Fuck you Nintendo for releasing Pikmin 1+2 while I was in the middle of playing this emulated.

I imagine the biggest internal conversation regarding sequel development is in regards to changes. A sequel is always the best way to really assess what makes an original title work and what doesn't. Pikmin 1 had the benefit of being such a richly produced game I found it hard to imagine what could be done to improve on it while playing it for the first time a while ago.

Weird feeling to find out that Nintendo's answer, in 2004, seemed to be "not much."

Pikmin 2 really wanted to flip the core of Pikmin on its head, by going from a time-limited scramble for ship parts to a slower, methodical treasure hunt. Part of Pikmin's appeal, to me, will always be its ability to pressure the player. Controversial as it was, Pikmin's entire campaign was time-limited for 30 in-game days, each day about 13 minutes in length. So, in short, each Pikmin playthrough will last, at most, about six and a half hours, give or take. To stress it out, the player is put under two constant time limits, that for the day, and that for the 30 total days. On my first playthrough I missed the deadline at the last minute by having the last two crucial parts in separate areas on the last day. It was frustrating, but I still enjoyed Pikmin.

I was aware of how Pikmin 2 removed the 30-day time limit but I also wasn't aware of what else it did to flip up the core game loop.

i.e. fucking dungeons. A lot of this review is gonna be about the caves/dungeons, as they’re the new center of the gameplay in this sequel.

Pikmin 2 decides that, while time ticks away during the day above ground, four different entrances in each area can be found that lead to a unique underground cave. The now-overworld clock freezes as you're now dungeon crawling for the bulk of the game time. Within the first hour, the main essence of Pikmin's design philosophy is contradicted. Pikmin 1's yin-yang of problem solving and time management is disregarded as Pikmin 2 concerns itself more with scanning featureless floors of repeating geometry, relegating the Pikmin to color-coded keys instead of diverse pieces of a toolkit. Red Pikmin are immune to fire and can remove fire traps, Yellow Pikmin are immune to electricity and can remove electric traps, Blue Pikmin can swim and are mostly useless in caves. Every floor, no matter the layout or cave itself, plays out exactly the same: clear out the enemies and traps, bring the treasures back to the landing spot, proceed down. You do this shit for over 100 floors, and all they do is get bigger, more plentiful, and take longer to complete as the game progresses.

Call me jaded or reluctant to change, but I don't find the constant lock-and-key (as Pangburn beautifully put it) gameloop an effective progression from what I previously experienced as such a greatly imaginative strategic puzzle blend.

I think what can be said most about the dungeons is how pointless they are for something that takes center stage. As I stated, pausing the daily time limit for extended dungeon crawling segments completely eviscerates the need for the time limit at all, especially with how barren the above ground sections are now. What used to be the main environment of Pikmin 1, sprawling multi-pathed worlds and labyrinths with puzzles to solve and routes to optimize at every corner have turned into circularly linear gates to these cave entrances with not much to see or do when outside of them. There's some stray treasure out there, but with how little time you spend above ground the time limit may as well not be there. I repaid my debt in 25 days over 10 hours of playtime, twice the time I spent in 30 days within Pikmin 1.

I could write much more, about this game's psychopathic sense of difficulty in the late game, over-reliance on randomized hazards to artificiate difficulty (those fucking bombs that drop from the cave ceilings), the unsubtle requirement to reset the game every time you fuck up on a shitty floor layout to get a new one (as it asks you to save between floors as a loud and obnoxious wink), the timepadding of having to farm the new White and Purple Pikmin, etcetera etcetera. You think all those clips being posted on Twitter of everyone's Pikmin army being completely eviscerated by random hazards all being from Pikmin 2 specifically is just a coincidence? It sure as hell isn't. Sometimes I think Pikmin 2 is a work of pure evil.

Despite all its changes, with all of Pikmin 2's misguided and unthoughtful reimagining, the most subversive thing of all is that I don't flat out hate it. It can be trudging, monotonous, boring, but never completely joyless. It's still a wonder of world and sound design, and there are moments above ground that spark the same light as its predecessor. I think "misguided" really is the key descriptor for Pikmin 2, as the core of a good game is still there and felt. Though I audibly groaned at the return of caves in Pikmin 4, with an explosion of countless indie roguelikes in recent years a-la Enter the Gungeon and Spelunky with their innovative dungeon crawling systems in the name of accessibility and quality of life, I think there's no drought in inspiration Nintendo could take from. Pikmin 2 could be elevated as a footnote in Pikmin 4's potentially successful winning take on Pikmin-meets-dungeon-crawling, but for now, it's a clumsy effort to shake up a successful formula that didn't need to be changed.

While it definitely has the personality and charm of Pikmin, the moment to moment is still fun, there’s just so many choices in this one that annoyed the hell out of me and drag my opinion of this game down. Tutorial texts are frequent and intrusive, most of the maps are just recycled from the first game, I don’t like how much time is spent in the caves, I find them really bland and unmemorable in terms of art and layout and they deal in a lot of cheap bullshit, things like bomb rocks randomly falling out of the sky and nuking half your pikmin (if any purples or whites were among the casualties, I would just reset), not to mention the exploration is downplayed in favour of a more guided lock and key kind of progression which I don’t think really fits Pikmin. It’s fine, hence the score, but I really didn’t have the motivation to beat it before the release of Pikmin 4. Maybe I’ll come back to it at a later date.

I love love LOVE the product placement in this game. It was such a cute and creative way for the game to make a connection with the person playing. And seeing all the kinds of names Olimar would make up for them, being artifacts he is not aware of, was so pleasing and funny. Dr. Pepper isn't just a soda, it's a DROUGHT ENDER.

Besides that extremely charming aesthetic, I actually do not like this game very much. It plays and controls fine, but the level design just feels overbloated most of the time. I was already annoyed that the sense of pure survival and the calendar were completely omitted, but if the trade-off was having so so SO MANY CAVES with monotonous tasks? I'll take the original game's design any day of the week.

