Quantifying everything I love about Pikmin 2 into a single text review is, simply, impossible. Pikmin 2 is a game so personally aligned with me and my tastes that it's incredibly difficult to explain just why I like it so much. I plan one day to make a full video review explaining why I love the game, which I will definitely link here whenever I make it, but as is, I'll make bullet points:
>A major improvement over Pikmin 1 in gameplay mechanics, polish, and scale. The longest Pikmin and most content packed Pikmin game to date, with all the previous game's AI and bugginess polished out
>One of the most interactive, immersive, dynamic, and atmospheric soundtracks I've ever heard. Every single track in the game is specifically designed and layered to dynamically adjust depending on various contextual factors, such as time of day, the actions your Pikmin are taking, your proximity to enemies, treasure, specific items, your health, I haven't found a game with this musical dynamicism before or since.
>The atmosphere is thick, within the caves the music is abstract and cavernous, while each area theme perfectly represents the area they're assigned to.
>The caves are, in my opinion, the best aspect of the game. Allowing for pure, unfiltered challenging gameplay with no restrictions. Despite being completely randomly generated, there seem to be restrictions in place within the generator to make the caves feel designed. I've had multiple friends play the game and not realize the caves were randomly generated until they either reset in a cave floor multiple times, or I TOLD them it was, that's how good the system is. Being able to take your time to plan out a perfect course of action while traversing an underground complex, searching for treasures and using your knowledge of the game and awareness to max capacity to ensure no mass loss of life is enthralling and I can never get enough of it.
>The worldbuilding is immaculate. The previous end of day logs have been changed from personal captains diaries to emails, and while you lose the direct connection to a character and their thoughts like in Pikmin 1's desolate, hopeless atmosphere, you instead get a much wider look into Pikmin's world, as well as the background characters, such as the family members of the protagonists back home, or the President's wonderful tomfoolery with a stint involving some debt collectors. Beyond that, the worldbuilding of PNF-404 only doubles with the introduction of the Piklopedia, which gives full pseudo-scientific analysis of the various creatures on the planet, giving them biological explanations, family trees, predator and prey relationships, everything. The captains also all comment on the treasures they collect, which can often lead to introspection which results in some great characterization and more lore. The world is fully fleshed out.
>The game looks stunning for a GameCube title.
>The Submerged Castle is one of my favorite moments in any video game period.
>The game is actually rather challenging! It'll test you and your abilities, as well as your knowledge of the game. If you aren't careful, you could lose your entire armada in the literal blink of an eye. But the game dropping the full game time limit means that no matter how devastating a loss you face, you can ALWAYS bounce back and recover.
>the core gameplay, micromanagement, exploration, treasure collecting, all of it, it's an absolute joy and completely addicting to me, I can't get enough. I always find myself pushing the boundary of how ballsy I wanna be and how much I wanna try getting done in a day. If I really can make it to take cave on the other side of the map before this 10 second timer ends or not. If I can really perfectly clear this cave floor with no deaths. It's probably why, despite being somewhat long (15-20 hours), the game is still so replayable.
>Two unironically super fun multiplayer modes. While Pikmin 3 most likely has the better multiplayer content, that doesn't stop 2's from being great either. A fun versus mode, and a great Mission mode featuring 50 pre-set (?) caves that can be challenged in single player or co-op.
I could really, truly keep going. But I'll stop there.
Let me give the only real criticisms I can give the game.
>On very, very rare occasion, the cave generation can fuck up and result in an incompletable cave floor. I've played the game 4 times and for god knows how long and never had this happen to me, but I've seen footage of it happening, so it's something to note.
>The balancing is a little out of whack. While the game is quite difficult, most combat encounters can be solved rather easily with the usage of Purple Pikmin. This can be alleviated by just not using them as much or keeping a limited supply with you, though.
