The purpose behind Soviet propaganda was not to deceive, but demoralize. The lie had to be so blatant, so bombastic, that it made the power of the institution behind it look utterly unchallengeable. The lies I told my Pikmin were in a similar vein. “The bulborbs are of no consequence,” I said. “You can still pick up the bomb rocks,” I said. “I will save you if you fall into the water” I said. As the falsehoods spewed from my mouth, I could see that the masses were not filled with faithful determination, happily gobbling up the slop of inspiring platitudes. No, instead there was only resignation. Eyes welling up as they knew, no matter where they wandered, they would be venturing down further into the caves. They prayed not necessarily for life, but for enough brutal, unnecessary, nonpermissible death that it would force me to reset the game and improve my performance as their leader. They were comforted only by dreams of one day becoming purple, becoming part of the anointed. The indispensable few. But these were merely dreams, dreams that rested under layers of nightmares.

Pikmin 2 is known for its very vocal fans. After a long wait between sequels, hardcore fans initially seemed split on Pikmin 3’s shift from a focus on survival to a focus on efficiency. Now, the Pikmin fanbase is known for its irreverent derangements, so most people could still agree that all the games were good despite the shitflinging. Still, it seemed like 3 generally came up short as far as the general opinions went. Then, upon Pikmin 3’s re-release on Switch, it seemed like things began to change dramatically. 3 became a much more positively seen course correction after 2 failed to follow up the format from 1. Pikmin 1 remained as an impressive-but-flawed first outing, and public opinion of 2 began to fall behind.

I like Pikmin 2. It does a few things I wish the other games would have kept more relevant. I would rather replay this over a lot of games, perhaps even games I’ve rated higher. Pikmin 2 is just easy to pick up and play like that. However, I have to say I’m pretty pleased with how things turned out for the franchise, with it choosing to skirt around 2’s fundamental ideas to instead focus more on expanding on 1’s more carefully tailored time management challenge. 2’s spelunking spirit still lives on, but its unique feeling of building dread as you dive further down seems mostly lost to time.

Overlap still exists between the games. Pikmin 2 certainly ups the ante as far as treasure collecting goes. There are tons of things to collect which, like many aspects of this game, are a double-edged sword. With more collectables to find, there are more instances of the game stopping every single time a new item is brought back to your base. Treasures piling up one after another when you are just sitting and waiting to move on to the next floor already slows the pace of the game down unnecessarily. The game already demands you pace yourself with a bit of “hurry up and wait” as Pikmin complete tasks, no need to add on to it. A results screen listing your treasures at the end of the day would do fine, and indeed it did in later entries. Pardon the comparison to future games, but I don’t believe this was impossible for Pikmin 2, it might have even been easier.

With so much treasure to collect, you might think there is an increased emphasis on how you route the process of amassing all of this. Not so. You have free reign to take your time in most of Pikmin 2. The surface level areas are difficult to assess in their quality, as they are mostly an excuse to bring you to the cave, where you have unlimited time to work your magic. Strange, given that Pikmin 2 gives you a second captain to control, allowing you to split the group up. Yet once you’re down in the caves, this becomes a moot point. Very few instances in the game benefit from the split up mechanic. It is mostly an act of convenience on the surface, where you can leave a captain at the base to wrangle returning Pikmin.

With the caves being procedurally generated, their challenge generally cannot come from careful routing and puzzle solving. Instead, they are designed to catch you off guard and make you think on your feet, particularly over the incremental randomization. Get ready to fight, because you’re going to be doing a lot of it. With that, you are gifted a new, vitally important combat tool in the Purple Pikmin. Only available for resupply in caves, these are your main fighting force for much of the game. I would argue their actual introduction comes a bit too early, as Red Pikmin are benched from their usual combat role as a result. A later introduction for Purple would have been a very empowering moment for the player. Instead, their presence is quickly rendered a matter of fact. An early fight with a boss that would prove destructive, the Empress Bulblax, was far less impactful thanks to the purples’ ability to stun.

The purples’ are so vital that I felt cheated when I first found out that caves don’t really suggest you bring them with you in your party, as they are not immune to any hazards like fire, electricity, water, or poison. Imagine my shock upon entering a cave that suggested I bring everything but purples, and I found myself struggling to justify barreling through without them. This does raise some interest in the idea of “no purples” run of the game, as most of the challenges are technically beatable without them. However, Pikmin’s combat is not interesting enough on its own for this already longer game to extend its life further through my self-imposed challenge.

