Wild ARMs - A Gaming Diary

The following chronicles my various thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the PS1 game Wild ARMs.  I would personally enjoy if you read the whole thing, but it is full of spoilers for the game because I found myself unable to talk about the game without talking about the story.  As such, to avoid spoilers for people who may be interested in the game, I will be placing a brief review at the beginning of the post.

Review

Wild ARMs is a fairly standard JRPG in terms of gameplay all told.  That's not to say there's NOTHING unique about it, it has some pretty interesting action-adventure elements to it, it borrows quite a bit from games like Link to the Past.  But for the most part it is a very basic turn-based RPG, it doesn't do anything in terms of its gameplay loop that is too out there.  This is, I feel, to the game's advantage, however.  Wild ARMs' biggest strength in gameplay is that it is perfect JRPG comfort food.  It feels very familiar almost immediately and very nostalgic as a result.  All this is enhanced, however, by its amazing presentation.  Wild ARMs is unique in that instead of a traditional fantasy setting or sort of a mixed fantasy and sci-fi setting, as is common in JRPGs of its era, it instead goes for this sort of steampunk spaghetti Western feel.  From its character designs to its world indicative of the 19th century American West to its amazing soundtrack, it really sells this theme from the get go.  Its presentation is immaculate.  Unfortunately I kind of feel like the game inevitably loses its way, the spaghetti Western vibes steadily losing ground to make this game more of a standard JRPG.  And like I said, it's not bad at being a JRPG, it's very cozy, very comforting, but it can't help but feel a bit disappointing that the Western promised kind of takes a backseat as the game goes on.  That being said though, I did really enjoy Wild ARMs, it has more than earned its reputation as one of if not the best non-Final Fantasy JRPGs of its era, super happy I played it.  7.8/10

Diary

 4/11/25

Started Wild ARMs last night, I'm already pretty impressed by it.  Like so far, I'm only two hours in mind so "so far isn't" very far at all, it's pretty standard JRPG fair.  You got your hero boy who just wants to help people but is shunned by the people he's wanting to help for reasons outside of his control, your treasure hunter who keeps cool under pressure and always has a quip ready, and your princess with magic powers chosen by some ancient civilization to be their hero uniting the trio.  And the battle system is very no frills, it lets you change equipment on the fly in battle which is neat and also has a super meter which I enjoy, but it's otherwise a pretty standard turn based battle system . But where Wild ARMs really shines is in its presentation.  

Wild ARMs, from the outset, sells its classic Spaghetti Western feel.  A soundtrack dominated by strings and whistles with a vague country twang, tiny towns made of log cabins and cobblestone buildings, the character's general wardrobe taking heavily from mid 20th century Western movies, it's delightful.  The game even starts on a ranch (depending on who you pick), full of chickens and horses to really get you in the mood.  It's such a unique feeling for a JRPG, I can't help but be endeared to it.  It's also super cozy!  Outside of using 3D models for characters instead of sprites, this game is barely different aesthetically from SNES JRPGs, it has such a nostalgic feel to it, I'm giddy playing it.  Very excited to play more!

4/12/25

Got to the end of the like "prologue section" of the game.  Gotta say, I'm a bit disappointed it wasn't longer?  Like, I was really enjoying having all our protagonists be separated and each have their own individual storylines going on and I was hoping I'd see more of them solo before the trio started coming together.  Though I am very happy that Cecilia, the mage of the trio, now doesn't risk either running out of MP or dying every fight.

I'm amazed at how forward thinking the Auto-Battle system is.  I feel like there's a lack of truly good auto battle systems in JRPGs, especially these sort of SNES-era-adjacent (Wild ARMs basically counts as an SNES JRPG, tbh, it feels so much like Chrono Trigger or FFVI) turn-based ones.  Like, don't get me wrong, I love turn based combat, I grew up on FFX so to me that's like the "default" of JRPGs, but after the three hundredth enemy grunt pops up this hour you kinda go like "I don't want to miss out on EXP but I'm over this, do it for me".  And unfortunately, a lot of "do it for you" AI systems just aren't up to snuff, they'll either do too little (standard attacking every turn when that's not going to be sufficient), or do too much (blow through all your MP/resources ASAP on common grunts).  Wild ARMs though, I really appreciate its numerous AI modes, where you can easily choose before a turn if you want the AI to go all out on offense, play defensively, focus on support, etc.  And these decisions can be altered per character, so you're not locked into one playstyle.

Every time I start to think the Western feel of this game is a gimmick, the atmosphere just sucks me back in.  Wild ARMs attempts to juggle this sort of Wild West aesthetic with a pretty traditional sword and sorcery setting, and I guess I was kind of hoping it would be MORE of a Wild West tale, but each time I'm thinking "this is just every other JRPG", that western soundtrack kicks back in and I feel all cozy.  Which is kind of insane because the current place of the game I'm at involves everyone dying in a demon attack from the sky, but this game just feels super cozy, what can I say!

4/15/25

I GOT SUMMONS.  I'm so excited about summons, I didn't even know there were summons in this game!  Being able to just drop a big guy on an enemy adds so much to combat, you don't even know.  In general combat is picking up, actually, the game is introducing a wider variety of enemies with more unique mechanics to them and I'm starting to gain more MP so I can more easily incorporate special moves and spells into my strategy.  We're far past the early game grunt battles of just mashing attack.  Battles have gotten this very nice flow to them, especially with how often characters counterattack, there's a lot of battles that are over in one turn with loads of back and forth.

I talked in my last entry about how I was a bit disappointed the characters united so early on in the journey when they started out on separate adventures and the game delivered with a very nice, albeit short, segment of the party being split again.  The game's second "temple" had each character on their own path, solving their own set of puzzles to reach the end.  I would honestly be open to more segments like this one, I think one of Wild ARMs' narrative strengths so far is that the party doesn't really feel like a unit.  They're just three strangers who happened to be at the same place when someone was looking for mercs, now cast on a journey to save the world.

Speaking of narrative strengths, the end of the aforementioned temple had a very good story beat where the gods of this world test our heroes by playing into their deepest fears.  It's not like reinventing the wheel but I like that we have something to go off of for these characters other than their quest.  As much as I like old JRPGs, that unfortunately wasn't always the case.  And it gives us a bit of a look into our otherwise silent protag's psyche, something that I really like to see in this kind of game.  Legit, my favorite moment in Earthbound is the moment where Ness' thoughts are projected onto the wall at the end of the seventh Sanctuary, giving us a look into how our protag who has been silent since the journey started feels about things.

This segment of the game was worrying for me though for one key reason.  See, Wild ARMs is a Western, it is using the aesthetics and narrative structure of a Western to tell a JRPG story.  And I don't know why it didn't occur to me that this was a bridge we'd have to cross eventually, but like.  This play session saw the introduction of the "Indians" of this game, the Baskar people of the plains.  I cannot comment on how respectful this depiction is, or really if it should even be considered a depiction given that, while the Baskar do take on the aesthetics of the spaghetti Western depiction of the Indigenous peoples, their story is not really that.  But I wasn't exactly comfortable in it nonetheless!

4/18/25

THIS GAME HAS A GRAPPLING HOOK!!!  It's a little funny who gets the Grappling Hook, like.  They make such a big deal about how rare it is to be able to use ARMs, aka, technology.  In this universe it's basically a form of magic with a genetic predisposition to utilize.  It's the thing that makes the protagonist, Rudy Roughknight, great cowboy name, an outcast who wanders the plains.  "Commonfolk" as it were don't take kindly to his kind, they invite trouble.  And Jack, the Treasure Hunter, is like the most "normal" member of the party, he can't use magic and he can't use ARMs, his special abilities are something that he trained to learn.  But like.  He's the Treasure Hunter, he gets the grappling hook.

A lot has happened since I last checked in with this diary, I've done like six or seven hours more game.  I'm really enjoying the sort of action-adventure-y elements present in the game a lot.  I'm reminded of a video I once saw on Mystic Quest, the Final Fantasy spinoff intended to get Americans accustomed to JRPGs so that they'd buy them and JRPGs wouldn't perform terribly outside of Japan.  That game's one singular strong suit was that the weapons you acquire in the game also served a function in the overworld, allowing you to chop down trees, climb walls, etc.  Wild ARMs feels like kind of a better version of this idea, it takes a lot of notes from top-down adventure games like Link to the Past.  Mind you it's not going full Zelda, yet, but it feels nice to be doing something in the dungeons instead of them just being "here is where your objective is".

Our heroes have failed!  I knew they were going to, mind, the game's pacing made it obvious given we're only like 12 hours into the game.  But I'm actually very glad that the main quest of the first part of the game was such a colossal failure?  It feels very right for this game, that this ragtag group of cowboys and drifters who all have individual ambitions and narratively struggle to work as a unit failed to stop the villains from beginning the apocalypse.  I hope this failure gets the ball rolling on their development more, both as individuals and as a unit.  I really like this cast and want them to have more to them, ya know.

