These are all just stream-of-consciousnesses type rambles for all of the games (minus the advergames; sorry Spaceforce fans). Do not expect organization or consistency. Or quality, for that matter.
For each game I also state my favorite and least favorite aspects of them. Because all* of these games are incredible with their own merits! They're all also very flawed! And I think its good to recognize that. Just know that I love the gameplay of each one, even if I don't out right mention it, because I love the general gameplay loop of Pikmin.
*Spinoffs not included in this statement.
Pikmin (The First)
Pikmin... Released in 2001 for the GameCube, then ported to the Wii in 2008, and ported again to the Switch in 2023. Note the time jump, we'll be coming back to that later. The plot is simple: you play as a little space man, Captain Olimar. He has crashed on an unkown planet, his ship in thirty peices. He has thirty days to find these peices before his suit is unable to filter out the oxygen present here that is so deadly to his people. His only hope rests in the hands of the pikmin, tiny creatures who are willing to help him for unkown reasons.
The red pikmin are strong in combat, and immune to fire! Somehow. Yellows can be thrown higher, and are the only ones who know how to use bombs (but don't trust them to be smart with them). Blues have gills and thus can't drown. That's it. Anyways here's a big lake between you and like five ship parts.
Olimar himself can't do much special, but he is a good leader. In canon. Your gameplay results may vary. He's also a loving husband, caring father, hobbiest biologist... this world is deadly, yet he is enamored with it, finds peace with it. He's able to appreciate the beauty of it. He cares so deeply for the pikmin, yet understands so little about them... just that he can't handle their deaths. He uses big words I can't always understand and need a dictionary to help sometimes. He's a facinating character and the perfect fit for this scenario. Just don't push him - you can break him.
At this point, I no longer care what happens. Surely, not even a last-minute push can guarantee my success. Now that I think about it, my wife always said that I gave up too easily... What does she know, anyway?! When did she become a licensed psychiatrist? Now I am upset... I guess I will just go to sleep early tonight. — Captain Olimar, Miscellaneous Voyage Log #25
I am so very tired... — Captain Olimar, Miscellaneous Voyage Log #28
Oh, uh, oxygen and time are not your only problems. There's also creatures who would like to munch on you and your pikmin pretty please. At least you can kill them and turn them into living pikmin! :3 isn't nature beautiful?
There's four main areas, plus a fifth one just to get to the final boss. Which is actually optional! Turns out that five of those thirty parts are not needed for the ship to fly. Unfortunanly, these are not Mario 64 rules, so you won't be able to skip any five you want. No, the five are pre-chosen. But they are three of the most annoying parts to get, the Nova Blaster (not sure why as it's just kind of there), and the final one. So that's neat!
You get about fifteen minuites each day to do everything you want to do, then you have to gather all your pikmin before the nocturnal predators eat them. It sounds stressful, and newbies to the series are better off starting with Pikmin 3 or 4, but I promise it's not as bad as it sounds. All you need is one part a day, and fifteen minuites is more than enough time for that. Heck, in some areas, it's more than enough time for multiple parts even in a blind run due to them being so close together.
Succced at your task, and Olimar gets to go home to his wife and children. Fail, and... uh... get leafed, idiot [youtube link].
Yes, that's a dead body. Until it isn't.
...isn't nature beautiful?
Yes, this is a short rant, but it is perfect for the short game that is Pikmin the First. Also all of these were supposed to be short. Until they wern't. Aren't special intrests beautiful?
What I (personally) like: The ATMOSPHERE, it's such a grim yet hopeful game in a way future games have yet to recapture in full. Pikmin 1's music style was the best, as it gave us Forest Navel and the Title Theme. Also, the short length is perfect for repeat playthroughs to perfect your strategies.
What I (personally) dislike: Super glitchy, often in ways that can be harmful/annoying to the player. And while it's very good and stands on its own, coming back to it after playing the other games shows how much the series has realized itself since 2001.
Pikmin 2
Olimar has just escaped that distant, unknown planet. He had spent days fighting for his life, struggling to repair his ship. But he has done it. The ship is repaired. A souviner was even found on the planet for his son! He can go home to Hocotate. He can reunite with his family. He can rest, he can give his son the treasure, he can-
What do you mean the company he works for is in debt.
What do you mean that the ship you just fixed is being sold and you have to use a diffrent, older ship. What do you mean they want to send him back to the death planet right now because they saw was was supposed to be a gift for his CHILD and realized the planet may have more treasure. That they want to sell to get out of debt.
What do you MEAN the debt was caused because the new kid's shipment of fancy golden carrots was eaten by a "ravounus space bunny"?!
So uh. That's Pikmin 2. Go back to the planet. Collect treasure for your company. Fuck you.
... Huh, these areas are the same as before. But slightly different. Time also freezes in caves? And they constantly shift? Oh, these silly video games. Just don't think too hard about the fact that all of these "treasures" are random objects that you have around your own home.