A wipeout of your Pikmin population is a common threat you’ll face in these games, and Pikmin 2 is easily the most eager game in the series to do that to you. A beady long legs jumping down from on high to genocide my yellows with the eagerness of a Harvard student realizing those kids with the little hats were still acceptable targets after all these years. Here you are presented with a choice. You can reset the game, perhaps at the cost of your personal time, or persevere and rebuild the group as you go about your normal tasks. Except not really. That’s how it is in Pikmin 1, where you have a macro time limit to complete the game within, a micro time limit of each day, and plenty of ways to repopulate as you are collecting items necessary for completion. In Pikmin 2, the game saves at every new cave sublevel, which will only take a few minutes to complete, and caves do not commonly give you opportunities to repopulate. Taking a day to rebuild on the surface feels like a total waste when you just want to get to the next cave, where the time limit does not exist. Purples in particular are a very precious commodity, and demand a reset should you lose even a few. So your only choice is to reset.

Why then, can I not reset to my last save from the menu? Pikmin 1 let me do that, and the other sequels let me do that. I actually have to close the game and reboot it in order to undo my mistakes. In the game where mistakes that lead to mass death are the most common. Who thought this was a good idea? It does not make the game more challenging, only more cumbersome. It does not create a greater fear of punishment, as the process of resetting carries with it no risk when I’m plopped right back to the same sublevel I was on. Compare Pikmin 1, where resetting could mean a major setback, misallocation of tasks as you repeat the day, or a repeat of your mistakes right at the end of a cycle. I can only assume that the removal of an in-menu reset was to discourage the act of resetting, in a game that was clearly more designed towards trial-and-error style gauntlets. There must have been more than a few changes in direction during development, as this and the aforementioned captain switching mechanic indicate that Pikmin had its priorities a little misaligned.

Reloading is also a completely viable strategy when tackling caves. I recall one particular cave where just crossing a bridge over water lead to mass genocide. The Pikmin pathing is hugely improved in this game over the first, a massive quality of life jump and very impressive given it was on the same hardware. However, sometimes Pikmin have the self-preservation instinct of a pasty British man cruising into Morocco waving a rainbow flag. Caves often end up with baffling setups thanks to their procedural generation, with alcoves and blocked off areas that present you with nothing of note, or enemies awkwardly grouped up so as to make things more vexing than necessary.

The good and bad of this structure culminates in the Dream Den, a harrowing gauntlet of death that is two parts a tense descent down a surprisingly tough series of obstacles and one part a complete slog where you are pretty much over the entire game. If you just want to get it over with, you could even waltz by nearly every enemy and just jump down each subsequent level. Pikmin left idle will follow you down, so there’s no reason to bother engaging with enemies if you’re going for speed.

As overly generous as I thought Pikmin 4’s lock-on was, Pikmin 2’s final boss is a great testament to lock-on as a permanent fixture of the games. It’s well known that you may as well only bring Yellow Pikmin to this fight, for all the good the others will do you. Not only does their higher throwing height help them consistently reach each destructible body part of the boss easier, but electricity is the only hazard in the game which acts as an instant kill. Fire, water, and poison all have a grace period in which Pikmin can be called back and saved, meaning all other Pikmin are completely useless in this fight. This is still a pretty fun final battle, you have to keep on your toes and for those not in the know you will likely lose most of your non-yellows thanks to electric attacks. I personally decided to keep things interesting by performing it the intended way, with a diverse group of Pikmin, but Yellows quickly became the only thing worth preserving.

The bosses are a massive highlight of the game. Trudging through a cave and meeting a unique, powerful creature at the bottom was always a delight. Dealing with unyielding levels of chaos, dodging bomb rocks from flying enemies for twenty minutes, only to be met not by relief but a firestorm of bullets from Man-at-Legs was a ton of fun. Each enemy acts as a different chess piece, and they can be mixed and matched to create a ton of unique combat scenarios with what would otherwise be a very simple system. It’s no wonder that Pikmin 2 enjoyed a lively rom hack scene, which goes a step further and frequently allows the bosses to team up against you.

