Pikmin 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, and in my opinion the best expression of the Pikmin experience. Time/inventory management is a gameplay mechanic I cannot get enough of, and this game is incredibly addicting trying to explore areas, defeat enemies, and collect treasures in the daily time limit. The addition of a 2nd captain to play as makes it so you are never waiting around for something to finish and always have some task you can go work on. The cave system can be a bit grindy but lets the game take a more combat focused approach, which is a lot of fun after how Pikmin 1 didn't have too many dangerous bosses. Not just gameplay wise, Pikmin 2 oozes charm in its writing. Olimar writes notes about every enemy you fight and treasure you collect, and it's very amusing seeing how alien creatures would react to and try to extrapolate meaning from everyday items completely normal to us. Not to mention the endgame reward of Louie teaching you how to cook the enemies.

Pikmin 2 is the complete opposite of Pikmin, it's design so antithetical to the core premise of the original game that it could've been marketed as a spinoff. Instead of a tightly-designed strategy game, Pikmin 2 is mainly a combat-focused dungeon crawler with an upgrade system. The controls are basically the same, and you still grow and manage a squad of pikmin, but there's no day limit and very few puzzles.

This all seems like a misstep that betrays everything good about the first Pikmin, and that's true. However, Pikmin 2 fills that void with new interesting and compelling design choices of its own.

The caves in Pikmin 2 are long, arduous, procedurally-generated gauntlets filled with enemies and hazards. Once you reach the first non-tutorial cave, the Citadel of Spiders, Pikmin 2 really starts to shine with interesting floor layouts and enemy combinations that take advantage of them. For example, blowhogs in sublevels with no ledges mean you have to position yourself carefully to avoid your pikmin being chucked off. Rarely do other Pikmin games pit you against multiple types of enemies at once.

Unlike the first game, Pikmin 2 is more about reading and adapting to situations on the fly. The procedural generation allows for some hectic combat setups, and the further you go the more interesting the different rooms get. There are traps that can fall from the ceiling, but these give you ample time to react accordingly. Even though combat is fundamentally simple, the enemy variety and free aiming/swarming (unlike 4) give you a lot of variety and options.

One of the biggest issues with the game is actually the overworld design. Even though three of them are reused from Pikmin, they are much more simple to navigate and really only serve as oversized level-select menus for the real meat of the game, the caves. In Pikmin, your base would often be around the center of the map, with multiple paths immediately accessible, which gave you more options in how to approach each day. Pikmin 2's maps start you in a corner and force you to progress linearly until you acquire the globe halves and all five pikmin types. On top of that, the overworld treasure placement is very uninteresting, sometimes repeating placements from the first game. The overworlds in Pikmin 2 just feel unnecessary.

I like the caves as they are, but I don't think they're quite punishing enough. The autosaving and lack of pressure (aside from the Submerged Castle) encourages cheap tactics. For the game to be at it's best, you have to be in a speedrun/multitasking mindset, because the game itself won't force you be good.

I would be remiss not to mention the over-tutorialization compared to the first game. These often pause the game in the middle of combat (and are unskippable in the Switch port!) and ruin the pace of the early game on repeat playthroughs. There should have been an option to turn them off, or have the text boxes appear in real time instead. The beginning 25-30% of the game is also much too easy; the dungeons don't really pick up until you have all 5 pikmin types.

As it is, Pikmin 2 feels unsure of what it wants to be. I think they should've instead committed fully into making the game a full-fledged dungeon crawler without all of the fluff. Something similar to the Challenge Mode, but with lengthier dungeons, more variety of hazards and themes, and up to 100 pikmin. The lack campaign co-op also seems like an oversight considering how excellent the Challenge and Battle modes are.

I really do like what the game was going for, and my love of Pikmin gameplay and dungeon crawling prevents me from seriously disliking the game - but I wish it had more focus. Fortunately, recent mods like Endless Abyss and Colossal Caverns explore this potential and also get my recommendation.

I would recommend playing the GC or Wii versions, depending on your control preference. The Switch port has worse controls than previous versions, missing easter eggs, and audio issues, including lack of surround sound.

Right after finishing the first game and loving it to pieces, I went straight to Pikmin 2. Before playing it I wasn’t aware of how divisive this game was in the Pikmin community, but now that I’ve beaten it 100% twice, I can definitely see why. It boils down to a single word: caves. Some people love how unpredictable they are due to them being randomly generated and the challenge they offer with its many enemies and bosses, and those are the very same reasons some people hate them, because let’s face it, it’s not that fun wasting your time bringing down a gate just for it to have literally nothing behind, or having bombs raining down on you from the ceiling out of nowhere.