Pikmin 2 is definitely a grower. At first I was seriously considering giving the game 2 stars, I was just so annoyed with it, but pushing through I started see what the hubub was all about.

First the bad.

I despise the narrative framing of this game. I get the whole anti-capitalism shtick it’s going for but I don’t think it is done particularly well. The debt angle opposed to the survival angle makes me feel like a parasite on the planet, taking advantage of the pikmin for my own personal gain, rather than working together. Which like...I get it, that’s what they are going for, but while Olimar’s curiosity in the first game I find infinitely charming, the constant disgust for nature from the rest of the cast in Pikmin 2 was exhausting and annoying. The letters received at the end of the days are so soulless, I derived very little joy from reading them. The ship’s constant bickering was deeply irritating and Louie’s dumb little meme faces just felt gross. I did not find any of it particularly funny or clever or interesting. It felt old and dry as soon as it was introduced and it sacrificed my favorite aspect of the other 3 games: the juxtaposition between the severity of the goal and the intrigue of the world. The debt has no stakes and the character’s intrigue is non-existent.

This game also starts that trend of needing to add a new pikmin type to every game. I think this trend might be bad actually. In the first game there is a really good balance between the three guys. Red fights good, Yellow throws high, and Blue can go into the water. They are very tactile to the environment and core aspects of the gameplay. The Purple pikmin being as strong as 10 pikmin is a pretty good addition but all the ones after that kind of stink. Like they don’t add to the gameplay in any meaningful way they are just little keys. Now instead of a generic wall you have a poison wall, or an electric wall, or an ice wall, or a glass wall. It kind of only makes the game experience worse and more tedious not to mention aesthetically incoherent. The electric walls are so jarring. The worst thing Pikmin 2 does is dedicate digging to the white pikmin. It’s way too important of a task to dedicate to a rare pikmin you only find in tunnels. The amount of time spent just watching 5 white pikmin dig - tedious.

Okay, I’m done pooping in my diaper. Now for the sort of good.

Boy this is like not even Pikmin. But also what even is Pikmin? I thought I knew what Pikmin was. I thought Pikmin was a game about multitasking and delegating tasks in big open areas but I guess not. Pikmin 2 gets rid of all of that and focuses on combat. At first I didn’t like this but the more I played the more interesting it became. Pikmin mechanically is very unique when approached as an action game. The war of attrition going into a tunnel and slowly losing pikmin as you descend is a very tense experience. I would approach tunnels so meticulously and on more than one occasion would reach the end with just enough pikmin to carry the last treasure. It was a wholly unique and deep satisfaction that only a game like Pikmin could provide. Not knowing how many floors the tunnels had made it very easy to get emotionally invested. You’d reach floor 7 with 40ish pikmin and think “surely this next one is the last one, I can’t take much more of this”.

The tunnels themselves work really well overall. While I think they trivialize the overworld, they also really create a threatening and cramped environment that compliments the combat. The large enemy variety was really cool too. Going deeper and deeper and discovering all the different little freaks. The deeper you go the freakier they get.

The procedural floor layouts were also pretty neat. You’d get a bunch of dead ends and empty tunnels but I like that crap. I like it when a game is inconvenient and kind of dumb. Dead ends feel very real. If everything leads to something it just feels like a game with programming and numbers but having the occasional dead end makes the tunnels feel hostile, not designed for life.

I also didn’t mind the cheapness in this game. I think it compliments the narrative framing. Some bullshit would happened and half of me was irritated but the other half felt like I deserved it. Olimar and co. are playing dirty so I don’t see why the planet can’t as well.

These tunnels, while a lot of the times very tedious, are so uniquely "PIKMIN". There is nothing else like Pikmin and more specifically there is nothing else like Pikmin 2.

Overall this game is weird as heck. I think I hate it. Some of that hate is why I love it. Some of the hate is why I hate it. I think it would be neat if Nintendo made a Pikmin 2 rogue-lite.

SIDE NOTE:
NOWITSREYNTIME17, if you decide to comment on this review please @ me so I can get that badge. Thanks.

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.

(Completed debt, game dropped afterwards)

Frustrating. Despite this being my least favorite Pikmin by far, I actually do see the gameplay vision, and the aesthetic is very charming! But this is simply not a game playing to its strengths, and filled with too many frustrations to list.

The most obvious change is that this game has no time limit. Pikmin 1's time limit was a non-issue if you were decently good, but its removal signals a shift away from time efficiency being the major driver. Okay, so what is the driver then? Well, the combat... kinda.

On paper, and to some degree in practice, this is actually a fine idea. Swarming controls strike a balance between immediacy and indirectness that makes positioning engaging, especially amidst the chaos that erupts while trying to aim thrown Pikmin, call stray ones back, and dodge attacks. Some improvements to the controls from Pikmin 1, especially around selecting thrown Pikmin, support this without hampering tactility too much, and the Pikmin 2 enemy roster is far more creative, challenging, and dynamic than 1's.

The problem is that the level design is consistently terrible at actually inducing these types of scenarios. Overworld stages are downgraded remixes of Pikmin 1 levels, especially embarrassing compared to Pikmin 3's Mission Mode. But the real meat of the game, the caves, is somehow even worse. This is some of the most dry, sterile procgen I've ever seen, almost deliberately placing obstacles to encourage slow, grindy, safe clears. Everything is mostly cordoned off into their own "handmade" rooms, so that you tackle enemies and hazards sequentially instead of simultaneously. Many "lock-and-key" effects like fire traps, poison traps, electric beetles, etc. are actually more flexible than they seem, but the player is given no impetus to ever use a non-matching Pikmin type save for rare, forced scenarios like Submerged Castle.

Speaking of Submerged Castle, shoutouts to the Water Wraith for being a fantastic (albeit very undercooked) addition, by reintroducing efficiency concerns in a natural and dynamic way that fits the style of the game and leaves lots of room for counterplay. Of course, this is Pikmin 2, so it's limited to this cave and never used again.

I have many more complaints, so I will phrase things a different way. The great version of this game as I envision it would do the following:

- Either revamp the overworld to justify its existence, or further minimize/remove it
- Generate caves that place varying threats in close proximity to each other, and everything in generally more dense and interconnected layouts
- Rebalance the game to avoid reloading floors and instead emphasize continuous resource management
- Allow most enemies to wander much further from their initial location
- Introduce a mechanic that incentivizes some efficiency, which will complicate treasure gathering and grindy playstyles
- Instead of creating sudden difficulty spikes through random events like bomb rock drops, use procgen, such as grouped difficult enemies, constricting terrain, high hazard density, etc.
- Vastly speed up the pacing of the game. Given the current quality level, half of the caves can be cut

If you put all this together, it almost sounds like a traditional roguelike or dungeon crawler! But this style of dense, systemically driven design is not something that Nintendo seems willing or able to make; BOTW/TOTK is the closest, and those games exist in spite of balance and structural issues.

What's shocking though, is how much the Colossal Caverns romhack resembles this, simply by squishing everything in the game into one giant, dense cave. Combat is more chaotic! Routing is more freeform! Resource management is more natural! It still falls short structurally due to its romhack status, but it's a testament to how much of the raw material is already present.

Ultimately, a disappointment. This could have served as a great example of seizing on the latent potential in a set of mechanics, almost like how classic Doom's combat was explored and developed, but Pikmin 2 is just too unfocused and inconsistent to make it there. Check out Colossal Caverns with a self-imposed time limit, it's fun!

As a follow-up to Pikmin 1, Pikmin 2 makes an incredibly strong statement. And that statement is "we know that we're spreading ourselves thin between score attack-style survivalist gameplay and slow-burn exploration and worldbuilding, so we've destroyed the worldbuilding and put it in a little book and now the game is all about not dying in caves". It's a change that honestly the Pikmin series probably needed to take in one direction or the other, and the game commits to its more arcade-style gameplay fairly well! Without having to worry about navigating a more complex terrain in favor of labyrinths, control of the Pikmin generally feels a lot more consistent, combat challenges can be placed in a player's way methodically and deliberately, and overall the spikes in difficulty and memorable moments are a lot more controlled than in Pikmin 1. Unfortunately, the very limited exploration offered from seeing Pikmin 1 environments change does end up feeling very rote and obligatory by comparison, which makes a lot of the game's opening stretch seem pretty performatory; Pikmin 2 can't be mean enough in its opening to really grit its teeth due to needing to reteach Pikmin 1's mechanics and introduce its new ones. Additionally, returning bosses like the Burrowing Snagret, Beady Long Legs and Emperor Bulblax are shadows of their former selves due to appearing at the end of dungeons where a player can't be assured to have a full squad like Pikmin 1, creating this really unfortunate deflating feeling after clearing the first game. I'd cleared the debt and was ready to write the game off as a technically superior, but ultimately short-sighted version of Pikmin 1.

Then the Water Wraith happened.

I cannot tell you how wonderful of a turning point the Water Wraith is. Every cave up to that point (discounting backtracking to the first area's harder dungeons) could be handled with just a simple measure of patience, with taking things slowly, step by step, and throwing the right colored Pikmin at the thing they're good at stopping. Water Wraith takes every bit of that away from you, demands you scramble, puts you in the position to make mistakes, has no weaknesses for a majority of its dungeon. This is Pikmin 2 at its best: throwing you into cruel situations where one lapse in attention or assuming that your little guys will be fine will end up with a squad crushed, exploded, or eaten by a jumpscare of a bomb rock or bulbear. Where the first game had you try to figure out how to solve each creature individually, Pikmin 2 is glad to mingle its enemies together, forcing you into incredibly uncomfortable situations to try and keep your most precious fellas alive, cursing the name of the Dirigibug or anything that happens to shoot lightning as they attempt to one-shot your lil' boy army. Bosses take a significant step up, with Man-At-Legs being an especially fantastic upgrade of needing to figure out spacial awareness, positioning, and just how fast your Pikmin can duck into cover to avoid machine gun fire. The midgame of Pikmin 2 is absolutely exhilerating in attempting to expect its cruelty and react.

... and unfortunately the endgame is where Pikmin 2's flaws become most apparent. The caves that you delve into are somewhat randomly generated, with layouts tending to be similar, but a lot of enemy placements and exit placements in those rooms being random. This leads to a lot of scenarios that aren't so much difficult, but unfun, especially if something REAL dangerous like a groink or bulbear spawns directly outside your starting area and leaves you little time to react. I do think the game is significantly more fun not resetting or leaving caves, just trying to do your best with the limited resources you have (I actually managed to beat Submerged Castle on the back of seven total Pikmin remaining, and it was an absolute blast maneuvering that!), but I'll admit it's not the optimal way to play the game compared to resetting. Sitting there watching your 'min get blown over and over again because the blowy man is behind a wall you need to break while a snitchbug takes swipes every so often is hardly a fun time, and these kinds of scenarios are abundant the further you get into Pikmin 2. Add in things like bomb hitboxes extending through walls with no real indication, cutscenes for items interrupting gameplay, and treasures sometimes glitching out if at a bad angle, and Pikmin 2 ends up an experience as unintentionally frustrating as it is intentionally.

Overall, Pikmin 2 is my favored Pikmin game of the Gamecube duology. It's a wildly inconsistent game, but its peaks are utterly fantastic, its writing some of the best on the system even though it's tucked away in its own little section, and the moments it creates as you barely make it through a tough challenge or scenario are legendary. I will never forget sending my army of Pikmin to gank the Empress Bulblax while the President of Hotocate Freight personally punched out an army of her spawn with his bare hands until they could all mob her face and guarantee a win, or slowly tricking Dweevils into getting a stack up disc out of the water because I lost all my Blue Pikmin. It is not the ideal sequel to its original game, and has to sacrifice a lot to make its own fun, but what it does uniquely it does superbly, and there's a stretch of about eight hours of game in here that's utterly incredible. The other surrounding eight hour chunks on either side are still pretty good, too, just with their very obvious drawbacks!

