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I Was Wrong About Pikmin 2

August 14, 2023

(This post is a follow-up to my post on Pikmin and Pikmin 2. Check that out here)

In a previous post on this blog, I talked about Pikmin 2 - specifically about my dislike for the caves in the game. I thought they were a bad addition to the game. It felt less like what Pikmin should've been about, managing your little guys and their lives, and instead, it felt more just like a grueling gauntlet of enemies and items to carry. It felt like this section of the game didn't have the sense of exploration and the task of managing your workforce that the rest of the game had.

But after playing through Pikmin 4, I've come around to realize that maybe I was ruining my own experience in that regard. When I played through Pikmin 2, I tackled each area in the same way: Complete all the objectives in the overworld, then tackle the caves. But when I played Pikmin 4 I handled things differently, tackling caves as I discovered them, rather than saving them all for after the rest of the area was completed. By playing in this way, caves felt more like a small extra section to explore rather than a gauntlet of content that eventually started to become stale.

There was one area quite late into the game where, without realizing it, I had accidentally fallen back into my ways from playing Pikmin 2. And quite predictably, the caves in that area felt like my least favorite to play through. Not because of the caves themselves, but rather because it felt like just a gauntlet that I was slogging through. And realizing that sparked this epiphany, that my main issue with Pikmin 2 may have actually been my own doing.

And I kind of did this again in Pikmin 4. This time not with caves, but with the Night Expeditions. It was a fun side mode, but I always waited on doing Night Expeditions until I had completed the area, then I went back to do all of them. While those didn't become nearly as much of a slog as caves had back in Pikmin 2, it would've been more fun if I dispersed them throughout my play time instead of saving them all for the end.

I have the urge to revisit Pikmin 2 now, to give it another chance and see if it truly was my own fault that caused me to dislike that part of the game. When I do, I'll be sure to update you on my opinions.