I believe this to be the best game Nintendo has ever produced by and far, and I love literally everything about it. Please, please, play the Pikmin franchise. It's absolutely worthy of at least a shot. It's filled with personality, love, and soul, something that's a general rarity in modern Nintendo games.
>A major improvement over Pikmin 1 in gameplay mechanics, polish, and scale. The longest Pikmin and most content packed Pikmin game to date, with all the previous game's AI and bugginess polished out
>One of the most interactive, immersive, dynamic, and atmospheric soundtracks I've ever heard. Every single track in the game is specifically designed and layered to dynamically adjust depending on various contextual factors, such as time of day, the actions your Pikmin are taking, your proximity to enemies, treasure, specific items, your health, I haven't found a game with this musical dynamicism before or since.
>The atmosphere is thick, within the caves the music is abstract and cavernous, while each area theme perfectly represents the area they're assigned to.
>The caves are, in my opinion, the best aspect of the game. Allowing for pure, unfiltered challenging gameplay with no restrictions. Despite being completely randomly generated, there seem to be restrictions in place within the generator to make the caves feel designed. I've had multiple friends play the game and not realize the caves were randomly generated until they either reset in a cave floor multiple times, or I TOLD them it was, that's how good the system is. Being able to take your time to plan out a perfect course of action while traversing an underground complex, searching for treasures and using your knowledge of the game and awareness to max capacity to ensure no mass loss of life is enthralling and I can never get enough of it.
>The worldbuilding is immaculate. The previous end of day logs have been changed from personal captains diaries to emails, and while you lose the direct connection to a character and their thoughts like in Pikmin 1's desolate, hopeless atmosphere, you instead get a much wider look into Pikmin's world, as well as the background characters, such as the family members of the protagonists back home, or the President's wonderful tomfoolery with a stint involving some debt collectors. Beyond that, the worldbuilding of PNF-404 only doubles with the introduction of the Piklopedia, which gives full pseudo-scientific analysis of the various creatures on the planet, giving them biological explanations, family trees, predator and prey relationships, everything. The captains also all comment on the treasures they collect, which can often lead to introspection which results in some great characterization and more lore. The world is fully fleshed out.
>The game looks stunning for a GameCube title.
>The Submerged Castle is one of my favorite moments in any video game period.
>The game is actually rather challenging! It'll test you and your abilities, as well as your knowledge of the game. If you aren't careful, you could lose your entire armada in the literal blink of an eye. But the game dropping the full game time limit means that no matter how devastating a loss you face, you can ALWAYS bounce back and recover.
>the core gameplay, micromanagement, exploration, treasure collecting, all of it, it's an absolute joy and completely addicting to me, I can't get enough. I always find myself pushing the boundary of how ballsy I wanna be and how much I wanna try getting done in a day. If I really can make it to take cave on the other side of the map before this 10 second timer ends or not. If I can really perfectly clear this cave floor with no deaths. It's probably why, despite being somewhat long (15-20 hours), the game is still so replayable.
>Two unironically super fun multiplayer modes. While Pikmin 3 most likely has the better multiplayer content, that doesn't stop 2's from being great either. A fun versus mode, and a great Mission mode featuring 50 pre-set (?) caves that can be challenged in single player or co-op.
I could really, truly keep going. But I'll stop there.
Let me give the only real criticisms I can give the game.
>On very, very rare occasion, the cave generation can fuck up and result in an incompletable cave floor. I've played the game 4 times and for god knows how long and never had this happen to me, but I've seen footage of it happening, so it's something to note.
>The balancing is a little out of whack. While the game is quite difficult, most combat encounters can be solved rather easily with the usage of Purple Pikmin. This can be alleviated by just not using them as much or keeping a limited supply with you, though.
I believe this to be the best game Nintendo has ever produced by and far, and I love literally everything about it. Please, please, play the Pikmin franchise. It's absolutely worthy of at least a shot. It's filled with personality, love, and soul, something that's a general rarity in modern Nintendo games.