Pretty curious to try Pikmin 2. I cleared Pikmin 3 years ago (which was my first Pikmin game), and remember liking it although it didn't leave a particularly deep impression.

My overall impression is this game feels a little underbaked - which makes sense because it was released one month after the GameCube launched, so it probably got rescoped at some point.

It's hard to know how much to criticize the Pikmin AI, the finicky controls. Part of that adds to its charm and I think when you see that kind of problem in a game, it's also evidence that the game is designing in a new space. Only uninteresting games have no 'problems', except for the problem of being uninteresting.

The main issue is that the combat felt a bit at odds with the enemy variety presented. Pikmin would die by the dozens, or the boss would lose half its health in 10 seconds, and I had no real sense of what I ought to be doing better.

I like the game length - nice and short, memorable levels you remember. More games should be like this! That being said, some of the level design felt like straightforward puzzles that just took time and planning to execute. Like converting blue pikmin to red to get an item through fire - idk, I think there's a more interesting puzzle direction than that. IIRC Pikmin 3 had some interesting puzzles but it's been a while.

If this game were released now I'd probably give it a 3 but it was Nintendo trying to 'casualize' RTS games, after the jump to 3D, and they really did propose some interesting solutions to making a casual RTS for controllers, so yeah it's hard to fault it too much.