Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly is an enjoyable experience overall. It successfully maintains the charm and warmth of its predecessor, delivering a narrative-driven game that feels like a comforting cup of coffee on a rainy day. It might not be a perfect blend, but it certainly offers a satisfying and heartwarming experience for those who enjoy narrative-driven games with a side of fantasy and a splash of coffee!

Read our Full Review >

In Pikmin 4 we are finally given a name for the core principles which have defined the gameplay and design of the series since its inception. Dandori: a Japanese word referring to the arrangement or planning of certain tasks. The development team first began using this term to identify the central philosophy of the series during the creation of the previous title, but with Pikmin 4 the concept of Dandori has become not only an explicit, in-universe ideology, but an integral strategic tenet in mastering several of the game’s structural additions. What Pikmin 4 offers more than anything else for the franchise, aside from the expected refinement of established mechanics, is a wealth and variety of interpretations of this newly ordained ethos, supplying the player a consistent stream of exciting and unexpected twists on the familiar Pikmin formula, building upon the unique foundations of each entry in order to deliver a truly masterful successor which can comfortably describe itself as a culmination of everything to come before it.

The beginning of the game is an unfortunate low point that belies the grandeur and ease of play to come. The story this time is actually a wonderful evolution for the series, positioning you as a new recruit tasked with rescuing various castaways stranded on the planet as your primary objective, as opposed to ship parts, treasures, and fruit being the principle collectibles. The issue comes in how long the game takes to actually get started, bogging you down with a constant deluge of character introductions, narrative cut scenes, and tedious tutorial segments, one after another for your first hour of playtime. These aspects are necessary, to an extent, given how many different mechanics the series has developed and refined by this point—not to mention onslaught of new mechanics introduced with the addition of your space dog comrade, Oatchi. By the end of the game, Oatchi’s wide-ranging powerset will largely trivialize many of the game’s more daunting challenges. Combat, multi-tasking, and puzzle-solving blockades are generally circumvented thanks to the ridiculous utility Oatchi is able to provide. The crucial factor that prevents Oatchi from completely ruining the game, however, is the fact that he’s always fun to use. No matter how overpowered he gets by the end, Oatchi remains an invaluable tool in keeping your Dandori on track. Because of how designed the game is around completing multiple tasks at the same time, Oatchi is never so almighty as to erase the need for Pikmin entirely—just mostly.

Once the endless tutorials have ceased, Pikmin 4 truly opens up and starts to blossom. It’s no question that this is the best looking entry for the series yet, if not outright one of the most gorgeous games on the Nintendo Switch at large. The picturesque scenery is brought to us through a new behind-the-shoulder perspective, rather than the top-down view we’ve been used to for the past three games. The theming of the new areas is a lot more varied than in previous entries, with the Serene Shores and Hero's Hideaway particularly standing out as vast, elevated regions set within a sandy beach and modern household respectively. This second example somewhat confuses the lore of the Pikmin series up to this point, as the house appears fully functional despite the apparent absence of human life, but it’s such a novel environment to explore it's hardly of much concern while you’re playing. It’s also a fitting destination for the game’s first climactic conclusion. Much like in Pikmin 2, the initial mission you’re tasked with completing is easily accomplished by about the halfway point of the totality of what the game has to offer. Unlike in Pikmin 2, though, the culmination of Pikmin 4’s initial ending has a lot more narrative weight and sense of accomplishment behind it, even if it doesn’t exactly end on a particularly challenging note. Included in your charge of locating and rescuing all the various castaways stranded on this planet are the Dandori-obsessed Leaflings: castaways who have been converted into leaf-covered zombies by Definitely-Not-Olimar-Why-Do-You-Keep-Asking. Each Leafling poses a Dandori-centric challenge for you to complete before they’ll allow themselves to be rescued, in the form of either so-called Dandori Challenges or Dandori Battles.

These new mechanical additions are actually little more than the respective Challenge and Battle modes of the previous games snuck into the main campaign of this latest entry. The genius of it, though, is that these changes in gameplay help break up the pacing by encouraging you to apply your organizational skillset towards different objectives utilizing the same tools at your disposal. When you’re navigating the overworld, your main focus is on exploration, gathering various resources and treasures while building a path forward and clearing obstacles for future excursions. When you approach a Dandori Challenge, your focus is geared towards efficient time management and optimized task completion—the heart of the Dandori principle. And in Dandori Battles your strategy should be most effectively aimed towards disruption, as the goal becomes not only to bring back as many items to the ship as you can, but to prevent your opponent from doing the same in as many different ways that you can. These new infusions are presented alongside another much-anticipated returning feature from a previous game: Caves. In addition to hosting the various Dandori Challenges and Battles, Caves exist as yet another means of recontextualizing the core gameplay of the Pikmin series under new restrictions. Once again, the hard limit of previous games has been removed, leaving you with an unlimited amount of time to complete the various missions assigned to you. But as was the case in Pikmin 2, the inherent limitations present in caves replace that need for an overarching peril, providing the requisite challenge these games demand so as to supply the most satisfying deployment of your stratagems and skills.

The biggest difference for the caves in Pikmin 4 is their bespoke design, in contrast to the randomly generated layouts of Pikmin 2. The latter, while functional, could occasionally result in some dubious enemy and obstacle placements. The curated design of 4 means that each floor is carefully crafted, and its puzzles are all distinct and logical. They retain the challenging ethos of 2’s caves, in that you’re limited to the Pikmin you bring with you into the cave and passageways are often narrow or filled with hazards, making the management of your squad a more attentive task. The difficulty balance has also been noticeably tweaked, with some of the more vindictive hazards having been toned down considerably. Combined with the game’s more forgiving disposition towards combat as a whole, the caves of Pikmin 4, while not explicitly easy, simply have so many approaches in their problem solving that there’s rarely an equal level of tension one got in their original iteration. This is more apparent when it comes to the later, more boss-centric caves, while the consistently creative puzzle-centric caves remain unencumbered by the overpowered tools at your disposal. Oatchi, as previously mentioned, is certainly one of the overtuned factors contributing to the trivialization of combat in Pikmin 4, but the excessive accrual of Ultra Spicy Spray, not to mention the litany of powerful items at your disposal easily purchased from an in-game shop, are equally degenerative when it comes to undermining the threat of combat as a whole—with no real incentive not to rely on them, unfortunately. It should be emphasized, however, that these issues are more a side effect of fun new mechanics, rather than poorly designed tools that simply break the game completely. Early on, when your access to these tools is limited, and the focus is less oriented towards combat, it’s not even a problem to be had. Only towards the end, mostly just in the post game areas really, are these overtuned mechanics an issue. Fortunately, the latter portion of the game does offer several challenges which can’t be merely circumvented by your insurmountable arsenal.

