Worst rogue-like know to man. Earns a lot of credit for its great character design and writing, but the game is a chore to play. Pikmin was not a game designed around combat, so it's weird Nintendo followed it up with an action rogue-like.
Caves are 75% of the game, and all you do in them is slowly fight one enemy at a time or wait for pikmin to carry items- the only way to play the game is slow, methodical, and tedious as hell. Caves aren't only boring, but they put a wrench in many things that work in the first game. A "day" in Pikmin 1 is a consistent unit of play time, and a major factor in how you plan your day. In Pikmin 2, a "day" is a 1-3 hour period that ends when you decide to leave a given hub world- the timer is still there, though.

Water Wraith is pretty cool, though.

Pikmin 2 is a very divisive game, with one side of the fanbase proclaiming it to be peak fiction and god's gift to Earth, and the other side claiming its ruined by atrocious dungeon design. While the first Pikmin is simple and basic by comparison, Pikmin 2 expands on the formula in odd and unexpected ways, and is nothing if not memorable.

I appreciate a goofy puzzle game like this making real effort on the exposition. Captain Olimar returns from his treacherous expedition of the first game only to find his employer in massive debt due to carelessness of his coworker, Louie. Olimar's prized S.S. Dolphin from the first game is sold to help pay off debt, and Olimar and Louie are sent back to the Pikmin Planet to recover treasure to be sold, Lethal Company style. Louie, despite almost never talking, works well as a foil to Olimar, and his presence allows for 2 playable captains, increasing the capabilities of multitasking the Pikmin series is well-known for.

Two new types of Pikmin are found not long after arriving on the planet, the purple and white variants. However these Pikmin are subterranean, spawning only from Candypop Buds of the same color, unlike the Onions of the red, blue, and yellow Pikmin. The hefty purples are honestly overpowered, and the rest just boil down to "match this color to its element to solve puzzles", which is fine but nothing mind-blowing.

These caves are what makes Pikmin 2 such a conflicting game for so many people. The layout of each floor is procedurally generated, with the same floor potentially being very different upon a second visit. This can result in some seriously unfun and outright bullshit layouts, especially in the late-game caves that have as many as 15 floors. The early-game caves are generally much more forgiving, and each dungeon is complete with a boss at the end that often drops an upgrade for Olimar and Louie. These are mostly simple things like the ability to pluck Pikmin with the whistle, or an immunity to fire damage for the captains, but it's a cute little gameplay mechanic for each cave to feature a reward at the end, considering most of these dungeons aren't actually required to finish.

The subterranean dungeon crawling is downright hazardous, and the player is mostly limited to the squad of Pikmin they bring in, making losing large groups of Pikmin at once even more devastating here than it was in the first game. There are occasional flowers to produce more Pikmin or swap out for different colors, but for the most part spelunking is a difficult and unforgiving experience, for better or worse. Hazards such as enemies that scoop Olimar and Louie into the sky, enemies that shoot boulders capable of crushing entire legions of Pikmin, and even bomb rocks that literally fall from the sky with absolutely no warning are all commonplace in Pikmin 2. Some floors have enemies way too close to the starting point that can begin attacking immediately, leaving little time to relax in between. Speaking of relaxing, there fortunately are rest floors present in some dungeons.
These allow the player to chill, manage their Pikmin lineup with Candypop Buds, and weigh their options if they would rather use the geyser to escape with the treasure they have, or delve deeper for greater payoff and risk alike. The ambience on these floors is seriously beautiful to me, that rare sense of safety is much-needed and so welcome. The underground aesthetic is also at its best here, with the low light and dazzling flowers.

