Right after finishing the first game and loving it to pieces, I went straight to Pikmin 2. Before playing it I wasn’t aware of how divisive this game was in the Pikmin community, but now that I’ve beaten it 100% twice, I can definitely see why. It boils down to a single word: caves. Some people love how unpredictable they are due to them being randomly generated and the challenge they offer with its many enemies and bosses, and those are the very same reasons some people hate them, because let’s face it, it’s not that fun wasting your time bringing down a gate just for it to have literally nothing behind, or having bombs raining down on you from the ceiling out of nowhere.

While the main focus of the first game is exploration, the caves make Pikmin 2 be more focused on combat, because they make up for like 80% of this game’s content. The overworld exploration takes a back seat, so much that they didn’t even bother on creating new areas - other than the very first level, all areas in this game are reused from the previous game, but with some changes. So if you don’t like the caves, well too bad, this game ain’t for you. As for myself, I quite enjoyed my first run through the game. Exploring the caves the first time around made me increasingly anxious as I progressed through the game and noticed how unpredictable they were, uncertain of what devilish troll the game would throw upon me. I’d always be especially excited for the boss fights.

I’ll never forget my first clashes with the Empress Bulblax and her spam of evil larvae that can one hit kill Pikmin; the sheer surprise I had when this mechanical spider called Man-at-Legs started decimating my Pikmin squad with a freaking machine gun; and the nightmarish Waterwraith, crushing my Pikmin with its stone rollers in the most memorable cave in the game, the Submerged Castle, a cave with an unsettling atmosphere that forces you to use only Blue Pikmin despite it having hazards of every single element.

However, despite the randomized aspect being nice for repeated playthroughs, the overall magic of the first run is significantly reduced, especially because of how exhaustive some caves can be due to their long length and the overwhelming amount of bullshit. And speaking of length, Pikmin 2 is MUCH longer than the first one (AND third one!), so all that combined greatly diminishes the replay value of this game.

All that said, I still love this game. It may sound like I find this game vastly inferior to the first one due to all I said, but that’s far from being the case. I can understand why some people dislike it, but I don’t think it deserves all the hate it gets. I’m sure I’ll replay it again and again for the years to come, just not as much as the first game.