The first of these additional challenges sees you once again taking control of Captain Olimar, using the maps and enemies of this game to echo the ship part-collecting endeavor of the first game, complete with a hard time limit to add pressure and challenge. On its own it’s a trifle—a brief encapsulation of the drive which initially motivated the series, bundled with all the conveniences developed across each game—but its value is all the more pronounced when taken as a reprieve from the divergent style of gameplay culminating in this latest entry. In addition to this are the Sage Leaf Trials, a hardcore Dandori Challenge Cave comprised of 10 floors, each one infinitely more difficult than anything found in the main campaign. This is where any regret regarding the base game’s breezy disposition is entirely mollified. After taking on the first floor, and initially clearing it with exactly zero seconds left, it was clear I was in for a truly unforgiving gauntlet testing the breadth of my Pikmin prowess. The reward for clearing these ten trials is substantial, but the glory of conquering these Herculean tasks is a worthy prize in and of itself. The Pikmin games are at their best when harmonizing strategy and tension around the inviting aesthetic the series is known for. With the reintroduction of caves and the return of the hard time limit in Olimar’s Shipwreck Tale, Pikmin 4 already maintained this ethos of the series, but the intense challenge of the Sage Leaf Trials supplants even this, resulting in an exhaustive collection of the ultimate Pikmin experience.

If only the rest of the post game were as brilliant as those two additions. The two remaining areas after clearing the main story aren’t bad per se—they’re perfectly satisfactory—but the narrative setup comes across a bit contrived, and the theming of the new areas doesn’t impress like the previous destinations of the main game. The final cave of the game also highlights Pikmin 4’s overreliance on returning boss fights as a source of challenge, regurgitating familiar battles in watered down environments thanks once again to the unmatched power your arsenal of combat options has become by this point. Even the final boss feels lackluster after everything that’s come before it, built around predictable attack patterns and vulnerability cycles, utilizing various elemental hazards as attacks regardless of whether or not it makes thematic sense for this enemy to wield those powers. Again, like the late game areas as a whole, this fight is perfectly serviceable. It checks all the boxes of what you’d want out of a final boss, including the reasonably challenging gauntlet leading up to it. It just doesn’t culminate in the way previous games did, or serve as a satisfying cap like the Shipwreck Tale and Sage Leaf Trials already did. In some ways, Pikmin 4 would feel more perfect with just those two segments serving as the game’s conclusion. The relative disappointment of these latter two areas is never subtractive, however, their biggest crime being the lack of denouement they provide in light of the opportunity to do so for this most grand of Pikmin titles.

The innumerable additions Pikmin 4 brings to the franchise are monumental in their refinement of all the ways in which the series has evolved since its debut over twenty years ago. The controls have never felt as intuitive as they do here, with some of the more complex mechanics having been mapped to a single button now, and further customization available via item mapping on the dpad. In addition to Oatchi, the two new Pikmin types functionally break the game without robbing the experience of its thrills. In addition to the aforementioned Shipwreck Tale and Sage Leaf Trials, the newly introduced Night Missions are another contained addition that helps break up the pacing of the main game by providing a twist on the typical gameplay structure. But ultimately, it’s not any one of these singular additions that make Pikmin 4 the ultimate game for the series, but rather, the culmination of every defining iteration seen so far packaged in a stunning beautiful, seamlessly playable, exhaustively inclusive triumph that makes it the unassailable opus of the franchise.

Chrono Trigger is a bad game to spiritually succeed- not because I consider it insurmountable, but because there's not really anything to succeed. Its greatness mostly stems from an intangible combination of structure, pacing, and presentation instead of any single concrete gameplay or narrative hook. From a game design standpoint, the lessons to take away from Chrono Trigger aren't exclusive to JRPGs, as evidenced by the fact that New Game Plus, as a concept, is now a mainstay across a wide range of genres. Fortunately, Sabotage has a good track record here, considering The Messenger was a Ninja Gaiden clone that played nothing at all like Ninja Gaiden, and this game similarly manages to avoid feeling derivative. Chrono Trigger's combat was fun but not particularly deep or complex, and instead focused on trying to make fights feel dynamic and fast-paced by expanding on Final Fantasy's ATB system, a feat that it accomplished better than most actual action RPGs from its era. Sea of Stars opts for a more standard turn-based approach, and borrows inspiration from Chrono Trigger's fluid character positioning, the Mario RPGs' action commands, and, against all odds, Octopath Traveler's lock/break system, and it actually ends up working out great! There was clearly real thought put into how all of these ideas fit together in ways that might not be obvious at first. For example, the Koopa shell special move from Mario & Luigi is repurposed here, but the fact that enemies aren't in static positions means that using it requires foresight about how long it'll take to hit each one in order for it to be most effective. Underlining these three core mechanics is the fact that health and mana pools are both small, but easily replenished. You die in three hits but are revived automatically after a few turns, regenerate magic on using normal attacks, and can swap out party members freely. It's a really unique combat system where you really feel like your decisions cause the flow of battle to turn on a dime. Missing a single action command can, and often does, mean that your opponent's turn isn't skipped, which means he hits and kills you, which means you lose. And so, with this solid foundation in place, Sea of Stars then expands on its gameplay throughout the course of its runtime by doing... absolutely nothing. There aren't any status effects, every piece of equipment just boosts one of your stats, and enemy variety is extremely low. The only two things you can do to your opponents during your turn is damage them or delay their turns, which means the gameplay plateaus in complexity once you get all your party members about halfway in. It's a bizarre, extreme example of constructing a genuinely compelling set of mechanics, and then missing the landing and letting your game slip into the doldrums anyway. But it's not like it tried and failed here: the game isn't boring because of balance issues or some other oversight, instead it feels like the dev team came up with the battle system and then immediately gave up. And, even more strangely, this sentiment feels like it applies to every other area. The combat is great mechanically but battles are still bland. The pixel art is outstanding but there's pretty much zero optional content or NPC flavor dialog, meaning that locations look pretty but have no texture. The music is solid but the story is barebones (mostly comprised of endless Proper Noun namedrops that I haven't been given reason to care about) and characters have no personality, so none of the narrative beats feel memorable or climactic. What makes this game so uniquely disappointing is that it seems like every aspect of it that Sabotage actually gave a shit about turned out great, but they just put in zero effort everywhere else. In hindsight, I regret calling Signalis "rudderless," because by copying an existing experience you're at least going for something. This game feels like a rough sketch of a JRPG with only a few portions colored in and no apparent plan to fully capture the genre's likeness. And, really, that's about as far from Chrono Trigger as you can get.