This peace is not to last however, as Pikmin 2's later dungeons love to spawn groups of enemies close to each other to the point it feels like spam. These layered attack patterns often feel like they require more precision to navigate than Pikmin 2's control scheme realistically allows, making losing Pikmin in these floors feel like an inevitability, not a dandori issue. The worst offender in dungeon design, to me, is sublevel 10 of The Dream Den. Enemies called Gattling Groinks love to lob bombs at the party mortar-style, and will revive themselves even after being defeated unless brought back to the Hocotate Pod. This level's layout frequently requires blue Pikmin to do this, but it's so deep in such a difficult dungeon that very realistically there won't even be enough blue Pikmin left. I could list off countless examples like this, but the point is there's scenarios like this one everywhere, with frustrating level design around every turn. Speaking of blue Pikmin, I'd be remiss to not mention The Submerged Castle and the horrifying Waterwraith dwelling within. The entrance to this cave is underwater and can only be accessed with blues, but as the party goes deeper they'll be chased by the Waterwraith if they linger on any floor for too long. Easily capable of running over the entire team, trying to escape from this guy is genuinely one of the most frightening things I've ever experienced in a video game outside of the horror genre, it's so unnerving.

The goal of collecting treasure instead of ship parts drives home the point harder that Olimar, Louie, and the Pikmin are very tiny, which always makes for a fun and charming setting. This treasure comes in the form of real-world everyday items such as bottlecaps, batteries, and marbles. It's very cute to know these apparently sell for serious money in the Pikmin world.

The game hits credits once 10,000 pokos have been collected and the debt has been paid off, but there is a sort of post-game afterwards involving Louie becoming stranded after being left behind. The President takes his place joining Olimar to go rescue him, but I admittedly wasn't enjoying this game the first time I played it and considered it "beaten" after hitting credits, never playing any of the Wistful Wild. This time I resolved to 100% the game and collect all treasure, which included rescuing Louie from the final boss. The dungeon design is at its worst in this area, leaving a bad last impression, but I'm happy to say I eventually did complete it 100%.

I've come to believe I was a fool for not appreciating Pikmin 2 the first time. It's vastly different from the game before and after it, and brutally difficult at times, but in a weird unexplainable way that's part of its charm. It feels similar to those cheap bottomless-pit deaths in NES platformers, or insta-kill spells in SMT games. They might not be well-designed difficulty, but there's a certain fun in knowing the odds are stacked against you and trying to persevere amidst all the bullshit. It's only a slight exaggeration/joke to say Pikmin 2 is a game about tragedy, there's just something strangely beautiful about this one, good and bad and all.

3.5/5.0

By far the most disappointing 6/10 I've ever played.

Without judging it against the other games in the series, Pikmin 2 is a pretty fun game with some frustrating moments and weird decisions. The story is still charming, the game is still beautiful, the music is still a vibe, and, during the overworld sections, it's fun to explore the world and see what you can do with 2 captains.

But as a sequel to Pikmin, it's mind-blowing why they would turn such a chill and well designed experience into a randomly generated and precise RTS experience for the majority of the gameplay.

6/10
Game #18 of 2024, March 20th

In this game you and your coworkers are sent to a distant planet full of dangerous native creatures by the shitty company you work for so you gather mundane objects for the sake of selling them back way over their actual value. So what I'm saying is that Pikmin 2 and Lethal Company are the same game.

I really liked this game. I knew going into this that I was probably gonna like it because I played this a lot as a kid but I didn't think I'd like it this much. Coming off Pikmin 4 felt like a really different beast; if that game was using the Pikmin system as an engine to make puzzles, this game uses the pikmin system to make a dungeon crawler. And it's tight.

Unlike Pikmin 1 (and the later 3), Pikmin 2 ditches the the timelimit and trims down the amount of time you spend in the overworld looking for items (though you still do that) for Caves, large multi floor dungeons with some random elements (Floor patterns, what treasures are on each floor, and type of enemies are consistent, but enemy spawn locations, treasure locations, starting position and exit locations have various different patterns).