Bosses were also some of the few times I would just accept my losses and move on. These being at the ends of caves, I would have no further use for many of the pikmin I brought, as my reserves outside had already been built up. While bosses would still cause resets, I appreciated them much more in these scenarios. They hit an excellent sweet spot where I was willing to improve but accepting of my mistakes after a certain point.

These encounters also offer two of the only set pieces where the captain split up mechanic really gets to show its usefulness. A fight against one giant enemy asks you to repeatedly switch between leaders to distract your foe and then attack it from behind. It’s absolutely shocking that no other Pikmin game offers anything like this. It seems like an easy slam dunk. Particularly for Pikmin 4, where your other playable character is just a super Pikmin. There’s also the infamous Water Wraith dungeon, in which you are saddled with only Blue Pikmin upon entry. Here you must quickly complete your tasks within a time limit before the wraith shows up. You may as well reset if you aren’t ready to leave, because the wraith is fast and unforgiving. So you begin again, desperately working to perfect your run through each level, passing the baton between captains, feeling the weight of the encroaching wraith grow heavier. Pikmin 4 would go on to recreate this cave, and while it was similarly fun, the wraith itself just does not compare with the Pikmin 2 rendition’s deadliness.

Pikmin 1, 3, and 4 were perhaps the most sure I’ve ever been of my odds to replay any given game. So I must apologize to 2 fans when I say this is the only one I might hesitate to give another go to. Was it good? Yes. Does it play better than many other games, perhaps even games I’d rate higher? Yes. Is it pretty unique compared to the other games? Yes. Did I find it as fun as the other entries? No, but it's still pretty good. This is one where I’d be much more likely to check out the romhack scene, and indeed I might have done that sooner. Unfortunately, when my computer forgot that its start menu existed, the team of Indian men I conscripted to help me were of no use, and everything was wiped. So instead of setting up an emulator again, I bought this game legitimately on Switch. It’s nice that an entire series is available for legitimate purchase on a single device, and my choice to pay for it here is a testament to piracy as a service problem. If only Nintendo would allow me to just buy their classic library instead of going through their online subscription service, but oh well you little bitch ass bitch boy don’t mind me while I play Path of Radiance the only way a sane person would bother to.

It’s been a while since I was actually sad to end my time with a game. Pikmin only comes around once in a blue moon, and while I think ten years between games is kind of excessive, I think I genuinely prefer for these games to take their sweet time. I pretty much drowned myself in this game and I have no regrets. Pikmin remains a brilliantly designed series, even with some concessions made.

Looking at those concessions, the old debate over what the appropriate level of difficulty for this series is exactly has reared its head again. Pikmin 4 may give Pikmin 3 a run for its money in the ease with which it can be completed. Not only are you given accessibility options like being able to simply rewind a few minutes at a time rather than an entire day, you also have Oatchi. This dog not only acts as your second captain for this game, but can be upgraded to act like a large group of multifaceted Pikmin all by himself. He also lets you ride around with Pikmin on his back, greatly reducing the risk of strays in the back taking hits. If you were to compare the games side by side, I would say Pikmin 4 ends easier than 3 by the time you’re fully upgraded and have things figured out, but Pikmin 3 put me at risk on account of my ignorance on far fewer occasions. This may just come down to Emperor and Empress Bulblax being back, but the long and short of it is that I used the rewind feature several times in 4 whereas the only time I’d need to redo a day in 3 was due to not amassing as much fruit as I would have liked.

What’s most interesting is that Oatchi actually keeps the game pretty fun in his own way, rather than just dumbing things down with the safety nets he provides. Oatchi acting as a one-man army lends itself to more interesting decision-making than just having two captains. You are now objectively weaker when separated from him, but you can still be much more efficient. Oatchi having his own progression system that allows you to take on tougher challenges is also satisfying to watch unfold. One of the game’s final challenges basically demands a fully upgraded Oatchi in order to earn a platinum medal (dandori issue, I know). A rare instance of a legitimate escort mission with the yellow thing dragging your object of desire away from a pair of thick, wet men. While I think the challenges posed in a game with just another normal captain would be more rewarding to overcome, Oatchi offers unique and fun utility in and of himself. Oatchi fundamentally changes how Pikmin are managed because of his ability to consolidate the space they take up, but he thankfully does not deprive the player of fun new ways to play the game. I would say working towards those platinum medals in 4 is actually quite a bit harder than anything in Pikmin 1, but admittedly completing the base game was still very easy. Pikmin 1 also did not have the luxury of twenty years of perspective to design itself around all its greatest gameplay strengths.

