Pokemon R/B/G, but just kind of a little worse? They give you all three starters (and a couple other pokemon) so your team is basically always going to look the same, which takes away the most interesting and personal part of any Pokemon playthrough and the starter Pikachu is just as weak as a normal one so he's kinda dead weight past a certain point, which makes all the cute friendship stuff with him just feel sorta pointless in the end. I just chucked him away and caught Articuno for the E4 lol

It's got a neat gimmick and a couple of handy fixes to the OG games, but ultimately for an "enhanced" version it just ends up being a little worse, at least in the long run.

I don't know what to think of Samus Returns, because it's the definition of all I hate about remakes, while simultaneously a pretty great game on its own. SR looks at Metroid II's identity and doesn't hesitate to throw it in the bin. Gone is the atmospheric, minimalist exploration, here's a high-octane action game, we hope you like it. Zero Mission does the exact same thing but y'all aren't ready for that discussion.

But, damn it, I do like it. I really want to be mad that you just completely ruined the ending for the sake of shoving in a fanservice boss fight but fuck if it's hard when the boss is so cool. That aside though, I think Samus Returns is pretty exemplary of the flaws of remake culture. Even a remake takes the original's place and erases its legacy with its own, and it just leaves me going "yeah, it's good, but..."

Fuck you Nintendo for releasing Pikmin 1+2 while I was in the middle of playing this emulated.

I imagine the biggest internal conversation regarding sequel development is in regards to changes. A sequel is always the best way to really assess what makes an original title work and what doesn't. Pikmin 1 had the benefit of being such a richly produced game I found it hard to imagine what could be done to improve on it while playing it for the first time a while ago.

Weird feeling to find out that Nintendo's answer, in 2004, seemed to be "not much."

Pikmin 2 really wanted to flip the core of Pikmin on its head, by going from a time-limited scramble for ship parts to a slower, methodical treasure hunt. Part of Pikmin's appeal, to me, will always be its ability to pressure the player. Controversial as it was, Pikmin's entire campaign was time-limited for 30 in-game days, each day about 13 minutes in length. So, in short, each Pikmin playthrough will last, at most, about six and a half hours, give or take. To stress it out, the player is put under two constant time limits, that for the day, and that for the 30 total days. On my first playthrough I missed the deadline at the last minute by having the last two crucial parts in separate areas on the last day. It was frustrating, but I still enjoyed Pikmin.

I was aware of how Pikmin 2 removed the 30-day time limit but I also wasn't aware of what else it did to flip up the core game loop.

i.e. fucking dungeons. A lot of this review is gonna be about the caves/dungeons, as they’re the new center of the gameplay in this sequel.

Pikmin 2 decides that, while time ticks away during the day above ground, four different entrances in each area can be found that lead to a unique underground cave. The now-overworld clock freezes as you're now dungeon crawling for the bulk of the game time. Within the first hour, the main essence of Pikmin's design philosophy is contradicted. Pikmin 1's yin-yang of problem solving and time management is disregarded as Pikmin 2 concerns itself more with scanning featureless floors of repeating geometry, relegating the Pikmin to color-coded keys instead of diverse pieces of a toolkit. Red Pikmin are immune to fire and can remove fire traps, Yellow Pikmin are immune to electricity and can remove electric traps, Blue Pikmin can swim and are mostly useless in caves. Every floor, no matter the layout or cave itself, plays out exactly the same: clear out the enemies and traps, bring the treasures back to the landing spot, proceed down. You do this shit for over 100 floors, and all they do is get bigger, more plentiful, and take longer to complete as the game progresses.

Call me jaded or reluctant to change, but I don't find the constant lock-and-key (as Pangburn beautifully put it) gameloop an effective progression from what I previously experienced as such a greatly imaginative strategic puzzle blend.

I think what can be said most about the dungeons is how pointless they are for something that takes center stage. As I stated, pausing the daily time limit for extended dungeon crawling segments completely eviscerates the need for the time limit at all, especially with how barren the above ground sections are now. What used to be the main environment of Pikmin 1, sprawling multi-pathed worlds and labyrinths with puzzles to solve and routes to optimize at every corner have turned into circularly linear gates to these cave entrances with not much to see or do when outside of them. There's some stray treasure out there, but with how little time you spend above ground the time limit may as well not be there. I repaid my debt in 25 days over 10 hours of playtime, twice the time I spent in 30 days within Pikmin 1.

I could write much more, about this game's psychopathic sense of difficulty in the late game, over-reliance on randomized hazards to artificiate difficulty (those fucking bombs that drop from the cave ceilings), the unsubtle requirement to reset the game every time you fuck up on a shitty floor layout to get a new one (as it asks you to save between floors as a loud and obnoxious wink), the timepadding of having to farm the new White and Purple Pikmin, etcetera etcetera. You think all those clips being posted on Twitter of everyone's Pikmin army being completely eviscerated by random hazards all being from Pikmin 2 specifically is just a coincidence? It sure as hell isn't. Sometimes I think Pikmin 2 is a work of pure evil.

Despite all its changes, with all of Pikmin 2's misguided and unthoughtful reimagining, the most subversive thing of all is that I don't flat out hate it. It can be trudging, monotonous, boring, but never completely joyless. It's still a wonder of world and sound design, and there are moments above ground that spark the same light as its predecessor. I think "misguided" really is the key descriptor for Pikmin 2, as the core of a good game is still there and felt. Though I audibly groaned at the return of caves in Pikmin 4, with an explosion of countless indie roguelikes in recent years a-la Enter the Gungeon and Spelunky with their innovative dungeon crawling systems in the name of accessibility and quality of life, I think there's no drought in inspiration Nintendo could take from. Pikmin 2 could be elevated as a footnote in Pikmin 4's potentially successful winning take on Pikmin-meets-dungeon-crawling, but for now, it's a clumsy effort to shake up a successful formula that didn't need to be changed.

This game gave us Louie, The President, and Purple and White Pikmins. For that, I am grateful to it. However, I will hold a grudge against it forever due to the existence of caves. This game has been on my backlog for 6 years because of those caves. Now, coming back to it after playing 3 and knowing more, I actually liked them. Then the Dream Den happened and I didn't even try and get a single treasure other than Louie, that thing just kicks you in the dick nonstop so I blazed past it. Even though I enjoyed them coming back, I still think they're too cramped and I wasn't a HUGE fan. I may be the only Pikmin fan stuck in the middle with those. I also think that collecting treasure is just less fun than fruits, and (so I've heard at least) Ship Parts. Watching the number go up is nice, but I like the more stress intensive nature of the others. This game took me 31 days btw. But yeah, idk its fine.