YMMV / Pikmin 4

• Accidental Aesop: No matter how well you get along, taking wild animals home with you can end up hurting them a lot, especially if your home is in a very different environment than their usual habitats. While Olimar doesn't attempt to adopt Moss, she sneaks onto the ship when he attempts to leave, and begins suffering when they take off, forcing Olimar to turn back and ultimately crash. Several castaways and Olimar himself are also on the receiving end of this, considering what happens when the Pikmin try to 'adopt' them...
• Accidental Innuendo: One skill lets Oatchi and Moss transport objects by holding them in their mouths. Not bad on its own, but the name of the skill combined with the phrasing Olimar uses when he introduces it to you can raise some eyebrows.
  Olimar: I named it the Swallow. Would you like me to teach you this skill?
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How much of Louie's actions in the game's second half were out of pure malice, and how much was simply fueling his own desire to stay on PNF-404 and avoid an Unwanted Rescue? While he does kidnap castaways and turn them into leaflings, Olimar notes that he's told Louie in the past to copy his actions at work to stay on task, and speculates that he may have only leafified castaways because he saw Olimar's leafling self do the same. Louie notably doesn't seem to care much that the Koppites he kidnaps aren't turned into leaflings, implying that he doesn't have much interest in the overall process. Otherwise, Louie's main motive after losing Moss seems to just be trying to escape from the Rescue Corps. He continuously tells the player character to leave him alone when they pursue him, and specifically flees to the Cavern for a King in the hopes that the Rescue Corps will give up chasing him there. Him siccing the Ancient Sirehound on the player is likely another, albeit more deadly, attempt to get them to stay away (although it's certainly possible Louie is also aware that neither the player nor Oatchi are in danger of actually dying, at worst being forced to leave the cave, which is exactly what he wants). Louie's logs and notes imply that he's become rather attached to PNF-404 since arriving, and would rather stay on it instead of leaving with the others. Even Olimar believes that Louie had his own reasons for doing what he did, and asks the player to forgive him following the final boss battle.
  • Towards the end of Olimar's Voyage Log, he starts to muse about the Pikmin potentially using him to climb to the top of the natural order and after a nightmare where they feed him to an Onion begins to question their bond. A much earlier entry makes note of the fact that when he tried to join in their marching song, they went noticeably and eerily silent. However, the Pikmin themselves never come off as manipulative in-game, shoving Olimar into the Onion turned out to not use him as nutrients but engaged an Emergency Transformation to save his life, and their marching song "Ai no Uta" is a song all about selfless self-sacrifice for the benefit of another, implying the reason they went quiet at Olimar singing it was the idea of him doing what they do for him upset them.
    • Another possibility is it could just simply be a joke about Olimar's terrible singing ability, which was implied in a log entry back in the second and third game, and even in this game where Olimar recalls a time he tried to invite his family to karaoke and their response was a disgusted look. Olimar's voyage log in the first game also has an entry where he has a nightmare about being turned into a Pikmin, so it could simply be a reference or call-back to that.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • The demo sparked some criticism for the length of the game's tutorial section, which was caused in great part by constant interruptions from the Rescue Corps, Collin in particular, to explain the game's controls and mechanics.
  • The Rescue Corps members will occasionally pop in with tips while playing to remind you of tasks or to give gameplay advice. While they don't interrupt gameplay, they can get a bit grating at times; of note is that they'll tend to remind you if you have Pikmin sprouts currently unplucked, including when you're currently on the other side of the map doing something else or even if you're already in the process of plucking the sprouts. It's especially egregious on Night Expeditions; while Yonny and the rest of the crew's advice is solid for the first few nights, it can quickly get repetitive and grating once the player has a handle on things, often chiming in to protect the Lumiknoll even when there isn't anything nearby.
  • The first time a Pikmin falls prey to an elemental hazard or special status (such as drowning, electricity, or confusion), a short cutscene will interrupt gameplay to make you aware of the status. While you can't lose Pikmin to these cutscenes, they can get annoying to watch repeatedly for every kind of hazard, especially if you're already familiar with the effects of said hazards from previous games in the series.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The Man-at-Legs is back... but is now an utter pushover thanks to the new tools introduced since its last appearance. Winged Pikmin can easily swarm it, and even if it shakes them off, everyone can hop on Oatchi with ample time before it begins firing, and Oatchi can easily outrun its spread of fire. The Winged Pikmin's pitiful damage output is a moot point, because even without Ultra-Spicy Spray, you can simply rinse and repeat until the boss is dead.
