Documenting Every Lie, Absurdity or Otherwise Notable Detail in “Can You Beat Pikmin 2"
If you have not watched my video essay, “Can You Beat Pikmin 2?”, then tragically the jig is already, to some extent, up. Still, though, it is worth giving a full view before coming back to this post. I intend this to function as a sort of companion piece, to be read timestamp by timestamp while rewatching. If I don’t mention something here, there is a decent chance it is actually a true statement.
[0:11] I found this Coinbase calculator by accident by literally googling “POKO to USD” to see if any redditors had done the math.
[0:25] The clip choice for “exploration” is tactically nonsensical. It’s in the very corner of the Perplexing Pool, on the ledge above the Shower Room. There is nothing there, it doesn’t look like there could be anything there, and most players have probably never even walked here.
[0:26] I hand-selected a clip of me fighting the easiest enemy in the game for “combat.” It takes several seconds for this enemy to grab and eat a single pikmin, it is genuinely weaker than dwarf bulborb (the tiny red/white/sometimes orange guys).
[0:34] If you couldn’t guess, I’m a lifelong Pikmin superfan. I have touched a Pikmin game before.
[0:34] Including the widely-panned 3DS sidescrolling puzzle spinoff “Hey! Pikmin” as a “main entry” is bait.
[0:37] This is actually true, I could not find the original artist.
[0:52] This section was recorded on a modified version of the game that edited the UI in the settings menu to have the challenge rules.
[0:56] This entire playthrough was recorded on an emulator, from start to finish. I do own a physical copy of the game, but the decent quality resolution of the video is a clue that this was not recorded via capture card.
[1:08] Walking away from the tutorial is a waste of time that doesn’t do anything.
[1:17] I had never seen this cutscene before, which apparently only plays if you walk away from the tutorial.
[1:20] Every single bit of voiceover that sounds live was written, recorded and added in post, in a worse audio environment to make it sound more believable. I did not record myself talking while playing the game.
[1:29] This is the first clue that I am not an amateur at this game. Throwing a Pikmin at the top of a Pellet Posy (these flowers) instantly breaks it, but a player attacking one for the first time wouldn’t know that.
[1:56] Throwing pikmin at this wall is bait, you can use the swarm feature to have every pikmin start attacking it immediately.
[2:25] This has never happened to me before. This pikmin death was, in this scenario, actually forced. I really did get surprised and attacked during the cutscene. However, you could (and normally would) just kill all the enemies before walking up to this hole.
[2:57] “In this run, there’s no way to have that many out at this point…” 100 is the maximum amount of pikmin you can have out at any point.
[3:02] In Pikmin 1, you can actually push objects by yourself using a glitch.
[3:05] This B-Roll of me messing around in the Piklopedia trying to somehow break the game open was recorded in between days 1 and 2, before I allegedly got stuck and went to try this out.
[3:08] I did not spend 2 hours doing this.
[3:25] All footage of me scrolling the wiki was recorded after the playthrough was over.
[3:43] This was not 20 minutes of exploring, though it was several. A player would also have to consciously try not to run into the purple flowers (you can watch me turn around tactically to prolong the sequence). To that extent, this entire sequence is a nonsensical diatribe. Generally, a new player would see the globe half, go “oh that’s weird,” walk 30 seconds down the hall, find purples, and then it would all make sense.
[4:15] No new player would find this golden fella this early, with that much intention. Nor would they know to use purples to hit it, which have an auto-lock feature when doing their ground pound. While we’re here, it’s worth noting that my usage of purples throughout the run is unusual for a new player. They are extremely powerful, overpowered even. Their ground pound does a lot of damage, and each ground pound has a 20% chance to stun the enemy. This can stack to perma-stun enemies with enough purples, which is easy to do with the aforementioned auto-lock on the ground pound. A new player would not know these things.
[4:23] I never use Ultra-Spicy Spray in this run except to speed up breaking down a gate or two.
[4:40] There is no need to “scope out” the Hole of Beasts, nor would a new player think to do so. I say this to set up [4:47].
[4:45] Note that I clearly see the fire geysers here.