There's the purple pikmin that are strong, like. "Crush the bones of my enemies, stun the big guys, and carry heavy objects" strong. And the toxic white pikmin that are immune to poison themselves... And can see things buried underground. Sure. Oh, and the special bulbmin you only get for spesific caves. They're immune to fire, water, electricity, and poision! Which is why they can't leave the cave you find them in. You must also commit terrible crimes to get them. And, uh, they may be infected with parasitic pikmin. Don't worry about that.
Oh, electricity is now a thing. Yellow Pikmin are immune to it. Most others are decidedly not.
Alongside you is the new kid this time - Louie. He's quiet, likes food (that's not suspicious at all). Gameplay wise, he allows for better multitasking - can have him and his team of pikmin build a bridge in one area while Olimar and his team escort some treasure or something. Whatever floats your boat. Louie is actually a really fascinating character but for reasons that don't exist yet so that's all I have to say about him. Other than the fact that he may or may not try to kill you with a giant spider. That has a flame thrower. And other weapons.
Some treasures are above ground, but most are underground in caves. Time freezes in caves. Caves are also kinda randomly generated (each sublevel follows a few rules, so they'll have the same enemies and items and general ~vibe~).
On that note, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the best/worst cave in the game. It's a beautiful day in the Perplexing Pool. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. You take a team of blue pikmin out into the water to hunt for treasure, and in the processes you find a very peculiar cave: one submerged completely under water. You investigate it to see what stats the game will tell you. The name? Submerged Castle. Hazards encountered? Yes. Water, fire, electricity, poision - all of it in a cave only your blues can get to. You pause. How odd.
Fun fact: if you try to enter the cave with other kinds of pikmin anyways, the game will stop you. If you have only non-blues, the game will act as if you have no pikmin in your squad. If you have a mix, only blues will be brought down. Source [Youtube Video].
Going down, you are immediately greeted with eerie, unsettling music unlike anything else the game has to offer. It doesn't take long to find that this first sublevel is filled with fire gysers and fire based enemies – including one that's particularly tough to fight even with red pikmin. Clearly, there must be a way to put out the fire on its back, right? Not long after, you'll probably find a water gyser, a way to exit the cave without penalty. Why? It's the first sublevel, and they're already giving you an out?
The first time I went into this cave, I took that out. I didn't even get to see what the cave really had to offer.
Stick around on any sublevel long enough, and it will come out. The Waterwraith.
It is unkillable, at least for now. It will mercilessly crush your pikmin under its rollers and actively hunts you down once it sees you. Or, it always felt like it anyways. Your ship worries over how it can't properly sense it, wondering if it's anchored in another dimension, before glitching out and screaming "DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!" Worst of all, though, was how human it looked. It was freaky. And it will keep chasing you down this cave, sublevel after torturous sublevel. The second sublevel has narrow halls it can corner you in and treasure-stealing spiders to waste your time. But also bulbmin, here to help replenish your numbers and counteract the hazzards ahead. The third, electricity, which instantly kills your pikmin in this game. And, yet again, more bulbmin. The fourth, bombs. Just so many bombs falling from the sky, and creatures that drop bombs, and creatures that are bombs.
And then the fifth. The game labels it the final one as you land. There are purple flowers – means of turning blue pikmin into purple pikmin. In the distance, a wide open arena. Are... You supposed to fight that thing? ... Do the purple pikmin somehow do something?
You make the purples. You enter the arena. Sure enough, the Waterwraith appears. You give it a shot, you throw purples at it. It goes solid and cowers from your attacks. Finally, you can fight back! You eventually break its rollers, leaving it completely vulnerable to your pikmin. Vengeance for those that it killed! But god, does it look even more human without its rollers, as it runs away and covers its head. Why does it look and act like this? And does the sound track to you terrorizing this thing have to be so damn goofy?
And that is the experince of burning (... drowning?) in actual hell on PNF-404.
As for the characters... Louie, well, he tried to eat the thing. Of course. This did NOT go well for him. But Olimar isn't even sure if it was real. He wonders if it was a natural phenomenon viewed as a creature only by fear and exhaustion. He also theorizes that it may be "the ectoplasmic incarnation of a kind of psychic phenomenon" which... I'll make the executive decision that he means ghost. Translating Olimar speak is very hard.
Yeah not even the final boss is getting this treatment. It's not nearly as important as this random ass freak in the corner of some lake. Final boss is cool though. Tough fight. Good song – love how it distorts as you slowly break the thing apart. But its moments like these, like the Submerged Castle, that make pikmin for me. Its weird, and dark, but still silly and bright. It also brings up so many questions about this world. Questions that I love to over think.
Once you repay the debt you have to go back to the planet AGAIN because Louie got left behind. Because the universe really said fuck you in particular. At least this time your boss comes with you, so you're able to let him be knawed on by the wild animals and see how HE likes it.