  • The Waterwraith is just as intimidating as it was in Pikmin 2, though due to Oatchi's ability to carry your entire Pikmin squad on his back, there's almost zero risk to carrying treasures while it's active, as you can simply whistle your Pikmin back to the safety of Oatchi's hide any time the Wraith draws near. Additionally, its movements are no longer targeted and it instead randomly roams around the area, making it much easier to avoid. You fight two of them at the same time later on in the Cavern for a King, in the same vein as the Bully Den from 2, which seems like it'll be a formidable fight... until you remember that you already entered the cave with Purple Pikmin in your arsenal (and there are two purple Candypop Buds on the sublevel itself in case you've lost any), effectively turning this into a curbstomp battle. Rock Pikmin also completely No-Sell the wraith's crushing rollers, making it more of a minor annoyance than anything else.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • The Groovy Long Legs is considered a highlight of the game for its concept, being essentially a sentient disco ball that stomps to the beat of its own music, and starts the battle by breakdancing. Its multiple stages gives it multiple versions of the same song of increasing intensity, which the song in itself being a groovy EDM beat that wouldn't be out of place in a real rave. Combined with its brainwashing ability being capable of forcing your Pikmin to dance until their deaths by its stomping feet, and you get one of the most memorable bosses in the series.
  • The Ancient Sirehound, the game's Final Boss, is an intense, five phase long gauntlet testing pretty much everything the player has learned while also being a fun Call-Back to the Titan Dweevil from 2 by using almost all of the hazardous elements the game had to throw at you and being controlled by Louie and being a Mirror Boss between two captains and their mounts in a bid for survival. The heavy metal music certainly enhances the experience.
• Breather Level: Gimmick Gambit is the easiest of the ten Trials of The Sage Leaf, being a much more simple level with a bigger focus on puzzle solving over killing enemies or collecting treasure. It also happens to be in the middle of the White Key, which is your challenge to get the White Onion and borders on a collect-a-thon with how much stuff you need and One Fell Jump, which is listed under That One Sidequest below.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: People speculated that the Dandori Battle leafling would be Olimar, due to looking like Olimar, only with his face covered in leaves, particularly with his large nose visible. If that wasn't enough of a clue, he's accompanied by Moss the whole time—this can be confirmed even before the Hero's Hidaway is reached, as the Red Leafling will refer to Moss by name if she is downed in a Dandori battle.
• Character Rerailment: After Pikmin 3 played up Olimar's greedy tendencies by having him constantly searching for treasure even after crashing his ship and being unable to return home, this game brings him back to being more selfless and noble, caring very much about Moss, the Pikmin and the Castaways that have crashed on PNF-404, even when he's been transformed into a Leafling.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • As seen here, Gimmick Gambit can be completed in ten seconds by exploiting flaws in the level's design.
  • The Baldy Long Legs can move into a puddle of Water, which allows you to freeze the puddle with Ice Pikmin, freezing the boss infinitely until you remove them and allowing you to kill it at your leisure. The rematch in Cavern For a King is even worse, as both areas it can move to have water in them, meaning you don't even have to wait for the boss to move into it.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • When it comes to Oatchi's skill tree, expect veterans of the game to go for upgrading Buff/Super Buff above almost anything else. Having one unit with the ability to carry up to 100 Pikmin's worth of objects is highly useful for multitasking in low day or general speedruns, as it allows for collecting any out-of-the-way heavy treasures while still keeping a large squad of Pikmin at hand, and it greatly helps in completing some Dandori Challenges. After maxing it out, it is possible to learn the Swallow skill from Olimar for free, which enhances his carrying abilities even further. Most notably, a fully upgraded Super Buff+Swallow makes the final Sage Leaf challenge significantly easier as it frees up ten Purple Pikmin for the player, taking the edge off of unlocking the useful Purple Onion.
  • With the "only 3 types at a time" rule in effect, expect experienced players to select Ice Pikmin and Purple Pikmin as 2 of the 3 in just about any situation. Ice Pikmin's ability to freeze water (for easier traversal) and enemies (to stun them long enough for a quick kill), combined with Purple's strength of 10 Pikmin, increased attack power, and ability to damage groups with their shockwave mean they're greatly versatile in all aspects by themselves, usually leaving the last slot to whatever Pikmin are needed to clear specific obstacles the former 2 types cannot.
• Discredited Meme: "Moss is homophobic". It was meant to be an ironic joke poking fun at Moss's judgemental, squinty-eyed expression, but after the meme started being passed around by actual homophobes, the fandom was quick to disown it. The fact that Moss herself is actually a fairly nice dog in-game further helped squash the meme's life cycle.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The difficulty of his trials aside, the Sage Leaf is a fairly popular character due to discovering and rewarding the player with the Purple and White Onions, and for being Shrouded in Myth regarding who he is. The fact that he and Olimar are the only Leaflings who demonstrate an acute awareness of their surroundings outside of their Dandori obsession certainly helps.