Speaking of the cast, met a lot of really interesting characters this section.  Zed is already such a fun character, the sort of comic relief villain with an eccentric personality and amazing theme that takes a more "frenemy" approach to his conflict against the heroes.  I realize this guy is in every JRPG but you know what.  It's a banger every time.  A lot of characters in the first bit talked a lot about "Calamity Jane", an apparently famous outlaw named after the real world Martha Jane Canary.  Well we finally met Calamity Jane and she's, surprise, a little girl!  Like literally just a child.  She has managed to get a lot of power in this world both due to her wealth (she is followed around by her butler), but also due to her ability to use ARMs.  She kind of serves as a folly to the main cast, being an ARM wielding treasure hunter of means, filling in the various notes of Rudy, Jack, and Cecillia, but being in the game for her own personal gain and actively stating she does not care about the incoming apocalypse, all she cares about is her own wallet getting fatter.  Finally we met Captain Bartholomew, a down on his luck ship captain whose rivalry with a powerful merchant forces him to marry Cecillia so as not to look like a fool.  This guy briefly had me worried because the wedding ceremony was a quiz minigame and if there is one thing I know from my brief experience playing FFVII, it's that PS1 JRPG minigames SUCK.  But he's now our main mode of transport, we can now travel the world much easier from his involvement!  Shame he never found his match though,

This game certainly has a very 90s JRPG sense of humor.  This game has one of those wild localizations that people used to hate but now really miss, where there's a lot of pop culture jokes and gags and the whole thing has an irreverent tone despite the game meaning to be serious.  Enemies use 90s slang, a lot of enemies have names referencing, like, Stephen King books, it's very Woolseycore.  I'm kinda back and forth on it because on the one hand, I'm not the most fond of this kind of localization, tbh.  I respect the work Woolsey and those like him have done in making games palatable for a US audience.  But like, this kind of overly jokey tone is never my speed.  But on the other hand, something I really enjoy about Wild ARMs is how 80s/90s manga it feels.  It's art style is very manga (it even has a 90s anime intro) and its combination of Wild West and classic fantasy feels like a very manga setting.  And this very irreverent tone really makes it feel like a 90s manga.  It's a bizarre mix, it's not really my vibe but I still find it charming?  Idk, maybe I'm just nostalgic over this style since I did play a lot of Chrono Trigger SNES totally legitimately growing up.

I would once again like to shoutout the amazing soundtrack by Michiko Naruke.  Her work on this game really ties the whole thing together, tbh.  Like, this previous gameplay section had us teaming up with a pirate to sack a ghost ship, at certain points it feels like we've just totally lost the plot of this "Cowboy JRPG".  But the music really makes it feel like a Western through and through.  I'm a little sad she doesn't seem to do many games anymore, only doing it looks like one or two games every couple of years, he work is excellent.  A few of my favorite tracks so far.

4/22/25

I'm starting to have the distinct feeling that Wild ARMs is one of those games where the shops only sell basic healing items, and for more advanced forms of healing you're going to need to either find them in chests or get them from enemy drops.  I get why this is the decision they made, the world of Filgaia is a wasteland.  In keeping with its Wild West theming, the scenery is mostly grassland or desert.  A major part of the game's worldbuilding is how extinction is imminent because the land is dying, slowly becoming unable to sustain life.  It makes total sense that the harvests would be limited to the most easy to grow plants possible.  It's just, you know, inconvenient.  Heal Berries, the game's basic potions, only heal 200 HP total, I can burn through 10 of them at a time.  I'm starting to think it'd just be better to stop wasting my time buying them and just have Cecillia take care of the healing.

I got to see a lot more Jane in this part of the game, always a fun time.  Calamity Jane is quickly becoming my favorite character in the story, on top of being sassy and hilarious and kind of a badass, her ideology is super interesting too.  During this section of the game, we stumbled upon where Jane is from, this town out in the middle of nowhere.  My previous statement that Jane was wealthy appears to be a mistake, Jane is actually rather poor, her father being a scientist who risked their entire fortune moving out to the middle of nowhere to investigate an obscure ancient ruin , bringing along every orphan he could find along the way to build a space where they would be safe and loved.  This radical shift has caused Jane to develop a deep resentment for her father, she even claims she hates him.  But she does not hate his mission.  Jane's outlaw behavior is, it turns out, due to her wanting to make sure that the orphans are taken care of.  No, Jane hates her father for the same reason Jane hates every self-described do-gooder: they do things "because they're right".  Jane simply does not believe in "because they're right", Jane believes that the only things worth doing are things you believe in, that you have a passion for.  And she brings this challenge to our party: if saving Filgaia is something we're only doing because it's the right thing to do so, then we should let it die.  We need to find our own reason for saving the world.

We gained a bit more insight into the characters in this section.  I mean, not Jack, Jack's deal is pretty well set, he clearly is on this quest for revenge and is trying to find the "power" necessary to accomplish that goal.  But Cecillia has a moment where she spiritually connects with one of the ancient weapons that was left behind from the old war and the both of them bond over how they were born/created to fulfill a role, both feeling as if they have no choice in the matter.  It was very sweet, I really enjoy Cecillia's whole deal of feeling like she never really has choices, only expectations.  Rudy though, Rudy get some big lore drops this section.  We found out a lot about why Rudy is a drifter, how he was once a true "Dream Chaser"(the in-universe name for adventurers) with his grandfather and how after he lost him, he felt like adventuring was pointless.  A large chunk of this previous section was exploring a dungeon that served as Rudy's grandfather's former workshop, actually.  It was nice to experience.

I had my first game over this section!  At least I think it's my first game over, may have had one early game and just forgot, lol.  I reached a major bossfight, Boomerang and Luceid, and man.  Having two enemies in a boss?  So hard!  I don't feel like this game was, like, easy before this, I definitely had figured out a strategy for most enemies but I also felt like I needed to heal after every couple of battles.  But Boomerang really just wrecks you, his attacks often deal half HP to where I'm at in the game and combined with a second entity also attacking, a party member can easily die turn 1 off a couple high rolls.  I'm starting to feel bad for Cecillia, tbh, it feels like she doesn't get to do anything offensively in most boss fights because she's spending all her turns either buffing, debuffing, or healing.

I really wish I was playing this on a console that had a screenshot function.  I have always been fond of the game's visuals but there were some incredibly beautiful pieces in this previous section.  The game's visual style of using 3D models to appear as if it's a 2D RPG is infinitely charming to me already, but the way it adds just a little more depth to scenes because the characters are 3D models and act accordingly really does enhance some of the emotion in quiet moments.  Also I'm like convinced something in this previous section was a reference to Chrono Trigger and I'm a big Chrono Trigger stan, I really should play that again soon.

I'm weirdly feeling like I'm both nearing the end of the game and still at the beginning of it?  I don't know how much game I actually have left, I've been skimming a walkthrough and I've been good about not looking ahead, but like.  On the one hand, I'm completed Cecillia's entire spell grid and I'm almost done with Jack's fast draws, having what appears to be 8 out of the 12 slots in the menu.  And storyline wise we are about to launch an assault on the villains' stronghold.  On the other hand, I've only acquired 3 of Rudy's ARMs so far (btw, the most recent ARM was a rocket launcher, cool as hell), I've only fought two of the big bads so far and defeated one of them and also like.  I'm only 16 hours in?  It's not unheard of for a JRPG to be that short but I feel like either I might be reaching the finale or I might be about to enter an Act II as it were.  We'll see, I guess!

4/23/25

Our heroes succeeded!!!  Last night's play session saw our heroes defeating Mother, the "big bad" of the game that the villain faction spent much of the first part trying to resurrect.  Mother is a classic JRPG final boss design, btw, again, wish I could screenshot so I could show you.  She has a beautiful humanoid face and torso but it's attached to this insectoid body, it's so classic.  Her theme is such a great JRPG boss theme too.  But yeah, she was defeated, the villains' plan seemingly foiled, our heroes escaping in a moment of triumph surrounded by the friends they've made along the journey.  And as I suspected, we're about to enter Act II.

See, throughout the "final dungeon", we were being aided by a mysterious figure in a cloak who claimed to be a victim of Mother's previous destruction.  Mother is kind of a Galactus or Lavos figure who goes from planet to planet, destroying and consuming all life before recruiting a handful of heralds to guide her to the next planet.  This mysterious figure turns out to be Zeik, the leader of the villain faction, the Quarter Knights.  The Quarter Knights, as it turns out, were all secretly working to betray Mother, as they originally believed Mother would help them take over Filgaia instead of destroying and consuming everything on it, including themselves.  They now come to our heroes with a warning: they will be making moves to achieve their own goals, the heroes victory is only temporary.  It's kind of interesting to see an evolving conflict like this in a JRPG, it feels like so often in the genre the villain is established very early on and anything else that arises in the meantime is sort of an episodic conflict, you know.

4/25/25

Cecillia has received upgraded spells!!!  I'm so excited, you don't even know, Cecillia's damage output was starting to trail and her role as the team's healer/support character was becoming really cumbersome.  Now though?  She can do all her setup in like 2 two turns and really start switching over to damage dealing in boss fights.  It's such a massive boon to combat, it feels like such a massive leap gameplaywise.  Combat already had a good flow in this game but Cecillia's spell upgrades?  Takes it over the top, I feel so powerful now.

