In this game you and your coworkers are sent to a distant planet full of dangerous native creatures by the shitty company you work for so you gather mundane objects for the sake of selling them back way over their actual value. So what I'm saying is that Pikmin 2 and Lethal Company are the same game.
I really liked this game. I knew going into this that I was probably gonna like it because I played this a lot as a kid but I didn't think I'd like it this much. Coming off Pikmin 4 felt like a really different beast; if that game was using the Pikmin system as an engine to make puzzles, this game uses the pikmin system to make a dungeon crawler. And it's tight.
Unlike Pikmin 1 (and the later 3), Pikmin 2 ditches the the timelimit and trims down the amount of time you spend in the overworld looking for items (though you still do that) for Caves, large multi floor dungeons with some random elements (Floor patterns, what treasures are on each floor, and type of enemies are consistent, but enemy spawn locations, treasure locations, starting position and exit locations have various different patterns).
I love the dungeons; the game knows that because there's no global timelimit like 1, it is allowed to be a little mean and punish you harsh if you fuck around because you'll always be able to resupply and go back in. Fucked up traps like bombs just falling from the sky (shoutouts to opening an egg that was full of mites that freak out all my pikmin and then dropping a bomb ontop of me), dense enemy spawn locations, enemies that very easily mulch pikmin if you move wrong (i lost a lot of pikmin to shit like calling pikmin back at the wrong time to wollywogs/moving the squad wrongly agaisnt cannon larvas), and because enemy spawns can be really dense you can't just completely own every enemy by walking behind them and throw Purple Pikmin until they die. And obviously you can't recover your pikmin outside of specific floors, so having a Pikmin Disaster fucking SUCKSSSSSSSS. It's great
Of course this is a gamecube game so it was made in the era of nintendo taking Genre, But Make It Rated E, so it's not THAT punishing. As mentioned before you have no global timelimit so if things go tits up you can always just bail, recoop your pikmin, and go back in. The game also lets you save between floors, so if you want to runback your Pikmin Disaster you can just hit reset and try again. And even if you do have to go back into the dungeon most floors are pretty easy to beeline straight to the exit to so it's quick to get back to whatever floor you missed an item on. It's fucking pikmin this isn't your masochist mod.
Things I have issues with are mostly control related. Limited camera controls can make trying to precisely aiming pikmin difficult which is frustrating for enemies with mid air attack points like the snargets and ect (this might be better on the versions of Pikmin 2 with motion controls, but then you lose all the branding, and I'm not giving up on being able to collect duracell batteries and skippy peanut butter), non flower pikmin (especially purples) being so slow that you can just lose them forces you to move slower than you need to be and is annoying, some floors just fuckin suck (S/O to Hole of heroes 6/dream den 10 layout. And by shoutout I mean go to hell. also specifically the Heroes 6 one because there are some treasure layouts that are actually impossible to get), and I think like 2-3 bosses are kinda dogshit. But it's really minor gripes in the long term.
This game was awesome. Such a fun skew for a weird console RTS/Dungeon Crawler hybrid. Not even the other pikmin game hit the same feeling, as the other dungeon focused pikmin game (4) is far more focused on puzzles than combat and "resource management" (not letting your pikmin get massacred).
I really liked this game. I knew going into this that I was probably gonna like it because I played this a lot as a kid but I didn't think I'd like it this much. Coming off Pikmin 4 felt like a really different beast; if that game was using the Pikmin system as an engine to make puzzles, this game uses the pikmin system to make a dungeon crawler. And it's tight.
Unlike Pikmin 1 (and the later 3), Pikmin 2 ditches the the timelimit and trims down the amount of time you spend in the overworld looking for items (though you still do that) for Caves, large multi floor dungeons with some random elements (Floor patterns, what treasures are on each floor, and type of enemies are consistent, but enemy spawn locations, treasure locations, starting position and exit locations have various different patterns).
I love the dungeons; the game knows that because there's no global timelimit like 1, it is allowed to be a little mean and punish you harsh if you fuck around because you'll always be able to resupply and go back in. Fucked up traps like bombs just falling from the sky (shoutouts to opening an egg that was full of mites that freak out all my pikmin and then dropping a bomb ontop of me), dense enemy spawn locations, enemies that very easily mulch pikmin if you move wrong (i lost a lot of pikmin to shit like calling pikmin back at the wrong time to wollywogs/moving the squad wrongly agaisnt cannon larvas), and because enemy spawns can be really dense you can't just completely own every enemy by walking behind them and throw Purple Pikmin until they die. And obviously you can't recover your pikmin outside of specific floors, so having a Pikmin Disaster fucking SUCKSSSSSSSS. It's great
Of course this is a gamecube game so it was made in the era of nintendo taking Genre, But Make It Rated E, so it's not THAT punishing. As mentioned before you have no global timelimit so if things go tits up you can always just bail, recoop your pikmin, and go back in. The game also lets you save between floors, so if you want to runback your Pikmin Disaster you can just hit reset and try again. And even if you do have to go back into the dungeon most floors are pretty easy to beeline straight to the exit to so it's quick to get back to whatever floor you missed an item on. It's fucking pikmin this isn't your masochist mod.
Things I have issues with are mostly control related. Limited camera controls can make trying to precisely aiming pikmin difficult which is frustrating for enemies with mid air attack points like the snargets and ect (this might be better on the versions of Pikmin 2 with motion controls, but then you lose all the branding, and I'm not giving up on being able to collect duracell batteries and skippy peanut butter), non flower pikmin (especially purples) being so slow that you can just lose them forces you to move slower than you need to be and is annoying, some floors just fuckin suck (S/O to Hole of heroes 6/dream den 10 layout. And by shoutout I mean go to hell. also specifically the Heroes 6 one because there are some treasure layouts that are actually impossible to get), and I think like 2-3 bosses are kinda dogshit. But it's really minor gripes in the long term.
This game was awesome. Such a fun skew for a weird console RTS/Dungeon Crawler hybrid. Not even the other pikmin game hit the same feeling, as the other dungeon focused pikmin game (4) is far more focused on puzzles than combat and "resource management" (not letting your pikmin get massacred).