Poll of the Day > Okay I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna say what we're all thinking right now

(+) Yeah! (+)

i ran out of time in pikmin 3

Q.E.D.

(caps)

Is that the one on the switch? I tried a demo of it and wasnt a fan.

Pikmin 3 was on Wii U and ported to Switch

I really do like the idea of Pikmin 3's time pressure, if not the execution. I understand why people don't like 1's, just because you can pretty easily find yourself in a no-win scenario if you overestimate how many parts you can get during a day or otherwise miss that you need to be hurrying, and the idea of being able to invest 6-8 hours in a game and end up losing and having to start all over again just feels bad. In practice, it's not that hard to average 1 part per day, and you don't even need that if you skip some of the optional ones instead of aiming for the perfect ending (and beating Emperor Bulblax at all is harder than keeping up a pace like that), but the idea of even being able to spend that much time and still end up irrecoverably losing is stressful in a way that some people just don't enjoy, so I sympathize with that a bit.

In 3, there is still that same pressure of "you'll lose if you can't keep up this pace," but it's a lot more immediate. If you're going to run out of fruit tomorrow, you spend tomorrow hunting for fruit. If you can't find any, you restart the day and try again, having lost only that attempt and not your entire playthrough. The stakes are lower and you're never going to get into a position where you don't realize that you have a problem before it's too late to correct it.

In practice, of course, you aren't going to run out of fruit unless you're playing really badly (god dammit, Louie), but as a concept having a time limit that the player can increase by adjusting their daily goals/priorities is a good balance between "I don't like having a time limit stressing me out the whole game" and "I don't like having zero pressure to be efficient with my time."

I like 4's Dandori Challenges for this as well (I didn't play much of Mission Mode in 3), since operating with a short time limit means you get that significant pressure, but also lower stakes because you can just try again if you fail, plus the smaller scope makes it easier to figure out where you went wrong (like I knew I'd screwed up when I had a minute left and hadn't even started working on the watermelon that I'd need to make up the 40 points I was missing for a Bronze, so on the next attempt I made that watermelon a priority). Getting a platinum also just feels really satisfying because you've spent ~7 minutes watching your little plant buddies work together like clockwork.

Note to self: The next time you think "I wonder what happens if I let the Smoky Progg egg hatch instead of listening to the loading screen tip," punch yourself.