Pikmin 4 is packed with excellent quality-of-life features, and planning director Yutaka Hiramuki noted that the team felt it was "important to lower the barrier to entry for new players by implementing features that make it easier to play, and then let the fun of Dandori sink in naturally." Looking at the ride to Pikmin 4's first ending, I'm pretty sure 'let the fun of Dandori sink in naturally' was the design ethos for that entire stretch of the game, letting players build up their skill until they're ready for the real Pikmin experiences in the post-game. ![]() But now there are Dandori battles, Dandori challenges, regular reminders to practice Dandori well, and even a sweet little loading screen message reminding you to use Dandori in your everyday life. The Japanese word 'Dandori' is all over Pikmin 4, meaning something along the lines of 'making plans to efficiently complete tasks in a timely way.' That's an incredible way of describing exactly what's fun about Pikmin, and it's a term that hadn't been used in the series - at least the English-language releases - up until now. "There have been three games in the series until now, from Pikmin to Pikmin 3," Miyamoto said in another part of that interview, "and personally I've always wondered, 'Why haven't they exploded more in sales even though they're so much fun to play? Why do people think they're so difficult?'" I'm guessing Miyamoto's interest in those questions is why Pikmin keeps making comebacks - it's the only reason I can come up with for how Pikmin Bloom managed to be greenlit - and I think this is a big part of why Pikmin 4 has so thoroughly focused on outright explaining the fun of the series. It turns out that's exactly what Nintendo had in mind. It was as if Pikmin 4 was building and refining my Pikmin-leading skills over the course of a dozen or so hours, shaping me into the commander I'd have to be to take on these endgame challenges at maximum efficiency. By the time I got to dive into the Olimar mode and the other post-game challenges, I was retroactively starting to appreciate those opening hours a whole lot more. ![]() I don't want to overstate how hard Pikmin actually is - even the games with the strictest time constraints are hardly likely to make you break a sweat - but the real appeal of the series is the way its gentle pressures force you to challenge yourself to complete tasks efficiently. By the time you get to Olimar's quest, you've gotten the opportunity to know these levels forwards and back, and the shorter time limit offers even more encouragement to perfect each day and complete the quest in the shortest timespan you can manage. It's a great addition, and it made me realize that all those time constraints are actually way more satisfying to work through after you've become familiar with the structure of all the levels you're exploring. It's just that here, it takes place in remixed versions of Pikmin 4's levels, and comes with an even tighter time constraint: 15 days versus the original game's 30. It's basically a soft remake of the original game, once again putting you in Olimar's tiny space boots in order to recover the parts of his crashed vessel before life support runs out. That prequel mode is exactly what I thought Pikmin 4 was missing. ![]() In an official interview released last week, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto noted that at the time of the original two games, "players were divided as to which game they preferred, and some people even talked in terms of being either a 'Pikmin 1 person' or a 'Pikmin 2 person.'" Pikmin 1 had a strict time limit of 30 in-game days for you to complete its story, but Pikmin 2 got rid of the overarching time limit in an effort to court players intimidated by the restriction. Pikmin has been back and forth over how much it demands of your time management skills over the course of the series. The action of directing your Pikmin and managing their tasks over the course of each day is engaging all on its own, but there's not quite enough pressure in the early stages of Pikmin 4 to force you to truly manage your time well and make the most of the game's systems. The game has a slow start, heavy on tutorials and explanatory dialog, and even once you've got full control over the action, it's not particularly demanding. I'm honestly a bit surprised to be typing those words, since for most of Pikmin 4's early hours I simply liked it - I hadn't yet fallen in love.
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