Pikmin 3 almost feels, in a sense, like an alternate universe Pikmin 2. By that I mean it takes the core concepts of Pikmin 1 and runs in the opposite direction with them, while also tossing out much of what Pikmin 2 added to the mix. Purple and White Pikmin are gone (at least in any meaningful role, popping up occasionally in Mission Mode), and most notably, so are caves, with the game instead doubling down on the time management aspect of the original that Pikmin 2 had begun to lose sight of. I'm hesitant to say it's a “return to form” for the series, as Pikmin 3 does a lot to give a distinct feel from the original, but nevertheless, it feels refreshing.
Pikmin 3 is also very notably two console generations ahead of its predecessors. Not only does it look prettier, but every aspect of it is much more polished. Small things like the Pikmin tracing the path of the leader rather than running straight towards them (where there might be hazards in the way) make for a Pikmin experience that's lacking a lot of the frustration of the previous games. Plus, Pikmin 3 feels a lot more conscious of your time as well. Withdrawing Pikmin from the Onion is faster, plucking Pikmin is faster, tutorials are handled much quicker, and the game interrupts you much less frequently than Pikmin 2 as well. The most time-consuming thing you’ll have to sit through is juicing fruit, which itself has a skip button to dramatically speed up the process (though the framerate gets comically bad if you use it).
As a result of being on the Wii U, the game gives you the option of playing either with the GamePad for something more akin to the traditional Gamecube-style controls or the Wiimote and Nunchuk for pointer controls. GamePad controls lightly frustrated me due to stiffer aiming, though it's perfectly doable to beat the game with them (as I have before). I tried pointer controls for this playthrough and much preferred them, though it they were also lightly frustrating due to the charge/dismiss action being mapped to shaking the Nunchuk causing me to constantly accidentally dismiss my Pikmin every time I lifted my arm to quickly scratch my face or brush a strand of hair out of my mouth (...sounds silly to say, but it's a thing that happens!), along with it being harder to quickly look between the map on the GamePad and the gameplay on the TV screen when you're not actually holding the GamePad. The latter issue is probably due to my setup, since I played the game standing up and had to bend over to touch my GamePad sitting on an ottoman to my side every time I wanted to mess with the map, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
The GamePad's functionality is great, though. With three leaders this time (one of the few concepts that was carried over from Pikmin 2, along with ultra spicy spray) and the ability to survey parts of the map you've seen and send leaders walking anywhere independently with the “go here” function through the GamePad, the multitasking opportunities here are seemingly endless. More than ever before, I'm sure you can get insanely efficient as you grow more familiar with the game. I, for one, collected all the game's fruit in half the days as I did the first time around, even though I haven’t played the game in over half a decade!
The game's narrative leaves Olimar in the background to instead focus on a trio of Koppaites trying to retrieve food for their starving planet. It's a compelling premise with a bit more urgency to it than Pikmin 2's (though the idea of “we're immediately returning to this deadly planet before even saying hello to your family because capitalism!!!” did have a certain air of comedy to it), especially given that the ship's missing cosmic drive key means the crew can't return home until they recover it. It also allows the game to reimplement a day limit, though a more dynamic (and a bit juicier) one that ends up being a lot more forgiving combined with the option to replay earlier days if things go wrong. The three Koppaites in question all make for incredibly charming characters, too. Unlike Pikmin 2, the leaders do most of the talking instead of the ship, so you get to hear their thoughts regularly throughout the game (rather than it all being delegated to the Piklopedia… which, in fact, is entirely missing here! It at least makes sense given that they all have defined roles, none of which are biologist... though I guess Olimar was the sci-fi equivalent of a truck driver, so eh), and they grow on you quite a bit as the game goes on. Pikmin’s dialogue always had some wit to it, but Pikmin 3 is the first game to really put that at the forefront. There are plenty of moments to smile at throughout, enough to where I actively wanted to read as many of the group’s little interactions as I could.
The game has more of a linear sense of progression to it (likely thanks to the game wanting to have some sense of narrative progression... though it doesn’t really kick in until you’re nearing the end); whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to taste, though I personally found myself missing the greater freedom to explore where you wanted when you wanted that the previous two games had. Pikmin 3 forces you instead to explore an area, fight a boss, explore another area, fight a boss there, and so on. There's few natural opportunities to revisit previous areas, so trying to get all the fruit can feel a little clunky, as you have to completely drop the main objective to go run around somewhere else for a few days. Just saying, it feels weird to come back to Twilight River just to grab two underwater fruit with Blue Pikmin I couldn't get on my first visit, and then end the day.
(As a sidenote, the game in general seems to sprint to the finish as soon as you get Blue Pikmin, so you won’t get a whole lot of usage out of them at all if you don’t go back and grab the random few underwater fruit scattered about previous areas. The pacing’s a little weird, supposedly because a late-game area was cut during development. And yeah, the game’s pacing would probably feel a lot more satisfying if it hadn’t been cut, as you can certainly feel that the game’s missing something in-between the Garden of Hope revisit and the Formidable Oak.)
Even outside of going for 100% I found symptoms of this more linear progression system annoying me. Pikmin 3 wants to have bombastic boss encounters, but that just doesn't mesh well with the time management aspect. For every single boss, I would discover them, but not have enough time in the day left to beat them. Once, I did manage to beat a boss, but didn't have enough time to carry its key item back to the ship before the day was over, so I had to land back down the next day just to finish carrying it back and do nothing else (I'd already gotten all the fruit in the area I could at that time). Not like there was anywhere else I could explore, because my progression was locked in place until I retrieved that item. Similarly, the game’s final area serves as a great test of all the player has learned throughout the game, but getting cut off in the middle of it by the end of the day feels like such a pace killer. Pikmin 2’s caves were certainly flawed, but they at least in theory could’ve provided all the time necessary to deal with these kinds of challenges.
Of course, you could say the real issue is that I just need to be better at the game. Beat the bosses quicker and all! Well, thanks to the system of damage caps for each cycle on a boss, I physically couldn’t beat the bosses much quicker than I did. In that case, perhaps I should’ve at least gotten to the bosses quicker so I had more time to deal with them. And yeah, sure, I guess. I just feel like there should be a better solution to an annoyance like this than “just be insanely good at the game and you won’t run into that issue!”. Ideally, games should still be fun even if you’re not the best at them, right? (And not that I’m saying Pikmin 3 isn’t fun, of course not, but just trying to make a point.)
Pikmin 3 innovates on the core of Pikmin 1 in a different direction than Pikmin 2 did (...that’s a lot of “Pikmin” very close to each other), though the direction it goes in is just as, if not more, fun to play through. Time management is doubled down on, and the player is given more tools in order to be able to act efficiently. The game’s much more polished than its predecessors, with the Pikmin being much more inclined to behave how you actually want them to, and with a fresh look, feel, and trio of protagonists to grow attached to without the game losing the charm inherent to the series. The structure of the game emphasizes a more consistent linear progression, which I found annoying in how it made revisiting older areas clunkier and how it made each area of the game feel almost like levels, each of which ended with a boss fight that didn’t mesh entirely well with the timed nature of the game. Despite that one big annoyance, however, Pikmin 3 provides an enjoyable experience that proudly holds the Pikmin series to a high standard.