Olimar should not dump his wife for a cool marble, though. That's weird, Olimar.

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.

Recently, it has occurred to me that the harshest thing that could be said about any sequel is that it makes you "appreciate the original more". What initially may seem like a positive comment is anything but. In actuality, such a statement is essentially saying "This game took an imperfect original and failed to improve upon it so spectacularly that I'm left wondering if the flaws of the first one are really so problematic after all".

Anyways, Pikmin 2

Chapter 1 - Earth: The Final Frontier

The original Pikmin game was fairly coy about the possibility of this game taking place in our very own backyard, perhaps after some sort of unnamed armaggedon. The sequel, on the other hand, hardly waits 20 minutes to smack you across the face with mustard lids and toy gundams. Such a setting would be fine, cute even, if it ever actually amounted to anything. At risk of getting ahead of myself, caves (which I'll get into more later) are given a vague "Earth stuff" wallpaper, but it's not like they're actual locations, just a mish mash of junk. They more closely resemble those AI-generated images that look like a hoarder's bedroom at first glance, but if you try to focus on any details your brain will start dry heaving and saying hail marys. Above ground is given token dandelions, though I hardly remember the forest having so many electrified gates and toxin-spewing vents. Maybe that's more common in Japan.

Chapter 2 - Hocotate Pawn

So, what is it that possesses the blue-collar hero Olimar to return to the site of his 30-day nightmare? Well, MONEY, of course! The plot is novel, as Olimar and his junior Louie are sent back to Earth in order to scrounge up enough money to save their (presumably non-union) jobs. Hazard pay is, I imagine, off the table. That being said, "novel" feels like such a disappointing step back from Pikmin 1. For any of its faults, the first game shined in mood. Olimar was in a genuine life-or-death struggle, completely alone on an alien planet. There was a constant danger and he clearly knew it. Now, it's Olimar and his jackass friend playing junior Bargain Hunt. There is nothing pressing about the situation except the occasional nagging email from their boss. The development of his situation was funny, especially by the time he was becoming king of the woodland creatures, but it once again undercuts any sense of isolation.

Chapter 3 - All the Time in the World

The time limit in Pikmin 1 was at once the bane of my existence, and its most essential feature. I was constantly fearful of inefficiency and working too slow, but it was a healthy kind of anxiety. Like a low heat stove, there was a constant simmering tension that merely asks you to avoid pissing around. Now, there is absolutely no urgency. Despite the plot explicitly concerning repaying late debt, the boss will presumably indefinitely hide out from the knee-breaking loan sharks until you're good and ready to proceed, Olimar and Louie free to spend all the time in the world prancing through flowers and singing hymns. Bizarrely, the game mysteriously retains the day-night cycle. Since there is no day limit, it's just an excuse for a recap of stats from the last arbitrary period of time and a chance for the boss to guilt trip you with the cigarette butts and half-eaten cheesecake he had to scrounge out of the trash for dinner. Previously, the end of a day was a further tick on the doomsday clock, that much less time to save your life; now, it feels more like that screen where the Wii would tell you to take a break and go outside.

Chapter 4 - The Louie Factor

Another new feature is of course the presence of Olimar's "he's trying his best" sidekick, Louie. Aside from the aforementioned total destruction of the atmosphere this creates, it does allow for some interesting gameplay opportunities, as Pikmin can now be set to two tasks at the same time - occasionally, at least. Since there's absolutely no automation, the only tasks you can set a captain to supervise passively is things that take a long time for the Pikmin to do, like destroying walls. That's not nothing of course; it's nice to not have to stare deadeyed as your Pikmin dash their brains out against a stone wall for 7 hours in a prolonged metaphor for their entire existence. Still, it would be nice to even have some basic captain commands (ex. "Return to the Onion with your Pikmin", "Go here on the map by the safest possible route", "Collect pellets near you"). Having two captains also allows for you to divvy up your Pikmin easier - still not as neatly as would be ideal, but definitely an improvement. Louie in specific is an interesting character, coming across less like Olimar Jr. and more like some sort of savage animal who's simply too stupid to be scary. He doesn't think about anything but food (which seems to rub off on Olimar somewhat), culminating in Louie's journal, an entire compendium built around one joke. I can't imagine reading the entire thing when it is, again, one joke, but the fact they put that much effort into it honestly does make the joke a lot funnier. To add to Louie's charming weirdness is the unexplained implication that he tries to kill Olimar, something which absolutely did make me laugh.

Chapter 5 - It's a Duracell World

Populating Olimar's new recurring vacation destination is a number of treasures for you to collect. These are Pikmin 2's equivalent to the ship parts in the previous game. There is absolutely a funny novelty to the idea of junk scavenged out of a dirty hole being considered treasure, as Olimar proudly displays rotten pickle chips and broken Hot Wheels next to Hocotate's Mona Lisa. The issue with this feature is a simple one: Pikmin 1 featured a total of 30 treasures to collect. Pikmin 2, a marginally longer game, features over 200. Despite this overwhelming amount of junk, each of which is worth a handful of pennies and a Subway coupon, the game still requires you to one-by-one carry them back to your ship for a little celebratory cutscene. Then, all my Pikmin gather around for a jovial applause and the Evangelion "Congratulations" scene because I brought back a feather worth literally 10 coins (reminder that the total debt is 10,000). It's impossible not to find it incredibly tedious after a while. There are only so many times you can laugh at the novelty of seeing a screw or a kiwi or one of the four(?!) Duracell batteries they make you collect. The most damning thing I can say is that, after defeating the final boss, I felt absolutely no impulse to collect the remaining treasures, in a game where such an exercise is ostensibly the entire point.

Chapter 6 - Meet the New Pikmin, Same as the Old Pikmin or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Purples

Like that story of James Cameron writing "Alien$" on a whiteboard, the inclusion of more Pikmin is an obvious step forward. Here, we have technically two new members of the Pikmin posse, though it's functionally three. The ability for yellow Pikmin to carry bombs has been removed, a mechanic that will not be missed. Instead, they focus on electricity, opening electric gates and giving electric enemies that fluoride stare when they try to zap 'em. The first fully new addition is the white Pikmin, whose primary function is to open poison gates and fight poison enemies - noticing a pattern here? It's like the whole games been recalibrated around making sure you have different keys for different doors. It could be argued that bombs were that too, but a) it's more explicit now and b) in these games, two keys feels very different from three. Hell, is it four? I don't remember fire gates in Pikmin 1, but that might just be the dementia. Beyond the poison immunity, white Pikmin also damage anything that eats them, something which will be very useful when Pikmin introduces the Divine Wind Pikmin and suiciding your units becomes a viable strategy. Thirdly, they can dig up buried treasures, a contextual "locked door" that seems to only exist to give you the double bird if you thought that "no poison" in a cave meant it was safe to not take whites, you oafish simpleton. Finally, they can carry items faster, an ability that's totally useless, since I don't really see any good reason to carry more than a few white Pikmin; you're not rolling out the White Ranger Recovery Squad to speed haul those Duracells, especially when there's, again, absolutely no urgency in this game. Further exacerbating that is the fact that whites and the secret third Pikmin are both fairly rare and not easy to replace. Ah, yes, that secret third thing: the purple Pikmin. Perhaps akin to Dr. Oppenheimer, I was initially naive to the awesome power I was meddling with. Rest assured, once their true potential dawned on me, I did indeed become death, destroyer of worlds. There's no reason not to roll up with a backing crew of these big boys. After getting cold cocked by a purple Pikmin air barrage, 80 - 90% of enemies fold like wet paper. These chunky fellas not only do gonzo damage, they can also stun enemies. That's not just those they hit, but also nearby enemies, their wife, pet dog, and those who happen to have run an errand in the same postal code. In addition, they seem to have basic homing abilities, so even my Olimar's crosseyed aim is enough to make bulborb pancakes one right after the other. It's not an exaggeration to say the vast majority of enemy encounters are totally trivial if you just bury them in purple Pikmin, including most bosses. Purple Pikmin being limited is not an issue because purple Pikmin simply won't die. If that wasn't enough, they can carry more than any other Pikmin, meaning you don't even need many for treasures.

Chapter 7 - The Earth Defense Force

Enemy variety is one area of improvement here, though the actual quality of the specific enemies is something of a mixed bag. Some, like the Careening Dirigibug or the Decorated Cannon Beetle can add a fun challenge, though become extraordinarily frustrating in the wrong situation. Others, like all the little Dweevils or the Jellyfloats, are not threatening at all, just annoying to deal with. The new bulborb variants are frightening suckers; the halloween-colored guys will pull an "omae wa mou shindeiru" on eight of your Pikmin before you can even react. As far as bosses go, they were unique and fun, though most were made fairly trivial by the purple Pikmin. The final boss, similarly to in the first game, is deeply frustrating to figure out, but once you do, he's a fun challenge. I probably prefer this boss to the first one, as your responses feel more varied, not just repeating the same hit and run until he throws in the towel. Finally, I can't not mention the Waterwraith, my new best friend, who turns into a Looney Tunes character after he loses his rolling pin. Replace his theme with Benny Hill for the same effect.

Chapter 8 - Addressing the Deep, Dark Hole in the Room

Finally, we get to caves, the foggy, wet hole at the center of this game. This is the part where I would normally say "it's a good idea in concept, but the execution leaves something to be desired". The issue, however, is that it's not a good idea in concept. In fact, I struggle to grasp how a team of developers decided the best evolution of a somewhat open world game about exploring and finding items scattered around a nature environment was a series of cramped, linear tunnels devoid of any discovery. Since these are such a major part of the experience and I have so many different things to touch on, this chapter will be broken into subchapters.

Chapter 8.1 - Pikmin's Baby Park

I really can't stress enough how much I hate caves. Let's start with the biggest, most glaring issue - the aforementioned linearity. Most floors are not strictly linear, to be fair, but that just means you're not TECHNICALLY forced to wade down the lane of the swimming pool because you're allowed to explore the hot tub to your heart's content. Every floor is a tiny area, mostly devoid of any puzzles, fun level design, or sense of discovery. They pretty much all boil down to a mix of fighting a bunch of guys (far from the most fun part of Pikmin) and clearing one of the many doors that you hopefully have brought the full rainbow to deal with like you're Captain Planet. Caves are, at first, fine, and by the end of the game, they're a merciless trudge. I feel like Alex DeLarge, having my eyeballs held open and being forced to watch increasingly elongated sequences of the same tunnels with the same enemies (mostly) and the same four kinds of doors until I break. The worst offender is Glutton's Kitchen, in which you "explore" an entire cave's worth of large, blank rooms where a crowd of bulborbs are holding a singles mixer to meet some nice breadbugs. These empty rooms populated by a bunch of basic enemies feel like the Pikmin equivalent of Mario Kart's Baby Park. Thankfully, it's mercifully short. Speaking of length, what starts at a compassionate 6 floors by the end of the game becomes upwards of an eyewatering 15. If you'll recall back to Chapter 1, I also alluded to how the artistic direction of the level design seemed to be "public park or public restroom after a tornado". Maybe I would enjoy it more if these were real environments, but they're not. I just remember bathroom tile texture over haphazard "baths" and randomly placed props, or something meant to resemble a sandbox or play pen if it was, as they say on Chopped, "deconstructed". I concede gameplay should come first, but environmental cohesion should probably be some sort of a factor, no?

Chapter 8.2 - Poison Vents to Nowhere

Much of these caves are procedurally generated, and by god can you tell. It's honestly atrocious. Spawning immediately next to a giant bulborb ready to make pik-kebabs and hazardous traps set up carefully to guard the cave's vast stock of dead ends are just a couple of the many wonders Pikmin 2 will generate regularly, the second one seeming to happen on essentially every floor. What is even the point of putting me through all these rooms if 90% of the dangers will spawn so haphazardly they're entirely irrelevant? The most important button map you need to remember to get through Pikmin 2 is your reset button. Don't like a level? Just reset it, and it'll be entirely different. There was one level where an extremely narrow bridge over a pond spawned off to the side, but after I was forced to reset the level, it spawned obstructing my path every single time. Since I refuse to play the Pikmin Shuffle with 100 little idiots, I just kept resetting until it would get out of my way again. So, we have a system that makes every level feel samey and terribly structured, and said system is easily abused, to boot. To add on to that, apparently some of the cave music is procedurally generated, which explains why some parts sound like cats remixing a soundboard of Weird Al songs.

Chapter 8.3 - The Great Bulborb Spanking Line

The degree to which these caves begin to rely on "fight huge hordes of guys" as their one and only challenge feels like if a movie director decided they'd done enough plot and made the back half of the film a series of disconnected scenes of people bowling. One right after another these dwarf bulborbs line themselves up, and one after another they get the goomba experience from my purple Pikmin air squadron. For most of these enemies, it's not difficult, it's not fun. By the time Cavern of Chaos has 54 bulborbs on one floor, it's hard not to imagine Miyamoto like Peter Venkman running his psychic tests at the beginning of Ghostbusters: "The effect? I'll tell you what the effect is - it's pissing me off!" Except by that point, I don't know if I had the enthusiasm to be pissed off, just totally drained. Who enjoys fighting grunt after grunt after grunt like this?

Chapter 8.4 - Live, Die, Repeat: The Pikmin Killing Zone

The horrible little reality that only dawns with time is how vital that reset button really will be. In every cave, you can bring 100 pikmin max and you're unable to ever go back for more until the cave is completely cleared and all the curtains are washed. With that change, suddenly Pikmin become a precious commodity - the loss of just one can be devastating, in part because the game only gives vague hazard warnings before entering a cave, so you have no idea of the ratio of colors you should bring. Pikmin in combat being stupid, sometimes difficult to control, and sometimes the victim of random game bs wasn't really a huge issue before, but now? Every one is like a hot needle to the brain. I'll reiterate what I said in my review of Sea Salt: you can't give me wild, uncontrollable tools and reasonably expect me to act with a great deal of precision. I can't make a ship in a bottle with a sledgehammer, and I can't thread the needle of mecha-frog artillery strikes without a couple troopers getting blown to kingdom come. Even the basic grunts, as easy as they are, can sometimes get in a lucky shot. Between the level reset and enemy behavior, you just have to keep trying until you get lucky enough to lose next to no one, since you never have any idea what precisely you'll need on the next floor. The most egregious example of all four sections here is a floor that is an entirely straight line, crossing over itself just enough so that the higher points will block your camera on the lower points. Along this straight line is one decorated cannon beetle after another. There had to have been upwards of 20 total, all lined up, technically easy to crush with purples, but with enough of a random factor to screw it up intolerably outside of any control when one of them gamer rages and chucks the 20 blue Pikmin I need into the Great Beyond to meet Pikmin Christ. If I didn't have access to save states through my... Nintendo Gamecube I honestly might have quit the game right there. But that's the thing - in Pikmin 1, there's a button to reset the day when you make too many mistakes. In Pikmin 2, meanwhile, you just have to reset the console for every little slip-up. It feels wrong, like you're cheating, but they clearly expect you to do it. This does not seem really doable without it.

Chapter 9 - The End of Pikvangelion

This turned out larger than I expected, but Pikmin 2 elicited stronger emotions from me than many other games. Honestly, I really did gain a new appreciation for Pikmin 1 through playing it. That's why this game is more saddening than anything else. Not only to see it ruin so much of what made the first game not just good, but especially unique, but to see it being lauded for it. I can't begin to understand the critical response to this game, but its worst crime is making me dread playing the rest of these. Pikmin 4 is supposedly "Pikmin 2 2", which is about as effective at selling me on it as if you told me playing it would lock my fingers in a Saw trap I can only be released from by killing 10,000 breadbugs in the name of Hocotate Freight.

Obviously, the main difference between this and its predecessor and immediate successor is the caves. I think the caves are conceptually sound, but there's a few issues that had me leaning in favour of Pikmin 1 & 3 over this:

- The ratio is way off, with caves taking up a vast majority of the playtime.

- The lack of a timer in most caves means tedious, safe strategies are incentivised - some of the most dangerous enemies are actually pretty useless against your captains' fists, provided you have a minute to spare (which you do). The one cave that DOES have a time mechanic is by far the most engaging.

- The feeling of dread as you descend diminishes once you realise Pikmin don't need to be in your control in order to descend down a hole (they'll all just teleport to you). Leaving the cave via geyser thus doesn't erase much progress, as getting back to where you were will only take a couple of minutes' hole-hunting with your captains.

On the plus side, the enemy variety in this game is crazy, and the caves provide space for them which may otherwise have not been there. Pikmin 2 also features boatloads of character, leaning into satirical, often dark humour that builds on the tension created by the first game's conflicting tones. Pikmin is just a conceptual masterpiece, and that's always going to go a long way despite any individual game's flaws.

I liked this a lot, but of the two Pikmin styles I'm definitely more into the style of 1/3 than what I played here in 2. From what I understand, Pikmin 4 is another in the style of 2, so while I am sceptical I'm also keen on seeing this style improved upon.

The early hours of Pikmin 2 immediately bring to mind all the qualities one looks for in a sequel entry: refinement, expansion, and a maintaining of the spirit while also taking the series in new directions. The small changes Pikmin 2 presents to the core formula established by the first game radically shifts the player’s approach to gameplay in a multitude of refreshing and unexpected ways. The most notable one, to start, is the axing of the pendulous time limit suspended across the game in favor of a more relaxed goal of simply accruing a set amount of treasure before initiating the first credits roll. What this allows for is a shift in priorities for the player, focusing less on optimizing the gathering of items and maximizing the amount retrieved in a single day, creating instead the necessary time and space for the player to accrue resources and make preparations for the daunting challenges awaiting in the game's many caves.

Caves are the primary source of strategic challenge which was previously supplied by the overarching time limit in the prior game. Each one proposes an arduous trek to the bottom, prompting the player to dispatch all manner of enemy and obstacle along the way, most of which guard the various treasures you’ll need to reach the game’s ultimate goal. The narrow spaces and treacherous hazards encountered in these caves, including new, deadlier, environmental obstacles, make some of the later undertakings especially hardcore. It is, however, less the hazards and enemies themselves that supply the challenge, but the fact that you are unable to spawn new Pikmin while in the midst of any given spelunking venture. Like the first game, a philosophy of general leniency is employed to give players the space to make mistakes and still be able to recover from them. The game saves your progress after each floor, allowing you to reset without redoing the entire dungeon, which is especially beneficial in cases of the randomly-generated layouts rendering themselves unfavorable in certain sections of the game. Additionally, the longer caves often have rest levels, where you’re given the chance to restock on certain valuable resources, and even regain some of your lost troops in the case of specific rare flowers which can sprout additional Pikmin for you.

Perhaps most importantly, the nature of the caves engage the player in ways which more naturally instruct on combat—far more than the first game ever managed to. The forgiving nature and largely open spaces of the first Pikmin meant that even if you lost a significant portion of your troops in combat, you were never punished severely enough that you needed to alter your strategy. It was always viable to simply throw an entire army of Pikmin at a problem, and then recover from whatever losses were incurred. The overarching time limit of the game was the only disincentive to this tactic, but never enough that one would have to engage with combat in a more strategic manner. The limiting nature of the caves prevent this method outright, while their labyrinthian corridors encourage a more considered approach to enemies within the dwellings. The effectiveness of this methodology is evidenced by the introduction of the first of two new Pikmin types in the game’s very first cave, which boast an incredibly utilitarian array of combat-centric skills, in addition to being able to lift ten times the amount of any other Pikmin type.

Purple Pikmin are an insanely powerful asset you quickly learn to utilize effectively but sparingly, due to their precious nature. Unlike your primary Pikmin colors, the newly added Purple and White Pikmin have no means of multiplying ad infinitum, making them especially more valuable when obtained. The tradeoff for this (for Purples, anyway) is an incredible utility that allows you to mow through many enemies, and even bosses, with only a handful of fighters, due to the stun-locking property they possess when thrown. For many of the most common enemies, their existence is trivialized by the existence of Purple Pikmin, but the ability to clear out entire areas using only a small retinue of about eight to ten Pikmin is invaluable for navigating through the caves without losing large swaths along the way. Additional elemental enemies ensure that you can’t just steamroll past every challenge with only Purples in tow, while their lumbering disposition often puts them at risk when dealing with a larger number of enemies at once. While they’re ultimately a bit overtuned in their abilities—particularly when compared to their albino brethren—their incredibly powerful assets in tandem with their scarcity encourage more strategic considerations when entering a cave, especially as the levels and boss fights become increasingly more puzzle-like as the game goes on.

Most of the initial boss fights encountered in the early game of Pikmin 2 are repeats of by now iconic bouts from the first game. Once again we are pitted against the likes of the Burrowing Snagret, the Beady Long Legs, and the Emperor Bulblax, all of whom appear easier than their prior incarnations. However, later caves build upon the familiar patterns of these previous encounters, giving us such harrowing challenges as the newly mobile Pileated Snagret, the mechanized Man-at-Legs, and infinitely-breeding Empress Bulblax. Each of these fights proves to be a worthy culmination of the respective gauntlets endured by the end of their caves, as well as the completely new bosses with entirely distinctive gimmicks to work out. A number of these fights unfortunately suffer from being repeated in later dungeons, usually with an additional gimmick which only succeeds in frustrating and complicating the fight, rather than adding an additional layer of strategy or challenge. The final boss thankfully avoids any irritating pitfalls, making use of every kind of element and hazard thus encountered for a truly climactic battle. The most memorable fight, however, comes not at the end, or even the bottom of any of the caves, but on the first level of the Submerged Castle, where you’ll almost certainly confront the infamous Waterwraith for the very first time. This adversary is less a test of player skill or combat prowess; it’s more an exemplar of well-engineered design intent on instilling blood-curdling fear through a musically-lead oppressive atmosphere and tension-torquing subversion. The effect is so successful that the specter of the Waterwraith hangs in the air, the anxiety creeping back in as you explore new caves, fearing it might drop unexpectedly from the ceiling again.

For all the ways in which the caves of Pikmin 2 reinvigorate and expand upon the philosophies established by the first game, they’re also the embodiment of the game’s most lackluster element. Because each cave is randomly generated from a predetermined set of repeating and interchangeable environments, the vast majority of visual renderings experienced in a playthrough end up feeling bland and indistinct. The overworld areas are not a particular reprieve either. Whereas the first Pikmin featured four bespoke and environmentally diverse areas to explore across its playtime, the main areas of Pikmin 2 are largely similar to one another, and lack any kind of memorable locales or set pieces. The layouts of these areas often push players towards a specific objective, hampering the open-ended sense of exploration these games otherwise engender. One of the core appeals of Pikmin, conveyed initially by the first game, is the shrunk-down perspective of a familiar world rendered fanciful by way of a humorously alien perspective; despite falling short in regards to the visual expectations for the game, Pikmin 2 still retains the innate charm and splendor of the series through clever writing and humorous commentary, inspired by the story’s conceit and real world analogues.

