pik2

I don't like this game, it takes out basically every aspect I enjoyed about Pikmin 1. I can't remember the last time I've had such strong anger towards a game's design. Getting on my soapbox to rant, hopefully this will be mostly cohesive

Caves are bad on a fundamental level and they're the overwhelming majority of the gameplay. No timer along with the general level design add up to an unengaging, boring gameplay experience. There's no interesting decision making in caves. It's a series of tasks that you can just take one at a time, incurring no risk along the way. So much of cave gameplay is just color matching.

The Cave Experience:
Spawn into a cave, there's a trap in front of me. Ok I match the color and throw pikmin at it to disable it forever. Step forwards and there's an enemy that one pikmin type is completely immune to. Ok I match the color and throw those pikmin at it. Then I move forwards and there's an enemy that isn't color specific. But oh yeah, it is: Purple!! As long as you have like 10 purple pikmin there are no difficult enemies, they die in a second to spamming the A button. At each step along the way I can have my full squad present if I want, since there's nothing else they need to be doing. Then after you've killed everything in a sublevel you have the most fun part, taking all the enemies and treasures back to the ship. There's no enemies so this is just attaching pikmin to things and waiting. Wow, how fun. The only form of engagement that may happen is Pikmin 2's favorite prank: Random bomb rock from sky. Fortunately as long as you have a semblance of awareness you just whistle and run away. Have fun doing that 7 times per cave because the game just keeps doing it. Once you get through the tedium of returning all the enemies and treasures, you can go to the next sublevel and do it again. And again, and again, and again. These caves are too damn long then eventually you get to the fun part, the last sublevel. The bosses are generally quite good and fun at least. Although I'm sure many of them are easily defeated with enough purples.

Hazards:
Touched on above but a lot of the hazards in this game are a joke. Traps can be disabled permanently which is pretty silly. Not being able to destroy them or making that temporary could be interesting. Even if you mess up and a pikmin is set on fire/poisoned/watered you can whistle and it's all ok. Electricity is the only one presenting a real risk honestly

New Pikmin:
Purple pikmin are broken holy shit. They deal an absurd amount of damage and they stun enemies. So many enemies that could otherwise be somewhat difficult just absolutely fold to like 10 purples. And with the game being "more combat focused", it just takes out so much that could be interesting. These new enemies are cool, shame I don't have to engage with them at all. No timer in caves and no day limit also means there's nothing stopping you from repeating a cave over and over to farm them to further break the game. In fact it's even encouraged with the treasure that requires 100 of them!! Just an awful addition. White pikmin are fine I guess. I didn't suicide them much so they were mostly just contributing to color matching for poison obstacles. They carry things really fast which yet again doesn't matter in this game because there's no timer!!

New Captain:
Louie is here! Why? There's no point to multi-task in caves(other than the one good one), so having two captains barely adds anything. It was kind of cool for one day where I did some multi-tasking on the surface but the surface is like 15% of the game. And it's not like day count matters anyway. Pointless addition

Retained aspects:
Many things in pikmin 1 only work/matter because there is a timer. Some of those things continue to exist in caves for some reason. For example: Walls. There is no point to there being a wall in a cave. Once I clear everything in the area I'm just going to use my whole squad on it and wait until it's gone. It takes time, and that time means nothing at all here. In pikmin 1 a wall is interesting: Do you go early in the day and just put 10 pikmin on it while you do other stuff? Do you put a larger squad on it, resulting in having fewer pikmin for a fight with an enemy? Do you go and get bombrocks to take it out instantly? The day timer creates so many interesting strategy questions that you have to find your own answer for. None of that is present here, just put your pikmin on it and wait. Some enemies feel like this as well. Snitchbugs can be annoying in pikmin 1 because they waste your time, but they're just filler inside of a cave. Dwarf bulborbs feel kinda pointless in caves, they dont present any difficulty. They're mostly pikmin spawning fodder but that doesn't happen in caves. I can't remember a situation where it woke up a big bulborb or anything interesting like that

Upgrades:
Some of these are really funny. You can move faster but your pikmin move at the same speed as before, wow sick man thanks. The three punch combo is ridiculous. Why is my captain dealing a real amount of damage? This only furthers being able to play caves with no risk. Cannon beetles and wollywogs were two enemies I had moments losing 10+ pikmin to, but they can now be killed without much issue by my captain. There's no reason not to inside a cave, there's no timer!

Sprays:
I didn't engage with this mechanic at all while playing. Seems silly tho, another way to not engage with enemies lol. And you can just farm an infinite amount

Submerged castle:
This was a fun cave! The waterwraith presenting a time limit made the gameplay a lot more interesting. There's reason to multitask, there's consequences to slowly killing enemies/disabling traps, there's a possibility of missing treasure for reasons other than forgetting about it. It's great. I think only going in with blues introduces challenges that aren't felt in other dungeons. You can't insta kill everything with purples. The few bulbmin you have are the only way of disabling traps and the only way you can kill certain enemies with 0 risk. And killing things slower has a real consequence. I wish more caves were at least similar to this, presenting unique challenges. Even just more caves where you can only go in with a certain type that still has other type's hazards. Maybe have that and dont give the player bulbmin, that could be difficult and fun. Also, this cave is short compared to the other ones. More should be this length. This was the only cave that after I beat I wanted to play again. That was a feeling I had almost every step along the way in pikmin 1, the feeling of "Oh I could do this better. I want to do it again at some point."

It's a real shame honestly, I love pikmin 1. Honestly shocking this is the direction they went with the sequel. At least I have pikmin 3 to look forward to at some point!