(BTW the boss is called the President of Hocotate Freight aka the President aka Sacho but that doesn't fit cleanly anywhere here-)
This game also introduces the Piklopedia and the Treasure Hoard, which are fan favorites. The Piklopedia is simple: it lets you look at enemies (and plants), see how many you have killed, how many of your pikmin have been killed by them, how many pikmin they make when brought to the onion, all that good statistic stuff. But then Olimar also has scientific notes on each and every one of them. He gives them a scientific name, a family, and describes their behaviors and/or biology in detail. It's so cool, and I regularly need a dictionary to understand what he's talking about. I'm cheating a little by pulling from Pikmin 3 notes (sorry), but what does "iridophores" mean??? Didn't know until I looked it up. And then it led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole that ended on a page about a bee that can photosynthesize. Damn you videogame, tricking me into learning.
Louie also has notes you get once you save him. He teaches you how to cook things. That, or warns you to not eat them due to them being poisionous or something. Not gonna lie, though, some of these recipies sound genuinely delicious and I want to try them. I also want to eat a cannon beatle larva - they look fruit flavored... Like a Fruit Gusher.
The Treasure Hoard is much more simple. There's some stats on the treasures that are fairly meaningless after collecting it, so all that's really here are Olimar's notes. Here they're more personal reflections or tangentially related stories, and are such a fun way to learn about his character. Complete a "series" of treasures (treasures that all follow some theme), and the spaceship will make a sales pitch for the treasures in that series. Oh, the ship has a person-like AI in it by the way. Anyways, these pitches range from "that's bullshit" to "that's bullshit but also hilarious", usually leaning towards the later.
There were a lot of treasure notes and creature notes I wanted to share, such as more examples of Olimar's verbose vocabulary alongside the ever popular "tastes like chicken", or perhaps one of the many entries where Olimar heavily criticizes his company and superiors left on treasures wirh names like "spirit flogger" and "merciless extractor". Or even how Olimar discusses his parents in two treasure entries named "priceless statue" and "worthless statue". But in the end I've decided to just share Olimar's notes and the Ship's sales pitch for a treasure called Innocence Lost because it's the funniest joke in the game IMO. And I see no better way to end this section off.
"This stirring object reminds me of a dream I once had. When I was a child, the twinkling stars held so much promise and mystery." — Olimar's Notes, Innocence Lost
"Think back and remember the starry skies of your youth. Innocence... Every being once possessed it, but lost it over time. This star is the shape of that precious memory. All major credit cards accepted." — Sales Pitch, Innocence Lost (Nintendo Switch version).
What I (personally) like: They perfected the way you progress though areas and unlock areas in this game. Starts linear to get you going, but once you have all of the Pikmin types you can do almost whatever in any order you want. Also, it introduced the Piklopedia + Treasure Hoard.
What I (personally) dislike: Difficulty is poorly balanced. It has a harsh spike with that idea of "difficulty" being "litterally spawn bombs and enemies on top of the player" rather than anything intresting. However, you are able to become very overpowered with Purple Pikmin and sprays. Feels very off.
The e-Reader Games
Yeah Pikmin 2 had e-Reader cards. If you don't know what those are, here's a Wikipedia page that goes into more detail, but basically they were like Amibo but with worse tech and better content. Because of course.
Anyways, the Pikmin 2 e-Reader cards were Japan exclusive. Because of course they were. While there were a ton to collect, they all came in one of three colors: red, yellow, blue. Scan a card of one color, and you could play one of three mini-games on your Gameboy Advance.
From what I understand, Japanese copies of Pikmin 2 always came with three cards, one of each color (spesifically one of Olimar, one of Louie, and one of the Boss), so you were gurenteed to be able to play the games? At least mine did, so I may be wrong. Anyways, I own some cards, but have no way to play the games on them. So I can't say much.
What I can say is that they're all just little puzzle games. One has you plucking pikmin in a certain order and direction as to not get any hurt. One has you moving pikmin across a level acound hazards. And the last has you connecting up pikmin in a line, and it sounds similar to the previous. Pretty simple stuff.
As always, the Pikmin Wiki article on this topic has far more info.
Pikmin 3
Pikmin the first was released in 2001. Pikmin the second was released in 2004.
Pikmin 3? Released 2013.
Yeah. At least we had the Wii ports of the first two games to hold us over between 2's release and 3's release.
ANYWAYS, Pikmin 3 shifts focus slightly from our previous characters. Now, we are dealing with a planetary crisis that has struck the distant world of Koppai. They are rapidly running out of food, in part due to a sudden population boom (as in, "it's normal for people to have fifteen kids who all live to adulthood" boom), in part because they're only able to eat fruits, in part because they have "hearty appetites", but mostly because their government sucks at planning. Yeah, one of the characters has a chance to complain about the government in a ship log, it's great.
So, obviously, the only logical solution to this problem is to send unmanned scout vessels out into space to scan unoccupied worlds for vast quantities of fruit they can substantially (and temporarily) harvest so that they may return the seeds to Koppai and give their supply a kickstart. Obviously. I'd make a musk rat joke here but it's too easy.
