Pikmin 3

 The original Pikmin was something more than the sum of its parts. It had a certain thematic cohesion where the premise of being stranded on an alien planet and needing collect the pieces of your ship in 30 days or you'd die meshed perfectly with the light RTS gameplay of learning to be more and more efficient with your time. In conjunction with the logs at the end of each day, and only your Pikmin as friends, you started to feel like you really were stranded on a planet. Pikmin 2 removed the time limit and I skipped it because I just didn't see the point- the individual pieces of the game like combat were fine, but they only really came together when the player was compelled to be efficient. Pikmin 3 marked the return to the time limit so I was pretty excited.

Rather than a hard 30 day limit, it introduces the concept of juice- every day on the planet consumes 1 juice and finding fruit (of which there are a finite amount) adds more juice to your reserves. I imagine the intention was to make the time limit feel less negative to people who are afraid of time limits. In practice there is so much fruit that it actually just undermines the tension completely. The original game was also a paper tiger in this regard, you'd have to be remarkably terrible to get anywhere near the time limit even on your first playthrough, but it still had enough unknowns that I felt pressured most of the way through. In Pikmin 3 it takes very little time to get a juice surplus and you will find yourself pretty much constantly getting +3 days almost every day such that there just isn't any tension. After cleaning up the game for 100% fruit I had like 40 remaining when I beat the final boss, and even before that I probably had a 20 surplus when reaching the final boss. The game does introduce one curveball to the system in the middle of the game which was appreciated, but still not enough.

It's kind of unfortunate too because the game also introduces so many more options for being efficient. You have 3 characters to direct pikmin with and are able to swap between them at any time. You can also use the touch screen to command them to move places while you're doing other things. You could really do some work with these new tools, but I only used them out of occasional convenience because there just wasn't any pressure. It also dissuades you from it in the early game because there are numerous puzzles requiring one commander to throw another one up inaccessible cliffs- so even if you wanted to be an efficiency machine, it might bite you later when the game requires the commanders to be together.

The controls are also frankly a mess. You can throw/gather pikmin using the gamepad's analog stick, or its touch pad, or the wiimote's sensor, or the wiimote's wiimotion+ gyro. Every option has drawbacks. Using the pure gamepad is awkward because a lot of targets (especially flying) are a nightmare to target. Using the touchpad is awkward because you have to re-center it frequently. The wiimote is the best way to play the game, but it offers no way to use the map on the TV so you'll have to awkwardly swap between it and the gamepad. I ended up using the wiimote for bosses, and the pure gamepad for exploration. It was not ideal. Even the touch screen map itself is lacking- there's no zoom options (because your cursor is linked showing the area itself on the TV which is kind of necessary since the map itself makes terrain indistinct), and there's no quick way to direct your commanders- you have to switch, scroll to where you want them to go, lock it in, then switch back. Given the touch screen I expected to be able to direct them by just dragging on the commander or something. I expected this to be one of the few games to justify the wiiu's gamepad, but I ended up wishing that I had the Switch version that lets you use the map on the TV (even if gyro aiming is probably a little worse than a wiimote pointer).

So should you play Pikmin 3? Even though this review consists entirely of gripes, I'd still say I had a pretty good time. It's a strange hybrid of RTS and adventure that is very light, but also enjoyable since there's not much like it (or possibly because a short game is incredible after playing so many 200hr monsters). I didn't really go into it, but the game has far more elaborate boss encounters than the original that often mix exploration/puzzles and battle in clever ways (though the final one is more annoying than anything). There's still a tinge of sadness since it could have been so much more if the developers were a little less afraid of hurting players (maybe the Switch version's hard modes even fix this). It's certainly not a must play, but if you see it for cheap go for it? Certainly play the original game instead if you haven't.