Unfortunately though, I'm starting to get tired of Wild ARMs.  This isn't really the fault of the game itself, the game is still really fun, but I am feeling the parts about it I really liked, the made it stand out amongst its genre, are more and more taking a sideline.  Outside of brief returns to town to rest, stock up, and talk to townsfolk for info; the game just no longer feels like a Western.  Much of the game at this point is adventures on the high seas until you find the correct info chain to figure out where you're meant to go, at which point you're tackling high tech alien strongholds.  It just kinda feels like the game has lost the plot, no longer the JRPG Western or even the Western themed JRPG, just, well.  A JRPG.

Now, all that being said.  The game DID give me a Bazooka.  So like.  Rudy might be a robot?  Scratch that, Rudy is most definitely a robot, but I think the game thought it was being subtle by never naming him in his grandfather's diaries about finding a robot child.  For as much as I'm not entirely into the game's pivot into pure sci-fi, I can't be mad about a robot cowboy, that's objectively cool.  I'm curious how this revelation will be handled in the coming narrative beats, like obviously I know, but I don't think the main characters know, least of all Rudy.

Speaking of unsubtle reveals, one of the bad guys is just.  Very obviously an ex-lover of Jack's.  She's had her memory wiped and she's been transformed into a larger demonic form, but like.  Her and Jack have a flirtatious relationship, with her giving Jack cute little pet names as they fight.  And after going toe-to-toe, they both talk about how the other feels so familiar but they can't quite place it.  Even in a genre known for its lack of subtlety, this is heavy handed.  There's even a point where Jack turns to Rudy and Cecillia and goes "I'm sure you know what's going on but can we please not talk about it until I'm ready", which feels like it's talking the audience as much as it is to the characters.

Idk, I don't want to just be shittalking this game because I am having fun with it still.  Like, it's a good game, very no frills outside of its Western theming but still very fun.  There are loads of things I did like about this chapter as well, getting to explore the world in full was pretty fun, there's lots of secret little nooks everywhere to find.  I got a lot of cool optional summons this part of the game, something I don't think I mentioned is that summons not only are big flashy aces in the hole when you need them but they also buff your characters because they're part of their equipment spread.  As such my characters are like, really powerful, lol.  The action-adventure elements of this game really are enhancing dungeons, this last section had a dungeon where you have to keep grappling from point to point, felt incredibly Zelda in a really fun way.  I unlocked fast travel and that's been great, the game teleports your ship with you so you don't have to remember where you've left it every time, which feels surprisingly forward thinking to me.  Like, the game has a lot good about it.  I just feel like what makes this game so unique is now just kind of gone and what's left is just a good but not noteworthy JRPG.

4/27/25

This section of the game had a point where Jane tells Captain Bartholomew "this is a game, you should always be carrying a special weapon".  I've been really back and forth on this game's writing and, what I assume, is the localization job, but like.  It's really starting to wear on me, y'all.  I feel like this very jokey tone is only serving to take me out of it at this point.  We're pretty close to the endgame, I think, and things are supposed to be getting more serious in the text.  We've had a couple run-ins with the big bad, one of our main characters was seriously injured in the midst of the conflict, heck, when this joke was thrown in there, much of the important supporting cast was being assaulted by a sea monster and it looked like they may not make it.  Idk, maybe I'm just being too much of a stick in the mud but for as charming as the localization can be, it doesn't have a good grasp on time and place.

Rudy is, indeed, a robot!  A lot of this previous section was devoted to Rudy sustaining an injury he could not naturally recover from and having to track down the elf-like race of beings who created him, the Elws, who abandoned Filgaia a millennia ago after the original war between mankind and the demons.  I've been kind of iffy on the transition this game has made to a more standard JRPG, but finding the Elw world was super neat.  The Elws live in this pocket dimension that freezes one of the parts of Filgaia 1000 years in the past.  It's nice seeing the wasteland as we've been told it was in the past, a lush green collection of forests and grasslands, brimming with life.  And the geography is completely different too, rivers that exist in the present don't exist in the past, mountains haven't eroded yet, it's super cool.  The Elws themselves are nothing overly special though, while they were once a technologically superior race that defended mankind, they've now forgone technology due to its destructive power and live a peaceful agrarian lifestyle.

This section obviously focused a lot on Rudy, we got to see what his childhood was like and how growing up as a robot impacted him, but this chapter of the game also really focused on Cecillia.  Cecillia's arc kind of finishes up in this part, she returns to the first dungeon of the game and faces a new challenge in her goal of rescuing Rudy.  I'm really starting to wonder honestly, like, how much of this game became open when you defeat Mother, it feels like you could genuinely do a lot of this in any order though maybe there are roadblocks I'm not seeing because I am doing these things in the order the game wants me to.  Anyways, Cecillia has always struggled with the concept of love, having been born a princess and raised to be a savior she's never particularly felt like she was loved and, in turn, doesn't really know how to love, either herself or other people.  But in this part she takes up the charge of saving Rudy and in turn reflects a lot on herself because of it.  I don't really want to get into how kind of problematic it is that the female MC's arc has so much to do with the concept of love, especially as it pertains to a blossoming romance with the male MC, but her efforts do restore one of the three lost gods' faith in Filgaia and they subsequently grant Cecillia their strength.  I'm happy, Cecillia's best possible summon for a hot minute before this was one that only caused Instant Death when summoned, it was USELESS on bosses.

We got an airship!!!  Always a banger moment in a JRPG, getting an airship.  This is the kind of anachronistic tech I can get behind, way more of a steampunk feel to it, actually fits in with the games' wild west setting.  I gotta tell ya, I've played like one other JRPG this year, FFXV, FFXV makes you jump through so many hoops to get an airship, it wasn't worth it, give me the airship as a story beat you cowards.  And also have a better story you cowards, god, FFXV sucks.  It's sad to see the ship that has served us well for so long, the Sweet Candy, go though, another casualty of the fight we're waging for Filgaia's future.  It had become such a central character in the cast up to this point.  However, not going to pretend it isn't nice to travel the overworld without encounters, lol.

The dungeons have just gone full Zelda at this point and honestly, here for it, this rules.  Wild ARMs is starting to feel less like a RPG with action-adventure elements and more like an action-adventure with RPG battles and progression.  Which I guess in the grand scheme of things, the two genres aren't that different, they both kind of spawn from adventuring books, tv shows and board games, just with two very different outcomes.  But like, puzzle solving is fun, they give us more tools to do it every other dungeon and it really enhances the gameplay.  It's not fully to the complexity you'd see in the action-adventure genre but it's way more than I ever expected from a JRPG.

It feels weird to say this right after saying how I was ready to be done with Wild ARMs in my last entry, but I've actually been really enjoying myself again.  Wild ARMs is just such a cozy, comforting game.  It is basically the definition of JRPG comfort food, a great "turn your brain off and watch numbers go up" kind of game.  I feel at home playing it, it's unlikely to crack my top ten or anything but playing Wild ARMs is a little like getting a warm hug.  I'm still kinda ready to be done with it, I think, I've been playing it for like over 2 weeks now, but I'm also going to miss it when I stop, I think.

4/28/25

This will likely be my final "diary" style update, I'm pretty confident that I will beat the game in the next section.  This section of the game finally explained what Jack's whole deal is.  Like we've gotten some hints beforehand, there was a moment early on in the game where Jack was surrounded by illusions of a crowd of people he apparently couldn't protect, but this section explained Jack was formerly a knight of the Kingdom of Arctica, a sort of House Stark like Kingdom in the north of Filgaia.  Arctica only had a handful of knights, they were meant to be the most elite squadron in the world, and each knight gave up their name to take on a title which represented a piece of knight armor.  Jack's name, Van Burace, was the arm brace, designed to both protect the sword and protect the people from the Sword, the Sword being his aforementioned ex-lover Elmina who has been corrupted and mutated by the Demons into the powerful Lady Harken.  Jack failed at this duty, leading to the Kingdom of Arctica falling shortly before the events of the game, and he has since been on a quest to gain power to avenge his people.  And, at the end of his journey, Jack realizes his purpose, that his power is not the anger of revenge, but the courage to protect, and becomes the avatar of the lost goddess of courage in the same way Cecillia became the avatar of the lost goddess of love.

I don't think I've mentioned this before but the level scaling in this game is wild.  Like, every enemy has an assigned level. but I don't think they really matter.  I'm fighting a lot of "level 50+" enemies in this area I'm in and I still feel overleveled despite being almost 10 levels down on all of them.  I can regularly one shot basically everything with my party's various weapons, spells and super moves.  I'm not complaining about being strong, mind, I'm glad the game has been kind of breezy for me as one of the main reasons I like it so much is how cozy and turn off your brain it has been.  I just think it's weird to assign numbers to enemies and ultimately have them not matter because you just are given so many win buttons.

