Olimar's Shipwreck Tale: A Post-Game Done Right
August 16, 2023
With six massive areas to explore, you'd expect that to be enough content for Pikmin 4 to keep the player satisfied, but the developers went an extra step further. After rescuing Olimar, you unlock Olimar's Shipwreck Tale - a short side mission that is essentially a retelling of the first Pikmin game. While mechanically the game is essentially the same, some key differences make it feel a bit more fresh and new.
Olimar's Shipwreck Tale uses the first four areas from Pikmin 4 to play in. Of these two, the first and third areas are quite large, but Olimar's Shipwreck Tale opts to cut some of the sections from those levels out. They still exist, they just aren't accessible. This helps keep the experience a bit more condensed. Since these are levels from the main game already, the player already knows all about them and their layouts - so opting to cut a chunk out of them helps keep the experience feel not as drawn out.
Something else that helps is the lack of caves. While the main game of Pikmin 4 was about exploration, Olimar's Shipwreck Tale is more of a challenge mode - the goal is to try and collect all 30 Ship Parts under a short 15-day time limit. The levels, even with some sections cut out, are still pretty large. Cutting out the caves helps keep the player from having to delve into the depths in search of a part they may have missed by accident.
But the lack of caves also provides another advantage. The day cycle in the main game felt quite long - when you were in caves time slowed to about 1/6th of its usual speed. removing caves from Olimar's Shipwreck Tale helps the days feel shorter and helps the time limit feel stricter. Even with knowing the layout of each level, I still came quite close to running out of time in my playthrough.
But the levels aren't the exact same as in the original game. Enemies and objects have been moved around and added. Some sections are blocked off by obstacles you may not have had to deal with originally, or you may find a boss that was previously only hidden away in a cave up on the surface protecting a Ship Part. These changes allow the experience to feel new and fresh, because while you may be reexploring the same areas from before there are new threats to deal with.
Olimar's Shipwreck Tale feels like a perfect post-game for Pikmin 4. It's a familiar enough experience to the main game while providing enough of a different experience to be worth playing. It's essentially the exact opposite of the post-game from Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe.