After playing through the first Pikmin, my appetite for more Pikmin fun was not even close to satiated, so I ordered the sequel online post-haste! Both a game I wanted to play, AND a game for GameCube month, so win-win! I actually managed to find a copy that came with the Japan-exclusive e-Reader cards, but I tragically was not able to find an e-reader+ to use them with (I accidentally bought a vanilla e-reader instead XP). It took me around 20 hours to get 100% of the treasures (though I didn't touch challenge mode at all. I'm not that unhinged ^^;).
Pikmin 2 picks up right where the first game left off, as Captain Olimar arrives back on his home planet after being stranded on a mysterious planet (Earth) and helping the Pikmin escape. Unfortunately, the delivery company he works for has gone into unimaginable debt while he's been away all thanks to the royal heck-up of the other captain on staff, Louie. Everything seems hopeless until they discover that the bottlecap (half the height of Olimar's body) that Olimar brought back as a souvenir for his son is worth a small fortune! With their hopes restored, their boss orders both Olimar and Louie (on a trip to redeem himself) back to that mysterious planet to get enough other artifacts and treasure to pay off that horrible debt.
The story is quite simple, ultimately, but it does what it needs to and then some. The more entertaining parts of the story are messages you get after each day. Instead of Olimar's logs to himself that you got in the first game, you get messages from back on Olimar's home planet. Messages from Louie's grandmother asking how he's doing, Olimar's kids and wife wondering when he'll be home, and even the antics of their boss running from the horrible loan sharks he took the debt out from XD. Your new spaceship (they sold Olimar's old one to help pay for the debt) also comes with a built in AI, whose silly banter about your adventure is also a consistent source of fun.
The mechanics and design of the game are largely the same as the first but with some significant improvements and additions. First of all, you're no longer on a time limit, as you're not crash landed or anything. You have all the time you could possibly want to hunt for treasure and play with your Pikmin (and the game makes a very explicit point of telling you this almost as soon as your adventure starts). In addition, you can also multi-task more efficiently than you could before. As both Louie and Olimar are on this adventure, you can split them up and have them take care of chores on opposite sides of the map if you want. You can't actively control them both, sure, but being able to actively babysit some Pikmin tearing down a wall or constructing a bridge while the other captain does something else is very useful for time management. Pikmin AI has also been improved significantly, and they trip far less, stay in tighter groups when managed, and can also be thrown much more quickly to give you much more control in battle.
On top of all that, you also have two new Pikmin types to play with! You have returning from the first game your battle-hardened and fire-proof reds, your high-flying and newly electric-proof yellows, and your drown-proof blues. Newly debuting in this game are your super tough and super strong purple Pikmin. They're basically the Wario of Pikmin, having a heavy ground pound when thrown and having both the carrying power and punching power of ten Pikmin, they pack a powerful punch! The only downside is that they're pretty slow. On the other hand, you have the diminutive white Pikmin, who are a little weaker and a little faster on top of being able to spot underground treasure with their big X-ray eyes and breathe in poison. Overall, they're both fairly solid additions, but the fact that you can only get more of them by using transformation flowers in caves really neuters their usefulness by a lot. You can't just have them carry dead enemies to an Onion like the other Pikmin can, so you're basically never going to risk having them die by using them for combat, and it all makes for their cool ideas landing a bit flat all around.
Those underground caves are the last most significant upgrade to this game. While the game only has four large above-ground areas (the hardest and final of which is only unlocked in the post-game after you've paid off your debt) very similarly to the first Pikmin, there are three or four large underground caves to go through in each area. These caves have a series of almost Mystery Dungeon-style floors (they're sometimes procedurally generated) full of more simple cavern designs where you can fight monsters and hunt for treasure. They just about always have a big boss at the end, which always provide interesting and challenging fights for you and your Pikmin to try and conquer! They even drop special treasures that give you permanent passive upgrades as well (ranging from a wider whistling range to immunity to fire and even a stronger melee punch for Olimar X3). Add that on top of how you also have two special sprays you can use (one for making your Pikmin faster and stronger temporarily, and one for petrifying enemies to stone), and you have a game that's much more combat-focused than the first game. I don't really consider that a positive or a negative, so much as it's just the thing that makes this game different from the other two. You have a longer, more challenging adventure full of big boss fights instead of the tighter adventure of the first game, and it lets them both stand on their own as fine experiences.
The presentation of the game is as excellent as you'd expect a first-party Nintendo game on the GameCube to be. The music is excellent, both the new versions of old tracks and the scads of new music, and the graphics and monster designs are also really cool. The treasures you're finding are basically just trash and assorted items from our human world (quite a few of which are different in the Japanese version, I was surprised to learn), and the descriptions you get of them in your log as well as just the design of the world itself gives the whole adventure a wonderful charm and character that's totally unlike that of the first game.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Pikmin 2 is one of my favorite games of that generation. It was before this replay, and it still is now. It holds up excellently, and it's absolutely still worth playing if you're able to track down an (increasingly expensive) copy~.