With an entire console generation separating the third Pikmin game from its predecessors, it should be the far superior experience, both mechanically and graphically—and to some extent, it is. Pikmin 3 returns to the fundamentals of the first game, zigging where the second game chose to zag. Focus is once again placed on resource management and overworld puzzles, revolving its central collectibles around a survival-based narrative in order to reinforce and incentivize the mission of optimal minute-to-minute gameplay. The mechanics have been refined since the last entry, with more tools at your disposal to command and delegate Pikmin, all of which have been practically begging to be implemented since the first game. The story is a lot more involved this time around as well, expanding our knowledge of the Pikmin world with the introduction of new intrepid explorers from a different planet than we’ve thus far known, as well as an official name for the Pikmin’s Earth-analogue homeworld, PNF-404. The stakes are raised with this increased emphasis on narrative, placing not just your own survival on the line, but that of your entire planet should you fail to accrue enough resources to return with. However, just as with many of the game’s other expanded ambitions, there remains a disconnect between conception and execution.

The outsized threat of Pikmin 3’s story should be more effective than the relative simplicity of its predecessors, but it lacks the inherent link between gameplay and narrative payoff the first two games made imperative. While the accrual of fruit in lieu of ship parts as the game’s central survival resource feels like a sound substitute initially, the fact that it has no practical bearing on the mission’s success makes the task feel empty, which is only worsened by the absolute lack of tension it provides as an incentivizing time limit. It’s obvious that Pikmin 3 was designed to be less overtly challenging than the previous games: dampening the difficulty of an already lenient hard limit, trivializing the lethality of every elemental hazard, as well as tempering the regularity of hostile enemies in addition to giving you more tools to deal with them. In a vacuum, none of these changes are inherently bad, and on the whole, decreasing the barrier for access is good. But when combined, all these elements hamper the essence of accomplishment that comes with overcoming the central obstacles of the series’ ethos.

The more technical changes and refinements are, however, one of the game’s most constructive additions. While at first I bemoaned the absence of the swarming feature so vital to controlling your squad of Pikmin in the first two games, the lock-on and charge mechanics introduced here proved such a godsend that I hardly missed what was once my main means of controlling squadrons. This was further helped by the universally improved AI of the Pikmin, which are now programmed to pursue more logical routes and follow the player in such a way that large groups get stuck significantly less often behind unwieldy ramps and other obstacles. These are all vital improvements which prove to be even more significant when considered alongside yet another intuitive new feature expanded upon after the introduction of multiple captain characters in Pikmin 2. Without all these quality of life changes, it’s unlikely the ability to direct captains with squads of Pikmin to and from various objectives would be as seamless and assistive as it is. Despite the evolving complexity of all these systems at play, each one building off every improvement prior games and subsequent re-releases have added to the experience, Pikmin 3 makes its mechanics as practicable as can be—which is critical considering how involved and dispersed the game’s myriad puzzles and obstacles for progression often can be.

The overworld challenges of Pikmin 3 echo the sprawling, frequently multifaceted undertakings prevalent in gathering the first game’s pivotal objectives. You employ the array of Pikmin at your disposal to build bridges, dismantle barriers, and retrieve items from otherwise inaccessible areas. Pikmin 3 expands the scope of these environmental puzzles through a handful of new mechanics, some of which directly tie into the unique power set of the two new Pikmin types. Rock and Winged Pikmin offer the player a host of new interactions between the environment and the enemies thanks to the particular set of powers they hold, which prove mostly balanced despite how disproportionately advantageous they often end up being over the other types available. Glass barriers and an immunity to crushing provide plenty of use cases for Rock Pikmin in the game, while Winged Pikmin prove invaluable for their ability to reach and transport objects with far more ease than even the nimble Yellow Pikmin previously could. They’re even adept in numerous combat scenarios despite an inferior damage output, by virtue of how quickly they’re able to overwhelm targets with the lock on and charge mechanics of the game. Fortunately, the distinct advantages of these new Pikmin types are never so overwhelming to outright invalidate any of the other variants, but even so their utility is such that you feel compelled to keep a squadron of them in your party regardless of whether the obstacle you’re tackling will require their assistance.

Undoubtedly, the most significant benefit to Pikmin 3’s delayed follow up to its GameCube predecessors is the massive uptick in graphical quality the Wii U allowed for in rendering the adventure’s idyllic scenery. The four bespoke areas to explore are distinguished via seasonal theming, with the fall and summer spaces being especially distinctive thanks to their complementary layouts providing more memorable interactions. The other two perhaps suffer from being the introductory areas of the game, with large sections made initially inaccessible thanks to your limited abilities to affect the environment. They’re also, however, more confusing to navigate due to the bizarrely dissected nature of the map layout. Various sections in each area of Pikmin 3 are kept separate from the central landing area you start out in, typically signposted by some kind of transitionary tunnel or cave entrance depicted on the map with an accompanying directional arrow. The disconnected nature of these layouts is already a little confusing, but it’s often made worse by its portrayal on the map screen, making each area look something like an archipelago with all its scattered parts. Some of the spaces aren’t even functional, operating as scenic hallways between sections with no ability to even turn the camera, let alone interact with the space in any meaningful way. These liminal passageways are primarily reserved for the interim between the exploration spaces and the boss arenas, signifying a kind of grandiosity looming on the other side. For the most part, though, these dramatic preludes are all pomp, as nearly all the boss fights in this game—and indeed, combat interactions as a whole—prove significantly underwhelming.

In spite of how the mechanics of Pikmin 3 universally improve combat interactions as a whole, additional changes result in a sense of general dissatisfaction in all but a few select encounters. The main bosses of the game best exemplify this duality, but the sentiment extends to regular enemies and minibosses as well. Bosses tend to have heavily forecasted attack patterns followed by a period of vulnerability. This isn’t poor design in and of itself, and is actually something of a good template for boss designs in general, but the monotonous and obvious signposting for these fights make them a terrible bore, as your strategy boils down to little more than evading obvious attacks and simply bum-rushing the boss when their defenses are down. There’s never a sense of uncertainty, or threat, thanks to their inability to kill any more than five of your Pikmin with any of their easily avoided attacks. The only exception here is the Quaggled Mireclops, an intimidating titan disguised as an earthen mound, whose stomps are disorienting and extremely deadly if you don’t maneuver carefully. It has a number of elemental components to it that make the fight more interesting, giving you an added obstacle to overcome should you wish to take on the boss with your more powerful, but more vulnerable, Pikmin types. It’s also the only fight where the build up sees some kind of impactful payoff within the bout, as you mount the creature’s back after bringing it to its knees to attack its exposed head. Even the final boss falls short of the spectacle it promises, albeit more so due to the excess of its execution rather than any particular let down in challenge. In theory, it’s a sound finale that tests all the skills and abilities you’ve thus far honed exploring the world and gathering its resources, but the drawn-out nature of the climax constantly undercuts the tension of the fight, due to the day timer still being in play.