Eventually, they find one previously uncharted planet that's 279,000 light years away and perfect for their needs. They name it... PNF-404. Get it. Uncharted planet, planet not found – whatever. They put three people into a rocketship and send them off to PNF-404, a trip that probably doesn't take too long given this is a sci-fi story. These three are the engineer Alph, the botanist Brittany, and Captain Charlie.
And once they get too close to the planet, something goes wrong and they crash and seperate. A troubling pattern we have here.
Oh the planet also looks like Pangea Ultima now. Don't worry about that.
Alph wakes up in a pool of water, finds red pikmin (who are VERY quick to help him), finds a datafile on the pikmin written by an unknown person, and finds the ship. Then he finds out the ship is missing its cosmic drive key that lets it do sci-fi warp stuff AND they're down to three days' worth of food. Um. Correction. Two days' worth. He ate an entire portion himself. Cool.
Random Koppaite fact here, the game implies that they are incapable of feeling full. It states that the only thing that stops them from eating is the absence of food (or strong self-control), so this is the only logical conclusion. Nintendo, what the FUCK.
So your goal is simple: reunite the crew, find the cosmic drive key, and collect fruit! Not just for Koppai, but also you. Because ending a day with no food left is an instant game over. A pretty dark game over, from implications alone, but the first game still freaks me out more because there you SEE the pikmin dragging a corpse around.
Oh, uh, new pikmin! We still got red, yellow, and blues, but alongside them are two new ones: rock pikmin and winged pikmin! Rocks are... Rocks. With googly eyes and plant stems. Throw them at things and it hurts more than usual. They can also break crystal. Winged can fly. This allows you to break the game completely. So many puzzels can just be ignored by them, it's incredible. The purples and whites were relegated to the side modes only, and both heavily stripped down to just their "carry treasure" tasks. Bulbmin? Uh. MIA.
The Piklopedia returns, with everyone making comments on creatures as usual. We also have Fruit Files where Brittany alone writes up reports on the fruit you find. The datafiles you find can be fun too, sometimes.
... What? The cosmic drive key?
Oh yeah. When you save Charlie, he finds a datafile written by a certain Captain Olimar! You've actually found many datafiles from him at this point, the first of which implies he's dead for some reason, but you know... Pacing. Or lack there of. In it, Olimar says he has found something called a Cosmic Drive key! Yay! So now you gotta find our beloved captain to get the key back so these three fools can go home.
An actual funfact, as of writing this I started playing Pikmin 3 in Japanese to practice reading. The implication that Olimar is dead in that first data file of his you find is not in the original Japanese script.
Eventually the trio save "Olimar" from a bee creature in a tree. To thank you, "Olimar" flees from your ship, stealing all your food, and – most evil of all – taking Captain Charlie's precious rubber ducky! He also blows up an otherwise indestructible wall via seer will alone, I guess, and I guess the force sends him flying all the way to the location of the next boss.
Save him AGAIN, this time from a living chunk of land with a forbidden fruit for a head, and you find out that this isn't Olimar. This is his underling, Louie. The trio just had a slight mix-up. At least time, he'll tell you where the REAL Olimar is.
So begins the final area: the Formidable Oak. You climb up a small path, and finally find Olimar – the real Olimar – being tended to by a golden humanoid... Thing. Approaching them causes it to absorb Olimar and form a ball around him. Destroy it and have the pikmin carry him. The path you came down was a one-way drop, so the pikmin will follow you through the oak as you clear it out. All the while, this creature, now in blob form, will slowly chase you down as eerie music unlike anything else in the game plays. It actively hunts you – or rather, Olimar – down, easily killing any pikmin in its path. The music swells as it gets closer to him, like a warning. All the while, there's other creatures you must deal with while under a strict time limit.
... Huh. Awfully familiar.
Its motives are unknown. It's kind to Olimar, caring for him and protecting him, but it will violently lash out at the trio and any pikmin. And once you think you've escaped, it manages to take him once again. Now the real boss fight has began, and (if you are playing the original Wii U release) this thing's name revealed to you: Plasma Wraith.
Oh god now there's two of them. And one is a yandere.
Real talk, this is the best boss fight in the entire series period. From the chase to the fight proper, it utilizes everything the game has taught you about the pikmin and time management. It's an incredible capstone to the game, and god that song is so good. Love how theres orcestrial bits to represent the trio and the pikmin, and then theremin bits to represent the wraith, and the orcastra slowly drowns our the theremin during the song! And the game's main theme is part of it – SO tasty. I know the third game is criticized for being too easy – which, at least for returning players, it absolutely is. But it's still wonderful.
If you play the switch release, the name reveal may take longer. But, in turn, you get crumbs more lore that gave me more questions than answers. Oh well. You'll also get to play some pre and post story missions featuring Olimar and Louie. They don't do much, beyond tying up loose ends so minor I never mentioned their details to begin with and also proving that Olimar's boss is a major peice of shit. Still very good, and once again have some amazing music. Oh, and Olimar and Louie each crash land onto the planet on seperate occasions so. Yay.
