The purpose behind Soviet propaganda was not to deceive, but demoralize. The lie had to be so blatant, so bombastic, that it made the power of the institution behind it look utterly unchallengeable. The lies I told my Pikmin were in a similar vein. “The bulborbs are of no consequence,” I said. “You can still pick up the bomb rocks,” I said. “I will save you if you fall into the water” I said. As the falsehoods spewed from my mouth, I could see that the masses were not filled with faithful determination, happily gobbling up the slop of inspiring platitudes. No, instead there was only resignation. Eyes welling up as they knew, no matter where they wandered, they would be venturing down further into the caves. They prayed not necessarily for life, but for enough brutal, unnecessary, nonpermissible death that it would force me to reset the game and improve my performance as their leader. They were comforted only by dreams of one day becoming purple, becoming part of the anointed. The indispensable few. But these were merely dreams, dreams that rested under layers of nightmares.
Pikmin 2 is known for its very vocal fans. After a long wait between sequels, hardcore fans initially seemed split on Pikmin 3’s shift from a focus on survival to a focus on efficiency. Now, the Pikmin fanbase is known for its irreverent derangements, so most people could still agree that all the games were good despite the shitflinging. Still, it seemed like 3 generally came up short as far as the general opinions went. Then, upon Pikmin 3’s re-release on Switch, it seemed like things began to change dramatically. 3 became a much more positively seen course correction after 2 failed to follow up the format from 1. Pikmin 1 remained as an impressive-but-flawed first outing, and public opinion of 2 began to fall behind.
I like Pikmin 2. It does a few things I wish the other games would have kept more relevant. I would rather replay this over a lot of games, perhaps even games I’ve rated higher. Pikmin 2 is just easy to pick up and play like that. However, I have to say I’m pretty pleased with how things turned out for the franchise, with it choosing to skirt around 2’s fundamental ideas to instead focus more on expanding on 1’s more carefully tailored time management challenge. 2’s spelunking spirit still lives on, but its unique feeling of building dread as you dive further down seems mostly lost to time.
Overlap still exists between the games. Pikmin 2 certainly ups the ante as far as treasure collecting goes. There are tons of things to collect which, like many aspects of this game, are a double-edged sword. With more collectables to find, there are more instances of the game stopping every single time a new item is brought back to your base. Treasures piling up one after another when you are just sitting and waiting to move on to the next floor already slows the pace of the game down unnecessarily. The game already demands you pace yourself with a bit of “hurry up and wait” as Pikmin complete tasks, no need to add on to it. A results screen listing your treasures at the end of the day would do fine, and indeed it did in later entries. Pardon the comparison to future games, but I don’t believe this was impossible for Pikmin 2, it might have even been easier.
With so much treasure to collect, you might think there is an increased emphasis on how you route the process of amassing all of this. Not so. You have free reign to take your time in most of Pikmin 2. The surface level areas are difficult to assess in their quality, as they are mostly an excuse to bring you to the cave, where you have unlimited time to work your magic. Strange, given that Pikmin 2 gives you a second captain to control, allowing you to split the group up. Yet once you’re down in the caves, this becomes a moot point. Very few instances in the game benefit from the split up mechanic. It is mostly an act of convenience on the surface, where you can leave a captain at the base to wrangle returning Pikmin.
With the caves being procedurally generated, their challenge generally cannot come from careful routing and puzzle solving. Instead, they are designed to catch you off guard and make you think on your feet, particularly over the incremental randomization. Get ready to fight, because you’re going to be doing a lot of it. With that, you are gifted a new, vitally important combat tool in the Purple Pikmin. Only available for resupply in caves, these are your main fighting force for much of the game. I would argue their actual introduction comes a bit too early, as Red Pikmin are benched from their usual combat role as a result. A later introduction for Purple would have been a very empowering moment for the player. Instead, their presence is quickly rendered a matter of fact. An early fight with a boss that would prove destructive, the Empress Bulblax, was far less impactful thanks to the purples’ ability to stun.
