pikmin 4 log #1
OK ok fiiine......i'll play pikmin 4 various tsundere grumbles
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i love pikmin so much, the little bastards have carved a pikmin-shaped hole in my heart. massive highlight is obviously the music by hajime wakai and later asuka hayazaki + atsuko asahi. i still want to cry listening to the impact site, piklopedia, and literally the entire pikmin 3 soundtrack.
NOW the reason i've avoided pikmin 4 up until recently is because of the music......i just...with what i heard in the reveals and trailers, i was very very hesitant. however, after veteran pikmin fans saying millions of good things about it, there was this intense feeling of fomo (do people still use this? or is this my millennial shade coming out), so instead of watching behind a window, i want to form my own opinion. practicing caution is only beneficial when you're not cautious about Literally Everything.
so i'm gonna note my thoughts down here! this place is for the many words so i will write many words, and also pikmin is fun, OK
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opening
to start off, WOW the beginning of this game is agonizing. i'm not just saying that to be a cynical asshole, a loooot of people have agreed that the tutorial interrupts and spoonfeeds you waaaaay too much. this isn't a matter of impatience either, so much of it is extremely unnecessary. like is it necessary to have you direct oatchi to a dirt mound, and then sit and wait for literally 20 seconds of oatchi digging AND THEN 30 seconds after that for dialogue (this is real btw and i screamed).
i understand they wanted to cater to new players of the series, and previous games weren't exempt from unnecessary tutorializing, but it really is frustrating to see the almost-condescending amount of explaining, especially with how painfully frequent cutscenes are and how long it goes on for. even if you skip the individual cutscenes, there are like 30 of them within the first hour
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area 1 (sun-speckled terrace)
...anyway once you properly get going, it's actually pretty chill lol. there's still some tutorial pop-ups here and there, but other than the obvious main objectives, they let you handle the day with a ton of freedom and flexibility.
some initial highlights (1st area completed):
- a loooooot of nice quality of life changes: the default throwing number stops at the necessary amount, the cursor locks on automatically, there's an auto pikmin recommendation with one button, etc etc.
- the move base function is snappy in such a satisfying way
- charging pikmin is still super fun
- oatchi is cool but i notice myself ignoring some of his skills in favor of traditional pikmin controlling
- god caves are fun, dandori challenges are also fun but caves are my faves
- the addition of sparklium is surprisingly cool and natural, a multi-purpose currency works really well in a way i never considered for pikmin
so that's all nice and dandy, but i gotta get into the music. the only track that i wholeheartedly loved was the intro music to the level, that ONE time it was introduced and it was beautiful piano and......that's it. the rest of the soundtrack has a classic saturday morning cartoon, goofy mickey-mousing, bassoon + pizz + constant #4 to 5 melodic movement, etc. it's very clear that this game's overall musical direction, specifically the style and tone, is very different and specific (the music direction handled by kenta nagata, who i believe hasn't touched the series at all?).
and i really just...can't stand it honestly.
pikmin music has always been goofy, but this feels goofy in the wrong way. the quirky yet warm and comforting feeling that made me fall in love with pikmin music to begin with, is quirky in a surface-level way. it feels condescending, like "pikmin is goofy and quirky and that's all there is to it", and it didn't need to be that way, even for an installment that's trying to cater to new players. it actually reminds me of the story of mario galaxy with koji kondo and mahito yokota, and how yokota wrote initial music that was just surface level cutesy stuff, and kondo rejected it saying "if you think that all mario is is just cute, then you don't understand mario". it was a lesson in retaining what makes something identifiable, while still providing depth and complexity. there's no need to dumb shit down.
anyway that's a long ass rant, and maybe my perspective will change with some more music tracks being revealed (it is only the literal first level lol), but in terms of my initial opinion, that's as honest as i can get. it obviously strikes a very strong chord with me, since again, the series' music is so fucking influential to me. soooooo yeah, that's that.
will update this once i've completed the next area (i'm about halfway done i think?), so stay tuned for more thoughts~