The disappointments of the game are never so much as to be wholly negative, though. While the many changes made to shear off some of the series’ more unnecessary difficulties have ironically made the game too easy now, the overall experience remains a positive and rewarding one. The more vivid world and involved story are welcome evolutions for the series, and one should hardly complain about the vastly improved interactions the game retains on a mechanical level. Pikmin 3 wavers in consideration only when measured against the unique strengths its predecessors maintain contrary to the refinements present in this more elegant entry. In actuality, Pikmin 3 is a relatively brief experience most comparable to the first game, in terms of objectives, structure, and overall strengths. But it sets itself apart still thanks to its strong mechanics, its more robust narrative, and distinct visual theming throughout. It comes up short in enough places that the overall experience is likely to leave a less distinct impression than its forebears, but it remains a charming, immersive adventure that comfortably improves and consolidates the Pikmin formula into a newly accessible, and still fulfilling, project with boundless potential.

Returning to a franchise as esteemed as Megaman holds much excitement. Despite its growing pains, the Battle Network games have provided much joy and excitement for their innovative gameplay and storytelling. Even a game as unrefined as the first Battle Network has much to offer as a foundational start for the series. With each game improving upon the last, it’s only natural to be excited for the fourth installment. This is especially true when considering the success of Battle Network 3. Megaman Battle Network 4: Blue Moon brings an overhaul to the visuals, restructures ACDC Town, new features like Double Soul and dark chips, and a combination of old and new boss Navis. All of this culminates in the series’ greatest failure.

Immediately when you start the game you will see a significant change in the art direction. The sprites are more detailed and the perspective feels slightly zoomed in. Each character’s portrait and sprite remain the same in spirit but some have different expressions. The overhaul of ACDC Town was the most jarring change. Some houses were removed, Yai’s house was moved and made bigger, and the locations of Higsby’s shop, the park, and the train station were all relocated. This condensed the town by removing about a third of the space within it. There’s no rhyme or reason behind it, it’s just different for what feels like the sake of being different. These changes don’t necessarily hurt the game but drastically changing the most known location becomes a contributing factor to the game’s other failings; starting with the story.

Battle Network 4’s story is essentially a tournament arc where Lan and Megaman participate in three tournaments while an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. The missions between the Navi fights were daunting and served zero purpose other than giving you something to do. The story often would introduce a point of conflict and then quickly undermine it. The first example of this is the introduction of AquaMan. AquaMan overhears a conversation where he is led to believe that his operator is going to discard him for a new Navi. The conversation made me feel bad for AquaMan but then you almost immediately find out that they weren’t talking about him at all. The story does this a few times where the “danger” was a misunderstanding or a plan to gain respect/admiration gone wrong. Each tournament gives you three randomized quests to complete while they drip-feed you what’s happening with the meteor. All of these missions feel empty because they have no bearing on the story. The problem with randomized quests is that because they have to fit the story regardless of which ones you get, they ultimately end up being nothing but a means to force more journeys into the net on you.

You’re introduced to the net very quickly, and the seemingly endless forays into the same bland net spaces begin. Battle Network is no stranger to running through net spaces but Battle Network 4 takes it to another level of constantly jacking in, running to a place, jacking out, completing an objective, and then having to jack back in again to go exactly to where you just were. I think I had the layouts of ACDC and ElecTown’s net spaces memorized before I finished the first episode of content. This persists throughout the narrative as you are only given three proper dungeons to explore. One of which is so linear that it’s literally on rails. The other two were incredibly limited with only one of them requiring you to figure out navigating due to the nature of the puzzle. By the time I reached the third and final dungeon, I was ready for the game to end. I hurried to get through it as quickly as possible so I could fight the last few bosses at the end of the game.

Battling the various Navis throughout the game was the game’s greatest opportunity to show off the good aspects of Battle Network 4. This is where you can experience the Double Soul mechanic where Megaman takes on attributes of Navis that he has made a Soul Bond with. This replaces the style change mechanic that was successful in previous games. Battle Network 4 has a cumulative six characters that this can happen with. The game only lets you gain three on a first-time play-through of the game though. Subsequent play-throughs forcibly limit your encounters so that you can only gain two on a second play-through and one on a third. Having to play the game three times to fully experience this mechanic is incredibly daunting, especially for a game that is so frustrating to play even a single time through. The mechanic itself would have been more enjoyable had I not been actively discouraged from using it. The first two Double Souls that I received were weak against the next boss fight I was to encounter. The Navis you face in the third tournament don’t have elements so this is when Double Soul could truly shine. Instead, I received a Soul that’s interesting in concept but hard to execute due to the nature of how to trigger it. Double Soul was the most interesting of the new features but because of the story structure, I was unable to enjoy them outside of random virus battles.

The other features they added are synchro and dark chips. When you successfully execute a counterattack against a virus you can achieve an effect called “Full Synchro” where Megaman gets glowing rings around him and can deal double damage with his next chip. I used this new feature the most as it was the most accessible of the new features. There are lots of chips that are complimentary to this feature. On the other end, if you are struggling and taking a lot of damage, Megaman will enter a worried status. In this status dark chips become available. Dark chips are introduced at the end of the second dungeon where the game makes you use a dark chip to delete a boss Navi. After being forced into using one, you are informed that dark chips will now cost you a permanent loss of 1HP every time you use one. This would have been more interesting or tempting to participate in but the chips are only available when you are in that worried state. I went through the majority of the game not being able to use the chips and the one time I might have considered it, they were no longer accessible. These new features should have been redeeming qualities because surely gameplay can make up for a bad story at least a little bit. Unfortunately, because most of the gameplay is spent trekking repeatedly through the same bland areas of the net and pursuing half-baked plots and tedious minigames, these new features do nothing to alleviate the pain of fighting the same viruses repeatedly. The boss fights did little to change things up either.

Because of how the game is structured, you do end up fighting a lot of bosses. Many of the potential bosses are a combination of Navis you’ve met before and new ones which is good but the new bosses weren’t given enough time to establish themselves as characters. You get short villain arcs where you learn who they are, solve a problem they’re causing or are related to, and then fight them in the tournament. I would say that most of the boss Navi fights are well put together but when enduring the fatigue this game puts you through just to get to them it’s hard to find enjoyment in them. The new Navis that you get to face are also of questionable quality. The only returning Navi I got to face was WoodMan. While his scenario was poor in execution, his fight was one of the more enjoyable moments of the game. The scenario with BurnMan was the most interesting and calls back to a scenario that has happened in previous games, but his fight was by far the most frustrating to deal with. I’m told that Ghost Navis are in the game but I never encountered one so I never received a Navi chip. This is the first game where I didn’t receive a GutsMan chip or a Roll chip. The battles at the end against LaserMan, Dark Megaman, and Duo made for a tough challenge to finish off this experience. LaserMan’s fight was tough. The way he puts his attacks together made for a stricter challenge than I was initially prepared for. His mechanics are entirely manageable except for the health regeneration that he triggers part-way into the battle. His health recovers faster than you can damage him with a fully upgraded buster. To defeat him I had to rely on his regeneration activating later in the battle and getting the right combination of chips so I could quickly kill him before he regenerates all of his health. Defeating LaserMan opens the way to the point of no return.