• Even Better Sequel: While Pikmin 3 was well-liked by the fandom and generally received positive reviews, there were some aspects that were criticized such as the main Koppaite characters, some changed up game mechanics and an overall weaker story. By contrast, Pikmin 4's new mechanics (especially regarding Oatchi) were immediately embraced by both veterans and new players alike, and the game's status as a Continuity Reboot helped make the story feel less debilitating. It's telling that Pikmin 4 has sold far more copies than any previous game, and its release on the far more popular Switch console has caused a Newbie Boom for the franchise.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Before its official name was revealed, fans had taken to calling the Groovy Long Legs from the second trailer "Disco Long Legs".
  • "Crack Bulborbs" is used to describe the red eyed Bulborbs seen at night in game thanks to their frenzied behavior and the fact that bloodshot eyes is commonly associated with drug use (though it's a side effect of smoking marijuana, not crack).
  • The default design of the player character came to be known as "Pom". It originated from a supposed leak of the game, and though it was proven to be fake, the name stuck with fans for how cute it sounded and for fitting with the rest of the Rescue Corps' Animal Theme Naming (they're all named after dog breeds, with "Pom" being short for "Pomeranian").
• Fountain of Memes: The Grubchucker has been subjected to a lot of jokes by fans thanks to its silly name and appearance.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Ice Pikmin are supposed to be a Utility Party Member whose usefulness is meant to be balanced by their low attack. In practice, they largely trivialize normal enemy encounters due to their ability to quickly freeze an enemy and stun them, allowing your Reds/Purples to quickly finish the job with no chance for the enemy to retaliate, effectively making them an Ultra Bitter Spray that isn’t held back by scarcity. Even frozen enemies being destroyed completely isn't much of a hinderance since you will rarely need enemy corpses for more Pikmin and enemies killed this way drop nectar or an Ultra Spicy Spray, which are much more valuable. If enough Ice Pikmin are deployed to a body of water it will freeze over, but what the game doesn't tell you is that any enemies caught on the surface of the water will be frozen indefinitely until the Ice Pikmin are withdrawn. This neuters several very hard encounters outright.
  • Purple Pikmin, after getting heavily nerfed in the third game, are more or less back to their former glory from Pikmin 2 with their heavy damage output and the radius of their slam being slightly increased from what it used to be. They also have great synergy with Oatchi, with his ability to carry Pikmin mitigating the Purples' slow run speed and Rush being able to quickly launch Purples onto a target. Furthermore, beating the Trials of the Sage Leaf awards the player with the Purple and White Onions, thus making Pikmin 4 the first installment where players can infinitely grow Purple Pikmin instead of relying solely on limited-access Candypop Buds. Granted, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it is absolute Hell to unlock the Purple Onion.
  • Oatchi and Moss in general. You and your entire Pikmin squad can hitch a ride on Oatchi after the first couple in-game days, and his increased on-foot speed makes avoiding many enemy attacks a breeze, even against most of the bosses. Furthermore, with enough investment in Pup Power upgrades, Oatchi becomes a Jack of All Stats Lightning Bruiser that can, among many other things, single-handedly clear out entire hordes of smaller enemies by himself by charging through them, stun larger enemies so long that even many bosses can be killed before they can even get one attack off (especially in combination with the aforementioned Ice Pikmin), transport non-Blue and Ice Pikmin across large bodies of water unscathed, ignore most environmental hazards and carry pretty much any treasure or creature you find by himself back to the ship/onion. The only notable drawbacks are not being able to use the Charge Horn while riding him, and he can't fit through certain passageways once he grows, but he more than makes up for it in his overall utility, and that's without mentioning the fact that he can be buffed even further with certain items, like Ultra-Spicy Spray just like Pikmin, and with Scrummy Bones to increase his HP.
  • The Pebble Pitcher basically turns Pikmin 4 into a Third-Person Shooter, allowing your 2nd player to stone a good chunk of the game's enemies to death without any risk whatsoever to your Pikmin, as well as destroy certain obstacles that would normally require a certain Pikmin type to clear (such as poison pipes). In addition, they get a constant supply of helpful items that normally cost materials and can only be crafted in between days. The Pebble Pitcher can even be used with the Survey Drone to shoot down enemies that aren't even near your captain.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Mitites are a huge annoyance if you don't have any Purple Pikmin. Their appearance will cause Pikmin and Oatchi to panic, and if you were riding on Oatchi at the time, you'll get thrown off and stunned for a while. Panicking can cause the Pikmin to lose their flowers, and they can panic again even if you just whistled at them. Trying to hit the Mitites is difficult because all the nectar they drop can mess with the auto-targeting.