One of the most surprising factors of Pikmin 2 is its value as a work of satire. It’s not particularly deep in this regard, but the repeated emphasis on, and acerbic derision of, capitalist greed and exploitation, leads to a more thoughtful experience than one would initially expect. Its commentary goes beyond the simple dichotomy of rapacious executives and subjugated workers, taking into consideration the underlying imperialist foundation for Captain Olimar’s relationship to the Pikmin. The story goes like this: a foreign explorer is contracted by his employer to extract valuable resources and treasure from an uncolonized land, utilizing the labor of the native inhabitants and decimating the natural ecosystem in the process. While Pikmin 2 is ostensibly still a cozy game built around the aesthetic appeal of exploring naturally-presented environments, those weighty social critiques remain inescapable when considered beyond face value.
Is it ironic, then, that the “treasures” Captain Olimar pilfers upon his journey would often be considered relative junk to us? The first of these items found in the game is a Duracell branded battery, the first of many humorously identifiable objects recognized from our everyday life. Skippy peanut butter, Carmex lip balm, an old 7-Up bottle cap—these are but a handful of familiar items encountered when playing Pikmin 2. The resonant tangibility of these extant materials helps the sentiment of the game’s commentary feel more applicable, while maintaining a trademark sense of whimsy through playful naming schemes. The dialogue and character exchanges aren’t the only places where the writing of Pikmin 2 shines, though. The end of day diary entries from Olimar are supplanted here by a short correspondence letter from your boss, chronicling his plight in evading vicious loan sharks and hiding out underneath a bridge. Similarly, there is a treasure trove of detailed entries on every item you collect and enemy you defeat, building upon the zoological observations of the creatures you’ve encountered and postulating over the perceived purpose of every treasure you’ve come across. It makes for a nice break in gameplay, relaxing between days by reading up on all the things you’ve seen and filling out your perspective of the world through the lens of these wide-eyed explorers.

It is undeniable that Pikmin 2 achieves so much, and constantly delights and surprises with its many new additions and twists. It never feels quite as iconic and instantly understood as its predecessor, but in many ways it surpasses it through sheer mechanical ingenuity. The way it engages you to understand and appreciate the nuances of its systems, instructing and encouraging you to think more strategically without forcing you to suffer in the process; the way the sly contortions of the game’s writing leads to a far more satisfying thematic experience than one would ever expect from an otherwise guileless series; the way that such a seemingly benign decision like making the products you collect correlate with actual objects you see and use in life dramatically effects the immersive feeling of the game to an almost inexplicable degree. This feature in particular was removed for the recent Switch port of the game, so I felt even more assured when setting out to play the Wii version specifically, which still retains this (in my opinion) essential experience to the game. The general blandness plaguing the environments and occasional bullshit complicating later dungeon expeditions seem to hurt all the more, because had these pitfalls been avoided Pikmin 2 might just be the undisputed greatest game of its kind. But in spite of this, it’s still phenomenal, and appreciated even more for being so distinct from the game that came before it. You need not compare the two to appreciate how they both excel in different ways, but it’s nice to, just the same, as in doing so you unveil how flexible and wide-reaching an essential Pikmin experience can be.

Pikmin 2 takes the charming dialogue, visuals, and music found in its predecessor and expands upon them in wonderful ways. I didn't think it was really possible to make the world presented in the original feel more charming and unique, but the small bits of story featuring Olimar's crappy job are a joy. The inclusion of real world items as treasures enhances the immersion as well - nothing like finding a Duracell battery to remind you that this game technically takes place after the nuclear extinction of humanity. The thing that makes this game a much different game than the original lies in its gameplay. It takes a more challenge-oriented approach, with procedurally generated dungeons stealing center stage. While usually fun, the caves cause occasional issues with balancing.

Following an unintentionally extended vacation on an unknown planet, Olimar returns home to his workplace. Without even getting a chance to say hi to his family, the company president exclaims that he's 10,000 pokos deep in debt. Imagine if you took a vacation and returned to find your workplace in disarray. Actually, that happens more often in my life than I'd like to elaborate on.

Pikmin 2's biggest flaw is a lack of having a concrete goal. Yeah, there's the 10,000 poko debt, but with no day limit, you can proceed at basically any speed you want to. This means that Pikmin 2 is effectively a collectathon. I'd argue the 10k debt is just the devs luring you into the gameplay loop, like a tutorial phase of sorts. The 30-day limit has effectively been replaced by a different kind of tension: managing your Pikmin within caves. When you lose Pikmin in a cave and move on to the next floor, they're gone for good. You wanna keep as many Pikmin on hand for as long as you can, especially with having no idea how many floors deep a cave is. It's also probably helpful to note that the Pikmin 2 devs are out to get you at every turn. Some levels are randomized, others have traps that are just there to fuck with you. Sometimes it can feel like someone's "super hard" romhack. Somehow, I actually find this endearing. I swear I'm not a masochist in denial, I just find games that have no qualms with torturing the player to be extremely funny, even when I'm on the receiving end. I don't think this shit would be nearly as tolerable if you couldn't reset your console to retry a floor though.

Another major factor that helps edge this game out over Pikmin 1 for me is the Pikmin AI. I'm not even kidding when I say that seeing my Pikmin narrow their formation as they cross a bridge is a game-changer. Everything feels more responsive overall. You can split up duties with the second captain of your group, but we unfontunately haven't reached Pikmin 3 levels of multitasking yet. Louie was simply my relay point for when Pikmin returned to base. New to Pikmin 2 are purple and white Pikmin. I didn't get very much use out of purples (useful for combat and nothing else), but whites got plenty of use by being very delicious to my enemies! Watching Emperor Bulblax die from food poisoning was the best thing ever after suffering against him in Pikmin 1.

Charm factor and variety carry this game hard. Caves may be too similar visually, but the smorgasbord of creatures found within are a force to be reckoned with. The value of the treasures mean nothing to me, I just want to know what they're called, and more importantly, what Olimar thinks of them. Yeah, the Piklopedia fuckin' rules. Getting to read detailed research blurbs on each creature is great, as well as hearing Olimar's internal monologue on each treasure. The man still thinks of his wife and kids, even on company time.

Pikmin 2 made me laugh, cry, and fear for my life. It kept me going from beginning to end, no matter how many times it struck me down. The final boss annoyed me to no end, and I want to put Louie through a meat grinder, but I somehow still came out of the experience feeling positive. The modding scene for this game is also surprisingly active, so I may very well find myself playing more Pikmin 2 in the near future. It can be bullshit, but it's admittedly my kinda bullshit.