I completed a pretty major sidequest in this section, the restoration of Adelhyde, and it felt super rewarding to do so.  Like you don't really get anything out of it other than an optional summon, which by the time you get it has been outclassed by unlocking the Hope (Hope is Rudy's big lost god summon, the Dragon god of Hope being awakened from the power of a robot being able to hope for a brighter future), Courage, and Love summons, but it's really nice to see this town thriving again.  And a less significant for the gameplay but arguably better reward is that the restored town has the "festival" theme we originally heard at the beginning of the game but hasn't been heard since.  It makes you feel so much triumph, that in the face of all of this strife the world is healing.

I want to give one final shoutout to the composer of this game, Michiko Naruke.  I haven't really been talking about the soundtrack since defeating Mother because like.  It's been fine, a lot of the tracks have remained the same, there have been a couple new ones, but like.  Most of the songs you hear are from the first half.  And a lot of the new stuff fails to really capture the Western feel, sadly, it's a lot more great JRPG stuff but I don't find it as noteworthy compared to the Western feeling tracks.  There have been two major standouts in this half though.  The first is Boomerang's theme.  Boomerang is your classic JRPG villain trope, the bad guy with a distinct code of honor who only antagonizes the heroes because he is looking for a worthy challenger for him to have a glorious battle.  The theme really encapsulates everything that works about his character AND has this distinctive Western feel to it, feeling like the theme to a stand-off.  It's always a welcome listen whenever he pops up, especially in the more distinctly traditional JRPG tone of the latter half.  The other theme I want to highlight is the theme of the past Filgaia's overworld.  This song feels so tranquil and grand, like you're really looking into the past when the world was green and beautiful, while also feeling very solemn.  It speaks to the tone of that section of the game, a world meant to be a screenshot of a specific point in history by a people who refuse to live with their own mistakes.

I'm a little put off by the finale, I'm just gonna level with y'all.  This is no fault of the game's own, mind, this is just my brain being a weird, but like.  I keep thinking of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which if you don't know already, is my least favorite video game of all time.  We're in this giant tower to the heavens, climbing it up to an orbital city in space where the main villain is seeking to use the weaponry on the orbital city to destroy the world.  It's very similar to the finale of Xenoblade 2.  It gives me too many flashbacks for comfort.  We persevere though!  Like I said, next time I check back in with y'all it'll probably be after I beat the game, I'm excited to wrap this one up.  I've been having a good time with it but I wanna move onto other games, the "shortlist" sure ain't getting shorter, lol.

4/30/25

And so we have finished it.  After almost three weeks of playing, Wild ARMs finally can be checked off in my backlog.  The endgame honestly wasn't too bad.  I had to do some minor grinding to restock some of my items, I was very worried about running out of the MP restoring magic carrots in particular.  A lot of the normal enemies in the final dungeon basically needed Cecillia to kill them before they became a problem.  But like, I didn't have too much trouble all things considered!

The final dungeon had some pretty neat puzzles in it.  They do some pretty interesting things with the idea of exploring this ancient space colony, having you enter multiple separate districts abandoned by this long gone civilization and solve puzzles in each of them.  There was, in particular, a super interesting puzzle where you're teleported into the colony's residential district, which is still running a simulation of it being populated, and you have to find one of the three hidden keys to access the control room hidden somewhere in the town.  You're given clues by the simulated residents on where the key is, but because the residents are all simulated, they are telling you lies and half-truths, and you have to piece together where the item is based on info you can't trust.  I really liked that one.  There was also a neat door puzzle where you had to maneuver through a maze of doors that keep switching on you and you have to find your way to the two switches, that one was also a standout.

I've been talking a lot about how the game felt like it has lost its way from its Western theming, but I'm happy to say that the finale honestly brings it back around majorly for me.  The ending cutscenes see our heroes looking over the land as the sun sets, looking out on the land they saved, the world which they must now protect.  The trio then resolves to continue their journey, wandering the wastelands, restoring towns, fighting off monsters and outlaws, doing what they can to heal the world of Filgaia.  All the while some excellent Western-sounding songs that I unfortunately am having a lot of trouble finding play.  Seriously, it's so hard to find the songs of the English ending because they have different songs in the Japanese OST and you know how fans of Japanese media can be, they tend to think of any changes as being definitively bad and something that should be erased from the canon.  Hot take though, the US credits song is WAY better than the lyrical Japanese song.  It really ties the whole game together for me.

In the end, while I had my problems with it, I did really enjoy Wild ARMs.  It's such a comfort food JRPG, it has this nice, homey aesthetic and vibe, it has a fun turn off your brain turn based combat loop, it has a very pretty and very classic visual style, amazing soundtrack, etc.  The story didn't always work for me and I feel like it kind of loses its way at certain points, but I'm super glad I played it and would easily play any of the sequels if I could get my hands on em.  Unfortunately only Wild ARMs 1 was on the PS Classic, sad.  It's well earned its status as "one of if not the best JRPGs on the PS1 that isn't Final Fantasy", I feel like it's honestly a must play for fans of the genre.

Pikmin 1 is the best Pikmin game (because it's the worst Pikmin game)

I have recently beaten Pikmin 3 as part of my ongoing, foolhardy quest to actually play through enough games in my backlog to make it decrease instead of increase. Pikmin 3 was a long time coming, I originally got Pikmin 3 as part of the deal Nintendo had back when Mario Kart 8 was coming out where you'd get a free first-party WiiU game alongside it and I had played through basically the entirety of it back then. I had collected all of the fruit, found all the data files, etc. The only thing I had yet to do is beat the final dungeon and the final boss. A rational person would likely just go do that but instead I chose the much more insane option of "play through the entire game start to finish so that I have accurate data on my spreadsheet", which, let's be real, updating your spreadsheet is the most fun part of game clearing.

Replaying it, I feel, ended up being the correct choice though. First of all, I had literally not played it in over a decade so I would not have been able to easily slide right into the final boss like it was nothing. But more importantly I think starting from 0 on Pikmin 3 allowed me to analyze it in a new way and come to different conclusions on the game than I had previously. I won't get fully into it but the too long, didn't read is who I was when I had initially played Pikmin 3 was a person who enjoyed series. Pikmin 3 was a game I loved a lot in 2014 because it was a Pikmin game, and a great Pikmin game at that, and I loved Pikmin. A decade later though, I find myself being more of a fan of works, how an individual game exists on its own merits disconnected from a branding I may be attached too and only evaluating the game in question in context of its series to compare and contrast how well it compliments a previous work.

A brief review of Pikmin 3 since we're already here

Pikmin 3 is, in many ways, the best Pikmin game. I know it has ended up being a rather controversial entry in recent times due to its general lack of difficulty and it stepping back on many features introduced in Pikmin 2, but I feel it is, by far, the best the series has been as a strategy game. Pikmin 3 utilizes the WiiU Gamepad excellently, allowing you to easily command your captains to move and work autonomously while you are busy accomplishing more complex tasks on your own. While I do often think the three captains are a bit too much as, frequently, it feels like one captain is just off doing nothing, waiting for other tasks to be done so they can gather up the wayward Pikmin, it is undeniable how much map control you get in this game, both from the multiple captains and the ease at which you can move them about the map and switch between the three.

As well, Pikmin 3's usage of three captains allows them to really play around with the complexity of the puzzles. There are several instances where you'll encounter a puzzle that needs all three captains to be doing various different things, be it stepping on weights to balance out while the third captain manages Pikmin distribution between the two others, throwing other captains on ledges and then having them go on individual ventures to reunite the other captains, or just using captains as middle men to easily get a squad across a large untenable obstacle, like a river. It leads Pikmin 3 to being incredibly fast paced while maintaining the depth of the previous entries.

This pacing is also enhanced by how snappy combat tends to be. The introduction of the Charge mechanic, allowing you to dismiss your Pikmin to swarm an enemy you've locked onto, allows most combat encounters to be over quickly, as your entire squad can decimate an enemy health bar like it's nothing. This does, of course, tend to make the game a bit easy, but I also feel like it's a well designed mechanic, streamlining gameplay while still providing enough of a risk to make you think about how you use the mechanic, as overestimating your Pikmin's abilities can now have disastrous consequences.

That's not to say that Pikmin 3's gameplay is perfect, however. The game is, often, let down by the console it is on. Pikmin 3, being on the WiiU, opts to include multiple different control schemes, touch controls, classic controls, and motion controls, a sort of best of all worlds. Touch controls allow you the best map control, allowing you the easiest usage of the map and, by extension, the best map control. This comes at the cost of having a lot of inconvenient gameplay/combat controls, like having to tap to throw Pikmin. Classic controls, in contrast, gives you a more typical controller layout, with almost everything being mapped to the buttons. This control scheme does give you minor touchscreen access as well so you can still do all the things you would be doing with the touch control scheme. The issue with Classic though is that "Classic" in this instance means "GameCube" and in the GameCube Pikmin games, your cursor was locked in a straight line directly in front of you, meaning actually controlling the game becomes way more stiff and awkward. Lastly we have motion controls, this control scheme sees you hooking up a Wii Remote and Nunchuck to control the game as if it were one of the Pikmin ports on Wii. Undeniably, this gives you the best field control, you have a pretty useful button layout while also having full control of the cursor. To many people this is the definitive way to play Pikmin, I take issue with it, though, as while it gives you the best control in the field, you lose a lot of the convenient map functionality of the Game Pad. In short, Pikmin 3 has three control schemes, and every single one of them does exactly half the job you want it to. To be honest, all I want is "GameCube controls but you control the cursor with the stick and the map with the screen" and I would be happy.

I, of course, cannot stop talking about Pikmin 3 without talking about its visuals. It is no exaggeration to say that Pikmin 3 is not only the most beautiful Pikmin game, a high bar for a series that has always pushed the graphical capabilities of the systems they are on. It's also arguable that Pikmin 3 is the most beautiful WiiU game and, honestly, maybe even the most beautiful game Nintendo has ever made. Its environments are serene and bizarre, finding a deep beauty in scattered trash of the old world that has been reclaimed by the new environment. The lighting is dynamic and sharp without being overbearing or too bright like many other WiiU games tended to skew. Its water visuals are some of the best ever produced, the water Miiverse guy must've had a field day with Pikmin 3, I swear. All these visuals are also enhanced by wonderful sound design, the environmental noises in this game are superb, I cannot tell you the joy I felt the first time I encountered a rainy day and the world was filled with frog songs. While I've had my problems with Pikmin 3, I do like it a whole lot and think it's a great game, I find it unlikely it'll make my top ten list for the year (mostly because, at the time of writing this, it's already down at number 7) but it's absolutely going to be an honorable mention.

A bizarre relationship with the Pikmin series

But, there was something else that was eating at me the entire time I played Pikmin 3. As I previously stated, at a certain point in my life I considered myself a Pikmin fan. You could've counted me among the ranks of people like "the Cookie Monster but for people who refuse to admit that the GameCube sold poorly" and "monotone Scott the Woz". A large part of this love of Pikmin came from a very singular source, the first Pikmin game. I played Pikmin 1 on its rerelease for the Wii and fell in love with it, for a long time it ranked amongst my favorite games of all time. I used to keep a rather extensive catalog of what I considered "5 star games" on my Backlog but kinda retired it after both finding it difficult and insufficient to upkeep, as well as doing a lot of rethinking on how I rate and rank things, and up until that change which came literally about a month ago, Pikmin 1 was on that list. I genuinely would've told you that Pikmin 1 was one of the greatest games ever made. I also would've told you that Ecco the Dolphin was one of the greatest games ever made, so maybe my scale is broken, but I think I'm right about Pikmin.

As I was playing Pikmin 3, I could not help but feel myself drift to thoughts of Pikmin 1. Despite loving Pikmin at least through 3 initially, I have not played 4 because that was well after the point I stopped just getting any game that had a brand I thought I liked on it, something that has always been true is that no Pikmin game has ever hit as hard for me as Pikmin 1 has. It's always been a bizarre dichotomy, I always acknowledged that, as games, the Pikmin series was constantly improving, becoming more fun with each entry, becoming better as games.

And yet, something about them never felt as right as the first game. For a long time I just chalked this up to nostalgia, that while I love Pikmin 1 the most, it's obviously not the best Pikmin game and as time would go on while I would continue to look at the first game through rose-colored glasses, I would eventually come around to preferring the newer entries on the level of being better games. Or, I would say "well, it's not that Pikmin 1 is necessarily even hitting harder for you, sure you love it the most but it's also the most unique". I'll admit, as much as I don't want this to be true, I have ultimately grown to value uniqueness. It's not a total blanket opinion, that something unique is inherently better and that later versions of said thing are always going to have diminishing returns, just this year already a serious contender for my game of the year is a sequel that has near identical gameplay and keeps almost the same tone, structure, and design as the first game, down to having half the game take place in the same location. But despite this I do tend to value a game being something all its own, even sometimes gravitating towards games most would find terrible due to them being weird, surreal, unique pieces of art.

This playthrough of Pikmin 3, however, was illuminating. As I was in the trenches thinking about what did and did not work about the third Pikmin game, at least in my opinion, I found myself gaining answers to these long held questions. How is it that, in a series that objectively gets better with every entry, I find myself underwhelmed by every single one after the first one? Does Pikmin 1 bring things to the table that other entries have been unable or unwilling to recreate? Why am I like this where I can't just like a game without making it a thing? I did not find an answer to the last one, for what it's worth. However, I think I have found my answer to the previous two: I think Pikmin 1 is the best Pikmin game specifically because it is the worst Pikmin game. Let me explain.

A summary of the first Pikmin game, AKA "What is Pikmin?"

In 2001, Nintendo released Pikmin for the Nintendo GameCube, barely missing the console's launch by a short enough time that most just consider Pikmin a launch title. Pikmin is noteworthy for being one of the last new IPs to be created by industry icon Shigeru Miyamoto, as he would spend the rest of his career as a general producer for most of the Mario, Zelda, and subsequent Pikmin titles, only really creating Nintendogs after this. Pikmin is, famously, as much of a technical showcase for the GameCube as it is a video game. It is built off the software from the tech demo Super Mario 128, a tech demo meant to show the GameCube's ability to render an impressive number of models who can all partake in individual actions and which was believed for many years to be an actual cancelled sequel to Super Mario 64. Kind of wish that were true, I would love to see what the game of "128 Marios on a giant pizza in space" would've ultimately entailed, however, Miyamoto and likely most of the other people involved see Pikmin as Mario 128's full release.

In Pikmin you play as Captain Olimar, an astronaut from the planet Hocotate. On the trip back to his home planet from a deep space mission, Olimar awakens to find himself stranded on an unknown alien world after his ship has crashed. The atmosphere of this world is toxic to his Hocotatian physiology and without the ability to easily find food befitting of his anatomy, Olimar is, at first, in a lose-lose situation, unable to repair his ship or survive on the planet should his resources run out. As he investigates this strange, alien world though, he quickly comes across his ship's missing engine, a potential glimmer of hope. If he could just find a way to carry the piece back to his ship, then he could work on getting the ship capable of flight again and maybe starting to search the planet's surface for the remaining missing ship parts. And this is when Olimar discovers the Pikmin.

Pikmin are these tiny little creatures native to the planet that Olimar names "Pikmin" due to their resemblance to a foodstuff on his home planet, the Pikpik carrot. Pikmin come in three distinct varieties, at least in the first game, the Red Pikmin who are generally stronger than the others and can easily exist in high temperature environments, the Blue Pikmin, who have evolved gills to allow them to move easily underwater while most other species of Pikmin drown, and the Yellow Pikmin, who are the most aerodynamic of the three species, allowing them to be thrown higher and further than the others. Also, only in Pikmin 1, the Yellows are the only species of Pikmin capable of using Bomb Rocks, last Pikmin games open up bomb rocks to everyone and give Yellows resistance to electric currents and the ability to conduct electricity through them. Individually, Pikmin are incredibly weak, serving as little more than foodstuffs for the various predatory creatures that call this planet home, but as a unit, Pikmin become incredibly strong, tearing through the same creatures that would otherwise seek to eat them and turning the tables on them, using their defeated foes as sustenance for their main spawn point, the onions, which will convert the creature into more Pikmin seedlings. And good news for Olimar, they're very receptive to his commands.

For some unknown reason, Pikmin naturally gravitates towards Olimar and his suit's built-in whistle. It's possibly behavioral, Olimar represents some sort of leader role the Pikmin are naturally lacking, someone with a more tactical thought process to turn their disorganized power into an organized battalion with which to combat their natural predators. It's possible that, due to Olimar plucking them out of the ground, they see the captain as something of a parental figure, in the same way birds may imprint onto a person if said person was there when they hatched. There's even the implication that the Pikmin were near extinction and Olimar's awakening of the Onion brought the species back. If Pikmin have some manner of higher brain function, they may be following Olimar due to gratitude for saving their species. Or maybe they just like the whistle. Regardless, the Pikmin become exactly what Olimar needs, an army to aid him in the acquisition and retrieval of the parts to his spaceship. Olimar's goal is now clear: use the Pikmin's aid to overcome the dangers of this strange alien world, retrieve the parts to his ship, and successfully repair it before his suit's life support systems shut down in 30 days.

Why I like Pikmin 1 so much

After overcoming the first day and the "setup" of the game, Pikmin wastes no time throwing you to the wolves. You start by landing at the second area of the game, named by Olimar the "Forest of Hope" due to containing his hope to get home, and here you enter a world that, simply, wants you dead. Giants roam the land, monsters that seem to even overwhelm your army of Pikmin despite its massive numbers just due to the size of the creatures. These monsters are also not passive, they are predators, seeking to consume not only yourself but to decimate your numbers. The singular kindness you have is that many of these predators are nocturnal, allowing you to sneak up on them to gain a small advantage over them in combat. Or at least this would be a kindness if it wasn't for the smaller but similarly deadly creatures that surround the giants. And that's not even to mention the things that have hidden themselves underground. This world is brutal and deadly, a harsh, alien landscape testing Olimar's will to fight at every turn. And I love it.