[4:47] This is code for me using this cave to farm up 95 purple pikmin. If it wasn’t clear, purple and white pikmin can only be obtained from flowers – they can’t be farmed. The game balances their power by having most purple and white flowers despawn when you reach a certain threshold of their respective pikmin types. However, not all flowers do, and the purple flower on the fourth sublevel of the Hole of Beasts is one of them. The reason I don’t do the Hole of Beasts until day 4 is because I spent all of day 3 entering this cave over a dozen times. I entered, ran to the fourth floor, got 5 purples, left, and did it again.
[4:53] A new player would not know about this double spray tech. Pushing your other captain into the spray to get them to drink it, then drinking it yourself, is an exploit.
[5:00] That is the script of the video with the document renamed, not my Hole of Beasts gameplan.
[5:06] As mentioned before, no one would have this many purples here.
[5:20] We don’t cut it close.
[5:23] The way I handle this egg is unusual for a new player, though somewhat believable in the diegesis of already having 95 purples. Those bug enemies, called mittites, have a small chance of spawning when you break an egg. While they’re passive, they freak out your pikmin, causing you to lose control of them until the mittites disappear underground. Killing a mittite, however, gives you one whole nectar drop, meaning killing all of them is a lot of nectar. This is why, when breaking an egg, it’s optimal to throw one purple to break the egg, then hold another purple in your hand in case the mittites spawn, as the ground pound will kill all of them immediately. A new player would not know this.
[5:24] This rest sublevel was not much-needed.
[5:31] Given that I saw the fire geysers during my recon, I should have brought red pikmin to deal with them, as they’re immune to fire.
[5:33] I got hit on purpose.
[5:39] It is not barely possible, it’s really easy to swarm them when they’re inactive. Fire geysers are a joke of a hazard in this game and mentioning them at all borders on bait.
[5:49] A demonstration of the above.
[5:58] Most new players will face a pikmin extinction, or close to it, to this boss the first few times they fight it. It’s not that it’s super difficult, but it is extremely punishing to new players who don’t know the timings to whistle.
[6:04] I took no notes.
[6:17] Throwing pikmin even after the bag is squished is bait.
[6:30] White pikmin aren’t amazing, but they do have uses. They’re immune to poison, deal a lot of damage to enemies when eaten, and their fast movement gives them genuine utility in moving treasures (you can ignore and outrun some enemies with enough white pikmin carrying something).
[6:50] This was not an accident, and “spawning object” is me just saying game dev-sounding words.
[7:03] Those are screenshots of code from a game I am currently working on, not Pikmin 2.
[7:10] White pikmin can dig. That’s just a feature. I actively had to cut out the cutscene where the game remarks on white pikmin being able to dig.
[7:40] Throwing non-white pikmin at the poison spewers is bait.
[7:43] A new player would struggle more to kill this boss, it takes precision aiming.
[7:48] This is true, but also suspicious. The knapsack has a genuine intended purpose, but I don’t use it for that a single time in this run.
[7:53] One of the only uses of the spicy spray in this playthrough.
[8:00] As revealed later, it is not the game’s final area, though it is the only other area available before the debt is cleared.
[8:07] There isn’t a better time to make this point, but enemies in caves give pokos when brought back to the ship, and they also respawn when you reenter a cave. This means the debt can be cleared in the Emergence Cave, the tutorial cave, by running it repeatedly and inching towards 10k a few corpses at a time. This has been done before and documented on Youtube. The point is, though it’s obvious on the face of it, the fundamental premise of this video is flawed for nuanced reasons. It isn’t “nearly impossible” to clear the debt with what we had left to explore, it’d just be tedious.
[8:23] This is a scale. The side with more pikmin weight goes down, and the other goes up. It isn’t random.
[8:42] I wasn’t necessarily implying this, but you don’t need berries to kill this guy. There’s actually a good reason not to. The bitter spray that I use here makes enemies immobile for a time, but when they die they don’t leave their corpse. That corpse is good for getting your yellows up at the end of this day. Either way works, though.
[8:50] It is optimal to leave all your corpses lying around for later on this day for this purpose, but a new player wouldn’t think to do this.
[9:07] Captains cannot damage gates.
[9:20] Said “big guy” is one of the most threatening enemies in the game. He does go down easily to purples, though.