Pikmin 2 picks up right where the first game left off, as Captain Olimar arrives back on his home planet after being stranded on a mysterious planet (Earth) and helping the Pikmin escape. Unfortunately, the delivery company he works for has gone into unimaginable debt while he's been away all thanks to the royal heck-up of the other captain on staff, Louie. Everything seems hopeless until they discover that the bottlecap (half the height of Olimar's body) that Olimar brought back as a souvenir for his son is worth a small fortune! With their hopes restored, their boss orders both Olimar and Louie (on a trip to redeem himself) back to that mysterious planet to get enough other artifacts and treasure to pay off that horrible debt.
The story is quite simple, ultimately, but it does what it needs to and then some. The more entertaining parts of the story are messages you get after each day. Instead of Olimar's logs to himself that you got in the first game, you get messages from back on Olimar's home planet. Messages from Louie's grandmother asking how he's doing, Olimar's kids and wife wondering when he'll be home, and even the antics of their boss running from the horrible loan sharks he took the debt out from XD. Your new spaceship (they sold Olimar's old one to help pay for the debt) also comes with a built in AI, whose silly banter about your adventure is also a consistent source of fun.
The mechanics and design of the game are largely the same as the first but with some significant improvements and additions. First of all, you're no longer on a time limit, as you're not crash landed or anything. You have all the time you could possibly want to hunt for treasure and play with your Pikmin (and the game makes a very explicit point of telling you this almost as soon as your adventure starts). In addition, you can also multi-task more efficiently than you could before. As both Louie and Olimar are on this adventure, you can split them up and have them take care of chores on opposite sides of the map if you want. You can't actively control them both, sure, but being able to actively babysit some Pikmin tearing down a wall or constructing a bridge while the other captain does something else is very useful for time management. Pikmin AI has also been improved significantly, and they trip far less, stay in tighter groups when managed, and can also be thrown much more quickly to give you much more control in battle.
On top of all that, you also have two new Pikmin types to play with! You have returning from the first game your battle-hardened and fire-proof reds, your high-flying and newly electric-proof yellows, and your drown-proof blues. Newly debuting in this game are your super tough and super strong purple Pikmin. They're basically the Wario of Pikmin, having a heavy ground pound when thrown and having both the carrying power and punching power of ten Pikmin, they pack a powerful punch! The only downside is that they're pretty slow. On the other hand, you have the diminutive white Pikmin, who are a little weaker and a little faster on top of being able to spot underground treasure with their big X-ray eyes and breathe in poison. Overall, they're both fairly solid additions, but the fact that you can only get more of them by using transformation flowers in caves really neuters their usefulness by a lot. You can't just have them carry dead enemies to an Onion like the other Pikmin can, so you're basically never going to risk having them die by using them for combat, and it all makes for their cool ideas landing a bit flat all around.
Those underground caves are the last most significant upgrade to this game. While the game only has four large above-ground areas (the hardest and final of which is only unlocked in the post-game after you've paid off your debt) very similarly to the first Pikmin, there are three or four large underground caves to go through in each area. These caves have a series of almost Mystery Dungeon-style floors (they're sometimes procedurally generated) full of more simple cavern designs where you can fight monsters and hunt for treasure. They just about always have a big boss at the end, which always provide interesting and challenging fights for you and your Pikmin to try and conquer! They even drop special treasures that give you permanent passive upgrades as well (ranging from a wider whistling range to immunity to fire and even a stronger melee punch for Olimar X3). Add that on top of how you also have two special sprays you can use (one for making your Pikmin faster and stronger temporarily, and one for petrifying enemies to stone), and you have a game that's much more combat-focused than the first game. I don't really consider that a positive or a negative, so much as it's just the thing that makes this game different from the other two. You have a longer, more challenging adventure full of big boss fights instead of the tighter adventure of the first game, and it lets them both stand on their own as fine experiences.
The presentation of the game is as excellent as you'd expect a first-party Nintendo game on the GameCube to be. The music is excellent, both the new versions of old tracks and the scads of new music, and the graphics and monster designs are also really cool. The treasures you're finding are basically just trash and assorted items from our human world (quite a few of which are different in the Japanese version, I was surprised to learn), and the descriptions you get of them in your log as well as just the design of the world itself gives the whole adventure a wonderful charm and character that's totally unlike that of the first game.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Pikmin 2 is one of my favorite games of that generation. It was before this replay, and it still is now. It holds up excellently, and it's absolutely still worth playing if you're able to track down an (increasingly expensive) copy~.
NOWITSREYNTIME17
1 month ago