  • Water-filled areas will often house Blinnows, small fish that will leap up at your Pikmin to eat them, and are difficult to land Pikmin on due to generally being below the surface of the water, meaning they have to either float down onto them, or hit the bottom to start swimming to attack them; both are slow, and leave the Pikmin open to attack. Their leaping height also means you cannot use Winged Pikmin to bypass defeating them, as they can grab them out of the air.
  • Dweevils have an annoying tendency to drop down out of nowhere while your Pikmin are trying to transport something and wrestle it away from them, prompting a fight that only wastes time due to how much effort it takes to get them to drop their cargo.
• Goddamned Boss: Titan and Blizzarding Blowhogs, which are gargantuan versions of the Fiery and Snowy Blowhogs, respectively. At best, they are a major annoyance to deal with, because even the Pikmin who are resistant to their elemental attacks will be blown back by the sheer force of their breath. At worst, they will be found near a Bottomless Pit, and their wild bucking can thus cause mass Pikmin casualties. Depending on how sensitive you are to losing your Pikmin squad, you may see yourself rewinding several times on the seventh floor of Cavern for a King.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There is an oversight with Candypop Buds that allows you to not only duplicate Pikmin that are of the same type as the flower, but also have over 100 Pikmin on the field at once for the remainder of your spelunking journey. By persistently throwing Pikmin into the buds just as they open back up, you can trick the game into thinking that some of the Pikmin that are sliding off successfully entered, causing it to spit out more seeds than it should. The maximum amount of Pikmin that will actively follow you around and ride on Oatchi is 120, but you can do this for as long as you want to get hundreds of Pikmin if you have the patience for it. Funnily enough, this trick is easiest to do with Purple Pikmin (which you'll actually need at least a hundred of in order to collect a treasure in the game's final area).
  • Another candypop bud related one, using Oatchi's Rush to slam into the bud after it's expelled Pikmin will pluck all Pikmin in mid-air. It appears to be a side-effect from a largely unseen mechanic where slamming into walls with planted Pikmin on top can be used to unpluck them. It's a usueful trick for speedrunners, as it's technically faster than using the Plucking Whistle.
  • The Smoky Progg is usually That One Boss, but there's a glitch where you can effectively one-hit kill it with a Rush before it's even hatched from the egg it's in.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The "Disco Long Legs" in the Pikmin 4 trailer is actually called a Groovy Long Legs… and part of its mechanics involve it playing disco music while attacking to its own beat.
• I Knew It!:
  • Many people have speculated that the series would eventually introduce new friendly units that aren't Pikmin. With Pikmin 4, we finally get that in Oatchi, the Big Friendly Dog that follows the captain.
  • People have been speculating we would get some form of nighttime mode since Pikmin 2. Come Pikmin 4, we actually do get a quasi-nighttime mode in the form of the night expeditions.
  • As revealed in the Venture Forth, Brave Explorer trailer, many people correctly guessed that Pikmin 4 would have a character creator due to the main captain remaining unnamed for most of the early trailers, which is highly unusual for pre-release Pikmin news.
  • There have been many speculations on what an unambiguously sapient Pikmin antagonist would look like, ranging from an intelligent indigenous species to a straight-up Evil Counterpart of the hero who is in direct competition with them. In the June 2023 Direct, we would get an antagonistic figure that fits some of this criteria in the form of the Leaflings. The second half of the game gives us a straight example of the latter in the form of Louie, who becomes the first Big Bad in the series to be both sapient and villainous.
  • It was a common theory that the reason for the size discrepancy between the Emperor Bulblax in 1 and its appearances in 2 (most being only slightly larger than a Red Bulborb) was because the smaller ones were younger Emperor Bulblaxes, which was confirmed in 4 by the introduction of the Sovereign Bulblax, an older Emperor Bulblax about as big as the one serving as the Final Boss of Pikmin 1.
• Improved Second Attempt: Louie's Flanderization regarding his love of food in 3 wasn't super popular at the time, as his morally ambiguous actions combined with his lack of dialogue outside of the word "Food" made it very difficult to sympathize with him, despite being a character the Koppaites were required to rescue to continue on their journey. By contrast, this game framing Louie as an outright antagonist makes him far more of a Laughably Evil character, making his odd behaviors and actions far more endearing in a Love to Hate kind of way.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Very close to completion ^ExplanationA quote from an online news source released not long after Pikmin 3's release that stated that the fourth game in the series was already almost finished. This was the only news fans would get surrounding Pikmin 4 for years, and the line eventually became a common quote from Pikmin fans surrounding the game or other projects in similar states.
  • "This dog took eight years of development." ^ExplanationDue to Pikmin 4's infamous Development Hell, a lot of people have jokingly taken to blaming Oatchi as the reason for why the game took so long to come out.