Pikmin 1 is, in my opinion, one of the best survival narratives in the medium's history. This world feels truly like a world that could exist, a planet with its own rules and ecosystem and complex evolutionary history that Olimar is a stranger to. The various creatures of this world don't feel like "just video game enemies" but rather animals, they behave in a very understandable way. Many creatures are opportunistic, not actively hunting the Captain and his army but instead lying in wait and only striking when an opportunity to feed presents itself. They don't tend to chase Olimar indefinitely either, they'll get tired and realize the hunt isn't worth it, which does serve as a convenient moment for Olimar and his Pikmin to regroup but also feels very real. The creatures that aren't predators that also stand in Olimar's way are equally dangerous but in ways that, while eccentric and not always logical (hi Fiery Blowhog), behave in very real ways. They feel threatened by a present predator, the Pikmin, and use their defense mechanisms in turn. Sure, eventually you'll learn the AI and these creatures will seem less real than they once did, but Pikmin 1 makes impressive strides to making this planet feel very real and make you feel as if you don't belong in it.

This feeling is enhanced by Olimar's diminutive stature. While you do find this out pretty quickly, there are recognizable obstacles to the player that give Olimar a distinctive sense of scale, it really starts to hit you in the Forest of Hope just how small the captain truly is. When you first encounter the underground insect enemies, the Shear grubs, you realize that Olimar is not just small, Olimar is "the size of random grubs" small. Olimar is a mere 1.9cm or .75 inches tall, just slightly larger than a cough drop. I feel this sense of scale is very important to making this world seem as brutal as it is, you are not a man fighting giants, you are an ant fighting spiders. You are tiny in this world of monsters, so small you cannot even begin to fathom what creatures eat the creatures that are eating you. It not only makes the world feel just that much scarier but also just that much more hopeless. Made even more so by the time limit.

As previously stated, Olimar's suit's built in life support system will only be able to keep him alive for thirty days. At the end of the month, he will simply die and, as depicted in the bad end, become himself food for the Pikmin to produce more. You are on a clock, every minute of every day counts, and you have to solve these puzzles, kill these enemies, build these structures, whatever is necessary for you to recover every necessary ship part before your life support runs out and you die. This sense of urgency it instills is made even more so by the fact that Olimar can only work during the day. See, most of the predators on this mysterious planet are nocturnal, and as such, the planet's surface becomes infinitely more dangerous at night. So much so that Olimar has determined that the best course of action is just to not risk it and to take off at sundown each day. Olimar thus only has 30 days, from sunup to sundown(about thirteen real world minutes) to repair his ship. Admittedly, this deadline is not as tight as one would think it is, as a new player back in 2009 with barely any idea what I was doing, having only seen part of a Let's Play to get my bearings, I still had about a week to spare on this timer. But it does give the game a sense of weight, of urgency. Every Pikmin death feels like it counts so much more when you feel like you have so little time. And if you have a full squad kill? That is an entire day of raising back up your numbers to be able to resume your mission, a day you may not be able to afford. I realize you're probably reading this being like "this seems bad" and that's fair, but I find this all to be infinitely compelling, a true test of survival.

Through all of this though, these insurmountable odds, this harsh environment, the deaths of so many of these tiny creatures who are selflessly protecting him, Olimar never loses hope. At the end of each day, Olimar writes a new entry into his journal. These journal entries contain everything from thoughts about how the day went to scientific theories about the creatures of this odd world (Olimar is a biologist by trade, which makes later games much weirder but we'll get there), to just talking about how he misses his home and his family. It's a lot of great character building, you learn a surprising amount about this kinda stoic, mostly silent protagonist through these end of day check-ins. He feels horror at the death of Pikmin and hope at a particularly productive day. Who Olimar is to you is based on your experience, what you did and didn't do, how effectively you did it. Most importantly though, it gives the player a much needed optimistic outlook in a game with impossible odds. Olimar never gives up, so you never give up. It's kind of masterwork.

All of this comes together to be one of the greatest pieces of survival fiction in the medium, at least in my opinion. It's tense, it's atmospheric, it tells a very gripping story through no dialog, sparse written pieces and player input. It's kind of superb, I genuinely think that Pikmin 1 is one of the greatest works of art that Nintendo has ever made. But, in spite of this, Pikmin 1 has almost been fully replaced by its successors in more modern times. There are some, like me, who are ride or die for Pikmin 1 but they become a smaller demographic every year as Pikmin becomes more popular, the fanbase expands, and frankly like. What's going on there?

Let's talk about Pikmin 2

I want to start the following segments by saying that I have never played Pikmin 4, the most recent entry in the series at the time of writing this. I'm not going to say "oh I'm never going to play Pikmin 4" because I don't know that, if I pick up a copy down the line I'll probably add it to my "shortlist" and who knows, I may play it, love it, and make all this work I've done writing about why I think Pikmin 1 is so good a massive waste of time. It's not a high priority for me at this moment, however and I'm not going to really consider it in this essay as a result. I'm more interested in analyzing the Pikmin series from my perspective as, I guess a lapsed fan is what you'd call it, and why when I was a fan of the Pikmin series, I felt this feeling that I still feel to this day of no Pikmin game reaching the heights of Pikmin 1. It's been rough, I've had to cut out a couple jokes already from this thing because they were little jabs at Pikmin 4 and I felt that was unfair given I hadn't played it or watched someone else play it. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, Pikmin 2.

The second Pikmin game, appropriately titled Pikmin 2, released for the GameCube almost three years after its predecessor in 2004. It sees Olimar successfully returning home only to immediately be hit with a string of unfortunate news; his employer, Hocotate Freight, has had to take out a large loan to cover a missing expensive shipment that was trusted to his incompetent coworker and noted worst person alive, Louie, and is at risk of going under. They have had to sell off almost all their assets, including the ship we spent so much time trying to repair in the first game, in an attempt to stave off financial ruin, seemingly to no avail. The company has been reduced to a singular ship and three employees, the President of the company, Olimar, and the aforementioned Louie who remains at the company despite getting them in this mess in the first place.

While the President is explaining all this to Olimar, a souvenir he brought from the planet from the first game, what appears to be a bottle cap, rolls out from his stores and into scanning range of the one remaining Hocotate Freight ship, who scans the foreign item and discovers that it is worth a considerable amount of money. This exciting prospect gets the President's wheels turning, and he immediately orders Olimar and Louie to head back to the planet Olimar had just returned from, scouting out more treasures hidden on the surface to save the company from financial ruin. The duo must go to new areas, battle new foes, recruit new species of Pikmin, and explore the newly discovered underground cave system in order to work up enough cash to pay off the loan and return home to their families.

Pikmin 2 is, in many ways, a massive improvement on the formula established in Pikmin 1. For starters, it gives the player a second captain to work with. This addition, just out the gate, gives you so much depth to the gameplay. The area design can get more complex and the puzzles more intricate because of your ability to work with multiple captains now. It's not quite where Pikmin 3 is where you can very easily control Captains to do certain tasks while you're off doing things, but it still lets you split up the captains at any point and walk them and a squad of Pikmin to wherever the work needs to be done. It's honestly kind of crazy how big of a leap in complexity this is on rip, you'd really expect them to play around with enhancing the single captain gameplay for an entry before doing multi captain gameplay.

Pikmin 2 also sees the introduction of dungeons to the series. These multifloor underground structures are where most of the game takes place. Time freezes while you are in a dungeon, removing much of the urgency present in the previous game, but exchanging it for this claustrophobic feeling of being trapped. Dungeons are home to all sorts of powerful enemies, including the games' numerous boss arenas, and contain many of the treasures needed to accomplish your goal, buried artifacts of whatever civilization used to call this place home. They are also something of an evolution of Pikmin 1's brutality, Pikmin 2 in general makes several moves to be more difficult than the first game as its balancing around the overpowered new Pikmin types, but dungeons especially are very difficult sections, including one dungeon that almost functions as a horror game as you are stalked through its halls by an invincible enemy seeking to murder all your Pikmin. The two new Pikmin types, for the record are Purple and White Pikmin, Purples contain the strength of 10 Pikmin and are able to stun most enemies due to their increased weight, making them your new go-to combat units, while White Pikmin are small, fast, and poisonous, making them efficient workers but also a good nuclear option against many foes as enemies take serious damage and/or get instakilled by eating white Pikmin.

I mentioned time and time is, in general, something Pikmin 2 gives you in spades. The first game notably had a strict time limit, Olimar had a month to accomplish his goal or he dies. Pikmin 2 has no such time limit. You can spend as much time on the game as you need or want and the developers take advantage of this. Pikmin 2 not only contains more to do than the first game, it contains so much more that Pikmin 2 is 4x the size of Pikmin 1. This includes something the first game was genuinely kind of lacking: a post game. A considerable amount of the content in the game, about 60% is only accessible in the post game. There's an entire area to explore with a bunch of dungeons but also due to the fact that the game ends after you reach a certain dollar amount, you have a lot to still do in the areas previously unlocked. Pikmin 2 does all of this, and so much more, for a singular goal: to make sure that the experience of playing Pikmin is way more fun for the player.

