I beat this with the help of someone who used to be a good friend of mine (no longer), who was a big fan of the game. I had never really played Pikmin as a kid, though I have played a lot of bingo battle in Pikmin 3 with my sister. So I was curious what I would think about the Pikmin style in a campaign setting. I have a few minor gripes but for the most part I found this to be a really excellent game with a lot of charm and atmosphere, and I enjoyed immersing myself in its world.
Let me quickly get some of the gripes out of the way. I'm not really sure how I would've recommended to combat this, but it can be really cumbersome to control the Pikmin sometimes. They get stuck on stuff, they fall off, they don't know how to orient themselves and oftentimes it can get a lot of them killed. I don't think it's a major issue because I think it adds to the coordination aspect but sometimes there are some moments that are super frustrating because of how challenging it can be to properly navigate them sometimes. It can also be hard to aim them properly, especially if something is in the air and you have to figure out how to align your cursor right under it, it plays with perspective in a weird way sometimes. The camera can also be frustrating to work with sometimes, it can make it hard to see what the Pikmin are doing or how to throw them properly when it's locked in an awkward way. Also I appreciate the game's challenge but there are some instances where I felt like I knew how to deal with certain obstacles and they would just do something weird that completely threw me off, or certain dungeon instances would just be really unfairly challenging and I would wonder how I could possibly properly keep enough of my Pikmin alive. Like on some occasions the magma rocks would explode like almost instantly on the ground and I'd have to restart the level (My former friend said the Pikmin may have been attacking it because they were left to their own devices? Idk). Also I only played it once but I think I prefer the setup of the Bingo Battle mode in Pikmin 3 to the multiplayer mode in this game.
That's pretty much all of the gripes I can think of at the moment, onto the positives.
From Chibi-Robo and movies like the Toy Story series and A Bug's Life, I've long been a fan of the possibilities of an environment where you're really small. How ordinary locations turn into these massive environments with unique geography. Pikmin 2 definitely plays to that. The environments are so charming and beautiful to look at, and any of the design aesthetics used to populate the maps and dungeons are really pretty to look at and nicely textured. I especially loved the look of the shower tile textures of some of the dungeons, very atmospheric and aesthetically pleasing. The game creates this great atmosphere of a scavenger leader going through this world that is evocative of something I find myself thinking about a lot, which is the concept of a world where humanity existed but then is somehow gone and how all of that manmade stuff would interact with nature over time. I love that kind of stuff. This game is just so pleasant to the eye, with all the character designs full of charm, and personality in their animations. The Pikmin themselves are so charming. The sounds play well into this style as well, with great sound effects for everything, and while the soundtrack hasn't impacted me on the level of some of my favorites, it's definitely solid and atmospheric.
The maps are solid but the dungeons are the really interesting thing about the game, especially with how their procedural generation ensures you have to keep adapting to however they're laid out. This means that if you get a layout that isn't so great, you can restart and try something else out. The dungeons are something you have to commit to, so individual Pikmin are more precious and you have to plan ahead properly, however the game's use of geysers are useful because you can choose to go back if you're just not doing too hot but at the cost of your current progress. Boss battles were generally solid for the kind of game this is, the final one was especially interesting. I also like how the focus on treasures forces you to generally explore these areas to their fullest, unless you really feel like it's not worth it (and in some cases it wasn't for me, including repeat boss fights in the one dungeon). It's a good framing for an overall objective for the game, and gives it a sort of collectathon vibe. Makes it so you have extra stuff you can go for in the sake of completionism (like the challenge mode as well that I don't really have time for) but you don't have to.
Another cool thing is a habit Nintendo has of making games that push the boundaries of genre definitions, that skirt the expectations, can be hard to classify, or challenge typical genre conventions. Like Super Smash Bros. does not neatly fit into the concept of fighting game, some don't even consider it that but it opened up a new type of "party fighting" game that went on to inspire a bunch of other games to try a new style. Or Luigi's Mansion, what do you classify that as, a twin-stick shooter? Pikmin 2 is defined on Wikipedia as a puzzle game and an RTS. It's like a melding of both in a way that doesn't completely fit in one or the other. It's such a unique yet incredible take on real-time strategy with some mild puzzle elements thrown in for good measure. I'd love to see more games approach a similar take to strategy games. It is strategic but in a completely different way than say Age of Empires or StarCraft. It's the unique kind of variation that still technically fits that Nintendo is best at. You can be very strategic about who gets what Pikmin and where you're going to place them and which you're taking, and I really love that they let captains go out on their own because there were situations where I was so grateful I could just beat up and kill enemies on my own without the Pikmin.
I think there could've been a little more polish in some of the controls and maneuvering the Pikmin and there are some situations that are a bit cheap, but I generally found this game very enjoyable. Aesthetically and sonically it's very pleasant and charming, it's a lot of fun to play with the Pikmin and figure out how to best control them, the dungeons are fun to explore, and it provides a very unique spin on typical genre conventions. I definitely recommend this game to everyone, extremely charming and a lot of fun, with compelling difficulty.