  • Rock Pikmin got Mike Wazowski'd. ^ExplanationThe official boxart◊ for 4 has all the Pikmin types from every previous Pikmin game on it… except for Rock Pikmin. Made even odder because the full art does◊ have Rock Pikmin in it, next to Oatchi. Jokes about Rock Pikmin being Unperson'd or Mike Wazowski'd soon ensued.
  • The Times Square Takeover. ^ExplanationOne particular fan spent 40 bucks to display in Times Square a video of Captain Olimar twerking, with floating text promoting Pikmin 4 and telling viewers to buy it. Other fans found this to be hilarious, and imitators soon followed, posting their own goofy Pikmin videos onto the Times Square marquee.
  • Moss is homophobic/Green homophobic thing ^ExplanationMoss has an expression similar to Whitney Chewston, the white dachsund made famous from the "homophobic dog" meme. It was intended to be ironic until actual homophobes began using it.
    • Moss isn't homophobic ^ExplanationWhen "Moss is homophobic" picked up traction with actual homophobes, the community responded by saying that Moss had renounced her homophobic beliefs and became an LGBTQ+ ally.
  • Barbminheimer ^ExplanationWhen the game's release date was announced as July 21, 2023, people immediately noted that it would be coming out on the same day as both Barbie and Oppenheimer, whose own shared release date and polar opposite tones (Barbie being a comedy movie based on a toy line and Oppenheimer being a dark biopic about the father of the atomic bomb) spawned the massively popular "Barbenheimer" meme. Consequently, Pikmin fans decided to lump 4 in with the meme as well, creating the portmanteau "Barbminheimer" and jokingly planning to play the game after seeing both movies.
  • Pikmin 4 vs. Final Fantasy XVI ^ExplanationPikmin 4 receiving slightly higher review scores than the latter has led to a parodic fake one-sided Fandom Rivalry, resulting in meme images of Pikmin characters beating the crap out of the much manlier-looking Clive Rosfield.
  • Protect the Lumiknoll, new blood. ^ExplanationOne of Yonny's generic, miscellaneous lines he can give during a night expedition, which is sometimes given as somewhat of a catchphrase of his in fan content.
  • Dandori Issue^ExplanationA variation of the term "Skill Issue", usually accompanied with in-game footage of large Pikmin casualties.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Collin was portrayed as one prior to the game's release, with fans finding his design to be slightly uncanny and then running with it, even making jokes about predictions that he would turn out to be Evil All Along. This has mostly died down once the game released.
  • Moss' squinty-eyed expression in preview material has caused fans to jokingly compare it to the memetic "Homophobic Dog" thanks to its similar habit of looking like it's staring judgmentally at the viewer, and from that it's been joked that Moss is judgmental, bigoted, or otherwise a bit of a Jerkass. Moss isn't actually that bad, and only opposes the player through Dandori Battles and patrolling the Hero's Hideaway. Aside from that, she's a chill dog.
• Older Than They Think: This isn't the first Pikmin game to showcase the characters traversing still-intact human locations in the overworld as opposed to forests and overgrown gardens. Hey! Pikmin has the entirety of its fourth sector (Ravaged Rustworks) take place in an old construction site.
• Replacement Scrappy: The three Koppaites in this game, Yorke, Nelle, and Don Bergman, were seen by many as being vastly inferior to Alph, Brittany, and Charlie, due to how all three are nowhere near as fleshed out or endearing as the Pikmin 3 captains and don't add much to the game or lore of the series outside of introducing one of Alph's previously mentioned family members. Upon their reveal, many were left wondering why Alph, Brittany, and Charlie didn't return.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • Purple Pikmin were infamously nerfed in Pikmin 3 to remove their high attack power, incredibly powerful ground stomp, and stun abilities from Pikmin 2. This game brings back the first two, making them powerful once again, though still not nearly as overpowered as they were in 2. Furthermore, their weaknesses are made up with Oatchi helping them navigate to places faster, making them even more beneficial than before.
  • The cave system in this game has a number of quality-of-life upgrades introduced to it that help make them more enjoyable and less stressful compared to Pikmin 2. In particular, floors are no longer randomly generated, the player can select what Pikmin to take with them at the mouth of the cave instead of prepping in advance (with auto-suggestions to help streamline the process), and the player can exit them at any time and reenter at any specific sublevel, rather than traverse through the whole cave again to get to where the player was last. Enemy gauntlets and falling hazards are also heavily downplayed compared to the caves in 2, and instead the floors focus more on puzzle-solving.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Enemies above ground no longer respawn, meaning once they are killed, they are gone forever. This makes it significantly more difficult to grow Pikmin, and it makes the areas themselves feel empty and lacking in challenge. The fact that this wasn't an issue in any of the previous entries has had fans wondering why the change was made in the first place.