“Dandori” is the word of the day with Pikmin 4. Some esoteric foreigner shit about time management. Pikmin 3’s challenge rooms are now the entire ethos behind Pikmin 4. Unlike both Pikmin 1 and 3 though, 4 has no fail state waiting for you if you want to take your time, outside of a side mode where you play as Olimar. 3’s time limit was basically irrelevant, but I thought 1’s added a great bit of flavor that too many people decry. The lack of a macro time limit doesn’t really harm Pikmin 4, in fact I think the spirit of 1’s emphasis on time management is captured wonderfully here. That repeated shouting of “dandori” ended up being a great incentive to prove I was not a dumb baby and could platinum this baby game. There were seriously a couple of times I walked into a fight with the confidence of Russia throwing down with Japan and I experienced similar results to that endeavor.

4 takes a couple more interesting cues from prior entries to inject some of Pikmin’s old soul back into the mix. In 3, areas were more linear escalations towards boss encounters. These fights were given a ton of fanfare, I definitely enjoyed them. However, simply stumbling upon a boss in its den has its own appeal. This is especially true when the boss is actually more bizarre and unnatural, not less. Walking in on a disco spider just vibing there in its arena raises so many questions, but the humor speaks for itself. On the other side of things, knowing emperor bulblax is just chilling underground in a standard area, waiting for you to throw one Pikmin to start the fight, makes it feel like a more organic part of its environment. The Piklopedia has also made a triumphant return. With it you will have three characters giving their thoughts. You have the more surface level analysis, Olimar giving more thoughtful or speculative journals, and Louie saying things like “Six million Pikmin? In four games? I don’t know about that…” There is one boss that feels more like something out of Pikmin 3, and it makes me wish there were a few more like that. Pikmin 4 has already gone to insane lengths to appeal to virtually all Pikmin fans though, so there really isn’t much more I could reasonably ask for.

Unlike the first game, 4 struggles a bit getting on its feet. This is, without a doubt, the longest game in the series, and the introduction is unlike anything that came before. Lots of dialogue. Lots of new mechanics. Old mechanics get more time allotted to explaining them than before. That last one is particularly bad, because referencing Pikmin 1 shows just how little we really needed some of the newer material explained to us. However, as previously stated, Pikmin 4 is substantially longer than its predecessors. Once the game gets going, you really can move at a breakneck pace to 100% it. For the most part. More impressive than the density of content is how well tuned everything is.

Pikmin 2 struggled to justify Reds when Purples existed. Pikmin 3 set Purples and Whites in a side mode and significantly nerfed their utility, while also making Blues very situational compared to Winged Pikmin. Pikmin 4 has NINE Pikmin types at your disposal in the main game. Balance issues still exist, but it’s astounding I got as much mileage out of each type as I did. Purples are nearly back to their dominant state, but until I had a huge number of them, Reds remained helpful. Red are also capable of carrying fiery pinecones that let you open up barriers, keeping them relevant for longer. Whites have several instances where their fast walk speed is critical to earning platinum medals, but their poison immunity is rendered fairly obsolete by Oatchi. I heard many people lamenting the lack of use for Rock Pikmin in this game, only to find they had quite a few caves, challenges, and even a full area in which they were quite handy. Blue Pikmin got the best deal they’ve had since the first game. Two huge areas and a handful of caves demand underwater utility. Yellow Pikmin still do that thing where they need to be thrown high sometimes. Wow. Good for them. Good for those guys.

New to the series are Ice and Glow Pikmin. Ice is one of those things that threatens to trivialize the entire game. You receive them quite early and a handful of them make fighting most enemies a breeze. They DO require you to have some other types on hand if you want to maximize efficiency though, as their damage output is peanuts compared to the other types. You will also lose out on any opportunity to farm more Pikmin from corpses of enemies who are defeated while frozen, as they leave nothing to harvest after shattering. I would say it was a solid effort in trying to balance something so strong. Most interestingly, it feels like the Pikmin type limit, forcing you to only have three types out at once, and the recommended Pikmin usage screen, were made to push the player into situations where they would not have Ice Pikmin around. It’s a bit artificial, I’m pretty sure you can get faster results by relying on Ice more. At the very least, while maximum efficiency might demand carrying some Ice Pikmin at all times, they are still not the be all, end all to your time management.