I love the dungeons; the game knows that because there's no global timelimit like 1, it is allowed to be a little mean and punish you harsh if you fuck around because you'll always be able to resupply and go back in. Fucked up traps like bombs just falling from the sky (shoutouts to opening an egg that was full of mites that freak out all my pikmin and then dropping a bomb ontop of me), dense enemy spawn locations, enemies that very easily mulch pikmin if you move wrong (i lost a lot of pikmin to shit like calling pikmin back at the wrong time to wollywogs/moving the squad wrongly agaisnt cannon larvas), and because enemy spawns can be really dense you can't just completely own every enemy by walking behind them and throw Purple Pikmin until they die. And obviously you can't recover your pikmin outside of specific floors, so having a Pikmin Disaster fucking SUCKSSSSSSSS. It's great

Of course this is a gamecube game so it was made in the era of nintendo taking Genre, But Make It Rated E, so it's not THAT punishing. As mentioned before you have no global timelimit so if things go tits up you can always just bail, recoop your pikmin, and go back in. The game also lets you save between floors, so if you want to runback your Pikmin Disaster you can just hit reset and try again. And even if you do have to go back into the dungeon most floors are pretty easy to beeline straight to the exit to so it's quick to get back to whatever floor you missed an item on. It's fucking pikmin this isn't your masochist mod.

Things I have issues with are mostly control related. Limited camera controls can make trying to precisely aiming pikmin difficult which is frustrating for enemies with mid air attack points like the snargets and ect (this might be better on the versions of Pikmin 2 with motion controls, but then you lose all the branding, and I'm not giving up on being able to collect duracell batteries and skippy peanut butter), non flower pikmin (especially purples) being so slow that you can just lose them forces you to move slower than you need to be and is annoying, some floors just fuckin suck (S/O to Hole of heroes 6/dream den 10 layout. And by shoutout I mean go to hell. also specifically the Heroes 6 one because there are some treasure layouts that are actually impossible to get), and I think like 2-3 bosses are kinda dogshit. But it's really minor gripes in the long term.

This game was awesome. Such a fun skew for a weird console RTS/Dungeon Crawler hybrid. Not even the other pikmin game hit the same feeling, as the other dungeon focused pikmin game (4) is far more focused on puzzles than combat and "resource management" (not letting your pikmin get massacred).

The only time product placement actually enhanced an experience. This game is a time management, real time strategy, dungeon crawler. I can't think of another game like it even the other Pikmin games. Its kind of mean and fucked up, but you can save constantly so its not unforgiving. Combat is supersizing deep once get a hang of it. It's not a numbers game, if you are just swarming monsters know there is a more effective way. Thowing pikmin, learning counter timing, and knowing when to call pikmin back before monster thrash. The elephant in the room is purple pikmin. People over state thier power, yes they are good at combat cus that's their roll. Every pikmin has a roll and you can't beat the game with nothing but purples. (And I'm not just saying that cus they are rare.) They are a power piece that needs to be managed like everything else and to those who say they invalidate reds, no the fact that they nerfed fire did that.

Pikmin 2: The Definitive Sequel

Pikmin 2, in my opinion, is the perfect example of what I call a "Definitive Sequal". Everything about Pikmin 2 is just better than anything done in Pikmin 1. Pikmin 1 was a great game, however, in contrast to Pikmin 2, Pikmin 1 just felt like somewhat of a tech demo compared to Pikmin 2. I'm glad as a newcomer to the Pikmin series that I played Pikmin 1 before Pikmin 2, I previously considered either trying out Pikmin 3 or 4 as my entry points into the series, but starting off with the first two games was the best choice I made. Pikmin 2 feels like a more, better-developed version of Pikmin 1, gameplay is expanded upon with the introduction of the Purple and White Pikmin, as well as the introduction of Louie as the second in command. Louie is kinda like the Luigi of Pikmin, while Olimar is the Mario of Pikmin, being the face of the series (outside of the Pikmin themselves).

Pikmin 2 does everything a sequel should do, improve on top of the first game, and introduce new inclusions. Pikmin 2's gameplay is the same at it's core compared to Pikmin 1, however, Pikmin 2 introduces two new Pikmin, The purple and white Pikmin, and they are fantastic additions, alongside the big three, Red, Blue, and Yellow. The purple Pikmin are heavier, compared to the other Pikmin in the game, they deal more damage to enemies and can carry items more easily than other Pikmin, but they are slower, and not immune to any hazards. White Pikmin can resist poison and can dig up treasures from the ground. I love the inclusion of these new Pikmin, the purple Pikmin quickly became my favorite Pikmin to have, due to it being one hell of a tank with damage onto enemies, as well as making it easier to carry treasures. However, I like the White Pikmin, but they were my least favorite Pikmin to use throughout my playthrough.