In the game’s final moments, you must confront the darkness within Megaman. This is a battle against a shadowy copy of Megaman, sporting the exact amount of health that you have and having access to your most used chips. The battle was disappointingly easy. It was easier than any of the previous Navi fights. It does make attempting to fight Duo easier as you aren’t faced with as tough of a boss fight as you were with Bass leading into Alpha in Battle Network 3. The battle against Duo initially feels overwhelming. After giving it a few attempts I found that the battle was incredibly easy. Other than one move, I was having no problems avoiding his attacks. Not long after I started battling him was I finally done. This leaves you to watch the remaining plot points before the game ends.

It’s not often that you find yourself playing a game that actively makes you want to quit. Battle Network 4’s way of introducing new features and immediately disincentivizing their use is extraordinary in its own respect. So extraordinary that I have no desire to pursue the post-game content. I’ve never looked forward to the ending of a game as much as I have with this game. It was only natural that Capcom felt the need to depart from the near-perfect formula of Battle Network 3. It’s a shame that departing from the formula meant revisiting the failures of the previous games and further regressing on them. Feeling excited about beating a game should be because you feel accomplished in conquering the main game’s final challenge. The only thing exciting about beating Battle Network 4 is getting to move on to Battle Network 5.

Whenever there is a significant departure in an established series, risk is inevitably incurred. Risk of alienating established fans with potentially controversial changes; risk of corrupting the core appeal by deviating too much from what has always worked; risk of obscuring completely the fundamental identity of the series through a glut of overly contrived additions in the place of cleanly refining the essential components and expanding upon a strong foundation. It’s always a risk, but one which is necessary to stave off stagnation, and create space for further creativity. Every failed idea was an opportunity for success, and before focusing on the egregious mistakes which lead to an undoing, it’s important to acknowledge the attempt to try something new. Battle Network 4 is an unquestionable failure and a risk–a necessary deviation from the refined formula of the series, which had reached its culmination with the splendor of the previous game. It’s actually less what 4 does differently which makes it so maligned than what it continues to do in terms of the series’ consistent pitfalls. The deviations of 4 are only frustrating in that they initially promise an exciting evolution for the series, which sadly goes unrealized in the face of all the worst impulses of the franchise manifesting so overtly. The new gimmicks thus become an additional flaw, perceived as a shoddy realization that compounds upon the already prevalent issues of the game instead of a bold innovation and a wellspring of future potential. So long as the fundamentals are solid, any nominal growing pains can typically be forgiven. With Battle Network 4, though, it feels as if every lesson learned in the development of the three previous titles were completely forgotten, and even the most basic of game design philosophies had been thrown out the window.

Setting aside mechanics for a moment, one of the immediate differences returning players will notice is the total upheaval of both the art style and the overworld as two of the most familiar and consistent elements of the series. This is not a dealbreaker in and of itself—beloved characters remain and maintain their base designs, while the spirit of the in-game world is not necessarily compromised due to the changes. However, it’s evident from very early on that these visual changes are overall for the worse. It’s another case where the negative sentiment could probably be assuaged if the game around it was still good, but because the core itself is rotten, these pockmarks fester across the whole of the experience. Similarly, the persistent localization errors plaguing the game’s translation are a minor but ever-present nuisance that, more than anything else, embody a lackluster sense of presentation inherent to the game. It contributes further to a pervading sense that the game was intentionally designed to be frustrating for the player, as even the flashy new developments introduced here are marred by obtuse limitations and tedious extension.

Double Soul is the new gimmick for Battle Network 4, replacing the Style Change function of the previous two games as the transformation mechanic that imbues Mega Man with various elemental powers. It recalls the central conceit of the original Mega Man games, in that you take on the powerset of certain opponents after defeating them in battle. This is far and away the most exciting and evolutionary change Battle Network 4 presents. Double Soul incentivizes more strategic play, as it only lasts for three turns in battle and requires synergistic deck-building to get the maximum value from every use. It’s also a more visually inspired mechanic, fusing elements of other Navi’s design with Mega Man to emphasize the melding of their abilities, as opposed to the generic palette swaps and minor ornamental differences seen in previous games. The catch, as it were, is that you can only access three of these souls, despite there being six unique variants per game, for a total of twelve different options across both versions. You have no means of influencing which souls you obtain on any given playthrough, and are expected to play through the game multiple times to experience all six, which are hard-coded to make you repeat at least one on a second playthrough, forcing at least three entire playthroughs of the game to experience the complete breadth of this new mechanic. Presumably, this is done to ensure variance for subsequent playthroughs, but the scenarios are presented in such a way as to be entirely interchangeable, negating any uniqueness they could have had. What’s worse is that the main narrative missions persist as well, further exacerbating the tedious nature the game has to begin with.

It’s almost impressive how tiring the gameplay loop ends up feeling, even from just the very early sections of the game. Whether you’re playing through part of the main narrative chasing down evil Navis across the net, or chugging through the tournament scenarios that pad out the time between actual story progression, the structure of these games has never felt so cyclical. The first major scenario embodies this aggravating approach acutely: you’re forced to chase an evil Navi across the heavily-restricted and blandly designed net, hit a dead end after you catch up to him, go to another place in the overworld and access the net again, chase him again until you hit another roadblock, go back into the overworld to obtain a progression item you’ll never use again, and then access and complete one of only three more traditional dungeons this game has to offer. The amount of backtracking endured in this first scenario is a dire portend of what’s to come, and when you’re not tasked with running back and forth across the same stretches of net, enduring an onslaught of tedious virus battles along the way each time, you’re saddled with cryptic invisible item
fetch quests and monotonous endurance battles as your only additional content to experience. There aren’t even side quests anymore to break up the repetitive loop of carbon copy plot beats and uninspired story missions. It only gets worse towards the end, as certain progressions keys are locked behind a currency gate, forcing you to grind for pittances of zenny in random virus battles should you have chosen to commit the grave sin of engaging with the game’s economy of shops throughout the game. In a twist of irony, this inexplicable punishment functions as a far better risk/reward system than the one which actually exists in the game. Unless you’re consistently playing like crap throughout, you’re unlikely to ever see Dark Chips outside of the mandatory tutorial they’re introduced with relatively early on in the game.