[9:46] I genuinely tried to softlock myself here, by having the breadbugs take every single treasure and corpse back on purpose, but I learned while recording this section that the giant breadbug can be damaged by purples. I had to cut that footage out of this section.
[10:23] It is up to the viewer if this is an exploit or not. It’s kind of intentional.
[10:55] Breadbugs being damaged this way is not a glitch, it is the intended mechanic.
[11:20] Many players may not even realize you can throw pikmin on top of breadbugs, as it can be a little finicky and it is easier to have them grab treasures and then steal them.
[11:27] At this point, there is no particular reason why we had to do this cave, or any cave. Or even why we needed this treasure from this cave. We could have just skipped this floor and moved on. Whenever I refer to something as a barrier at this point, I am inherently lying, because we could go somewhere else if it was actually impossible.
[11:35] “Come in clutch” is overstated, though it is a nice buff to not have to worry about electric damage.
[11:50] Getting there the intended way involves breaking an electric gate.
[11:53] This is a glitch. The knapsack glitch involves exploiting pikmin treasure-carrying pathing to have them carry you up walls you are not supposed to be able to get up. Treating this nonchalantly as something everyone knows is bait.
[12:17] This text on screen is lying, it’s a coincidence that I thought would be funny to frame as intentional. Even if I didn’t have the dream material, you could just break the electricity gate like any other.
[12:46] I did actually record 20 minutes of me pretending I couldn’t get this treasure.
[12:56] This is a lie. The intended way is to throw red pikmin up the ledge on the right side of the room, then walk up the slope with your captain and rejoin the pikmin. It’s a demonstration of the scorch guard, and you do not need blue pikmin. I did discover another insane way you can get it as well while trying to record footage of me being unable to retrieve the treasure. On the left side of the room, by the geyser, if you hold a yellow pikmin and get a running start, you can actually barely make the throw to get it all the way up to the top by the gyroid. It’s also easier with the speed boost upgrade you can get in a different cave (I tested that on a different file once discovering this), though I didn’t run that cave in this playthrough.
[13:15] This is footage of me testing the yellow throws from the above note.
[13:17] No one doesn’t know that blue pikmin exist.
[13:26] This is a reasonable way to realize there is an onion for a new pikmin type around. A new player, though, would likely have either already found it by this point, or looked on the map, where its location is clearly visible at all times.
[13:35] “Exploring all the wettest parts of the map” to “get lucky” is bait.
[13:43] This puzzle in front of me is literally the same puzzle that I am claiming is impossible. Water doesn’t let you get pikmin through, so you throw your pikmin up the ledge and walk around. I don’t even mention it as a puzzle here, despite doing it in service of circumventing the same puzzle.
[14:09] I’ll mention it one more time, but this treasure isn’t even an upgrade. I could have skipped it.
[14:10] This is a lie, I pre-planned my route through the game. More on that later.
[14:30] This is one of the most difficult caves in the game, easily the most stressful, and the most gimmicky.
[14:39] It is true that Bulbmin are a lifesaver here. However, starting with only blues in a cave that has every hazard in it is a challenge that will throw most players for a loop, even decently experienced ones.
[14:45] You should enter this cave with fewer than 100 pikmin, more like 80, to save room for bulbmin. I forgot to do that. These deaths still weren’t intentional, that is a lie, I just played it poorly.
[14:51] If it wasn’t clear, it isn’t particularly nonchalant. You can just keep walking past the bombs though, that’s true.
[14:54] After 5 minutes on each sublevel before this one, the final boss of the cave drops from the ceiling and starts chasing you. He is invincible and can crush massive amounts of pikmin. It is true that I did not run into him before this point, but new players would never go fast enough, and would have encountered (and been terrorized by) him repeatedly.
[15:09] This boss fight is supposed to be catharsis after a borderline-traumatic cave.
[15:20] You have to do a lot, so getting only 700 pokos is a bit of a practical joke from the devs, justified somewhat by the genuinely life-changing utility of the pluckophone if you consciously route to get it early.
[15:35] This is advanced tech, but you don’t actually have to get yellows over there or do the puzzle I’m about to describe. If you get the speed upgrade I mentioned, you can use momentum to throw blues over the ledge blocking the shower room, where they’ll then break open the cave and drain the water. This lets you skip the bridge and walk the yellows over. There isn’t a reason to do this, if it’s faster it’s not by much, but figured I’d mention it while we’re here.
