I always thought Pikmin 3 was the perfect amalgamation between Pikmin 1 and 2. Pikmin 3 is a hand-crafted adventure with no time limit to complete the game and fun puzzle-solving elements. Suffice to say when Pikmin 3 Deluxe was announced, I was excited. At its core, Pikmin 3 Deluxe is Pikmin 3 on the Switch and realistically, that’s probably all Nintendo wanted. It comes packed with all the DLC packed in and some small quality-of-life features added such as a hint system or the ability to quickly switch leaders. But is that enough to separate it from the original game’s release?
Pikmin 3 Deluxe
Developer: Nintendo & Eighting
Price: $59.99
Platform: Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Nintendo Switch code for review
No. It’s not. Sorry to make you click into the article to find the answer but here it is. No. If you played Pikmin 3 on the Wii-U you know exactly what you’re getting with this release. It took me digging out my Wii-U and Pikmin 3 to realize what quality-of-life additions there were added to Deluxe. Nintendo did very little to make this appealing to fans who have already played Pikmin 3.
Luckily, for those that haven’t played Pikmin 3 and those that have and loved it, Pikmin 3 Deluxe is the best experience of those available. The hint system is fabulous and allows you to set down the game and come back to it later without really losing track of what you were doing. Likewise, the ability to quickly split your party and easily swap between party leaders makes Deluxe a very enjoyable experience. I definitely felt like I had WAY more trouble using the Wii-U gamepad to play Pikmin 3 at launch and playing Deluxe on the Switch with a Switch Pro controller felt like a dream. I had way more control over everything I was doing and thoroughly enjoyed almost every encounter and puzzle thrown at me. I barely noticed I didn’t have each level’s map sitting in my lap while playing (A feature of the Wii-U version.)
Pikmin 3 Deluxe is about a race of tiny beings called Koppaites from the planet Koppai. Koppai planned poorly and is now running out of food. To solve this, they’re using their space program to send Koppaites off to different planets to find new resources. The player controls the 3-party team sent to PNF-404 after a crash landing separates the party and they’re found by a tiny group of plant-like creatures known as Pikmin. You soon learn that Pikmin can be used, if thrown at objects, to carry things back to your ship and perform simple tasks like fighting bugs or building bridges. Pikmin 3 Deluxe is a beautiful blend of puzzle and strategy that requires a small level of skill to progress and improving only serves the allow you to complete levels faster.
Pikmin appear in different colors indicating proficiency in things like fighting, flying, breathing underwater, being rocks, and allowing electricity to pass through them unharmed. The strategy involves splitting them up amongst party members and choosing which color does what in order to grab the fruit necessary to make juice, the meal of choice for the Koppaites, and get everyone back to the ship before sundown. If left unattended when night falls, your Pikmin’s lives are forfeit. Proficiency with leading Pikmin is primarily required when fighting bosses. Typically bugs or something similarly disgusting, the bosses in Pikmin 3 are enormous. Pikmin can be controlled by using a whistle attached to the Koppaites space helmets and it serves mostly to call Pikmin back to the player. Boss fights will have you running around, throwing Pikmin at the boss, and trying frantically to get them back to you before the boss comes crashing down on them or tries to eat them.
Along with the quality-of-life improvements, Pikmin 3 Deluxe features the ability to play through the entire story mode in co-op. While the original game had some separate co-op missions to play, Deluxe offers the entire story with a friend. As well, Deluxe also offers, for the first time in the franchise, difficulty options. Normal has the day’s length set to 18 minutes as opposed to the original game’s 13 minutes. Hard is essentially the default difficulty of Pikmin 3 on the Wii-U. And finally, Ultra-Spicy which can only be unlocked after you beat the game on hard, reduces the amount of Pikmin on the field from 100 to 60.
Originally, Pikmin 3 offered a score attack mode that had you running around collecting fruit and finishing puzzles in order to advance your score to win medals. In Deluxe they used this same play style to tell the story of the Pikmin 1 & 2 protagonist, Olimar, and his slow-witted companion, Louie. If you enjoy the gameplay loop of Pikmin, these side-stories are not to be missed. Granted, the story in Pikmin 3 is nothing to write home about, it’s not Ibsen, but providing more context as to what they’re doing on PNF-404 and enjoying their hijinks while participating in what I find, S-tier gameplay is incredibly enjoyable.
While this is clearly a bare-bones port, simply making Pikmin 3 work on the Switch, it offers an unbeatable experience for first-time players and anyone who really enjoyed it the first time around. Despite having thoroughly beaten Pikmin 3 on the Wii-U (seriously, I spent way too much time playing that game,)
The Final Word
I really enjoyed coming back to Deluxe and seeing all it had to offer, even if that wasn’t much. Pikmin 3 Deluxe is not just a great entry to jump in on, but also try out if you’ve ever been curious about the franchise. The removal of the time limit provides a more casual, laid-back experience and doesn’t penalize newcomers. Of course, while this was a spicy nugget of deliciousness in the Pikmin universe, afterward, one is only left wondering where the heck is Pikmin 4?
MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