The persistent feeling of frustration that comes from playing Battle Network 4 is only ever compounded by the moments where the gameplay feels engaging and fun. It’s frustrating because, very clearly, there exists the groundwork for an appropriate and exciting evolution of the series beneath the grueling game design that weighs down every other moment playing this game. The combat in particular showcases the continued trend of improvement and complexity of the series, with new and interesting chips to be used in tandem with the more compelling Double Soul mechanic the game more or less revolves around. In hindsight, one can almost certainly claim that the risks taken in the digressions of Battle Network 4 were ill-advised. Still, it should be said that the failures seen here are a greater product of poor design in general, rather than the changes made to specifically distinguish this entry from the prior titles. The game is bad on a fundamental level, but it’s arguably still a decent Battle Network game. The spirit of the series is maintained, by means of its unique battle system being preserved and expanded, while the story and characters remain consistent, if a little more confused due to the botched localization. I’d be curious to know if these staple strengths of the games were enough to endear an uninitiated player to the series, similar to how the unrefined mechanics of the first game are endured thanks to the foundational appeals one experiences playing it for the first time. It’s impossible to ignore, though, the rudimentary failures of basic game design here, forcing players through repetitive loops of undistinguished gameplay, and masking the keys to progression behind abstruse and unintuitive solutions. Battle Network 4 seeks to incentivize players to go through the game multiple times based on the structure of its core design, but the baseline flaws are so discouraging it’s a struggle to complete even a single playthrough of the game, let alone three or more.

When playing the original Pikmin, the most enjoyable aspects of the game were the exploration, discovery, and learning of how Pikmin operate in the world. Finding and collecting your lost ship parts so that you could escape before time ran out struck a delicate balance of time management and resource conservation skills. The knowledge and experience from the original Pikmin gave me confidence going into its sequel. This time, however, you have more at your disposal. You explore with two captains, there are dungeon-like caves to explore, new Pikmin to command, a large abundance of treasure to find, and a new cast of enemies to impede your progress. With there being no limits on how many days you may use to explore this distant planet, you are given more grace on how you choose to pace yourself through the game.

When playing a sequel it’s always nice to see good things return, but what you are truly looking for are the new features that are being introduced. Pikmin 2 does a great job exposing you to new features in tandem with the original features of Pikmin. For example, you start with a small colony of Red Pikmin. You are then taught the basics of collecting flower pods and enemy carcasses to bolster your forces. This naturally translates into the new goal of this game. Instead of fixing your ship, you are looking for treasure. Having two captains to control allows you to cover more ground within the small time window that you have for each day. I do wish that there was a way to send an inactive captain to specific places. That being said, the ability to coordinate the two captains worked fine to serve the challenges presented. Many obstacles from the first Pikmin game return. Throughout the different environments that you get to explore you will encounter obstacles like the breakable walls and the extendable bridges. Walls that require bomb rocks, interestingly enough, do not make a return. New obstacles include poison emitters and electrical lines. While poison can be recovered from, electricity instantly kills all of your Pikmin except for Yellow ones. There are only a few treasures to be found on the surface, the abundance of treasure needs to be uncovered in the game’s largest feature: caves.

Caves in this game are the focal point of exploration. Pikmin 2 successfully takes the original experience of Pikmin and pivots it in a completely different direction by introducing this single feature. Once you gain access to a cave, the day timer freezes so you can explore at your own pace. Upon descent, you are greeted with a labyrinth of randomly generated floors. Your game saves in between each floor, so if you’re given a bad floor layout you can reset the game for a more desirable outcome. This comes in handy later in the game when there’s a chance for you and your Pikmin to appear immediately within range of enemies. These floors are littered with all kinds of treasures, enemies, and traps, so it is up to you to strategize your approach. Caves demand you to play more thoughtfully as you cannot repopulate your Pikmin whilst exploring them like you can on the surface. Some of the caves do have flowers that can give you a few extra Pikmin, but enemy carcasses are turned into money instead of additional forces. Aptly preparing for a cave excursion is essential and the game gives you enough knowledge of what to bring beforehand. Each cave gives you a preview of what elements will be present within. This gives you a chance to decide what type and how many Pikmin to bring.

To aid your search for treasure, you enlist the help of several different types of Pikmin. Six types, to be exact. You have your original roster of primary color-themed Pikmin; Red and Blue Pikmin retain their respective immunities to fire and water while Yellow Pikmin lose the ability to pick up bomb rocks in exchange for immunity to electricity. You can still throw Yellow Pikmin higher into the air than any other Pikmin. New Pikmin types include Purple Pikmin, White Pikmin, and Bulbmin. Purple Pikmin do twice as much damage as a Blue, Yellow, or White Pikmin and are also ten times heavier and can lift with the strength of ten Pikmin. White Pikmin can find treasure buried underground and dig it up, are immune to poison and are poisonous to hostile creatures. Bulbmin are parasitic Pikmin that have taken over Red Bulborbs. You obtain them by killing the leader of the group. They are immune to all environmental hazards but are slower and weaker than regular Pikmin. Although Bulbmin cannot journey with you out of a cave, they make for a nice disposable supplement for your forces. These unique attributes open up the game to more challenges by combining returning hazards with new ones. You can now encounter poison/electric gates and much heavier items to be carried back to your ship. The main thing to note here is that the new Pikmin types don’t have onions. To get them you have to sacrifice your main forces (or Bulbmin) to convert them into these new Pikmin types. This makes White and Purple Pikmin intrinsically more valuable. By adding three new Pikmin types, and limiting your access to them, the game can create a new atmosphere of interesting challenges and resource management.

Locating and collecting treasures is your primary goal in Pikmin 2. The entire reason you have returned is to collect treasure so you can pay off your boss’s loan that was taken to cover a lost shipment. The treasures you find in the original release are directly related to things we have in real life (i.e. a Duracell battery and a bottle cap that says Sprite on it). Some of these items are mundane garbage to us, others are fun or interesting. You get a whole range of treasures. One of the caves yields only confectionaries. The best part of this is that your ship names and describes each of these treasures. I often found myself getting a good chuckle from some of the names given to the treasures. Naming a queen chess piece “Priceless Statue” and the king chess piece “Useless Statue” was probably my favorite example of this. The unfortunate thing about the remaster is that all of the third-party brands were removed from the game and replaced with generic fictional brands. While the game is still enjoyable, I found this diminished my appreciation for the treasures. Things that had a generic label ended up being less interesting to me and so I was less likely to look at it in my treasure catalog in between days.

The setting isn’t entirely dissimilar to the first Pikmin game. Although your adventure takes you to new locations, you are still visiting the same planet so that makes sense. While the first Pikmin had more explicit theming, this charm isn’t realized so well in Pikmin 2. You have four locations like before, but only two of them feel truly defined. The Valley of Repose is an oblong-shaped snowscape. Lacking much detail, you’re left pursuing the few obstacles that are laid down before you in this introductory area. Awakening Wood is a more lush environment. You find the Blue Pikmin onion here despite them being locked behind an electrified gate. This area is more square and features only a few challenges. The Perplexing Pool was the most interesting environment for me. It features a central land mass that’s surrounded by water. You find the Yellow Pikmin onion here. This area had the most interesting challenges that demanded the use of multiple types of Pikmin. Finally, the Wistful Wild is accessed only once you’ve cleared the debt owed by your boss. This area felt more plain. You see very little opposition between you and the caves. The lack of bosses on the surface undermines any sort of challenge that you may face since all of the creatures are decently manageable. I found these places to be much less memorable than its predecessor. It feels like the environmental innovation was spent more on developing the caves. This would have been fine if the caves were less procedurally generated. Because of this, only a few caves are truly memorable.