The purples’ are so vital that I felt cheated when I first found out that caves don’t really suggest you bring them with you in your party, as they are not immune to any hazards like fire, electricity, water, or poison. Imagine my shock upon entering a cave that suggested I bring everything but purples, and I found myself struggling to justify barreling through without them. This does raise some interest in the idea of “no purples” run of the game, as most of the challenges are technically beatable without them. However, Pikmin’s combat is not interesting enough on its own for this already longer game to extend its life further through my self-imposed challenge.
A wipeout of your Pikmin population is a common threat you’ll face in these games, and Pikmin 2 is easily the most eager game in the series to do that to you. A beady long legs jumping down from on high to genocide my yellows with the eagerness of a Harvard student realizing those kids with the little hats were still acceptable targets after all these years. Here you are presented with a choice. You can reset the game, perhaps at the cost of your personal time, or persevere and rebuild the group as you go about your normal tasks. Except not really. That’s how it is in Pikmin 1, where you have a macro time limit to complete the game within, a micro time limit of each day, and plenty of ways to repopulate as you are collecting items necessary for completion. In Pikmin 2, the game saves at every new cave sublevel, which will only take a few minutes to complete, and caves do not commonly give you opportunities to repopulate. Taking a day to rebuild on the surface feels like a total waste when you just want to get to the next cave, where the time limit does not exist. Purples in particular are a very precious commodity, and demand a reset should you lose even a few. So your only choice is to reset.
Why then, can I not reset to my last save from the menu? Pikmin 1 let me do that, and the other sequels let me do that. I actually have to close the game and reboot it in order to undo my mistakes. In the game where mistakes that lead to mass death are the most common. Who thought this was a good idea? It does not make the game more challenging, only more cumbersome. It does not create a greater fear of punishment, as the process of resetting carries with it no risk when I’m plopped right back to the same sublevel I was on. Compare Pikmin 1, where resetting could mean a major setback, misallocation of tasks as you repeat the day, or a repeat of your mistakes right at the end of a cycle. I can only assume that the removal of an in-menu reset was to discourage the act of resetting, in a game that was clearly more designed towards trial-and-error style gauntlets. There must have been more than a few changes in direction during development, as this and the aforementioned captain switching mechanic indicate that Pikmin had its priorities a little misaligned.
Reloading is also a completely viable strategy when tackling caves. I recall one particular cave where just crossing a bridge over water lead to mass genocide. The Pikmin pathing is hugely improved in this game over the first, a massive quality of life jump and very impressive given it was on the same hardware. However, sometimes Pikmin have the self-preservation instinct of a pasty British man cruising into Morocco waving a rainbow flag. Caves often end up with baffling setups thanks to their procedural generation, with alcoves and blocked off areas that present you with nothing of note, or enemies awkwardly grouped up so as to make things more vexing than necessary.
The good and bad of this structure culminates in the Dream Den, a harrowing gauntlet of death that is two parts a tense descent down a surprisingly tough series of obstacles and one part a complete slog where you are pretty much over the entire game. If you just want to get it over with, you could even waltz by nearly every enemy and just jump down each subsequent level. Pikmin left idle will follow you down, so there’s no reason to bother engaging with enemies if you’re going for speed.
As overly generous as I thought Pikmin 4’s lock-on was, Pikmin 2’s final boss is a great testament to lock-on as a permanent fixture of the games. It’s well known that you may as well only bring Yellow Pikmin to this fight, for all the good the others will do you. Not only does their higher throwing height help them consistently reach each destructible body part of the boss easier, but electricity is the only hazard in the game which acts as an instant kill. Fire, water, and poison all have a grace period in which Pikmin can be called back and saved, meaning all other Pikmin are completely useless in this fight. This is still a pretty fun final battle, you have to keep on your toes and for those not in the know you will likely lose most of your non-yellows thanks to electric attacks. I personally decided to keep things interesting by performing it the intended way, with a diverse group of Pikmin, but Yellows quickly became the only thing worth preserving.