... And then the game ends with an ominous warning: that the crash landing that seperated the trio may not have been an accident after all...
Oh, would you look at that, in 2014 Miyamoto hinted that work on Pikmin 4 had already started. And... Just a year later, Eurogamer said Pikmin 4 is "very close to completion". Already? Well, that has the fandom excited! I wonder how long it will take for the game to release?
What I (personally) like: Had the perfect concept for a time limit even if it didn't fully utilize it. Pikmin 1 had strictly 30 days; Pikmin 2 gave you all the time in the world (or however many days the game could handle before breaking). In Pikmin 3, your current day limit was tied to how many items you had collected thus far – it was tied to your food supply. Keeping your food stocked was very easy, but the building blocks are there for the perfect day limit system.
What I (personally) dislike: Linear the entire way through. Hardly gives you a choice of where to go until the end, when you go back through areas to collect the last of the fruit. It's also very easy for veteran players like myself but I'm sure newcomers would find it well-balanced.
Pikmin 4
2023.
It took ten years for Pikmin 4 to be released.
Ever looked at the Pikmin fandom from the outside and thought, "Why are you so weird? Like? Paying $40 to force Times Square to look at Olimar twerk? [Youtube Video]" (This is not only real, but only the tip of the Times Square Takeover iceberg.) Well, now you know why. We suffered a nine year wait immediately followed by a ten year wait and we went a little rabid. Just a little.
... For the record, I did not take part in the takeover. That was an effort led by r/pikmin, because of course it was Reddit, and I only found out about it afterwards.
But I have, as of writing this, written 341,756 words of Pikmin fanfic to Ao3. And that's just what I've actually posted. So I'm my own brand of weird fan /affectionate.
Alright, enough fandom lore, onto the game lore.
While traveling through space, Captain Olimar has crashed on an unknown planet, his ship in thirty pieces. He has thirty days to find these peices before his suit is unable to filter out the oxygen present here that is so deadly to his people. His only hope rests in the hands of – wait this is the same plot as before! What gives? Oh, wait, correction: his hope rests not only in the hands of the pikmin, but in the paws of a doggy named Moss. Very different story, now.
A cutscene explains how he has gathered most of the parts of his ship now, and just needs to go to one final area to find the last few parts. This area serves as our tutorial and it's... A house. Just like, a normal house, fairly clean too. Someone even left the stove on. Irresponsible. Some minor shenanigans occur here, but in the end he manages to recover his interstellar radio. And with that, he sends out an SOS signal in the hopes someone gets it.
One cutscene later (which, curiously, is stated to take place a month later... So... Thirty days?), we're told that his signal was picked up by the Rescue Corps. Determined to save this man, even from an uncharted planet, they make haste to this strange world to bring him back home. And. Uh. Hm. How do I tell you. They also crashland.
Good news though, they were smart enough to leave the rookie back home. Who is this rookie? You! You're not playing as a preexisting character in the world this time, you're making your own self-insert to run around this planet with. So you better go save your superior officers with your much much tinier ship.
You, thankfully, avoid crash landing. Later lore would reveal that this is because your ship is super tiny. Not that it matters; it's so tiny that the engines are too weak for it to escape a planet's gravitational feild unassisted. So while you don't crash, you're effectively stranded the moment you land.
The rest of the crew is pretty cool too. First you meet Oatchi, who I'll talk about later (for Reasonstm). Then Collin, the communications officer. Collin is the only normal person on this ship, and I'm pretty sure he is seconds away from snapping on account of the others' shenanigans.
Next is Captain Shepherd. She likes dogs, a lot. She also has the weight of the world on her shoulders and maybe possibly was supposed to be the main character (based on the presense of her diary entries) before the idea of a custom character was made. Not gonna lie, kinda wish we were playing as her.
Russ is a weird science man. He once managed to freeze and burn himself at the same time, apparently, and makes many gizmos and gadgets for the crew. He's also a rich mama's boy. 10/10 character.
Dingo... Dingo oh Dingo. The ranger of the crew who's dense and full of himself, but also has a lot of heart. Even if he'd never admit it, on account of him totally being a cool badass. He adores Shepherd, and is terrified of dogs. He may have also abandoned a crewmate once due to said fear of dogs. I'm sure this event had no serious consequences.
Doctor Yonny is the, uh, Doctor. He can be unnerving but he also cares for his crew. He's a perfectly nice and wonderful person, if you ignore his unethical experiments. He also likes to call you "new blood" and I think that's a cute detail lol.
Oh and Bernard. He is the pilot with so much ENTHUSIASM and OPTIMISM and his best friend does NOT consider them rivals! Not at all!!! He also talks LOUD for some reason and I like it. I like him. He's my favorite. He's also the one Dingo accidentally ditched, leading to him becoming a leafling which... Put a pin in that, we'll come back to what the hell a "leafling" is.