While the main focus of the first game is exploration, the caves make Pikmin 2 be more focused on combat, because they make up for like 80% of this game’s content. The overworld exploration takes a back seat, so much that they didn’t even bother on creating new areas - other than the very first level, all areas in this game are reused from the previous game, but with some changes. So if you don’t like the caves, well too bad, this game ain’t for you. As for myself, I quite enjoyed my first run through the game. Exploring the caves the first time around made me increasingly anxious as I progressed through the game and noticed how unpredictable they were, uncertain of what devilish troll the game would throw upon me. I’d always be especially excited for the boss fights.

I’ll never forget my first clashes with the Empress Bulblax and her spam of evil larvae that can one hit kill Pikmin; the sheer surprise I had when this mechanical spider called Man-at-Legs started decimating my Pikmin squad with a freaking machine gun; and the nightmarish Waterwraith, crushing my Pikmin with its stone rollers in the most memorable cave in the game, the Submerged Castle, a cave with an unsettling atmosphere that forces you to use only Blue Pikmin despite it having hazards of every single element.

However, despite the randomized aspect being nice for repeated playthroughs, the overall magic of the first run is significantly reduced, especially because of how exhaustive some caves can be due to their long length and the overwhelming amount of bullshit. And speaking of length, Pikmin 2 is MUCH longer than the first one (AND third one!), so all that combined greatly diminishes the replay value of this game.

All that said, I still love this game. It may sound like I find this game vastly inferior to the first one due to all I said, but that’s far from being the case. I can understand why some people dislike it, but I don’t think it deserves all the hate it gets. I’m sure I’ll replay it again and again for the years to come, just not as much as the first game.

Another wonderful addition to the series. This game can be frustrating, unforgiving, and even unfair, but all together I found this game to be a great time that admittedly had me wanting to throw my controller at the screen at times.

The graphics of this game are much improved from the first game, with the world being much more vibrant and colorful. The sound as well is amazing - the cave soundtracks in particular are a highlight. There’s a video I watched on youtube from “Scruffy” on the audio design in the caves - they’re very good at creating a foreboding/calming/adventurous/strange vibe based on the cave that you’re in, which is quite unique and impressive for a game this old. In general, I liked the vibe of this game more than the first, while being a graphical and audio improvement.

The ai in this game is improved as well, which was my biggest critique with the first one. The pikmin are much better at doing what you want and I found myself being much less frustrated with the controls than with the previous entry.

The design of this game is… controversial. This entry has much of a bigger emphasis on the new “caves”, and you spend much less time aboveground doing typical pikmin gameplay. When I think back to my playthrough of this game, It’s almost entirely of these caves, which does give this one a much different feel to the other entries in the series. The caves are less intricately crafted, and serve as dungeon-style sequences where you gather treasures to increase your money supply. They are also much more difficult, with you having a limited supply of pikmin. These are probably the most controversial element of the game and while they are definitely not perfect, they are probably my favorite parts of the game. Bite sized, dungeon-esque sequences that test your fighting ability and patience. These are also where you find the purple and white pikmin, which are adorable. While I enjoy the caves, I admit there are way to many of them. In fact, they are part of the reason why this game is so much longer than the first. Honestly, most of your time will be spent in the caves - which is definitely a valid critique if they’re not your thing. However, I enjoyed them, and many served as satisfying challenges to spice up the gameplay.

The story of this game is silly, but the treasures are one of this game’s highlights, I like the piklopedia and how many different dialogues there are commenting on the items you find in the world. It’s cute.

All in all, I enjoyed this game a lot. It’s a lot longer, harder, and at times more janky and unfair, but I found it to be a fun package all in all. If you liked the first game, give this one a try, you’ll at least find something to like.

Oh man, Pikmin 2. I find it hard to put into words the feeling this game gives me when I play it.

There are a lot of things wrong with this game. It is brutally difficult in a way Nintendo has not topped since. The Pikmin types are severely unbalanced, with blues being awful unless literally required and Purples being capable of easily nuking most bosses or enemies in the game.

But it works. It really works. It's a nonstop joyride that pushes your strategy skills and/or your ability to hit your Gamecube's reset button to the limit.

It's not a game for casual players. If you savor a tough and unforgiving game like I do, though, you'll love it to death.