Glow Pikmin are an interesting resource. They are primarily available in night missions, a side mode focused on tower defense. As such they are designed around accommodating your needs in this mode. You fight against hordes of advancing enemies, so the glowies are given the ability to teleport to you as soon as they are idle for a moment, as well as a powerful stun attack that extends its duration the more glowies you have. This makes them a powerful resource, but one that can only be summoned in caves outside of their dedicated missions. You must expend a resource in order to make use of them, so most players will be keeping themselves in check here, even if you do amass plenty of glow seeds. I actually don’t find these units as strong as Purples, who remain king. But if you’re willing to forgive the glowies’ repeated demands that their “fellow Red Pikmin” stage public terror attacks on Bulborb HQ then you will find a very fun new addition to these games.

Winged Pikmin sadly drew the short straw for this game. I can admire that they went out of their way to actually include them for certain caves and challenges, but their pathing in this game leaves them feeling significantly less impactful. White Pikmin and Oatchi will generally get you better dandori. Worse is that Winged Pikmin still have the same 0.5x modifier to their attack that White Pikmin and Ice Pikmin have, but the tradeoff just isn’t worth it. There aren’t even any enemies where you really see the benefit in using the winged Pikmin, as ultra spicy spray on stronger Pikmin expedites the need to reach elevated enemies faster. However, there are a few instances where Winged Pikmin help in perfecting a puzzle, like the white onion challenge.

Structurally, Pikmin 4 is broken up between large areas, caves, and various dandori challenges. Different areas favor different Pikmin, but you can generally play with other types if that’s just how you prefer to do things. You will be given suggested party setups for each area, and are limited to three Pikmin types, a first for the series. I feel this limitation needlessly restrains expressiveness, but it is admittedly rare where it feels like I would appreciate having more than three types of Pikmin. The levels are larger than ever, so you’re given many opportunities to move your base around should you need to swap things around. This is most common in Serene Shores, where the water level will change midday. As I alluded to before, Blue Pikmin get to shine in this game in a way that they haven’t since the first. Not only do these larger areas give them plenty of opportunities to prove their worth, there are also several caves that favor them as well. These more open areas, compounded by the revolutionary ability to jump in a Pikmin game, lend themselves to a greater sense of verticality than we have had in this series before. Some might feel that this leads to a lack of density in the main levels compared to say, Pikmin 3, where every corner is basically a new slice of dandori. However, 4 does a lot to compensate for this through caves and challenges, on top of this design decision giving you a greater sense of scope for your adventure in general.

Oddly enough, the game has one of the most pointless fakeout credits sequences I’ve ever seen. Leading off of Hero’s Hideaway, a fantastic area in which you have to occasionally deal with an unkillable enemy that steals your troops away, you are treated to a hint at Louie’s whereabouts. This leads into not one but two entirely new areas, and not just small areas that ostensibly act as boss arenas like Pikmin 3’s Formidable Oak. They are fully expanded upon areas, just as robust as what preceded them. Really, really do not get what they were going for here, but both levels prove more than worth your time.

Caves will often restrict what Pikmin you are even allowed to bring. Not only because the environment favors them, but in some situations you’re forced to use these Pikmin precisely because the challenge is actually more difficult for this specific type. I actually wish there was more like this in the game. What’s more, if a cave allowed me to change a Pikmin’s type along the way, then it shouldn’t allow me to enter with that changed type to begin with. I would’ve found that much more interesting. You generally won’t be grinding for units without their corresponding onion though, so these limited challenges generally work as intended. Of particular note is that Pikmin 2’s Water Wraith cave is more or less completely remade in Pikmin 4. Should this be criticized as rehashed content? It’s been nearly twenty years since that game was released. I guess time makes that less objectionable.