The bosses are a massive highlight of the game. Trudging through a cave and meeting a unique, powerful creature at the bottom was always a delight. Dealing with unyielding levels of chaos, dodging bomb rocks from flying enemies for twenty minutes, only to be met not by relief but a firestorm of bullets from Man-at-Legs was a ton of fun. Each enemy acts as a different chess piece, and they can be mixed and matched to create a ton of unique combat scenarios with what would otherwise be a very simple system. It’s no wonder that Pikmin 2 enjoyed a lively rom hack scene, which goes a step further and frequently allows the bosses to team up against you.
Bosses were also some of the few times I would just accept my losses and move on. These being at the ends of caves, I would have no further use for many of the pikmin I brought, as my reserves outside had already been built up. While bosses would still cause resets, I appreciated them much more in these scenarios. They hit an excellent sweet spot where I was willing to improve but accepting of my mistakes after a certain point.
These encounters also offer two of the only set pieces where the captain split up mechanic really gets to show its usefulness. A fight against one giant enemy asks you to repeatedly switch between leaders to distract your foe and then attack it from behind. It’s absolutely shocking that no other Pikmin game offers anything like this. It seems like an easy slam dunk. Particularly for Pikmin 4, where your other playable character is just a super Pikmin. There’s also the infamous Water Wraith dungeon, in which you are saddled with only Blue Pikmin upon entry. Here you must quickly complete your tasks within a time limit before the wraith shows up. You may as well reset if you aren’t ready to leave, because the wraith is fast and unforgiving. So you begin again, desperately working to perfect your run through each level, passing the baton between captains, feeling the weight of the encroaching wraith grow heavier. Pikmin 4 would go on to recreate this cave, and while it was similarly fun, the wraith itself just does not compare with the Pikmin 2 rendition’s deadliness.
Pikmin 1, 3, and 4 were perhaps the most sure I’ve ever been of my odds to replay any given game. So I must apologize to 2 fans when I say this is the only one I might hesitate to give another go to. Was it good? Yes. Does it play better than many other games, perhaps even games I’d rate higher? Yes. Is it pretty unique compared to the other games? Yes. Did I find it as fun as the other entries? No, but it's still pretty good. This is one where I’d be much more likely to check out the romhack scene, and indeed I might have done that sooner. Unfortunately, when my computer forgot that its start menu existed, the team of Indian men I conscripted to help me were of no use, and everything was wiped. So instead of setting up an emulator again, I bought this game legitimately on Switch. It’s nice that an entire series is available for legitimate purchase on a single device, and my choice to pay for it here is a testament to piracy as a service problem. If only Nintendo would allow me to just buy their classic library instead of going through their online subscription service, but oh well you little bitch ass bitch boy don’t mind me while I play Path of Radiance the only way a sane person would bother to.
Pikmin 2 is known for its very vocal fans. After a long wait between sequels, hardcore fans initially seemed split on Pikmin 3’s shift from a focus on survival to a focus on efficiency. Now, the Pikmin fanbase is known for its irreverent derangements, so most people could still agree that all the games were good despite the shitflinging. Still, it seemed like 3 generally came up short as far as the general opinions went. Then, upon Pikmin 3’s re-release on Switch, it seemed like things began to change dramatically. 3 became a much more positively seen course correction after 2 failed to follow up the format from 1. Pikmin 1 remained as an impressive-but-flawed first outing, and public opinion of 2 began to fall behind.
I like Pikmin 2. It does a few things I wish the other games would have kept more relevant. I would rather replay this over a lot of games, perhaps even games I’ve rated higher. Pikmin 2 is just easy to pick up and play like that. However, I have to say I’m pretty pleased with how things turned out for the franchise, with it choosing to skirt around 2’s fundamental ideas to instead focus more on expanding on 1’s more carefully tailored time management challenge. 2’s spelunking spirit still lives on, but its unique feeling of building dread as you dive further down seems mostly lost to time.
Overlap still exists between the games. Pikmin 2 certainly ups the ante as far as treasure collecting goes. There are tons of things to collect which, like many aspects of this game, are a double-edged sword. With more collectables to find, there are more instances of the game stopping every single time a new item is brought back to your base. Treasures piling up one after another when you are just sitting and waiting to move on to the next floor already slows the pace of the game down unnecessarily. The game already demands you pace yourself with a bit of “hurry up and wait” as Pikmin complete tasks, no need to add on to it. A results screen listing your treasures at the end of the day would do fine, and indeed it did in later entries. Pardon the comparison to future games, but I don’t believe this was impossible for Pikmin 2, it might have even been easier.
