I recently got the urge to play through the Pikmin games again and after blasting through Pikmin 1, completing most of Pikmin 2, and even beating a few levels of Hey Pikmin here and there, I thought I'd jump into the third game which I haven't touched since it came out 4 years ago. My memories of it were generally fond, but the more I got back into it the more I realized it's a total letdown compared to the previous two entries for a few major reasons.
1. The controls
I'd go so far as to say this game is nearly unplayable with the default Gamepad setup. Instead of having the aiming reticle be a set distance away from the character, it now moves separately with your character only moving once the reticle has moved enough. Right stick Pikmin control has also been ditched in favor of a lock-on feature that lets you command the Pikmin to charge towards an enemy or object. Together, their powers combine to create... an extremely unwieldy control scheme that had me immediately reaching for the Wiimote and nunchuck. But wait, there's more! The map and character auto-movement feature can only be accessed using the Gamepad for some bizarre reason! So even if you play with the superior Wiimote aiming, you still need to have the Gamepad ready to go. Just... why?
2. The timer
At first I couldn't figure out what it was about the timer that was so annoying, because theoretically it should be no different from the first 2 games where it was no problem, right? Then it hit me:
- The level design is FAR more linear than the previous games. In Pikmin 1 and 2 you could be doing one of any number of tasks on any given day, as each ship part / treasure / dungeon entrance was equally important to get to. Here, you just follow one specific route to to the boss arena with little incentive to deviate from the path (fruits are clearly intended to be the successor to treasures and parts, but they quickly become pointless as it's extremely easy to stockpile a massive amount of juice - in my playthrough where I only went out of my way to find fruit when I had time to kill, I still managed to end up with 33 days worth of extra juice). As a result, instead of feeling like you got lots of mini objectives done in one day when night rolls around, you just feel like you're constantly being cut off from completing the one big objective.
- Bosses are not fought underground, and thus time passes as you fight them. Here's the issue: these guys take the better part of a day to fight. If you don't fight them early in the day there's a good chance you'll be interrupted mid-battle and unceremoniously sent back to the ship, and even when you do kill them, good luck getting all the spoils back to your ship before night falls - especially annoying when the boss drops a part needed to access the next level. The final boss is just the worst because of this, what could have been a frantic and fun chase is instead dragged out across multiple days.
3. The characters and writing
Alph, Brittany, and Charlie just suck compared to Olimar and Louie. Even the developers apparently think this, as they turned the Captain into a Poochie by making the trio constantly ask ”Where's Olimar?" whenever he's not on screen. In addition, while the dialogue still has some pretty good moments, the amazing Piklopedia entries from Pikmin 2 filled with Olimar's hilarious salaryman musings have instead been replaced by loads of boring tutorial files and a handful of mildly amusing descriptions of fruit from Brittany. Did they run out of time to add it or something? Even Hey Pikmin didn't disappoint in this regard.
There are other things I could go into such as the removal of dungeons, the annoying decision to make Pikmin return to the empty spot where they picked something up for no apparent reason, the excessive amount of tutorializing that discourages experimentation, or the oddly paced doling out of Pikmin types that sees Blue Pikmin getting a meager amount of screen time in Story Mode unless you go for all the optional fruits and White/Purple Pikmin only appearing in Mission Mode, but I think I've made my point.
There are still a lot of good points about the game. The graphics and sound are great, Mission Mode is even better than Pikmin 2's challenge mode especially with the extra DLC levels, and at the end of the day Pikmin gameplay is still pretty fun even with all the flaws... but ultimately it still feels like the worst entry. Anyone else agree or am I just an uncultured swine who doesn't understand the majesty of Pikmin 3?