Dandori challenges make up some of the best content in the game. You can pass any of these with a mere bronze medal, if you’re a huge fucking loser. Very few games manage to provide that last second desperation as I worked to complete a challenge, and Pikmin 4 pulled it off multiple times. I am talking the literal last second, a big fat “1…0” displayed on my screen telling me how close I was to failure, just before I scored a Platinum Medal. More than once. Dandori issue, yes, but one I’m thankful for. Granted, a few of these were done without full upgrades, like a captain with a pluckaphone or a 100 strength Oatchi, but being capable of scoring high marks on these challenges without those things is a testament to just how well designed the game is. To add to this, I was not actively trying to hinder myself, this all happened quite naturally, and I wasn’t even aware of the pluckaphone until later. I recall one particular challenge where the solution seemed to be using purple pikmin in a way that felt wrong, with them carrying relatively light loads, but it worked. This could have been an inefficient solution, but realizing that it was a solution at all was fun. This is the kind of content that begs for some additions down the line, crafted with pure malicious glee by developers.

Not all of Pikmin 4’s content is a home run. Night missions end up a bit too simplistic, albeit fun for what they are. They only make you sweat a bit towards the end, where you may find yourself frantically running back and forth between bases to make sure a tennis ball spider does not trample your bipedal canine while a ball of amphibious miasma encroaches on you. I will say that I’m glad these missions still account for some interesting routing, with some of them being beatable before any enemies of note even become aggressive. There’s also a series of dandori battles, distinct from dandori challenges. These are a way of integrating the multiplayer feature into the main game. The random and chaotic nature of these leave them feeling much less geared towards the appeal of the standard challenges, so I felt a greatly diminished incentive to perfect them. Still, this mode does seem like it would be a blast to play with friends, but sadly my friend swore off these games after a failed attempt at Pikmin 3 multiplayer years ago, where he was left stuck behind a gate for several minutes as I jacked off in a corner somewhere.

It’s pretty amazing that even Pikmin 4’s weakest content still ends up being pretty good. From top to bottom, there was never anything in this game that I actively disliked doing. There are only a few things that actually bring the game’s score down from 5/5 for me. Granted, I gave Bloodborne a perfect score, and that game is far from perfect, it’s just that the flaws never outweighed how I reflected on the experience as a whole. Maybe time will change that for Pikmin 4 as well (it did for Pikmin 1 pretty much immediately upon my second playthrough), but a few changes leave me scratching my head. Why is lock-on not on a toggle? This feature has virtually removed the need for aiming, and you do have the ability to switch targets, but it’s often a bit overeager to send my Pikmin where I do not need them. A flick of the wrist should have been enough for micro adjustments, but lock-on is just too sticky. “It works most of the time” is simply not enough when this is my primary interaction with the world around me. If I were to screw up throwing things on gyro, then at least I know that’s on me. Lock-on screw ups feel more vexing to deal with. True, they’re just a momentary vexation, but those moments are too common for me to give this a pass. Why are certain features like swarming, something that used to be a default ability, locked behind endgame progression? Maybe charging is just better, but there was no reason to throw this ability into the corner like this. These kinds of things, compounded by the extreme increase in dialogue fluff, make me view the game less favorably than a literal five star experience. They are pervasive enough issues that I cannot ignore how they impacted my experience, even if I think the game is stellar overall.

A testament to just how densely packed the content is in this game, I nearly forgot to talk a bit more about the side mode featuring Olimar as the main playable character. This mode is thrown in here for seemingly no reason other than to find yet more ways for any kind of fan to enjoy Pikmin 4. It reintroduces the macro time limit of Pikmin 1, but it’s even stricter. This was likely done because the player is already familiar with the areas Olimar is exploring. Despite this being well-trodden territory by this point, the time limit and new treasures to collect make this mode feel fresh enough to be worth exploring. Olimar and Moss also become more powerful as the days go by, rather than this being tied to player choice. An interesting decision that turns the time management in this mode into a race against your own space-time obliterating power. It also opens up the Sage Trials for you, which I will once again say is my favorite content in the game.

When I was done with everything, all I could think about was either replaying this game or another Pikmin game. It’s such an oddball franchise that has always had difficulty finding a wider audience thanks to its surface level cuteness being mixed with a healthy dose of moroseness. Something it does without veering into glib territory to reassure the self-conscious adults that it’s in on the joke. The game goes above and beyond in adding little bits of goofy character. I’m happy to see that, with Pikmin 4, this franchise may have finally found that larger pool of fans, and years from now I can say I liked Pikmin before it was cool.