With so much treasure to collect, you might think there is an increased emphasis on how you route the process of amassing all of this. Not so. You have free reign to take your time in most of Pikmin 2. The surface level areas are difficult to assess in their quality, as they are mostly an excuse to bring you to the cave, where you have unlimited time to work your magic. Strange, given that Pikmin 2 gives you a second captain to control, allowing you to split the group up. Yet once you’re down in the caves, this becomes a moot point. Very few instances in the game benefit from the split up mechanic. It is mostly an act of convenience on the surface, where you can leave a captain at the base to wrangle returning Pikmin.
With the caves being procedurally generated, their challenge generally cannot come from careful routing and puzzle solving. Instead, they are designed to catch you off guard and make you think on your feet, particularly over the incremental randomization. Get ready to fight, because you’re going to be doing a lot of it. With that, you are gifted a new, vitally important combat tool in the Purple Pikmin. Only available for resupply in caves, these are your main fighting force for much of the game. I would argue their actual introduction comes a bit too early, as Red Pikmin are benched from their usual combat role as a result. A later introduction for Purple would have been a very empowering moment for the player. Instead, their presence is quickly rendered a matter of fact. An early fight with a boss that would prove destructive, the Empress Bulblax, was far less impactful thanks to the purples’ ability to stun.
The purples’ are so vital that I felt cheated when I first found out that caves don’t really suggest you bring them with you in your party, as they are not immune to any hazards like fire, electricity, water, or poison. Imagine my shock upon entering a cave that suggested I bring everything but purples, and I found myself struggling to justify barreling through without them. This does raise some interest in the idea of “no purples” run of the game, as most of the challenges are technically beatable without them. However, Pikmin’s combat is not interesting enough on its own for this already longer game to extend its life further through my self-imposed challenge.
A wipeout of your Pikmin population is a common threat you’ll face in these games, and Pikmin 2 is easily the most eager game in the series to do that to you. A beady long legs jumping down from on high to genocide my yellows with the eagerness of a Harvard student realizing those kids with the little hats were still acceptable targets after all these years. Here you are presented with a choice. You can reset the game, perhaps at the cost of your personal time, or persevere and rebuild the group as you go about your normal tasks. Except not really. That’s how it is in Pikmin 1, where you have a macro time limit to complete the game within, a micro time limit of each day, and plenty of ways to repopulate as you are collecting items necessary for completion. In Pikmin 2, the game saves at every new cave sublevel, which will only take a few minutes to complete, and caves do not commonly give you opportunities to repopulate. Taking a day to rebuild on the surface feels like a total waste when you just want to get to the next cave, where the time limit does not exist. Purples in particular are a very precious commodity, and demand a reset should you lose even a few. So your only choice is to reset.
Why then, can I not reset to my last save from the menu? Pikmin 1 let me do that, and the other sequels let me do that. I actually have to close the game and reboot it in order to undo my mistakes. In the game where mistakes that lead to mass death are the most common. Who thought this was a good idea? It does not make the game more challenging, only more cumbersome. It does not create a greater fear of punishment, as the process of resetting carries with it no risk when I’m plopped right back to the same sublevel I was on. Compare Pikmin 1, where resetting could mean a major setback, misallocation of tasks as you repeat the day, or a repeat of your mistakes right at the end of a cycle. I can only assume that the removal of an in-menu reset was to discourage the act of resetting, in a game that was clearly more designed towards trial-and-error style gauntlets. There must have been more than a few changes in direction during development, as this and the aforementioned captain switching mechanic indicate that Pikmin had its priorities a little misaligned.
Reloading is also a completely viable strategy when tackling caves. I recall one particular cave where just crossing a bridge over water lead to mass genocide. The Pikmin pathing is hugely improved in this game over the first, a massive quality of life jump and very impressive given it was on the same hardware. However, sometimes Pikmin have the self-preservation instinct of a pasty British man cruising into Morocco waving a rainbow flag. Caves often end up with baffling setups thanks to their procedural generation, with alcoves and blocked off areas that present you with nothing of note, or enemies awkwardly grouped up so as to make things more vexing than necessary.