I debated if I really needed to go over all of the crew. Probably not. But I did so anyways. They don't do a whole lot, unfortunately, but I do still find their characters to be a lot of fun and I enjoy talking to them. Which! There's a rescue base! Every morning you have an unlimited amount of time to run around a base camp where you can talk to various NPCs. I have spent more time than I care to admit just talking to people. I am very invested in this world.
Speaking of worlds, what planet is your crew from this time? Trick question: you're from many planets! "You" are from a planet called Karut. Shepherd, Collin, and Russ are all from Giya. Dingo and Yonny are from Ohri. Bernard is from Nijo. We know very little about all of these planets but apparently Giya has dog taxies so hell yeah. Ohri has a village known for some criptid that I am 90% sure is just Dr. Yonny. People from Nijo spend years traveling the universe for their "soul work", trying out many jobs in the process. And Karut is known for sick ass dandori. Which is the word the devs now use to describe pikmin's "time manegment" gameplay. Get used to hearing it.
As for pikmin, there are two (kind of three) new ones. Ice pikmin freeze water and enemies and are immune to the cold. Nice. I'm not apologizing for that.
Glow pikmin help us with the one thing we were always told not to do in the other games: explore at night. Yep. For plot reasons, we gotta go do night missions. And the only nocturnal pikmin are these ghost looking ones. Probably safer for them, because you can't kill what is already dead. Assuming they were alive to begin with. This is canon, by the way – glow pikmin don't die. They don't have onions, but termitemound-esq structures called "luminkulls" that do basically the same thing. When a glow pikmin """dies""", it just turns into photons and returns to the luminkull. All of that said, it's harder to kill them than the average pikmin: neither fire nor ice will harm them, nor water or electricity, or even posion. Which is why they're night only! And cave only.
The third "pikmin" is Oatchi! He's your puppy. He can attack enemies, break down obstacles, and help carry objects. After a certain point in the game, he can even be directly played as, allowing for some very fun and good dandori. With Russ's gizmos, you can even make him immune to all of the elements, and Shepherd can train him to have stronger attacks and to carry heavier objects!
... Yeah Oatchi can be pretty busted. He makes the game a little too easy. Over all, Pikmin 4 is an incrediblely easy game. But a lot of what makes it easy is also optional. Sure, you always have that knowledge that your dandori will be objectively worse without the upgrade, but if it makes the game more fun then I think you can learn to ignore that thought. Besides, isn't the challenge (and thus enjoyment) to make your dandori good despite not having those upgrades? :3
As for the returning pikmin types? They pulled a SSBU and brought them all back to... Varying success. Red, yellow, and blue are all still as useful as ever. Purples are also very helpful, as they can once again crush the bones of thine enemies. White and rock pikmin are... Situationally useful. Rocks help when you're not confident you can avoid having pikmin be squished, but purples are better for damage. Whites are useful for transporting piles of objects (and dealing with poison, I guess). Wings, oh wings... They were nerfed badly. There's so many shortcuts that they should obviously take that they just don't, so I hardly use them. For the rare cases where they do have senseical shortcuts though, I do like having them.
So, what are the pikmin helping you do, other than find your crew and Olimar? Well, it turns out your ship also needs fuel so you need to collect treasures, which are coated in a mysterious substance known as "sparklium" that can be used as fuel. Okay, good enough excuse for random objects to be collectables again.
To find these, you'll mostly be returning to caves. Yep, it's Pikmin 2 time. Caves are hand crafted now, though, so that's nice. Time also moves slower in caves, which is confirmed to be a canon fact about the planet and not just a gameplay thing. So. Time broken. Cool. Space broken, too; some of these cave entrances are placed in physically impossible locations.
I'll also rip the bandaid off and say the Waterwraith is back. No theatrics this time, it's much tamer than before, but they brought the demon back. And then... They bring it back again later, pitting you against two at once. Language used on the site confirms that the Waterwraith is not an entity. It is a species. There are MANY of these wraiths rolling around out there.
... Are there multiple Plasm Wraiths? God I hope not.
Anyways, there's more to be found in these caves than mere treasure. See, the Rescue Corps were not the only ones to receive Olimar's signal. A bunch of people got it. And somehow they missed the "I'm stranded and I miss my family please send help" part and only heard the "uncharted planet" part and all decided to go there too! And they ALL crashed!!! So now it's your job to deal with their stupidity and save them all, too. By the end, you'll have rescued one Olimar, six crew mates, and 43 other people who decided that coming here was a GREAT idea.
... Okay, what's going on here. Why do people keep crashing on this planet??? PNF-404, what is your problem?
Now, not everyone came alone. In fact, there's two large groups within these 43, plus a few random pairs and such. I did end up counting who all was grouped together and seeing how many spaceships crashed onto the planet as a result. Counting Olimar's ship and the Rescue Corps' ship, a total of 20 ships end up crash landing onto this planet. That's still a lot. This is no longer weird happenstance or coincidence – something is wrong with this planet.