I didn't have a lot of them stored, so I limited my use of them, only bringing them out with I found a breakable wall with poison or needed to dig up a treasure underground. One of the differences between the two new Pikmin compared to the original three is the fact that getting new purple/white Pikmin in your party is quite limiting compared to getting any new Pikmin from the original three. You can get new Pikmin of the original three types by bringing items to each respective pod, but for the Purple/White Pikmin, you have to find rare flowers called Candypop Buds, and even then, you can only create 5 per flower, so it is quite limiting. I don't mind this, I found my supply of Purple Pikmin to be constant throughout my playthrough, but by the end of my playthrough, I had less than 10 White Pikmin. This would be a problem if Pikmin 2 kept Pikmin 1's limited day system, but thankful, Pikmin 2 has scrapped that feature from Pikmin 1, and you can now spend as much time, without worrying about wasting your day.

I love this, I liked the limited day system from Pikmin 1, and I think bringing it back, as some sort of optional game mode would have been cool to bring more of a challenge to Pikmin 2, but the exclusion for Pikmin 2's core gameplay was the best decision. Pikmin 2 has so much more replayability than Pikmin 1, even after beating the game, I want to go back and collect every single treasure, and replay it again. Of course, nobody plays Pikmin for the story, but there is a story here. After the events of Pikmin 1, Oilmar comes back home and meets with his boss, who tells Oilmar that the company is in massive debt, and now needs to pay $10,000 to get rid of it. Olimar has to go back on the planet from the first game, alongside Louie, to find treasure and repay the debt. The story doesn't do anything but serve as a reason for the gameplay to exist, and for this type of game, it works.

Olimar and Louie are charming characters to play as, and the Pikmin are cute as they were before. The OST continues the beautiful, nature-sounding OST from Pikmin 1, and it's as good as it was in Pikmin 1. Hajime Wakai's compositions add a scene of life to Pikmin 2, just as he did in Pikmin 1. Every song just sounds perfect within each area of the game they play in. As for any complaints, I found the Pikmin AI to be not too great sometimes, and this was also one of my complaints I had with Pikmin 1, but it's not as bad here as it was in Pikmin 1, so I'll give it that.

Overall, Pikmin 2 as a definitive sequel, it does everything better than Pikmin 1, improves on it, and adds new additions. I absolutely loved my time with Pikmin 2, and can't wait to play Pikmin 3 and 4 later on.

Stats:
10th game I've completed in 2024
Played on Nintendo Switch (played the HD remaster from Pikmin 1 + 2 and wrote my review here cuz backloggd's system for ports/remasters suck)
Hours into Game: 12 hours and 10 minutes
Score: 9/10 (4.5/5)
Last Statement: Pik(men)

This is a strong contender for my favorite game of all time. I spent countless hours on this game as a kid, and even replaying it found myself loving it again, and recently, I watched and helped a friend beat it all, and I have loved it once more. It's a special game to me, one with sentimental value. But not only is it one I love, it's a game I love to discuss due to how different it is from Pikmin 1.

There are a lot of types of video game sequels, and this one falls into the "experimental second game" category, where it takes what the first game did and completely spins it all around upside down. A lot of the things that defined Pikmin 1 - the anxiety-inducing day limit, the well-balanced Pikmin types, the loneliness of Olimar's situation, the time management of each day - ALL of this is absent from Pikmin 2.

