So I consider myself a very casual Pikmin fan. I haven't played the first 2 since they came out for the GameCube, and have only played some of the 3rd one back on WiiU. So with Pikmin 4 around the corner and Nintendo shadow dropping the first two on Switch, I figured it was time for a replay.
I just completed Pikmin 1, and what an absolutely fantastic experience. I think back when I was a kid playing the first one may have been just a bit too much strategy for me to comprehend. But now may years later, I just absorbed myself into it.
Pacing out every day to explore the areas and devise a strategy of what I could reasonably tackle, judging if I should spend the day going straight for ship parts or doing pikmin harvesting... It all comes together with such an incredible sense of flow. The 30 Day time limit really makes you consider all of your actions. And it seemed like an intimidating limit at first, but the 30 Day cycle was much more forgiving than I expected. Even if I had a rough day, I could at least put my Pikmin away and just run around and assess the areas as Olimar.
And even as just an upscale, the visuals are brilliant. I love that early GameCube era look of games like this and Luigis Mansion.The way the environments and camera are designed do a great job making you feel like a tiny man in a big strange world.
I feel like I've fallen in love with a franchise all over again. I'm starting Pikmin 2 tonight, and can't wait to play 4 next month. If you haven't tried out this series, please do yourself a favor and grab at least the first game on the eshop. It's a perfect slice of pure Nintendo.
Just played it for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was a lot more fun than I expected!
I grew up watching lets plays of Pikmin 3 when it came out, so that was my first real foray into the Pikmin franchise. When seeing footage of Pikmin 1, it looked crude in comparison at first- especially things like the onion models, which looked so simple compared to how they appeared in 3.
But, I decided to actually play the pikmin games, and seeing as I have a homebrewed Wii, I just got the gamecube version and played it on that (I know the new play control version exists too).
Really fun, and while there are aspects of the game that could have been polished, it was really fun, and struck a nice balance between challenging but not oppressively so.
Like you also mentioned, I too was surprised by how forgiving 30 days was. It felt short enough to actually make me feel pressured to work as fast as I could, but not to the point where I was genuinely concerned of getting the bad ending.
There were times when I did use a guide to at least figure out where some of the ship parts were, and the only ones I couldn't figure out were the ones inside of regular enemies, like the normal puffy blowhog in Distant Spring.
Distant Spring, in the end was probably my favorite stage in the game, as some of the methods for acquiring ship parts made you think, and the different ways you could traverse the map and different shortcuts you could take gave the level some nice choice on the player's end.