[I didn't go for 100% completion but I spent significantly more time than needed to beat the game because I was just enjoying myself and going back for some stuff I missed, because I was having a lot of fun with the game.]
Let me quickly get some of the gripes out of the way. I'm not really sure how I would've recommended to combat this, but it can be really cumbersome to control the Pikmin sometimes. They get stuck on stuff, they fall off, they don't know how to orient themselves and oftentimes it can get a lot of them killed. I don't think it's a major issue because I think it adds to the coordination aspect but sometimes there are some moments that are super frustrating because of how challenging it can be to properly navigate them sometimes. It can also be hard to aim them properly, especially if something is in the air and you have to figure out how to align your cursor right under it, it plays with perspective in a weird way sometimes. The camera can also be frustrating to work with sometimes, it can make it hard to see what the Pikmin are doing or how to throw them properly when it's locked in an awkward way. Also I appreciate the game's challenge but there are some instances where I felt like I knew how to deal with certain obstacles and they would just do something weird that completely threw me off, or certain dungeon instances would just be really unfairly challenging and I would wonder how I could possibly properly keep enough of my Pikmin alive. Like on some occasions the magma rocks would explode like almost instantly on the ground and I'd have to restart the level (My former friend said the Pikmin may have been attacking it because they were left to their own devices? Idk). Also I only played it once but I think I prefer the setup of the Bingo Battle mode in Pikmin 3 to the multiplayer mode in this game.
That's pretty much all of the gripes I can think of at the moment, onto the positives.
From Chibi-Robo and movies like the Toy Story series and A Bug's Life, I've long been a fan of the possibilities of an environment where you're really small. How ordinary locations turn into these massive environments with unique geography. Pikmin 2 definitely plays to that. The environments are so charming and beautiful to look at, and any of the design aesthetics used to populate the maps and dungeons are really pretty to look at and nicely textured. I especially loved the look of the shower tile textures of some of the dungeons, very atmospheric and aesthetically pleasing. The game creates this great atmosphere of a scavenger leader going through this world that is evocative of something I find myself thinking about a lot, which is the concept of a world where humanity existed but then is somehow gone and how all of that manmade stuff would interact with nature over time. I love that kind of stuff. This game is just so pleasant to the eye, with all the character designs full of charm, and personality in their animations. The Pikmin themselves are so charming. The sounds play well into this style as well, with great sound effects for everything, and while the soundtrack hasn't impacted me on the level of some of my favorites, it's definitely solid and atmospheric.
The maps are solid but the dungeons are the really interesting thing about the game, especially with how their procedural generation ensures you have to keep adapting to however they're laid out. This means that if you get a layout that isn't so great, you can restart and try something else out. The dungeons are something you have to commit to, so individual Pikmin are more precious and you have to plan ahead properly, however the game's use of geysers are useful because you can choose to go back if you're just not doing too hot but at the cost of your current progress. Boss battles were generally solid for the kind of game this is, the final one was especially interesting. I also like how the focus on treasures forces you to generally explore these areas to their fullest, unless you really feel like it's not worth it (and in some cases it wasn't for me, including repeat boss fights in the one dungeon). It's a good framing for an overall objective for the game, and gives it a sort of collectathon vibe. Makes it so you have extra stuff you can go for in the sake of completionism (like the challenge mode as well that I don't really have time for) but you don't have to.
Another cool thing is a habit Nintendo has of making games that push the boundaries of genre definitions, that skirt the expectations, can be hard to classify, or challenge typical genre conventions. Like Super Smash Bros. does not neatly fit into the concept of fighting game, some don't even consider it that but it opened up a new type of "party fighting" game that went on to inspire a bunch of other games to try a new style. Or Luigi's Mansion, what do you classify that as, a twin-stick shooter? Pikmin 2 is defined on Wikipedia as a puzzle game and an RTS. It's like a melding of both in a way that doesn't completely fit in one or the other. It's such a unique yet incredible take on real-time strategy with some mild puzzle elements thrown in for good measure. I'd love to see more games approach a similar take to strategy games. It is strategic but in a completely different way than say Age of Empires or StarCraft. It's the unique kind of variation that still technically fits that Nintendo is best at. You can be very strategic about who gets what Pikmin and where you're going to place them and which you're taking, and I really love that they let captains go out on their own because there were situations where I was so grateful I could just beat up and kill enemies on my own without the Pikmin.
I think there could've been a little more polish in some of the controls and maneuvering the Pikmin and there are some situations that are a bit cheap, but I generally found this game very enjoyable. Aesthetically and sonically it's very pleasant and charming, it's a lot of fun to play with the Pikmin and figure out how to best control them, the dungeons are fun to explore, and it provides a very unique spin on typical genre conventions. I definitely recommend this game to everyone, extremely charming and a lot of fun, with compelling difficulty.
[I didn't go for 100% completion but I spent significantly more time than needed to beat the game because I was just enjoying myself and going back for some stuff I missed, because I was having a lot of fun with the game.]