Pikmin 4 Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Dandori Academy review – back to school

Nintendo releases an updated version of Pikmin 4 with higher resolution visuals and a peculiar new challenge mode that’s set to get new content well into next year.

Having a sizeable collection of Wii U games to remaster for the Switch 1 helped greatly in filling out that console’s release schedules, especially in the initial years. Nintendo Switch 2 Edition remasters have attempted to fill that role on the new console, but they’ve struggled to justify their existence, with most of the changes being so small that even Nintendo doesn’t dare charge more than £5 for some of the upgrades.

Pikmin 4’s is a little more than that because it does have a substantial new mode, even if there are no major changes to the main game. The resolution has been increased to 4K in TV mode and you can now use GameShare for the competitive Dandori Battle mode, but that’s it in terms of new features – beyond using the microphone to give voice commands to your dog-like companion Oatchi.

Even as an upgrade that’s not really worth it but the most significant addition is an all-new mode called Dandori Academy, which is not only fun but addresses the key complaint of the original: that it’s too easy.

While the first three Pikmin games were often compared to a real-time strategy game, that comparison was stretched to breaking point when it came to Pikmin 4, which went off in a very different direction. You can find our full review of the original release here and apart from the voice commands it really is exactly the same game.

In it, you control a pint-sized alien that’s become stranded on an Earth-like planet and has to collect parts of their crashed ship, and various other things, by ordering around small armies of plant-like pikmin. These come in various colour schemes, each with different specialities, depending on whether you need to fight the dangerous fauna of the planet, bash through obstacles, or navigate things like water and fire.

In theory that’s business as usual for the franchise, except Pikmin 4 has a more streamlined interface than before and less emphasis on combat, so that it comes across more as a cosy game than a complex puzzle or real-time strategy title. The low difficulty can make parts of the game feel disarmingly trivial but the original does have some more difficult moments, most notably in the dandori battles involving the Leafling creatures.

Dandori is a Japanese term that refers to forward planning and effective organisation and while you don’t need all that much of either for most of Pikmin 4, you certainly do in the Dandori Academy mode. It’s presentation is a little confusing at first, as the idea is that you play a set of six stages (two each of easy, normal, and hard difficulty) in order to get as high a score as possible and compare that to other online players.

You can practice as often as you like, and there are some handy tutorials to remind you of the controls – if you’re a returning player that hasn’t touched the game in a while – but your online score comes from a one-off exam. Well, not entirely one-off, since you can earn the right to take it again, but there’s a set exam period after which that becomes impossible, so the idea is that you work out a plan beforehand and then give it all in the exam.

New sets of stages are due to be released over the course of this year and next, as if you’re attending an actual academy, and you get various cosmetic trinkets for how well you do. We’ve no idea what the later stages are going to be like, but the ones already released have been cleverly designed and are nicely varied, in terms of the obstacles and pikmin limitations imposed. The hardest ones are really hard too, and several steps beyond anything in the base game.

In terms of new content, you’re not getting much at first, but the promise is there’ll be 72 new stages in total, released in batches of six each month. That’s a decent haul overall and, assuming you’re interested in a more challenging, less open-ended version of Pikmin 4’s story mode, we really enjoyed it. It’s a very odd and unique concept, especially for console games, and there’s nothing else quite like it, which is always a positive.

Nintendo’s plans for the future of the series remain unclear, as it now seems that the teases this time last year were actually for a new series of animated shorts, and not necessarily Pikmin 5 or another new game. Given that Pikmin 4 was by far the most commercially successful of the games, that is inevitable at some point but for now this is definitely the best version of the most recent entry and worth the upgrade for those that already have it.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2
Price: £58.99 (£7.99 as upgrade pack)
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EPD and Eighting
Release Date: 12th November 2026
Age Rating: 3

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