The first thing to praise Pikmin 2 for is something of a "free point," something the game would have done regardless of direction, which is its stability and quality of life improvements. Pikmin 1 is both notoriously jank and has by far the worst Pikmin AI in the series (which are honestly charm points for the game IMO, but thank god it got better). Pikmin 2 has little to no debilitating glitches like the Crush Glitch; the most you'll see is a treasure (like the Unspeakable Wonder or Possessed Squash) get a little bit stuck, but you can get it out with a little effort. The only other one to come to mind is Pikmin can die out-of-bounds in caves if they go high enough past a wall (best place to do this is the Pileated Snagret fight). Furthermore, the Pikmin AI is VASTLY improved, they're so much more cooperative it's insane. Tripping has also been reduced in frequency and duration, which is highly appreciated. Not to mention the captains now have funny little idle animations and the Pikmin SING AND MAKE NOISES! It's such a small change, but it adds so much to the game, I love the little Pikmin songs they sing.

Additionally, this game has something truly remarkable: the Piklopedia. Pikmin 1's end-of-day journals and ending roll call are cool, but Pikmin 2's Piklopedia BLOWS it out of the water. Every enemy, every interactable object, all the bosses, even the fauna and grasses are recorded with Olimar's beautiful way of writing, with wording complex, yet without feeling convoluted or hard to understand. Every enemy has a funny little scientific name, and the new journal entries you get after getting every treasure are just delectable! AND YOU CAN THROW CARROTS AT THE ENEMIES! On the other end, you also have the treasure hoard, which you sadly can't throw carrots at, but is very entertaining nonetheless. Olimar has a ton of out-of-pocket stuff to say - things about hating his boss and corporations, talking about his (ungrateful) wife, his kids, the ship, Louie, and oftentimes talking about himself in the most ridiculous ways. Going through the Treasure Hoard is, well, like searching for treasure. Many of the entries aren't that notable, but some I genuinely couldn't believe what I was reading! Also, the way it scrolls through the list when you complete a set is satisfying. The treasure hoard also has Sales Pitches once you complete the set, but these are less interesting overall.

Alright, now into the meat and potatoes of the game. First off are the new Pikmin. Reds and Blues are exactly the same as the first game (although Reds got slightly indirectly nerfed since you can destroy Fire Geysers now), and Yellows have been repurposed to no longer wield bomb rocks but are now immune to the new Electricity hazard. The new Piks on the block are Purples, Whites, and Bulbmin. Bulbmin can only be obtained and used within dungeons, but in exchange are immune to every main element (Fire, Water, Electricity, and Poison). Good, solid, balanced, and reward a player for entering with less than 100 Pikmin, or help out a player who has lost a lot of their squad. Purple and White Pikmin can only be obtained via Candypop buds, which have been reworked to only convert 5 Pikmin before disappearing. White Pikmin are fast, small, can see buried treasures, are immune to poison, and will deal heavy poison damage to enemies that eat them. They're quite fun to use! You can sacrifice them to diffuse a strong enemy, they're great for carrying stuff back, and they're pretty naturally useful thanks to the Poison immunity. Good, balanced, solid.

And then there's Purples.

Full disclosure: I've never played Pikmin 4, and I've only played Pikmin 3 once, but I have no doubt in my mind that Purple Pikmin in Pikmin 2 are the strongest Pikmin type, ever. Good lord they're strong. They aren't immune to any element (they can't be knocked over by wind, but lose their flowers anyway, so it isn't worth much). But in exchange, they are VERY strong. They home in on enemies, meaning you don't have to aim that much. They deal heavy damage when they stomp on enemies, and deal a small stun in a nearby radius. Their actual melee attacks are way stronger than normal, and to top it all off, they have a decent chance to deal a LONG stun to an enemy, lasting around 7 seconds or so. They are MONSTERS. The game gives out very few of these for good reason, you only need about 20 to beat any enemy in the game without paying attention. They are obscenely strong. If I have 35 Red Pikmin versus a Red Bulborb, I'm not confident I'll beat it without losing anything. If I have 9 Purple Pikmin versus a Red Bulborb, it's going down guaranteed. Their strength is truly ridiculous.

