A video game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube console in 2004.
Text by NiGHTS108
Very quickly after the first, Pikmin 2! Honestly to get us started here I feel Pikmin 2 is more different than you might expect. It is generally the same concept, light real-time strategy about commanding a bunch of little dudes to do what you want, but brings a number of new ideas to the table so this one definitely stands on its own… though for the right reasons? I’m not sure. It starts great, with this opening cinematic about how the company Olimar works for, of which he’s apparently the one competent employee, goes under after his month long disappearance. It’s a goofy plot and I guess contrasts the last’s more down to earth tone, sure, but it’s charming. Quickly though you team up with Louie, and head back to the Pikmin planet to find treasure to repay the company’s debt. Yeah. Gameplay itself is generally the same, as I said. The first and most obvious change to the gameplay are two new Pikmin types to boost the original’s three. I really like these guys, they add a decent amount to the strategy I liked so much about the first. There’s the purple Pikmin, who are absolute blessings from the heavens who can carry the weight of 10 regular Pikmin, and the white Pikmin, which can move faster carrying things. Additionally the main cast has seen a better rebalance too, last time I complained how yellow Pikmin were obviously always the weakest choice, but here, despite bomb rocks being removed they do retain the ability to be thrown higher (even if that’s even less useful now) and have finally been given the ability to resist electricity, which is actually better than you’d think since that’s instant death in this game for some reason. Pikmin 2 also manages to fix a few of the more technical details I discussed last time. Unevolved Pikmin are… still slow, but it’s way easier to keep them evolved in this game and they’re not as bad as in Pikmin 1 in regards to trailing behind. Bridges and stairs also aren’t a nightmare anymore, as Pikmin usually group together to cross narrower passages. So yeah as a whole Pikmin 2’s core gameplay is still super solid… but sadly I don’t think it really comes together as well as it should and it’s because of one thing primarily. I’ll get the elephant out of the room, I’m not really a big fan of the caves. Now, I will say I think these are great in concept, they’re these multi-floored dungeons which you will be spending a sizable chunk of the game in as they have the highest volume of treasure which you’ll want to pay off your debt. There’s a rogue-like quality to them, if we’re being honest. The floors themselves are randomly generated, and honestly combined with some really good music and sometimes very clever gimmicks they can be super fun, but sadly more often it just doesn’t work out that way. Compared to the once more beautiful landscapes outdoors, the caves are kind of blocky, ugly and simple most of the time, and when they’re not it’s hard to imagine how it all fits together, lots of these just feel like random video game levels which breaks from the immersion of the world. Also the randomly generated levels… aren’t great, and only contribute to them feeling even more blocky and simple. It’s easy to see just the exact same setpiece repeated in a different cavern, which really doesn’t help given they already feel the same given how they look. Some of these are definitely memorable, Shower Room, Glutton’s Kitchen and especially the infamous Submerged Castle are all highlights, and some others like Snagret Hole’s bright fields are certainly memorable but most of these are just generic and uninteresting, which is a real shocker given how full of life the last game was. Additionally I don’t like how this effects the rest of the game. They really bid a lot on caves and it just doesn’t work out. For one, you spend most of the game in them. The overworld only contains less than 20% of all the treasure in an area you’d want to get, as it’ll usually only have about 6 or 7 treasures at most, which pales in comparison to the 10 or more all four caves in an area might have, so the overworld itself just feels like looking for more caves and isn’t particularly relevant overall. Time also doesn’t pass in caves, in (almost) all of them you can freely spend however much time you want collecting every piece of treasure, and given the story of the game is just about paying debt and there’s no time limit with days or anything you need to do to survive like in Pikmin 3, it means the whole time management aspect of the other games I really liked just isn’t really a thing in 2 because there’s no punishment for taking as long as you’d like. There are still day cycles but they might as well not even be here, as all they amount to is having to make sure all your Pikmin are gathered in one spot every 30 minutes or so since day count itself seems to not matter at all. Also while we’re at this, I don’t like how they handle purple and white Pikmin at all. They’re only found via purple and white flowers in the cave and don’t have their own onions when they really should. Also from what I understand flowers are a finite resource, as once you complete a cave you can’t return and even if you don’t they don’t respawn, so it just makes you never want to use these very interesting and useful Pikmin. This game is also really fucking hard thanks to the caves and for none of the right reasons. Like oh okay, here’s a fucking hydrogen bomb randomly from the sky to take out all my coughing Pikmin. Caves can often just feel unreasonably unfair and difficult (Though thankfully they do have a way of cheesing the saves and you can always start from the previous day if things don’t go as planned.) I could go on to be honest, I’m not a fan of caves not really for their concept, or even their execution looking at them in isolation, but to be quite honest it’s a bad design choice at the heart of Pikmin 2 that just drags down the entire experience sadly. I do have to respect this game’s pretty bold new direction, and I am excited to see caves return in Pikmin 4 as if it wasn’t obvious, I think there’s a ton of cool shit you can do with the concept, especially like 20 years later. I feel like I say this about all 6/10’s or so I review but this probably came off more negative than how I really feel. Pikmin 2 at its core just like the first is a very strong game that’s only overall mildly dragged down by the caves for me personally. This game even has an entire 4th area with new treasure to find as a post-game, so I’m sure I’ll be returning to Pikmin 2 someday. Overall if you’re a fan of this series looking for something different after playing 1 and 3 or just a newcomer, Pikmin 2 is still worth your time.