Oh look we're back to Pikmin 3

Before we finish off here, I would like to circle back around to Pikmin 3. Despite Pikmin 2's numerous gameplay upgrades on the original game, it was not without its controversy. There were always fans who found the second Pikmin game's far less compelling story and lack of any real survival elements to be a step back despite all its numerous steps forward, an opinion which only grew in the long gap between the second and third Pikmin game; largely due to the rerelease of the first Pikmin game making it more accessible and defining more to people what Pikmin is. And so we have Pikmin 3, something of a compromise between the two styles, an attempt at making "the ultimate Pikmin game".
Pikmin 3 is noteworthy for moving the story away from Captain Olimar and instead introducing not only new captains but an entire new planet to the Pikmin universe: Koppai. The planet Koppai is facing something of a crisis at the moment, the citizens of Koppai are, exclusively, fruit eaters and the planet's supply of fruit is running dangerously low. In an attempt to stave off their own extinction, they send out probes out into space to find a planet with the precious fruit they need to survive, eventually discovering a planet they name PNF-404 which not only has fruit, but has so much fruit that, should they cultivate it properly, could support the species indefinitely. An exploratory squad consisting of three people, Captain Charlie, botanist Brittney, and engineer Alph, is sent out to the planet and after crashing onto the planet's surface and getting separated, find Pikmin.

As you could've probably guessed, PNF-404 is the planet from the previous Pikmin games. The trio must find enough fruit to survive as they work to reunite themselves and find their missing Cosmic-Drive Key, which was lost in the crash and is a necessary component to being able to return home. But something also doesn't feel quite right to the trio. Why did their ship, which was functioning perfectly, suddenly crash onto this alien planet with no warning? Who is leaving all these memos they're finding all over the planet's surface? And who, or what, is behind this mysterious SOS they keep being led to?

You may have gathered from the synopsis, but Pikmin 3 is the most narrative driven of the Pikmin games thus far. Not only does it have the highest stakes seen from the series thus far and genuine mysteries for the player to unravel as they proceed through the game, but it also has a very traditional narrative structure to it. Whereas previous games opted for a very nonlinear style of "find things in whatever order you come to them and once you get x amount of things, you can unlock a new area to find more things in", each area in Pikmin 3 has a specific arc with very noticeable and satisfying plot beats and a specific, unique boss enemy at the end to let you know that you're done with the area's story. These individual arcs culminate in a pretty defined three act structure; Alph awakens on the planet and has to overcome obstacles to reunite himself with his missing crewmates Brittney and Charlie; the crew is reunited but receives a distress signal from another astronaut lost on the planet, who they believe to be the mysterious "Captain Olimar" whose logs they keep finding, and mount a rescue mission; the crew rescues "Olimar" but he absconds with their stuff, including their entire fruit reserve, forcing the crew to chase him down, only to find out it is not Olimar but worst person alive Louie, who informs them of where the real Olimar and their Cosmic Drive key is, leading the crew to mount another rescue mission. This very traditional story structure not only makes it a good jumping on point for new players, but also clearly shows that the Pikmin team wants Pikmin to be something more, a universe to tell stories in with its own history and lore.

Speaking of lore, Pikmin 3's more narrative focus allows it to finally answer some questions that have been hanging over the series for a while. As you'll recall, the major theme of Pikmin 2 is unearthing treasures, you find weird, lost artifacts of a civilization that occupied PNF-404 once upon a time. These treasures are, largely, real world items, often being name brands like Duracell batteries. This implies PNF-404 is our world, but it's our world far enough into the future that any recognizable creatures have gone extinct and our civilization has been reclaimed by the elements. Pikmin 3 effectively confirms this, its world map showing the areas from orbit and revealing they exist on what are clearly our continents, but far enough into the future that they have drifted, adopting new ecosystems and being almost unrecognizable. Australia and Antarctica are now one continent and are equatorial, Southern Asia is now near the pole and is a tundra, South America is a fair climate akin to the Mediterranean. It's a wild world. The other big question it answers is why all these astronauts are drawn to this planet and, more importantly, why they seem to crash land on it. These are major spoilers for Pikmin 3 so I won't get into it but it's a fascinating answer and one I would like to see explored in more detail in a future entry.

Besides the deep and more complex strategy gameplay mentioned earlier, the biggest thing Pikmin 3 does to evolve the Pikmin formula is the introduction of major boss fights. Previous Pikmin games have had boss fights, of course, but whenever you encounter a boss in those games it is not treated with the grandeur of a video game boss fight. They're treated more as bigger, stronger, deadlier regular enemies that require a bit more strategy than your average foe. Pikmin 3 though has some real boss fights, entirely unique enemies fought in giant arenas that drastically play around with the mechanics and scale of the game prior. These larger than life boss fights also serve as the end point for each individual area's storyline, with each area containing at least one major boss to defeat. This all serves to create a Pikmin game that's more decidedly game-y, Pikmin 3, in keeping step with Pikmin 2, wants to create a more decidedly fun player experience, something that both new and returning fans can get on board with and have a decidedly fun time.

Fun

E3 2009, Nintendo ended their show with an absolute showstopping game, Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Nintendo Wii. Released the following year Mario Galaxy 2 was, obviously, the sequel to Super Mario Galaxy, one of the most critically acclaimed of all time. Mario Galaxy 2 went on to be as critically acclaimed as its predecessor, with both games remaining on Metacritic's "best games of all time" list literally in back to back places at #4 (Mario Galaxy) and #5 (Galaxy 2). This sentiment was echoed by the general populace, Mario Galaxy 2 was incredibly beloved by the Wii's audience and especially fans of Mario Galaxy 1 who saw the game as more Mario Galaxy and, moreover, more fun Mario Galaxy.

While the original always had its advantages, it seemed pretty clear to most that Galaxy 2 was the better game, it took the strengths of Mario Galaxy and made a whole batch of new, more fun levels. It included new powerups, new minigames, new iconic levels. It's such an upgrade in seemingly every way that if you liked Galaxy 1 more, it was just because it hit at a point where it was more impactful to you. Or you're one of those weirdos who cares about story in a Mario game, but that'd be ridiculous right, who goes to Mario for the story(hi, it's me). But, as you probably know, this opinion did not hold.

In fact, Mario Galaxy 2's reception would be less positive upon re-evaluation. Basically everyone acknowledges it's a fantastic game, mind, but the idea that it is just a better Mario Galaxy 1 became more and more questionable as time went on. Mario Galaxy 2 is indeed a more fun game, but it almost sacrifices much of the magic Mario Galaxy 1 has in order to be that. Mario Galaxy has a stronger story, arguably it is still the perfect Mario story, it has a more cohesive theming as it almost never drops its space opera roots, it has this sweeping, beautiful orchestral score that makes it feel like an epic, something far more grand than we've ever experienced from Nintendo before. Mario Galaxy 2, meanwhile, feels more like a Mario game, it kind of adopts the obstacle courses in the sky level design that Mario would go on to be criticized for in the coming years, the theme becoming incoherent, the design streamlined to a fault and the story, famously, absent. In Nintendo's quest to make a more fun game, they scrubbed Mario Galaxy of the things that made it an impactful piece of art.

Pikmin 1 is undeniably the worst Pikmin game. It even says so in the title and it's something I have made clear throughout this piece. It's clunky and basic and buggy. Pikmin die for no reason, they get caught under things they are actively building, they're dumb as rocks with AI you would expect from an early era GameCube game and at times it ruins the experience. The time limit forces the game to be small and forces the player to feel rushed, barely being able to take in the scenery of this weird alien planet and punishing them for not being good enough at a game that does not adequately teach you how to be good at it. It often feels like it's from a bygone era where it expects you to buy it and just be your life for a summer, which is insane when it has such limited content and is also in a very new player unfriendly genre, the real time strategy game. Pikmin 1 is a product that needs to be improved on.

However, much like the earlier example of Mario Galaxy, I feel as though Pikmin loses something in its "improvements". As noted previously, Pikmin 1 feels like a very real environment, something that could exist when the player isn't there to experience it. Unfortunately I feel as though the later games really fail to capture this aspect of the game. Pikmin 1 certainly has its out there enemy concepts and encounters, late in the game there's literally a pig that has evolved to be a balloon for no discernable advantage as all it seems to do is float above water and push things in to drown them, but as the series goes on, this element becomes more and more lost.

Pikmin 2 makes a number of interesting decisions with regards to new enemies. Some of them are very fascinating plays on the enemies already seen in the first game, such as a variant of the series' staple, the Bulborb, who has evolved a hair-like adaptation to aid it in cold weather. Some of them are a little out there and don't make a ton of sense, like the Antenna Beetle, a bug evolved to replicate the distinct whistling noise that attracts Pikmin despite the fact that, as far as we knew, the entire Pikmin whistle thing is a recent development brought about the crash landing of Olimar. Strange, but I guess you can suspend your disbelief there. But some enemies are the Man-At-Legs.