So you just wreck everything in the game? What gives? Well, it's balanced by the fact that this game is actively vitriolic towards you. This game has "fuck you" level design. The first several dungeons in the game aren't anything too bad. Eventually you'll get to the Bulblax Kingdom, Glutton's Kitchen, and Snagret Hole and it's still nothing too crazy. The occasional bullshit but hey. But eventually the game really starts throwing curveballs at you. A Bulbear trap. Spawning in front of several Decorated Cannon Beetles. Dropping multiple Volatile Dweevils on you at once. Having to camp out next to the entrance to the next floor while Empress Bulblax's babies keep spawning while dodging falling rocks. This game has a lot. It will throw a floor at you with seemingly no respect for you and you'll lose 20 Pikmin, and you can choose to either reset the floor or hold the L. This game gets straight up evil, and that's not even mentioning bosses like the Man-at-Legs or Segmented Crawbster which are just diabolical. It almost paralyzes the player in fear, making them slowly take their time in a dungeon, not knowing when the game will throw something vicious at them. Or, alternatively, the player will just have to bite the bullet and run into something despite knowing it won't go well, like fighting a Fiery Bulblax while it's in water, or fighting a Gatling Groink on a pillar. Sometimes the game blindsides you with a Bumbling Snitchbug grabbing you as a bomb rock deploys on top of your now-dismissed Pikmin.

It's quite the dynamic! But what adds to the game's fun is outsmarting it at what it does. Activating the bomb rock traps you know will be on the floor, luring a Bulbear into a death pit, using White Pikmin to sneak by a pack of Careening Dirigibugs. And it's this very concept that gives the game some decent level of replayability (although the game's replayability is still weak due to its slow start and human capacity for bullshit).

What IS very replayable is Challenge Mode. The scoring system is pretty strange, but it's great fun to go through. Running around Red Chasm trying to get as much treasure as possible, or trying to just beat all 3 Bulbears in Subterranean Abyss, or 100%ing Cave of Pain, are all very fun, very tough challenges. Playing Bully Den on multiplayer is one of the funniest experiences I have ever had in a video game.

Back to dungeons in the main game, which are, after all, the main focus, it's certainly a strange design choice, isn't it? Time does not pass in dungeons at all, so you're able to go through and clear it as slowly as possible. If you really want to, you can even go with the captains alone and start punching most of the enemies on the floor. In fact, that's often the best play to not lose Pikmin. It may not be as strong of a setting as Pikmin 1, but it's still pretty cool, flawed and all. Pikmin 1's setting is based around the terrifying time limit and managing your days. Pikmin 2's is about going into the bowels of caves just for some extra treasure. It may not be a perfect fit for Pikmin, but I'll be damned if it isn't fun. Though I will say, the visuals can sometimes be lacking. Sometimes it looks nice, but the default dirt caves many floors have is very whatever to look at. Once you come back on the surface you realize how good everything looks. This game is actually very pretty graphically, and even has some nice touches, like sun flares on the camera or the heat warping the air around Fiery Bulblaxes, but there's a lot of times you can't really see that.

I still love it for what it is! Accept the game's bullshit into your heart, accept that it is trying to kill you, and just know you can repopulate your pikmin again. Sure, grinding purples at the Subterranean Complex (which you have to do for the Doomsday Appartus if you're going for 100%) is pretty boring, but just watch a movie or something in the meantime, get in a call with a friend. There's so many ways to make monotony in games bearable.

What can I say except the final boss of the game is fucking epic and the last cutscene is emotional. The game, despite me giving it full marks, is still deeply flawed. But that's what I love about it. The game really breaks the mold and delivers a unique experience. It treads new ground and does exactly what a sequel should do: expand out the ideas of the first game and see what happens. As an experimental, silly, occasionally bullshit game, I absolutely love Pikmin 2. It's totally unbalanced, Purples are way too strong, Sprays are too, and enemy placements can be downright unfair, and I love it to death. I hope I can play more games like it in the future.