  • While there are 8 types of Pikmin available^note 9 types counting Glow Pikmin in caves, you are only allowed to have 3 out at a time outside of caves. This leads to many situations where certain types are barely utilized (most notably Winged and Rock Pikmin) since you don't have room to take anything beyond what the game recommends for each area. The fact that the previous two games had 5 types that could be freely taken out at any time makes the limit in this game feel tacked on as a result.
  • The max number of Pikmin you can have out on the surface is 20, requiring Flarlic to increase the number. Longtime fans see this as an inconvenient and pointless way of making the above ground areas "challenging" by limiting how many Pikmin they are allowed to have, when previous games all had the limit of 100 Pikmin at all times aside from wild Pikmin in Pikmin 2 and the Ultra-Spicy difficulty in Pikmin 3.
  • While the auto-targeting works great for the most part, a lot of people wish there was an option to disable it, since there are certain situations where it would be better to freely aim the cursor, such as trying to throw Pikmin at a specific target when there are so many targets available that the auto-targeting gets thrown off. The 7th stage of the Trial of the Sage Leaf in particular would've been much easier if you could freely aim the Purple Pikmin so you could spread them more efficiently, instead of being forced to throw them at the same spot or wildly throwing them around into danger because of the auto-targeting.
  • Dismounting Oatchi can be a harrowing experience if you're near a hazard or the edge of a platform, because doing so will cause all of the Pikmin to go behind you even if there's something like a body of water there, and Oatchi can push you back as he tries to get behind you, potentially off a ledge.
  • The way Pikmin place themselves when carrying/attempting to carry an object, the game denotes that they must be in a perfect circle or else a Pikmin will be scrambling to find a "proper" spot. If one of those points is blocked (especially when two enemies or treasures are near-touching, which happens much more often than you'd think) a Pikmin will fail to grab the object, resulting in situations where a player tossed the correct amount of Pikmin onto an item only for it to not move because one Pikmin is still scrambling around looking or unable to grab the specific spot it wants to.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Producing as many Glow Pikmin as possible during night expeditions. Gathering enough to fend off enemies is one thing, but going out of your way to collect all of the area's Glow Pellets is incredibly difficult, demanding more out of your planning skills than most of the game's Dandori challenges.
  • Discovering each Pikmin type only by collecting their Onions. Even though that's how you acquire Pikmin during Olimar's Shipwreck Tale, the main campaign expects you to obtain some underground Pikmin before finding their Onions, so you'll have to think out-of-the-box by abusing the co-op mode's pebble shooting, making careful use of Bomb Rocks and Ice Blasts, and actively avoiding groups of wild Pikmin in caves. This also means that Ice, Rock and Winged Pikmin can't be used until very late in the game, and if you're truly dedicated to the challenge, you have to complete Trial of the Sage Leaf just to use White and Purple Pikmin.
• Sequel Displacement: The game is already well on its way to becoming this to its predecessors. While the previous games aren't unheard of, they're still quite niche and rather obscure compared to Pikmin 4, which far outpaced all 3 of them in sales and popularity on its first week of release alone. Likely thanks to it being released on a popular console like the Nintendo Switch, whilst the others were released on the GameCube and Wii U which were both commercial failures, and the large amount of advertising and promotion from both fans and Nintendo themselves from before the game's release.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The game begins with a fairly lengthy recap of Olimar's Pikmin backstory, only now with Moss added in, before throwing players into a long series of unskippable tutorials that frequently interrupt gameplay. Even once players get past the main ones, there are still more for the Dandori battles that have to be sought out. Only once that's complete does the game open up and allow players to truly explore.
• That One Attack:
  • Anything that causes Pikmin to panic will also cause Oatchi to panic, and if you were riding on Oatchi at the time, you'll get thrown off and stunned for a while. This will quickly lead to the Pikmin spreading all over the place, making it difficult to save them. The Smoky Progg and final boss exploit this by spreading around a hazard that instantly kills Pikmin, making their ability to scare them even deadlier.
  • In the last phase of the Final Boss fight, the Ancient Sirehound will spit out puddles of the same smog that the Smoky Progg uses, which instantly kills Pikmin on contact. The sheer number of these puddles, which increases as the boss takes damage, coupled with the boss being able to roar and send Pikmin into a panic, means that a single mistake can cost nearly half or all of your squad. At the very least, the first roar is done before it sends out the puddles, which can alert a savvy player to watch out for it.
• That One Boss:
  • In a relatively early cave, you have to fight a duo of Emperor Bulblaxes, which itself would be bad enough, but you also have to fight in them a pretty tiny arena, which makes it very difficult to avoid both of their attacks at once. It is very tempting to just use your precious bomb rocks to take them out, which in itself can be dangerous if one bounces off them and explodes your Pikmin due to the small size of the arena.
