you start bouncing between the Pikmin Man and Ochi, the new puppy, divvying up the Pikmin responsibilities, and finding treasure, which is probably the most fun part. This is a very cozy game to play. And I think easily the most addicting part of it all is just exploring and finding every little trinket, doodad, nicknack, patty whack, give a dog a bone. Oh, you can actually give the dog a bone. That's a funny joke, and I didn't write it. I mean, I was always on the hunt for the next GBA game, or weird and wacky thing that you can find in the levels. But a lot of you might be wondering, would I've never played a Pikmin game? What do you do? Pikmin is one of those games where when you look at the gameplay, this could be my opinion. I don't think it looks super fun. I don't know what it is. Whenever I'm not playing Pikmin, I wonder why Pikmin is fun. I really can't explain it. It's like when you see an old person trip and fall over. It shouldn't be funny. It shouldn't make us laugh, but it always does. Why? That's Pikmin. It doesn't make sense. It just is really fun. But it's these little guys that are the real star of the show. The Pikmin. There's a bunch of different kinds. You got the blue one, the yellow one, the red one, the ice one, the rock one, the big chunky one, and the white one. There's probably more that I'm forgetting, but oh, the flying ones. Each one has a different use, and unlocking these also act as a path of progression. In a way, it's kind of like a Metroidvania game where you need to get a certain upgrade or ability to progress to a new area you couldn't access before. But all that progression and the items that you need are actually the Pikmin. For example, the blue Pikmin can go under water. So now all of a sudden you can get treasures that you couldn't reach before because your Pikmin would drown like little idiots. The ice Pikmin can freeze enemies, but also freeze water so that you can walk on top of it. And the flying Pikmin are so handy because they can pick up treasures and just fly over gaps. So mixing up the kind of Pikmin that you use, depending on the level that you're on, can give a whole different experience to playing a level with three different kinds of Pikmin. And that's Pikmin in Pikmin. I think for me it's the micromanaging aspect of it all. My brain gets to go on an overdrive dealing with a bunch of different things at once. Wasp is getting real close. It just flew right past the camera. Each time you dive into a level you have to complete it before night falls. Which gives you this stressful feeling of needing to get as much done as you can in the day but it really doesn't matter because you can just play again and do another day. There's no punishment for not getting enough done. It really is just up to you and how long it takes. The levels are filled with bugs, creatures, and other eight-legged nasties that you just don't want to lose your Pikmin to. I mean, none of them are particularly that hard to defeat but if you even lose one single Pikmin and you see that little baby ghost rising up oh you just feel terrible. Like I have 80 of these guys following me but if I lose even one it cuts me deep in my heart. I just lost a child which they did include a rewind feature this time. If you really do feel that bad about it you can just rewind to the start of the level. I tried really hard not to do that on my playthrough because it felt like cheating but I will forever remember the fallen soldiers. They were so little they had so much to live for but I do have a lot of them and I can really spare a couple. Other than the bugs and the creatures around the levels is the time the treasure is defined but also the capes that you can dive in and they have multiple layers to explore and kill more creatures and find more treasures. You see it doesn't on paper sound that fun but there is so much to do in each level and it's so satisfying to 100% complete each level and I think it's a mix of it's not that hard if you just spend the time doing it you'll eventually get it done. They don't make it impossible to find everything or to kill everything it's not really about that it's really at its heart a cozy relaxing game. Now there are things you can do to amp up the stress and the pressure though like you can play at night where now all the bugs and creatures get big red glowy eyes and get vicious. I thought this was gonna work differently looking at the promotional material leading up to the game's launch. I thought if you stayed out too long it would get night and things would get really hard and I was looking forward to that but it's not like that you can just opt to do night missions now if you want. They're pretty easy though. If you do them you get a herb medicine thing that you can treat these other crashed survivors that you find in the day levels and turn them from the leaf creatures to the normal creatures. I know I'm really summarizing this in a weird way it's because I gotta be honest I skipped the entire story I just didn't care I'm not here for the Pikmin story I know that it can get dark I know that it's deep I know that people really like it I know that I was finding guys and they needed medicine so at night you get the medicine for them by completing these missions and it's like a tower defense mode you have this main hive that you have to protect and you go and find glow Pikmin which you can only get at night and then you just go to work defending the tower I wish they were more difficult I also wish they were scarier I feel no real threat because for one I'm using glow Pikmin which are like imaginary magic Pikmin they're not my actual Pikmin I get these for free unlimited at night there's not as much weight to losing these guys I'm sorry you're very cute I do like the way you look but I'm just not that attached to you and also because these big scary bad guys are really just regular enemies that are on rails and they're not trying to fight me they're trying to fight this mound of dirt so the night stuff was kind of a let down I think but I do appreciate they tried to do something different with this and they didn't just give us the levels at night they did try to change it up and add something new to the formula which just didn't really work for me but where it did work for me was the Dandori battles these are really fun they're one-on-one head-to-head battles where you try and collect the most amount of stuff as possible and I like these because it's what I like most about the game the micro managing aspect of how many things can you do at once can you have several groups of Pikmin doing multiple different things from breaking down walls to collecting resources attacking enemies the balance between trying to amass a ton of Pikmin first or just going straight to finding the stuff before the other player finds it for the points you can also if you see another player grabbing something if you overwhelm them with more Pikmin it becomes a tundra war and you can yank that thing towards your side instead this home mode really utilizes what I love most about the game