Pikmin 2 manages to take everything from 1 and improve on it from the graphics to the gameplay to the pikmin themselves everything is improved. While i understand many dislike the cave system and hate the removal of the time limit i see 1 and 2 as two different gameplay styles for the series they both set out to do different things and succeed in my eyes, so while it changed alot i dont fault it for that as its not trying to be pikmin 1. With that being said the insanity of the electric hazard and how broken purple pikmin are does make the game a bit messy though regardless of that i still consider it a great game and a worth any fan’s time.

After playing through the first Pikmin, my appetite for more Pikmin fun was not even close to satiated, so I ordered the sequel online post-haste! Both a game I wanted to play, AND a game for GameCube month, so win-win! I actually managed to find a copy that came with the Japan-exclusive e-Reader cards, but I tragically was not able to find an e-reader+ to use them with (I accidentally bought a vanilla e-reader instead XP). It took me around 20 hours to get 100% of the treasures (though I didn't touch challenge mode at all. I'm not that unhinged ^^;).

Pikmin 2 picks up right where the first game left off, as Captain Olimar arrives back on his home planet after being stranded on a mysterious planet (Earth) and helping the Pikmin escape. Unfortunately, the delivery company he works for has gone into unimaginable debt while he's been away all thanks to the royal heck-up of the other captain on staff, Louie. Everything seems hopeless until they discover that the bottlecap (half the height of Olimar's body) that Olimar brought back as a souvenir for his son is worth a small fortune! With their hopes restored, their boss orders both Olimar and Louie (on a trip to redeem himself) back to that mysterious planet to get enough other artifacts and treasure to pay off that horrible debt.

The story is quite simple, ultimately, but it does what it needs to and then some. The more entertaining parts of the story are messages you get after each day. Instead of Olimar's logs to himself that you got in the first game, you get messages from back on Olimar's home planet. Messages from Louie's grandmother asking how he's doing, Olimar's kids and wife wondering when he'll be home, and even the antics of their boss running from the horrible loan sharks he took the debt out from XD. Your new spaceship (they sold Olimar's old one to help pay for the debt) also comes with a built in AI, whose silly banter about your adventure is also a consistent source of fun.

The mechanics and design of the game are largely the same as the first but with some significant improvements and additions. First of all, you're no longer on a time limit, as you're not crash landed or anything. You have all the time you could possibly want to hunt for treasure and play with your Pikmin (and the game makes a very explicit point of telling you this almost as soon as your adventure starts). In addition, you can also multi-task more efficiently than you could before. As both Louie and Olimar are on this adventure, you can split them up and have them take care of chores on opposite sides of the map if you want. You can't actively control them both, sure, but being able to actively babysit some Pikmin tearing down a wall or constructing a bridge while the other captain does something else is very useful for time management. Pikmin AI has also been improved significantly, and they trip far less, stay in tighter groups when managed, and can also be thrown much more quickly to give you much more control in battle.

On top of all that, you also have two new Pikmin types to play with! You have returning from the first game your battle-hardened and fire-proof reds, your high-flying and newly electric-proof yellows, and your drown-proof blues. Newly debuting in this game are your super tough and super strong purple Pikmin. They're basically the Wario of Pikmin, having a heavy ground pound when thrown and having both the carrying power and punching power of ten Pikmin, they pack a powerful punch! The only downside is that they're pretty slow. On the other hand, you have the diminutive white Pikmin, who are a little weaker and a little faster on top of being able to spot underground treasure with their big X-ray eyes and breathe in poison. Overall, they're both fairly solid additions, but the fact that you can only get more of them by using transformation flowers in caves really neuters their usefulness by a lot. You can't just have them carry dead enemies to an Onion like the other Pikmin can, so you're basically never going to risk having them die by using them for combat, and it all makes for their cool ideas landing a bit flat all around.