The good and bad of this structure culminates in the Dream Den, a harrowing gauntlet of death that is two parts a tense descent down a surprisingly tough series of obstacles and one part a complete slog where you are pretty much over the entire game. If you just want to get it over with, you could even waltz by nearly every enemy and just jump down each subsequent level. Pikmin left idle will follow you down, so there’s no reason to bother engaging with enemies if you’re going for speed.
As overly generous as I thought Pikmin 4’s lock-on was, Pikmin 2’s final boss is a great testament to lock-on as a permanent fixture of the games. It’s well known that you may as well only bring Yellow Pikmin to this fight, for all the good the others will do you. Not only does their higher throwing height help them consistently reach each destructible body part of the boss easier, but electricity is the only hazard in the game which acts as an instant kill. Fire, water, and poison all have a grace period in which Pikmin can be called back and saved, meaning all other Pikmin are completely useless in this fight. This is still a pretty fun final battle, you have to keep on your toes and for those not in the know you will likely lose most of your non-yellows thanks to electric attacks. I personally decided to keep things interesting by performing it the intended way, with a diverse group of Pikmin, but Yellows quickly became the only thing worth preserving.
The bosses are a massive highlight of the game. Trudging through a cave and meeting a unique, powerful creature at the bottom was always a delight. Dealing with unyielding levels of chaos, dodging bomb rocks from flying enemies for twenty minutes, only to be met not by relief but a firestorm of bullets from Man-at-Legs was a ton of fun. Each enemy acts as a different chess piece, and they can be mixed and matched to create a ton of unique combat scenarios with what would otherwise be a very simple system. It’s no wonder that Pikmin 2 enjoyed a lively rom hack scene, which goes a step further and frequently allows the bosses to team up against you.
Bosses were also some of the few times I would just accept my losses and move on. These being at the ends of caves, I would have no further use for many of the pikmin I brought, as my reserves outside had already been built up. While bosses would still cause resets, I appreciated them much more in these scenarios. They hit an excellent sweet spot where I was willing to improve but accepting of my mistakes after a certain point.
These encounters also offer two of the only set pieces where the captain split up mechanic really gets to show its usefulness. A fight against one giant enemy asks you to repeatedly switch between leaders to distract your foe and then attack it from behind. It’s absolutely shocking that no other Pikmin game offers anything like this. It seems like an easy slam dunk. Particularly for Pikmin 4, where your other playable character is just a super Pikmin. There’s also the infamous Water Wraith dungeon, in which you are saddled with only Blue Pikmin upon entry. Here you must quickly complete your tasks within a time limit before the wraith shows up. You may as well reset if you aren’t ready to leave, because the wraith is fast and unforgiving. So you begin again, desperately working to perfect your run through each level, passing the baton between captains, feeling the weight of the encroaching wraith grow heavier. Pikmin 4 would go on to recreate this cave, and while it was similarly fun, the wraith itself just does not compare with the Pikmin 2 rendition’s deadliness.
Pikmin 1, 3, and 4 were perhaps the most sure I’ve ever been of my odds to replay any given game. So I must apologize to 2 fans when I say this is the only one I might hesitate to give another go to. Was it good? Yes. Does it play better than many other games, perhaps even games I’d rate higher? Yes. Is it pretty unique compared to the other games? Yes. Did I find it as fun as the other entries? No, but it's still pretty good. This is one where I’d be much more likely to check out the romhack scene, and indeed I might have done that sooner. Unfortunately, when my computer forgot that its start menu existed, the team of Indian men I conscripted to help me were of no use, and everything was wiped. So instead of setting up an emulator again, I bought this game legitimately on Switch. It’s nice that an entire series is available for legitimate purchase on a single device, and my choice to pay for it here is a testament to piracy as a service problem. If only Nintendo would allow me to just buy their classic library instead of going through their online subscription service, but oh well you little bitch ass bitch boy don’t mind me while I play Path of Radiance the only way a sane person would bother to.