  • Compared to Olimar's Dandori Battles, Louie's are an absolute nightmare. Right off the bat, he starts with more Pikmin than the player and will use every trick the player has access to to turn the tide in his favor, up to and including using Moss's Swallow ability to deny the player Bonus Finds and even target the Sneak Bomb with it.
• That One Level: Kingdom of Beasts is a difficulty leap for a cave in Blossoming Arcadia, the second area of the game. It is the second-longest cave in the entire game at six sublevels, and none of them are rest floors. Its main theme is that it has most varieties of Grub-dogs and their mimics, including a miniboss with an Empress Bulblax halfway through and a pair of Emperor Bulblaxes at the end. The latter is detailed under That One Boss. Because the cave is found early in the game, it is likely an unexpecting player would go in with a low surface Pikmin cap and thus a small starting squad, and would not have access to Purple Pikmin as they do not become available until the next area. The game encourages use of items for this cave, but the low resources by this point in the game nearly puts them at Too Awesome to Use levels.
• That One Sidequest: The Trial of the Sage Leaf is an optional end-game series of Dandori Challenges that are unlocked after finishing Olimar's Shipwreck Challenge. Said challenges are easily the most difficult Dandori challenges in the entire game, requiring mastery of the combat system and intimate knowledge of each level to even stand a chance. Even of the ten stages, two stand out:
  • The seventh challenge, One Fell Jump, is infamous for highlighting the flaws in the auto-target system. The player is given five Purple Pikmin to clear out a room with nine Shearfleas and ninety Bulborb Larvae in just one minute. The issue is that it is difficult to change targets on the fly, and the auto-lock will not change targets until after the previous one is killed, meaning that a player trying to throw too fast will end up throwing several Pikmin on the same enemy and waste time by killing much fewer than they would have otherwise.
  • The final challenge, The Purple Key, stands out as probably the singular most difficult Dandori level in the entire game. Not only does the player have to contend with a Waterwraith, but they must also escort the prize of the Purple Onion to the exit using Purple Pikmin, who are incredibly slow. Even if you use Oachi's Swallow to make the challenge easier, it still requires a ton of outside-the-box thinking. It's even worse if you are trying to go for the Platinum Medal, as the fastest way to complete the challenge is to commit a complete Violation of Common Sense and not kill the Waterwraith, meaning you have to let one of the most dangerous monsters in the game roam the area while you try to get your prize back to the start. Thankfully, your reward is well worth the effort, as the Purple Onion is a total Game-Breaker.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Being limited to having three Pikmin types out on the field outside of caves. While some fans find it either a non-issue since the game is good at recommending the best types for a given environment or love the restriction for enforcing a level of strategic decision, others view it as making preparation more frustrating than necessary and/or miss being able to have a diverse array of Pikmin at all times.
  • The game's change in musical style, from using more memorable beats in a wide range of styles, to atmospheric minimalism ala Breath of the Wild. This is often criticized by fans as one of the game's weakest aspects, especially in a franchise full of stellar music. Caves now use one unified music track as well^note With a couple of exceptions, such as the Waterwraith's theme and the Giant Breadbug theme, though both of these are lifted straight from Pikmin 2., a far cry from the 20+ tracks Pikmin 2 used for its caves^note where different sublevel themes had their own music tracks, and some specific caves such as the Bulblax Kingdom and Frontier Cavern had unique music tracks of their own. There are even unique variants of each theme depending on which captain you're playing as! The game's boss theme is also seen as extremely weak, tedious, and forgettable, especially coming off of the much beloved boss theme from 2^note which is in this game, but is rarely utilized and the well-received and catchy boss theme from 3. While the game does still have a few fantastic tracks here and there, the soundtrack as a whole is seen as forgettable and a major step down from its predecessors.
  • The changes to the caves are seen as hit-or-miss. Those who loved Pikmin 2's caves felt that 4's were too short and easy,^note the average sublevel count for Pikmin 2's caves is 5-7, with some even going above 10, while this game's caves average around 2-4 sublevels each. Granted, the game's final cave, "Cavern for a King", has 20 sublevels (5 more than the previous recordholder, Pikmin 2's Hole of Heroes), but most never go above 4 or 5. The individual sublevels of Cavern for a King are also shorter than the norm, most only holding one boss fight, even going into the endgame^note for reference, in Pikmin 2, the endgame caves are 10, 15, and 14 sublevels respectively. Outside of Cavern for a King, the other two final area caves only have 3 and 5 sublevels, the former of which has a miniboss as the cave's main boss, something 'Pikmin 2 only did in its earliest caves. The random generation of cave floors was swapped out for fixed layouts, which hinders replayability for some, and the drastically reduced enemy and sublevel counts is seen as destroying the satisfaction of fighting one's way to the bottom and besting the boss.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Puffstool returns after being absent from the series in over 22 years. With the addition of more Pikmin types since then, it would have been interesting to see Mushroom versions of types beyond the original three. However, the Puffstool's spores no longer create Mushroom Pikmin, instead causing the new "confusion" ailment that the Groovy Long Legs' spray does. This has caused disappointment from longtime fans, as Mushroom Pikmin still have yet to appear outside the first game, despite the enemy that creates them being present.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The Lineup Trumpet. It allows you to use the "swarm" mechanic from Pikmin 1 and 2, but since it is only obtained at the end of the game after collecting all of the instrument treasures for a sidequest (one of which is in the final area of the game), you're unlikely to get much use out of it, especially since nothing in the game actually requires you to use it.