Those underground caves are the last most significant upgrade to this game. While the game only has four large above-ground areas (the hardest and final of which is only unlocked in the post-game after you've paid off your debt) very similarly to the first Pikmin, there are three or four large underground caves to go through in each area. These caves have a series of almost Mystery Dungeon-style floors (they're sometimes procedurally generated) full of more simple cavern designs where you can fight monsters and hunt for treasure. They just about always have a big boss at the end, which always provide interesting and challenging fights for you and your Pikmin to try and conquer! They even drop special treasures that give you permanent passive upgrades as well (ranging from a wider whistling range to immunity to fire and even a stronger melee punch for Olimar X3). Add that on top of how you also have two special sprays you can use (one for making your Pikmin faster and stronger temporarily, and one for petrifying enemies to stone), and you have a game that's much more combat-focused than the first game. I don't really consider that a positive or a negative, so much as it's just the thing that makes this game different from the other two. You have a longer, more challenging adventure full of big boss fights instead of the tighter adventure of the first game, and it lets them both stand on their own as fine experiences.

The presentation of the game is as excellent as you'd expect a first-party Nintendo game on the GameCube to be. The music is excellent, both the new versions of old tracks and the scads of new music, and the graphics and monster designs are also really cool. The treasures you're finding are basically just trash and assorted items from our human world (quite a few of which are different in the Japanese version, I was surprised to learn), and the descriptions you get of them in your log as well as just the design of the world itself gives the whole adventure a wonderful charm and character that's totally unlike that of the first game.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Pikmin 2 is one of my favorite games of that generation. It was before this replay, and it still is now. It holds up excellently, and it's absolutely still worth playing if you're able to track down an (increasingly expensive) copy~.

Pikmin 2 is a bit divisive among Pikmin games. The first Pikmin was a beautifully elegant experience about time and workload management. Pikmin 2 ditches the time management aspect of the game for dungeons and significantly more challenge. Pikmin in Pikmin 2 feel infinitely more disposable, which is good because a lot of your Pikmin are going to get mowed down, incinerated, eaten, drowned, electrocuted, and even good-ol'-fashioned shot by guns.

Pikmin 2 almost feels like a roguelike with procedurally-generated dungeons. It's packed to the brim with loot and hazards to micro-manage your Pikmin through. With infinite time to complete the game and a portion of the challenge that came with that in Pikmin 1 being eliminated, Pikmin 2 is just hard. Monster types are brutal with lots of them, and with more Pikmin, you have significantly more bandwidth to kill enemies with them--either by crushing them with Purples or just straight-up sacrificing White Pikmin for the glorious cause. The slew of monster types keeps the gameplay interesting and occasionally terrifying. And the coolest feature is the Piklopedia, a journal of sorts for every enemy and every piece of loot you grab in the game.

Pikmin 1 felt like an honest arcade experience, where a lot of it became about minmaxing your work days maneuvering through levels and harvesting loot to fix your ship; it wasn't a particularly long game for it, but it was replayable. Pikmin 2 feels more like a complete game. It's a harder game with arguably a major hook fans of the first game liked gone, but it's still a beautifully designed game.

ive seen a lot of distaste for pikmin 2 recently, and now it seems like its the most polarizing game in the series. you either love pikmin 2 for its challenge, mini-roguelike caves, and new additions to the series, or you hate it for its difficulty, which can sometimes edge on downright cruel or unfair. for me, personally, i love pikmin 2 to death, and its probably my favorite of the 4 pikmin games currently out. pikmin 2 will kick your ass, spit in your eyes, curbstomp you, and then give you a bundle of roses the next day and apologize for its actions.

as previously mentioned, the caves are randomly generated each time you go through them. the layouts are different each time, but it keeps things like treasures and enemies consistent. it makes for a game with loads of replay value, with so much to do to keep you coming back.

i personally play the wii version whenever i do my replays, which includes new play control pointer controls, which is the best way to play. that being said, the gamecube controls arent as bad as youd expect for a game like this, its very much designed to accommodate those original controls.

if you played pikmin 1 and wanted a bit more of a challenge, give pikmin 2 a shot, its sure to give you exactly that

This fuckass game hates you in every single way.
Drops enemies all the times that'll kill you.
Hazards gallore.
Water wraith.
And its the funniest thing ever on how you have to survive it.
Pikmin at its core is really good, and hard to mess up, so making kind of an official kaizo game was a fun idea, even if it left 12 Y/O me scarred for life with difficulty in games lmao.