[15:40] That blue pikmin being up there while I say it’s “right in front of our eyes” is bait, though by accident. The way I did this puzzle most of my life is what I showed in the video, but it is not what you are supposed to do. You’re supposed to throw your pikmin up to where that blue is, then whistle them and have them follow you from above while you walk across the bridge.
[16:04] I really do have no idea what happened here. Genuinely baffled to this day, my real life reaction was much more exaggerated than the “what?” I recorded.
[16:30] This is stupid. You are supposed to try not to get caught inside.
[16:46] This is not a bug. You are supposed to kill the enemy to get the treasure.
[17:10] I make a point out of the flower later in the run that “turns a pikmin into any other type of pikmin,” and I’ll elaborate on that point when we get there, but it’s worth noting one of those flowers is also in this sublevel and I make no mention of it.
[17:20] This boss is not intuitive for a lot of new players, though many won’t have too many issues. He follows whichever captain is the active captain, so you have to repeatedly swap back and forth to damage him, as his tail is his weak spot. He isn’t good at killing pikmin though, that’s true. I treat it a touch too nonchalantly.
[17:40] This is one of the more useful knapsacks in the game, as it skips breaking a poison-protected gate that takes 30 years to open.
[17:43] This is one of the harder caves in the game where a lot happens, and I frankly gamed out of my mind on a few floors. Nothing relevant to the narrative happened, is what I actually meant.
[18:10] This enemy is very scary, and it is a joke that I only lost a flower on one pikmin.
[18:18] Still don’t know how to open it, if any pikheads reading this know please send a message.
[18:27] It turns a pikmin into 8 of the color you choose, the only type of flower to actually increase your pikmin amount. However, because I made it a point to do this cave deathless (given it’s hard and long and filled with bombs), I had 100 pikmin, so it couldn’t give me any of the extra 7 it otherwise would. This is bait.
[18:43] This boss obliterates new players. I didn’t know you can actually destroy it just with purples until this playthrough, though this was my second try at doing so and it’s high-risk. Its laser gun eviscerates your squad, and you’re supposed to take cover behind the various metal barriers around the arena when it prepares to fire.
[18:59] The amount of time that passes in the day from leaving the cave to finding the ring is a joke when it’s right next to the landing site.
[19:05] When I said I routed the game from the start, it was for a specific purpose: making sure I was at 9200 pokos at the end of this day. I obviously knew the Citadel of Spiders had 800 pokos, so I wanted to set it up so that the last treasure in the Citadel put us over the debt, for this upcoming sequence.
[19:14] This is a lie. I’ve grabbed almost no above-ground treasures in this run, and I skipped a cave in both the Awakening Wood and Valley of Repose. Thousands of pokos have been left untouched, even ignoring the theoretically infinite pokos from corpses.
[19:40] I had to actively try throughout this playthrough to not accidentally activate the cutscene for finding the Citadel, and also worked to keep it off my screen as much as possible throughout the run (though I’m pretty sure it’s visible a few times in my footage throughout the video, feel free to look for it). It’s right next to the landing site, it’s genuinely impossible to miss as a new player.
[20:35] The Citadel is one of the easiest caves in the game.
[20:40] Every clip of me losing pikmin throughout this cave was premeditated to try and look as natural as possible. At many points I genuinely struggled to have pikmin die in a way that was remotely believable, and the editing was tactical throughout this sequence.
[20:58] Having one white pikmin left was a coincidence.
[21:13] This boss could pose a problem to newer players, and it’s not unreasonable to lose even 15 pikmin here. But again, I had a genuinely hard time losing pikmin, and ran this fight three different times to get a sequence where I lost the most.
[21:22] This is true, which is why purples should be left behind here. You can bring reds if you want, but yellows are the best choice for the fight as they can be thrown the highest.
[22:02] It’s true that clearing the debt puts you into the postgame, but the postgame includes the actual final boss, the actual narrative end, and an entire area to explore. Putting the goalpost at 10k pokos is in and of itself a joke.
[22:11] It wasn’t close.