Resembling a giant "daddy long legs" spider, the Man-At-Legs is a boss seen in Pikmin 2, appearing in one of the final dungeons of the game. The Man-At-Legs is noteworthy for its striking appearance, having a seemingly robotic body with four long spider-like legs coming out of it, three organic and one robotic. The creature constantly emits steam and other mechanical noises, and it attacks by locking onto an enemy at which point a gun comes out of its mechanical body and fires onto the creature it is locked onto. The Man-at-Legs is, as you could gather, a cyborg, a creature that has evolved a symbiotic relationship with the leftover technology of the planet that came before. There are a few other such creatures in Pikmin, the Groinks are notably fish that have evolved to hunt on land using mechanical components, but the Man-At-Legs I think is the most egregious of these examples. The idea of an animal naturally evolving a symbiotic relationship with technology is a neat idea, don't get me wrong. I don't know how feasible it is, but it's something that if handled well I could suspend my disbelief. Unfortunately the way they handled it is "a spider with a gatling gun".

The Man-At-Legs is an absolutely jarring enemy to throw at the player in what is otherwise a pretty grounded universe. Pikmin 2 has other eccentric enemies, as previously mentioned, but the enemies that have technological components are the breaking point to me. What once felt like a real planet now feels like a video game world. These enemies don't feel like they were designed with the idea that they are natural parts of the world, they feel like the designers wanted enemies that have guns and worked backwards from there. They sacrificed the world that had so elegantly been created for the sake of making a more challenging boss fight. They sacrificed their personality for the sake of making it more fun for the player.

Speaking of boss fights, I feel the way later Pikmin games handle their bosses also makes this world feel less tangible. Pikmin 1, of course, had its fair share of boss fights, with each main area having at least two to its name. However, in Pikmin 1 bosses didn't really feel like bosses in the same way that they would in the later games. Bosses felt like part of the ecosystem, the geography of the areas communicating to you "this is definitely a boss" but also making it feel very natural, as if these were simply more animals you were naturally stumbling across on your quest for survival. The sole exception to this being the final boss, the Emperor Bulblax, which takes place in an area dedicated to it. I'm not the most fond of this decision either, the Final Trial I feel misses the mark with what makes the rest of the game so great, but I can appreciate it on a certain level as sort of a test of the player's knowledge and resourcefulness.

Starting with Pikmin 2 though, basically every boss encounter is a final trial. The introduction of dungeons to the game also saw the introduction of more dedicated boss areas. Most dungeons end with this large room that exists only to contain a boss fight, as you would likely expect dungeons to. There is also a clear lack of bosses that naturally occur in the overworld on top of this. I feel this ultimately makes the bosses in Pikmin 2 feel less substantial. Despite the fact that sometimes they would be fascinating looks into the creatures that exist in the Pikmin world, like the Empress Bulblax which is a giant matronly Grub Dog who is constantly giving birth to young Bulborbs, it becomes difficult to see them as anything other than video game boss fights. This disconnect only becomes greater as the game progresses, dungeons may have multiple boss encounters which all choreograph that they are boss fights, the realism slowly vanishes as bosses become more eccentric, culminating in the games' final boss which is a giant insect that uses a sink and a vacuum tube to fight you.

Pikmin 3 is somehow worse about this fact, though. Despite Pikmin 3 in many ways being a return to form of Pikmin 1, including having many of the games' bosses just naturally appear in the overworld as if they're normal creatures inhabiting this planet, it makes a much bigger blunder by introducing major area bosses to the formula. The six major bosses of Pikmin 3 are not only entirely unique enemies unseen anywhere else in the game, but they all have incredibly specific battle arenas that all have little build up sections, have little intro cutscenes to show off the boss in all its splendor, and have entirely unique fights with specific mechanics and, usually, some sort of puzzle to be solved to gain the ability to attack them. They are very literally Zelda bosses in the middle of this Pikmin game, bosses designed to be more fun and more interesting than all that came before. Bosses are designed to have this feeling of grandeur to them, for the player to look at and feel like they've accomplished something, like they've defeated a real, honest to god video game boss. And they are fun, they are unique, interesting battles to both flex the designer's creativity and the players' understanding of the mechanics. But they also feel like they once again are sacrificing what made Pikmin so special in the first place for the sake of fun.

The dungeons introduced in Pikmin 2 are the biggest example of this idea, however. Dungeons are the most contentious mechanic in the Pikmin series to me. So much so that their reintroduction turned me off of Pikmin 4 almost entirely. I think if you have read this far, you can imagine why. Pikmin originally operated under this idea that it was a race against the clock, you only had so much time to accomplish goals for the day before the night comes and you have to leave the planet due to hostile nocturnal predators. While I find this element extremely compelling as it adds to the survival nature of the story, admittedly a lot of people find time limits like this anxiety-inducing. I have had plenty of trouble getting people into one of my favorite games of all time, Majora's Mask, due to the time limit at the core of its gameplay. So Pikmin 2 effectively removes it with the introduction of dungeons.

Dungeons are by far the mechanic that robs Pikmin 2 of the thing that made Pikmin 1 so special. I've talked a lot about Pikmin 1 feeling so real, like a functioning world that Olimar is a trespasser on. And dungeons, wholesale, undo this idea more than any other. Not only does time freeze in them, making the entire day restriction pretty superfluous all told, but dungeons make Pikmin's world feel like a video game the most. You'll enter one and it'll have this absolutely unhinged scenery ranging from "an actual cave system" to "what appears to be leftover plumbing from the world before" to "an illogically hollow space that looks like a classroom". I'm pretty sure at least one dungeon takes on the appearance of being in the sky despite all of them being entirely underground. These are not lost places, buried ruins of a forgotten civilization that Olimar and Louie are uncovering, these are meaningless backdrops, designed to be visually stimulating without any care for what they mean to the atmosphere.

Not only that but they completely ruin the whole idea of this being a functional ecosystem in the first place. You are bombarded with loads of rooms of just enemies hanging out together with no rhyme or reason. The idea these were all real animals was always limited by the game's AI, mind, which is why in all Pikmin games you rarely see enemies interact with each other. But due to dungeons' tight, enclosed areas, it can't help but draw attention to how much the creatures of the Pikmin world are just video game enemies. They are there to serve a specific purpose, to be a problem for the player, and have no greater context beyond that. What was once a world full of such potential, such promise, such ecological value now feels like nothing more than it is, a video game. A good video game, mind. But a video game.

Pikmin 1 is not a great video game. It's arguably not even a good one anymore; over two decades have passed since it came out and it has aged considerably. It's mechanically lacking, so much so that an entire type of Pikmin is relegated to doing an incredibly specific job because the intended mechanic for it couldn't be implemented. The AI is terrible, Pikmin are incredibly dumb, putting themselves in danger constantly just from losing track of the player or their pathing back to base being terrible. I think I have genuinely had more Pikmin die falling through a bridge they're building than to any of the numerous non-boss enemies in the game. The game can be almost entirely solved on your second playthrough, making almost all of the core points to its favor seem kind of trivial. Honestly, I feel like it can be solved pretty easily on your first playthrough, I only didn't get to the optimal number of days on the first try because of a bad run in with a Wollywog or two. It is a rough experience, especially with all the later Pikmin games that just improve the gameplay a hundred fold. Pikmin 4 even contains something of a better remake of Pikmin 1, with an even tighter time limit to battle against. Literally I have had multiple friends attempt to sell me on the fourth game entirely on this mode, saying I have to play it if Pikmin 1 is my favorite (this mode is locked behind a game I'm unsure if I would otherwise enjoy). As a game Pikmin 1 is the worst entry in this series.

But Pikmin 1 is also a totally unique work of art, doing so much right that its successors fail to capture. It's something that can only be created by someone who has an entirely out there idea with no clue if it's going to work and the wherewithal to push forward regardless. And I feel as though Nintendo did to Pikmin what it always does, smooth out its edges when its edges are the things about it that make it brilliant. Pikmin is now a better video game, there is no argument to be had there. For all my talk about what does and doesn't work about Pikmin 3, I had more actual fun playing it than I ever had Pikmin 1, despite my clear bias towards the latter game. But, I feel as though in making Pikmin a better game, they made it a worse piece of art. It has lost something in its numerous iterations, something that was seen as a problem to be solved by a company that puts fun over art.

I cannot in good conscience say we would be better off with a world where Pikmin prioritized the things I loved about the first game. The public has certainly spoken on that fact, Pikmin continues to sell more and be enjoyed by new players with each entry. And I cannot bring myself to mourn the fact that all those people are choosing a more fun game. That's the medium, fun should be paramount, I recognize the artistic significance of Soulsbornes and yet I don't play any of them because I don't think they're very fun! But, to me, Pikmin 1 will likely remain the best Pikmin game for many of the reasons people would cite it as the worst one.