What’s more interesting than the environments, are the creatures that inhabit them. Some returning creatures are Bulborbs/Bulbears, Burrowing Snagrets, Blowhogs, and many others. Pikmin 2 almost triples the amount of creatures that you will encounter throughout your journey. Notable additions are the various types of Dweevils, Wollywogs, and some new variations of the aforementioned returning creatures. Each of these creatures have unique behaviors and ways of impeding your progress in the game. Anode Dweevils steal treasures and wear them as protection. Swooping Snitchbugs make a return and are often paired with the new Bumbling Snitchbug. Bumbling Snitchbugs grab and throw your captains around which can get pretty annoying when you’re trying to retrieve your pikmin from the ground. Seeing many different enemies is a marked improvement upon the cast that you got to enjoy in the first game. Many of these enemies have great designs and are fun to read about in the game’s new feature, the Piklopedia. This catalogs every enemy you encounter and gives you information on each of them. Given entries based on the perspective of both Olimar and Louie, also provides a fun spin on the information gathered for each creature. This can be helpful if you are struggling to figure out a good way to tackle a particular creature.

You also encounter several bosses as each cave has at least one. They are usually found at the end of the cave and some are encountered multiple times. The Empress Bulblax is the first boss you will encounter and is easy. When you face her again you are given a much stricter challenge as she’s constantly reproducing Bulborb Larvae that can eat your Pikmin before dying. I’d say her encounter in the late game is more forgiving than in the mid-game but that’s because her mid-game encounter is poorly designed. Sloped hallways would be okay if your Pikmin were able to consistently climb them without fear of the Bulborb Larvae. The Emperor Bulblax makes a return and is seen a few times as well. Not much has changed except you can’t use Yellow Pikmin to throw bomb rocks into their mouths like before. You’re left to try other strategies with them. My favorite boss was the Water Wraith. The Water Wraith is encountered in the Submerged Castle, which is only accessible with Blue Pikmin. The cave has all types of hazards along with a unique gimmick. The boss drops in on you if you take too long on any given floor. This applies pressure for you to hurry to the end where you’ll be given the proper tools to defeat it. This was the first cave that challenged my ability to manage my time and resources properly. With proper strategization (and a few choice resets of certain floors) I was able to avoid the Water Wraith altogether for a few floors. The boss itself isn’t that tough once you gain access to its weakness, but the challenge it imposes on you is what makes it so effective. The only other boss that elicited a strong response was the Man-at-Legs. This was a Beady Long Legs equipped with a machine gun. Although terrifying at first, once you have a chance to think rationally the boss isn’t too difficult to handle.

Fully delving into what Pikmin 2 has to offer gave me a lot of thrills. Despite the environments being less fleshed out, I still enjoyed searching for the treasures both on the surface and underground in the caves. The inclusion of three new Pikmin types was a welcome feature and well implemented. I ultimately found Pikmin 2 to be a more engaging game for me. I still appreciate the original Pikmin and its simplicity but Pikmin 2 has so much more to offer. I did find that towards the end of Pikmin 2, I started to feel a bit of fatigue with the longer caves. One cave is effectively a boss rush and another cave just has tons of grueling floors to tackle. Then once you finally reach the bottom, you have an extremely tough final boss to face. The Titan Dweevil is perhaps the most challenging aspect of Pikmin 2. This boss forces you to play to the strengths of your Pikmin. It was a much more challenging boss than the Emperor Bulblax in 1, and it was more thematically interesting as a final boss. The seamless introduction of new features balances well between innovation and stagnation. The accomplishment of collecting all 201 treasures felt satisfying. By the time I had completed all that I wished to accomplish, I was ready to put the game down and play something else. Pikmin 2 gave me just enough content to feel satisfied, if not a little bit more.

The early hours of Pikmin 2 immediately bring to mind all the qualities one looks for in a sequel entry: refinement, expansion, and a maintaining of the spirit while also taking the series in new directions. The small changes Pikmin 2 presents to the core formula established by the first game radically shifts the player’s approach to gameplay in a multitude of refreshing and unexpected ways. The most notable one, to start, is the axing of the pendulous time limit suspended across the game in favor of a more relaxed goal of simply accruing a set amount of treasure before initiating the first credits roll. What this allows for is a shift in priorities for the player, focusing less on optimizing the gathering of items and maximizing the amount retrieved in a single day, creating instead the necessary time and space for the player to accrue resources and make preparations for the daunting challenges awaiting in the game's many caves.

Caves are the primary source of strategic challenge which was previously supplied by the overarching time limit in the prior game. Each one proposes an arduous trek to the bottom, prompting the player to dispatch all manner of enemy and obstacle along the way, most of which guard the various treasures you’ll need to reach the game’s ultimate goal. The narrow spaces and treacherous hazards encountered in these caves, including new, deadlier, environmental obstacles, make some of the later undertakings especially hardcore. It is, however, less the hazards and enemies themselves that supply the challenge, but the fact that you are unable to spawn new Pikmin while in the midst of any given spelunking venture. Like the first game, a philosophy of general leniency is employed to give players the space to make mistakes and still be able to recover from them. The game saves your progress after each floor, allowing you to reset without redoing the entire dungeon, which is especially beneficial in cases of the randomly-generated layouts rendering themselves unfavorable in certain sections of the game. Additionally, the longer caves often have rest levels, where you’re given the chance to restock on certain valuable resources, and even regain some of your lost troops in the case of specific rare flowers which can sprout additional Pikmin for you.

Perhaps most importantly, the nature of the caves engage the player in ways which more naturally instruct on combat—far more than the first game ever managed to. The forgiving nature and largely open spaces of the first Pikmin meant that even if you lost a significant portion of your troops in combat, you were never punished severely enough that you needed to alter your strategy. It was always viable to simply throw an entire army of Pikmin at a problem, and then recover from whatever losses were incurred. The overarching time limit of the game was the only disincentive to this tactic, but never enough that one would have to engage with combat in a more strategic manner. The limiting nature of the caves prevent this method outright, while their labyrinthian corridors encourage a more considered approach to enemies within the dwellings. The effectiveness of this methodology is evidenced by the introduction of the first of two new Pikmin types in the game’s very first cave, which boast an incredibly utilitarian array of combat-centric skills, in addition to being able to lift ten times the amount of any other Pikmin type.

