At one point, a difficult enemy flew into an unreachable location and froze there, allowing me to go about my business unhindered, and my game crashed twice. I’m tempted to say that The Wild at Heart felt a bit better to play overall however, I will note that I encountered significant bugs in a handful of places. I even liked the craftable bomb in The Wild at Heart much more than the bomb rocks held by Pikmin. I preferred the way you select Spritelings over scrolling through which Pikmin to choose as well, because I never felt like I was struggling to select the right class of little guys in the heat of combat. However, many of the extra tools at your perusal in Pikmin are confusing to use, difficult to manage, and don’t add much to the overall gameplay. Pikmin gives you additional tools that allow you to control your squad in more subtle ways than The Wild at Heart does, and Pikmin likely has more replay value than The Wild at Heart too, due to its high difficulty, optional challenges, and scoring system.

Like Pikmin, The Wild at Heart is smooth and intuitive. Instead, the games each have different strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to gameplay, I really expected Pikmin to pull away in my comparison, because of my fond memories and the fact that intuitive gameplay is what Nintendo is known for. Well, mea culpa: Pikmin 3 is a good game, if not a particularly fulfilling one it also doesn’t change up much from that 2001 original I loved so much. I wanted to test if my love for those little alien plants withstood the test of time. I was so nostalgic for Pikmin throughout my 16 hours with The Wild at Heart that, shortly after I finished the game, I actually felt inspired to buy the most recent Pikmin game: last year’s Pikmin 3 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch. Pikmin was also incredibly difficult, to my recollection, requiring subtle strategy to make it through the punishing terrain. Surely Pikmin was longer than this short-ish, independently developed game Pikmin’s story felt endless when I played as a kid. Surely, I thought, the similar gameplay in Pikmin was superior-it was created by Nintendo, which meant it had that inherent Nintendo magic. While I liked The Wild at Heart from the start, as I played, I continually harkened back to my fond memories of playing the original Pikmin as a child.

Wild at heart game review