At least you can talk to all of these fools before the start of every day. And at least they're all a genuine delight to talk to. I adore hearing their little stories and plights. Yes, I do want to hear my fortune this morning Ms. Bernise. Yes, I will go explore some caves for you Dash. Yes, Dalmo, I do think these creatures that keep trying to kill me are adorable in their own bizarre way. Sure, I'll listen to Santi rant about Bernard for the billionth time. And yes, I do want to hear about how Grace is wanted by the cops – wait what? Okay, whatever.
But being able to talk to Olimar in particular gave me a strange feeling I can't quite describe. It was very cool! But again, you were not playing as a predefined person in this universe. You were playing as you. And you were talking to the main character of the series. In my case, a character I had known since I was a small child. I don't remember the first time I played a pikmin game. So it was so surreal and cool to just talk to him, and – no, Olimar you're not annoying me stop apologizing D:
"Wow," I can hear you say, "20 crashed ships and everyone is fine? Videogame logic, am I right?"
Weeeeeeell about that.
Remember how this is the same plot as Pikmin 1. Remember the bad ending of that game. What the pikmin would do. Yeah some people had bad endings.
Early on, you find out that uh. Olimar had a bad ending. I don't know what Zelda Timeline shenaniganry is going on here, but now we're on the bad ending path. And the pikmin hybrids have a new shag-carpet look and an official name: Leaflings. Plant zombies who are utterly obsessed with the concept of dandori.
Fun fact: when Leafling Olimar was first revealed in a direct, the fandom collectively screamed "THEY KILLED HIM?!"
If you think I'm being dramatic, leafling Olimar litterally says at one point that "with the leaves, we can return them (referring to castaways) to life". There's also some dialogue that states being leafed undoes any ailments, even chronic pain, and dialogue that implies castaways were, best case scenario, in dire condition prior to being leafed.
Also, this is the Pikmin 1 plot. In that game, he was 1000% confirmed dead.
Gotta love these games.
This leafling Olimar will sometimes find castaways and turn them into more leaflings. He insists it's the only way to survive the planet. But if you really want them, you must beat him... In a Dandori Battle. AKA, the devs making 2-player battle part of the story mode.
What do you do with these leaflings? Cure them, of course! They can't stay leafy forever. This is where night missions come in. You brave the dangers of the night, protect the glow pikmins' luminkull, and it will give you glow sap in return. Dr. Yonny can then make this sap into some cure. And with that, you can undo the leafification as if it never happened.
Time, space, AND death are meaningless on this planet!
Hm, this section is getting long, I should wrap it up. Uh, at some point Oatchi gets leafy too. So you have to hunt down a castaway who is a vet to cure him, and a non-leafy dog to provide the DNA sample also needed for the cure. Yeah the game didn't tell us about the other ingredient of the cure until this point in the story.
And who has the non-leafy doggy?
Why, Louie of course! Because it's always Louie.
Chase him down the longest cave in the game, fight the final boss, drag his butt back to base, get the DNA from the doggy, cure Oatchi, go home, yadda yadda. I wanna end this section on questions about the timeline placement of this game.
Because like, what.
It makes no mention of Pikmin 1, and Pikmin 2 is referenced as only a bad dream. There are some Koppaites in the game but they talk about the food crisis as if it's yet to reach it's tipping point. Absolutely on a straight line to disaster but just not there yet. Nintendo copped out and said "oh, it can be whatever you want it to be!" but that's dumb and confusing.
I... Think it's an alt timeline? Or a soft reboot? Or maybe it's another example of time being absolutely broken on PNF-404, who knows. But I did want to end on that note because this planet is goddamn weird.
What I (personally) like: The characters, the story, THE LORE. The optional upgrades are really cool too, opens the doors for fun challenges like "20 pikmin only" runs or "base Oatchi" runs or "fuck off Russ" runs, or combinations there of. It's also very open and nonlinear in general, save for the first level. Night mode is also a lot of fun, and I want a spinoff game that expands on that idea. Moreover, so much about this game makes it feel like it was made for the fans. Return of caves and treasures, return of many beloved (and beloathed but in a loving way) enemies, return of all the pikmin, the Sage Trials to challenge veteran players, leaflings finally making a comeback (and getting a name!), Olimar's Shipwreck Tale being Pikmin 1 remade with tons of remixed music... Call it nostalgia baiting if you want, but it was done very purposefully and skillfully. Not random references thrown in for the sake of it.
What I (personally) dislike: Generally very easy for veteran players like me, especially if you get all of the upgrades and make liberal use of items. New players may find it more balanced, though. Auto-lock-on is also genuinely the worst thing Nintendo has ever intentionally coded for these games oh my GOD. It never locks onto what you want. Frequently gets my pikmin killed. Is very annoying to wrangle constantly. Pikmin 3 DX had a good system, how did you mess this up. Tutorials are all very long and heavy handed too, and there's no way to disable them for repeat playthroughs.