  • Winged Pikmin. Because of the three-type limit, you must prioritize which Pikmin types are helpful. However, Winged Pikmin will rarely be used because the two Alizarin Candypop Buds in the game are found in the Below Grade Discotheque on separate floors, while the Pink Onion can only be found in the last area. This means that for most of the game, you will only have 10 Winged Pikmin, and their primary use (carrying objects) requires a large amount of Winged Pikmin unless you want to continue walking back to the Onion to gather them. This is worsened by the fact that Winged Pikmin will not take shortcuts over anything other than water, mud, and conveyor belts, whereas in 3 they could carry objects over ledges and skip paths, so there is little point in bringing out Winged Pikmin over another type, and they will spend most of the game in the Onion.
  • Rock Pikmin. The three-type limit really hurts them as well, due to their similarities to the Purple Pikmin. While both deal slam damage, the Purple Pikmin can latch on to enemies to deal damage more than any other type of Pikmin, and because of Oatchi, their slow movement speed is no longer a problem. Enemies that previously could only be defeated by Rock Pikmin exclusive can now be killed by Oatchi or Moss, and the Grey Onion is found in the second to last area, while the Purple Onion can be found in the Trial of the Sage Leaf, before then Purple Pikmin can be easily be grinded by going to the Engulfed Castle's final floor and converting other types to Purple, so with or without the Onion, the player will likely have more Purple Pikmin than Rock Pikmin.
  • The game introduces the idea of duplicate colored Onions to give you multiple places to obtain the ability to grow Pikmin, which could have made for a very interesting replay/speedrun tool to try to figure out which Onion would be the fastest and most strategic one to find first, but this only matters at all for the Yellow Onion, because only Yellow and Blue Pikmin have duplicate Onions, and you need Blue Pikmin to get the Blue Onion in the Serene Shores because it's underwater beyond a climbing wall, meaning Oatchi can't get it for you. While it is possible to gather enough wild Blue Pikmin in caves to get it, since Serene Shores is the third area while the other Blue Onion is in Sun-Speckled Terrace, the first area, most people will have already gotten the one in Sun-Speckled Terrace first, relegating the one in Serene Shores to just a free boost to your Blue population.
  • Fulfilling Louie's side mission requests will reward you with the extra hand gear. This allows your playable character to retrieve items like the Pikmin. However, you're only worth 1 unit of weight and can only be gotten after defeating Louie and the Ancient Sirehound, any use you can get out of it is severely limited.
• Unexpected Character: Of all the creatures that appeared in Pikmin, very few people expected the Smoky Progg to return in this game, due to its status as an optional superboss that only appears in a specific timeframe and hadn't been seen or mentioned in the mainline Pikmin series since.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Moss. When Olimar finds her in the opening and in his Shipwreck Tale, she is sad, tired and alone. She quickly bonds with Olimar and helps him survive on the planet, and desperately tries to tag along with him when he leaves the atmosphere. She inadvertently causes him to crash land back down, killing him, and then is forced to revive him as a Leafling so he can survive the planet. Then Olimar is rescued and she teams up with Louie just for a chance at survival, only for him too to abandon her. Thankfully, the true ending shows that she and the Ancient Sirehound will team up to protect the Pikmin species, ensuring their mutual survival on PNF-404.
  • Captain Olimar is an ordinary space deliveryman that crashed on PNF-404. Like in Pikmin, he uses the help of the Pikmin (with the addition of Moss) to scramble for the parts of his beloved S.S. Dolphin before his life support system fails him. Unlike Pikmin, he fails when Moss, who stowed away in the cargo hold, starts dying, making him try to turn the ship around, which stalled him for long enough that his Life Support ultimately ran out. In a desperate bid to save him, the Pikmin and Moss send his body to the Onion, restoring him, but turning him into a dandori-obsessed leafling with little memory of his past life. Had he not found the Interstellar Radio and contacted the Rescue Corps beforehand, he would have remained like this forever, with none of his family ever seeing him again.

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