but pits me against somebody else and even with the AI it's fun if not a little easy but you can do it co-op too well I guess not really co-op because you're not cooperating but with a friend and that's cool the actual co-op mode was also a bit bleh it reminds me what game was it I can't actually I guess I'm not really reminded I think it was Mario Odyssey where you could play two players but the second player was Cappy it's the same thing here the second player can throw Pikmin by pointing at the screen or something I was kind of hoping for more of an actual two player mode but there's no but really it sucked I didn't like it I mentioned resources into my rambling and I want to touch on that more because this time around you collect these shards that you can then spend to upgrade yourself but also spend to fix the world like if you want to fix a bridge you can spend these resource points to get fabrication materials to finish the bridge I like this it's better than just having pieces of the bridge lying around and it's giving you an arbitrary task to do that's just wasting time now you actually need to have the money to progress which again adds to the progression and me feeling like I'm doing a good job but on top of that you get to balance this progression of do I need these resources to build a bridge to progress in this world or do I want to spend these to upgrade me or my puppy because there's a ton of upgrades this type you can make yourself or your puppy immune to like every status effect imaginable or you can buy speed and health increases or new abilities that make the outings way more streamlined this time around like being able to press a button and calling all your Pikmin back to your base no matter where they are around the world which means you will never lose a Pikmin again there's a lot of really nice streamlined things in this game that arguably make it way too easy but also more fun to play like even the puppy you can have it go and round up every loose Pikmin and bring it back to you that is so handy you can adapt your own shortcut menu whether it's having Ochi finding treasure or switching between playing Ochi or the Pikmin man which is so yasashi oh sorry I meant to say nice I'm learning Japanese in my free time and you know sometimes you just forget what language you're speaking because I'm just that kakai kakoi oh I was trying to say kakoi it means cool when I messed it up this is a side tangent but I pulled some numbers apparently Pikmin 4 has already sold 400,000 units which is 135% more than Pikmin 3 Deluxe which sold 170,000 units I mean there is a massive install based on Switch and nobody bought the Wii U but it is nice that so many new people are trying Pikmin and I think a lot of people should give it a shot especially if you enjoy cozy games but also enough action for it to be thrilling at times to boss battles are actually really cool like it's all because of the scale I mean you're this tiny little ant sized human with a bunch of little hands running around so when you come across a spider and it's 50,000 feet tall also they're really creative with how you attack each different type of enemy it doesn't ever feel like you're just spamming Pikmin and hoping for the best you really have to pick your moments pick your strategy every enemy is different and if you just throw your Pikmin straight in chances are they're gonna get f*** chances are they're gonna get tongue licked and chewed up and spat out or they're gonna get spiked or squished you think losing one is bad when a whole group of them gets squished or gobbled up at once oh god you may as well uninstall it sucks it's also weird because I liked Pikmin but I didn't think anyone else did I've never done anybody that's liked Pikmin growing up my friends outside of YouTube and even inside of YouTube now I can barely think of anyone that liked Pikmin but the amount of Pikmin fans coming out of the woodwork on this new release I love it I mean we don't know about Arlo but even my editor Zach it's his favorite series and I didn't know that he actually said he refused to edit this video if I said anything bad about Pikmin just kind of crazy I mean it's your job I told Zach if he wanted he could give a 60 second power of you so Zach time god how am I gonna fit this into one minute much like how wood uses Zelda as nostalgic pinpoints throughout his entire life I kind of use Pikmin games when Pikmin 1 came out I was in junior school when Pikmin 2 came out I was in secondary school when Pikmin 3 came out I was at uni now Pikmin 4's out and I'm a 30 year old man with a full-time job by the way for the record I definitely would have edited Pikmin 4 if you if you hated it would maybe so the untrained eye all the Pikmin games look pretty much exactly the same but I can tell you this one is most like 2 so if you enjoyed 2 because of all the boss battles the spelunking the treasure collecting you'll love this one this one doesn't have a time limit like 1 and 3 although once you hit the first batch of credits you do unlock a kind of Pikmin 1-esque mission so if you do like being stressed on a time limit then there is still that option I love a lot of the changes to this game like gathering pharlux to build up your Pikmin infield count I also do like the fact that you can only bring 3 out at once it does make the game feel less overwhelming one thing I don't really like is the lock-on system it's fine for like 1 or 2 enemies but when there's multiple like sheer fleas jumping around at you you're just like can I just aim my Pikmin I would have liked the option to turn it off and have the old style but whatever but anyway back to word bye alright well that's Pikmin I wanted to make a video about this game because I think it is really charming and it's one of those series that I think people pass over and they don't give it a shot because they don't think they'll like it but I'm telling you if you just download that demo it might surprise you I'm surprised myself that Nintendo is still making this series but it's a testament to Nintendo listening to the fans I know a lot of the time it sucks because it feels like they don't you know there's a lot of series that we all want to get a sequel or we all want to see come back it's like why is Nintendo not doing it but when you think about it no other company has kept so many of their legacy franchises running this long look at the other consoles and the franchises that have come and gone hey I'm just reminiscing because right now I'm staring on up at the clouds I feel like I'm getting so relaxed I might fall asleep if you're liking Pikmin let me know down below if you're going to check it out now after this video at least the demo let me know that too I love you guys and I'll see you in the next one you want to see what I'm seeing I mean there's a big honking camera there you'll have to ignore that guy hello but I mean like this whole video I've just been staring at these clouds is that a spider on my camera holy crap there is no way I do not have a spider in my hair there's literally a spider