Hey! Pikmin
Let's go back in time to, oh, 2017. Eurogamer's claim that Pikmin 4 is very close to completion is still fresh in fans' minds. And a new Pikmin game is announced! It's... a puzzle platformer spinoff for the 3DS. To say fans in general were disappointed by it would be a gross understatement. I, however, think it's cute. Not great, but fine. So what happens in this one?
Olimar crash-lands (again) on a planet that is not PNF-404, but is identical to PNF-404 in every way. Okay. His spaceship, the shiny new S.S. Dolphin II is fine, but lost its fuel supply of sparklium in the crash. It also lost the sparklium converter that lets it use the fuel. So now Olimar is heading out with the pikmin once again to collect sparklium, which come from treasures because of course they do.
I... don't have much to say about the gameplay? What made fans dislike this entry was the fact it was a spinoff, essentially; it didn't have the dandori of the previous games. Rather it was a straightforward "A to B (and sometimes a secret C)" platformer with puzzles and maybe fights along your path. It came out after Pikmin 3, so it just uses the red, yellow, blue, rock, and winged pikmin from that game. It is truly very simple in this area. The only standout gameplay moment was the level "Over Wintry Mountains" (Sector 7, Area C) where you spend the entire level snowboarding on a bottlecap and have to use winged pikmin to help jump gaps and grab treasures. Genuinely so much fun. I also remember Burning Bog (Sector 8, Area X) for being the reason I had to get a New!3DS, as the level lagged so badly on my "old" model 2DS that I couldn't get the bombrock across the level to get the last treasure. Oh, the bosses can be neat sometimes too I guess – the Emperor Bulblax fight is my favorite.
What makes this game special is the character. Throughout the levels, you'll occasionally be interrupted by brief cutscenes of the pikmin doing something cute. Maybe one will pick up a leaf and use it as a mask to scare the others. Maybe they'll try and fail to work together to get to a treasure. In one, Olimar trips and falls into a him-sized hole and instead of helping him up, the pikmin just walk across him like a bridge (Olimar does not appreciate this). Sometimes they're hiding from creatures, or fighting creatures, or playing with each other, or pushing Olimar forward to make him deal with their problems. These cutscenes give the pikmin SO much character that is SO desperately needed in clarifying how their relationship with Olimar works.
And oh, you BET the piklopedia and the treasure hoard come back, full of Olimar's notes! Which I think is a good place to end this off on.
“My daughter caught a snake once and was so thrilled, but my wife and son hated the thing. I promised I'd let it go, but secretly I helped keep it in the garage. That was the first time my daughter and I really came together.” — Hey!Pikmin logs, Bond Impressor
“No one is truly self-sufficient. We all put in our work and get pay in return. I do my job, and in return, I get money and keep my family fed. That's how it works for everyone, even the president. Hm? The Pikmin are looking at me like they want something...” — Hey!Pikmin logs, Quid Pro Quo-Yo (a yo-yo treasure)
“This beach chair was designed to help people stay in constant communication with their bosses. But what kind of vacation is that? I'm not sure this planet ever had intelligent life.” — Hey!Pikmin logs, Work-Life Imbalancer (a cellphone treasure)
“Not only does its thick, rubbery layer of fat insulate it from the ice and snow, it wards off any attack. The only way to get at it is to attack its inner core. It has that in common with certain people I know. It's just impossible to get through to them past their thick, insulating layer of self-regard.” — Hey!Pikmin logs, Blubbug (enemy)
What I (personally) like: The character, as stated before. And while not mentioned, the music in this game is so good. If you haven't listened to the Ravaged Rustworks level theme yet (the level theme, not the map, those are two different songs) then do yourself a favor and give it a listen.
What I (personally) dislike: As a lore nerd, I am VERY bothered by the fact that this planet is not PNF-404. Why. Why isn't it. More importantly, why does this game run so badly on any 3DS/2DS that isn't a "new!" model? I mentioned the worst case of lag, but it lags basically whenever there is water in a level on older models.
Pikmin Bloom
I guess I shall talk about this, because I am talking about everything. It is an app, for your phone. It is a very fancy pedometer. You walk, it makes your pikmin happy, and it encourages you to walk more. It also has a ton of microtransactions that were not there at launch because enshitification.
I still play it because the premise of "excersise to make your pikmin happy" does genuinely work for me, but it does make me sad to see how bloated the app has gotten since it first launched :( but it was also really cool to see Pikmin go from being a barely recognized series to having its own app. So that's something.
What I (personally) like: Tricks me into walking. Made me feel a spiritual connection with Olimar once (got lower backpain trying to grind out 10,000 steps in one day for the first anniversary event. Now I understand why his spaceship has a massage machine...).
What I (personally) dislike: Microtransactions :( not sure if I can trust Niantic with my data anymore either honestly.
Pikmin: 100%, which to me is just getting 30/30 ship parts.
Pikmin 2: 100% story completion, still working on getting all pink flowers in mission mode.
Pikmin 2 e-Reader Games: have not yet played (and still need like, three things to be able to play them... that or emulation, assuming they're even avalible).
