Pikmin 2 thoughts:
- Caves are pretty cool in concept. Having a more linear series of obstacles and enemies and not being able to sprout more pikmin from enemy kills makes for a uniquely interesting pikmin experience.
- This game boasts a lot of content, lots of new enemies and bosses to learn and see, which is a huge plus.
- The bosses in this game are the best in the series, I had a lot of fun figuring out the best way to beat them.
- As cool as the caves are, I feel that there are too many of them and the cave content gets very repetitive very quickly. I don't feel that the semi-random elements add much to the experience. Cave's feel interesting for a decent amount of time but I think this feeling has more to do with encountering new types of enemies than anything to do with the caves themselves.
- The caves also rely too much on cheap tricks to artificially increase difficulty. The first few times maybe you can find some humor in it but it gets really annoying really quickly, as learning to anticipate and deal with these tricks becomes an exercise in tedium rather than a display of skill or strategy.
- As infamous as it is, the submerged castle I think provides the most compelling and interesting challenge. Obstacles like the waterwraith required strategy and planning from me and it felt satisfying outsmarting the game. The stress I felt from the incoming danger of the waterwraith was much more interesting of a challenge than random bomb rocks dropping from the sky.
- Despite the praise I gave to the enemy variety, purple pikmin are overtuned to the point where many combat encounters are just trivialized by having enough purples.
- White pikmin are weird. They have many unique properties and yet I somewhat feel that their existence isn't very impactful for the game. Poison walls/gates and buried treasures are just another type of lock where white pikmin are the key, and moving objects faster feels irrelevant when the game gives you infinite time to achieve your goals. Hurting enemies when being eaten is pretty interesting though, even if its something I didn't use much.
- (As a side note to the above point, the criticisms against white pikmin also apply to yellow pikmin, however that is a pikmin 1 issue rather than a pikmin 2 issue).
- Since I mentioned it in pikmin 1, pikmin AI in pikmin 2 is a lot better about not willingly running into water and getting stuck behind corners (not that it never happened).
Overall Pikmin 2 was a bold step forward for the series that explored lots of new ideas and provided lots of new content, however it felt that every good new idea from this game came with caveats that weakened the experience just as much as it improved it.
- Caves are pretty cool in concept. Having a more linear series of obstacles and enemies and not being able to sprout more pikmin from enemy kills makes for a uniquely interesting pikmin experience.
- This game boasts a lot of content, lots of new enemies and bosses to learn and see, which is a huge plus.
- The bosses in this game are the best in the series, I had a lot of fun figuring out the best way to beat them.
- As cool as the caves are, I feel that there are too many of them and the cave content gets very repetitive very quickly. I don't feel that the semi-random elements add much to the experience. Cave's feel interesting for a decent amount of time but I think this feeling has more to do with encountering new types of enemies than anything to do with the caves themselves.
- The caves also rely too much on cheap tricks to artificially increase difficulty. The first few times maybe you can find some humor in it but it gets really annoying really quickly, as learning to anticipate and deal with these tricks becomes an exercise in tedium rather than a display of skill or strategy.
- As infamous as it is, the submerged castle I think provides the most compelling and interesting challenge. Obstacles like the waterwraith required strategy and planning from me and it felt satisfying outsmarting the game. The stress I felt from the incoming danger of the waterwraith was much more interesting of a challenge than random bomb rocks dropping from the sky.
- Despite the praise I gave to the enemy variety, purple pikmin are overtuned to the point where many combat encounters are just trivialized by having enough purples.
- White pikmin are weird. They have many unique properties and yet I somewhat feel that their existence isn't very impactful for the game. Poison walls/gates and buried treasures are just another type of lock where white pikmin are the key, and moving objects faster feels irrelevant when the game gives you infinite time to achieve your goals. Hurting enemies when being eaten is pretty interesting though, even if its something I didn't use much.
- (As a side note to the above point, the criticisms against white pikmin also apply to yellow pikmin, however that is a pikmin 1 issue rather than a pikmin 2 issue).
- Since I mentioned it in pikmin 1, pikmin AI in pikmin 2 is a lot better about not willingly running into water and getting stuck behind corners (not that it never happened).
Overall Pikmin 2 was a bold step forward for the series that explored lots of new ideas and provided lots of new content, however it felt that every good new idea from this game came with caveats that weakened the experience just as much as it improved it.