Purple Pikmin are an insanely powerful asset you quickly learn to utilize effectively but sparingly, due to their precious nature. Unlike your primary Pikmin colors, the newly added Purple and White Pikmin have no means of multiplying ad infinitum, making them especially more valuable when obtained. The tradeoff for this (for Purples, anyway) is an incredible utility that allows you to mow through many enemies, and even bosses, with only a handful of fighters, due to the stun-locking property they possess when thrown. For many of the most common enemies, their existence is trivialized by the existence of Purple Pikmin, but the ability to clear out entire areas using only a small retinue of about eight to ten Pikmin is invaluable for navigating through the caves without losing large swaths along the way. Additional elemental enemies ensure that you can’t just steamroll past every challenge with only Purples in tow, while their lumbering disposition often puts them at risk when dealing with a larger number of enemies at once. While they’re ultimately a bit overtuned in their abilities—particularly when compared to their albino brethren—their incredibly powerful assets in tandem with their scarcity encourage more strategic considerations when entering a cave, especially as the levels and boss fights become increasingly more puzzle-like as the game goes on.

Most of the initial boss fights encountered in the early game of Pikmin 2 are repeats of by now iconic bouts from the first game. Once again we are pitted against the likes of the Burrowing Snagret, the Beady Long Legs, and the Emperor Bulblax, all of whom appear easier than their prior incarnations. However, later caves build upon the familiar patterns of these previous encounters, giving us such harrowing challenges as the newly mobile Pileated Snagret, the mechanized Man-at-Legs, and infinitely-breeding Empress Bulblax. Each of these fights proves to be a worthy culmination of the respective gauntlets endured by the end of their caves, as well as the completely new bosses with entirely distinctive gimmicks to work out. A number of these fights unfortunately suffer from being repeated in later dungeons, usually with an additional gimmick which only succeeds in frustrating and complicating the fight, rather than adding an additional layer of strategy or challenge. The final boss thankfully avoids any irritating pitfalls, making use of every kind of element and hazard thus encountered for a truly climactic battle. The most memorable fight, however, comes not at the end, or even the bottom of any of the caves, but on the first level of the Submerged Castle, where you’ll almost certainly confront the infamous Waterwraith for the very first time. This adversary is less a test of player skill or combat prowess; it’s more an exemplar of well-engineered design intent on instilling blood-curdling fear through a musically-lead oppressive atmosphere and tension-torquing subversion. The effect is so successful that the specter of the Waterwraith hangs in the air, the anxiety creeping back in as you explore new caves, fearing it might drop unexpectedly from the ceiling again.

For all the ways in which the caves of Pikmin 2 reinvigorate and expand upon the philosophies established by the first game, they’re also the embodiment of the game’s most lackluster element. Because each cave is randomly generated from a predetermined set of repeating and interchangeable environments, the vast majority of visual renderings experienced in a playthrough end up feeling bland and indistinct. The overworld areas are not a particular reprieve either. Whereas the first Pikmin featured four bespoke and environmentally diverse areas to explore across its playtime, the main areas of Pikmin 2 are largely similar to one another, and lack any kind of memorable locales or set pieces. The layouts of these areas often push players towards a specific objective, hampering the open-ended sense of exploration these games otherwise engender. One of the core appeals of Pikmin, conveyed initially by the first game, is the shrunk-down perspective of a familiar world rendered fanciful by way of a humorously alien perspective; despite falling short in regards to the visual expectations for the game, Pikmin 2 still retains the innate charm and splendor of the series through clever writing and humorous commentary, inspired by the story’s conceit and real world analogues.

One of the most surprising factors of Pikmin 2 is its value as a work of satire. It’s not particularly deep in this regard, but the repeated emphasis on, and acerbic derision of, capitalist greed and exploitation, leads to a more thoughtful experience than one would initially expect. Its commentary goes beyond the simple dichotomy of rapacious executives and subjugated workers, taking into consideration the underlying imperialist foundation for Captain Olimar’s relationship to the Pikmin. The story goes like this: a foreign explorer is contracted by his employer to extract valuable resources and treasure from an uncolonized land, utilizing the labor of the native inhabitants and decimating the natural ecosystem in the process. While Pikmin 2 is ostensibly still a cozy game built around the aesthetic appeal of exploring naturally-presented environments, those weighty social critiques remain inescapable when considered beyond face value.
Is it ironic, then, that the “treasures” Captain Olimar pilfers upon his journey would often be considered relative junk to us? The first of these items found in the game is a Duracell branded battery, the first of many humorously identifiable objects recognized from our everyday life. Skippy peanut butter, Carmex lip balm, an old 7-Up bottle cap—these are but a handful of familiar items encountered when playing Pikmin 2. The resonant tangibility of these extant materials helps the sentiment of the game’s commentary feel more applicable, while maintaining a trademark sense of whimsy through playful naming schemes. The dialogue and character exchanges aren’t the only places where the writing of Pikmin 2 shines, though. The end of day diary entries from Olimar are supplanted here by a short correspondence letter from your boss, chronicling his plight in evading vicious loan sharks and hiding out underneath a bridge. Similarly, there is a treasure trove of detailed entries on every item you collect and enemy you defeat, building upon the zoological observations of the creatures you’ve encountered and postulating over the perceived purpose of every treasure you’ve come across. It makes for a nice break in gameplay, relaxing between days by reading up on all the things you’ve seen and filling out your perspective of the world through the lens of these wide-eyed explorers.

It is undeniable that Pikmin 2 achieves so much, and constantly delights and surprises with its many new additions and twists. It never feels quite as iconic and instantly understood as its predecessor, but in many ways it surpasses it through sheer mechanical ingenuity. The way it engages you to understand and appreciate the nuances of its systems, instructing and encouraging you to think more strategically without forcing you to suffer in the process; the way the sly contortions of the game’s writing leads to a far more satisfying thematic experience than one would ever expect from an otherwise guileless series; the way that such a seemingly benign decision like making the products you collect correlate with actual objects you see and use in life dramatically effects the immersive feeling of the game to an almost inexplicable degree. This feature in particular was removed for the recent Switch port of the game, so I felt even more assured when setting out to play the Wii version specifically, which still retains this (in my opinion) essential experience to the game. The general blandness plaguing the environments and occasional bullshit complicating later dungeon expeditions seem to hurt all the more, because had these pitfalls been avoided Pikmin 2 might just be the undisputed greatest game of its kind. But in spite of this, it’s still phenomenal, and appreciated even more for being so distinct from the game that came before it. You need not compare the two to appreciate how they both excel in different ways, but it’s nice to, just the same, as in doing so you unveil how flexible and wide-reaching an essential Pikmin experience can be.

This game is just pure joy.

I played the vanilla version just after it came out in the PAL regions and I spent a small fortune to buy a PSVita and that rare cartridge just to play Golden. And I do not regret it. Not one goddamn bit.

Everything in this game brings me joy. The setting, the soundtrack, the pacing, the characters, the character interactions, the boss fights, the dungeons, the central premise, the social links, the social events, the story and its conclusion and all the endings and the way it just oozes optimism.

Every. single. thing. about. this. game. is. love. and. joy. and. bliss. to. me.

I could propably play it during the absolute worst day in my entire life and suddenly feel a lot better.