Can you complete Pikmin 4 without any Pikmin?
Players devise unconventional strategies after finishing no-Oatchi run.
Pikmin 4 is far from a difficult game. There's no time limit you need to worry about, most resources can be perpetually collected, and the game is extremely forgiving about your ever-growing Pikmin death toll.
It's easy enough to see Pikmin 4's story properly to the end, with the toughest challenges being its platinum badges for Dandori side-missions. (It can be particularly tough with some of the Dandori battles against the AI, and especially tricky in that one, very long cave.
Tom is going through and collecting all of the platinum badges, to which I say godspeed, but ever since I finished Pikmin 4 I've been thinking about other ways I could challenge myself in the game. At time of writing, the speedrunning record for getting Pikmin 4's true ending is just under two and a half hours, but it doesn't take advantage of any area skips - it's an exercise in Dandori mastery because there aren't really any major glitches to take advantage of to begin with.
My thoughts, then, began to wander to something extremely ridiculous - completely antithetical to the whole point of the game. Can you complete Pikmin 4 without using any Pikmin?
Before the game had even been released, some parts of the Pikmin community were discussing "no Oatchi" runs. From the demo, it was clear our new puppy companion was very capable of handling tasks the Pikmin can do, and there were some concerns Oatchi would steal the show from the titular creatures - a sentiment which Tom agreed with when he played a Pikmin 4 preview build.
By the time I got around to finishing Pikmin 4, there were quite a few reports from players in its community who shared their results of no Oatchi runs. Beating the game is possible without Oatchi, though he is needed to reach 100 percent completion. Tricks such as using bomb rocks and mines to clear ledges remove the need for Oatchi's jumps in a lot of places. Otherwise, it's mostly a case of grinding caves for resources to get items.
The number of attempts at no Pikmin runs is far less, unsurprisingly. The game hasn't been designed with playing like this in mind, of course, so everything from defeating enemies to collecting raw materials will take huge amounts of time when relying solely on Oatchi (and the little amount of damage the Captain can also dish out).
One player on the game's subreddit showed their results after beating the game without sprouting any new Pikmin or picking up wild ones found in caves, resulting in the use of a mere seven, which you must pluck in the tutorial, throughout the entire game. What the results screen doesn't show is the number of Glow Pikmin used and lost, as the game doesn't keep count of these. Glow Pikmin can only be used in night expeditions and in caves however, and choosing to not use them at all would make the night missions impossible to complete without resorting to asking fellow Rescue Corps officer Dingo to automatically complete them for you.
Another player has found an extremely ingenious trick to beat the game with just Oatchi and the least amount of Pikmin possible. YouTuber Bowborb shared a brief summary of their experience doing what they've dubbed a "Piklophobic" run - which focuses on minimising the use of Pikmin. The aim is to have no Pikmin grown and no Pikmin lost at the end of each day, and the initial seven Pikmin plucked in the tutorial can't be used. The run centres on playing in multiplayer mode and unlocking the Survey Drone. This allows you to shoot pebbles as player 2, allowing you to destroy barriers and enemies without needing protective gear, and at a distance, meaning you can send Oatchi and your Captain somewhere on the map whilst completing a task separately elsewhere. The Survey Drone can even be used to throw carrots onto switches to trigger them, removing the need to throw a Pikmin over.
Another trick used by Bowborb is to collect wild Pikmin in caves and use them, and then despawn them by throwing them into a Candypop Bud and not plucking them. To prevent accidentally collecting wild Pikmin, Bowborb suggests killing them with a bomb (or freezing them, if you want to be a pacifist) before you approach them, as it won't class as part of your death count. Did Nintendo ever consider this is how players would be using the rules of Pikmin 4? I doubt it, and I love it.
Sadly, Bowborb was unable to complete a 100 percent completion run of Pikmin 4 like this, due to tight time limits when collecting the gold bar that needs a strength of 1000 to be moved, but they believe it could be possible with good time management and a save file at a more convenient time of day to complete the arduous task of collecting 100 wild Pikmin, converting them into Purple Pikmin, carrying the treasure and then returning to a cave sublevel five times to despawn them. I can understand why they ran out of time during the day, but it's mighty impressive at how much they did achieve.
The one annoyance Bowborb reported is the fact that any items gained during co-op play will be lost upon closing the session, meaning if you close the game or switch to single player mode when you return to co-op mode you'll have to start with nothing and waste time grinding to earn the items again.
Despite this, I'm still very tempted to give playing Pikmin 4 like this a go. It sounds like a proper challenge to myself, and a lesson in patience and multitasking. If anyone thinks of other outlandish ways to play Pikmin 4, I'm all ears.