In Pikmin 2, Olimar returns to his home planet only to find the company he works for has gone bankrupt and is in heavy debt. Your boss commands you and your co-worker, Louie, to return to the mysterious planet and gather valuable alien treasures to save Hocotate Freight. These "treasures" turn out to be things that are common to you and me, such as Duracel batteries, Chap Stick, sand dollars, chocolates, strange-looking leaves, a king from a chess set, and hundreds more. This time around, you haven't crash-landed, of course, so your air supply is limitless - Olimar and Louie can spend as much or as little time on the planet as they want, whereas in the first game, you were forced to complete the game in under 30 game days, which to many was the game's most notable flaw.

On that note, and having just beaten Pikmin 2 in exactly 30 days, oddly enough, I feel like this game is to Pikmin as Empire Strikes Back was to A New Hope - deeper and more compelling, slower and more drawn-out. It's obviously more nicely crafted, and it only leaves you wanting Return of the Jedi that much more...

Gameplay
As with any sequel to an already fantastic game, it seems all people wanna' know is how Pikmin 2 improves on the strangely intuitive gameplay in the first Pikmin. Cutting to the chase, the nicest additions to the game are the two new types of pikmin - purple and white. Purple pikmin both weigh and can carry ten times the weight of a normal pikmin. This means you can throw them on enemies to instantly stun and do damage to them, as well as carry things you never could in the last game - since you can only control 100 pikmin at a time, how could you ever obtain something that requires two hundred pikmin to lift? Why, 20 purples, of course. White pikmin have a number of abilities. Firstly, they're immune to this new poisonous gas that many enemies and obstacles are expelling in this game. Secondly, when enemies that predate on pikmin eat whites, their slightly poisonous bodies do damage to the creature - sometimes enough to kill (kamakaze action in Pikmin games is always fun). Lastly, white pikmin have the ability to see and uncover hidden objects that are buried just slightly under the surface. At first, they sound like two of the nicest pikmin types, however, you can't find them in the wild, so getting them requires you to convert your red, blue, or yellow pikmin to either white or purple, making them more rare than perhaps they should be.

I'd have to say the biggest change (although not necessarily the nicest) in the gameplay is the addition of the cave stages. Each level has three or four caves you can enter with your Pikmin, and each cave has anywhere between 2 and 10 sublevels within. Once you've reached the bottom, a geyser will be there to boost you all back up above ground. The trick is, you can't get new pikmin underground - however many you came in with is how many you're stuck with (unless you find a queen candypop flower, but that's not too important). Add to that that time doesn't go by at all while you're underground, and this new experience makes for some very interesting and EXTREMELY challenging gameplay. For example, say you've made it all the way to the fourth sublevel, only to be greeted by a fiery bulblax! But the path to the cave entrance above ground was underwater, so how could you ever fight this fiery monster with a team comprised completely of blue pikmin? Rather than swarming it, as you would if you had a bunch of reds, you'll have to lead it into a pool of water, where your blues do their thing best. That's kind of a weak exapmle, but you get the point. Also at the end of every cave is a sort of boss creature. Some of these enemies come straight from the hardest beasts in the first Pikmin game, and the others are harder than anything that game would've dared to offer up. After completing the boss fights, you're rewarded with a special item that adds to Olimar and Louie's abilities, such as a whistle that calls back your pikmin from a wider range and a suit that makes you impervious to fire.

Overall, this game tries to add a lot of "stuff" to the basic Pikmin gameplay. By that, I mean new types of levels (the caves), new weapons at your disposal (the two new sprays, one that turns enemies into stone and one that beefs up your pikmin's strength temporarily) - those kinds of things. These are really nice additions, I'm not complaining. But as Alex and I agree, the franchise doesn't really need more "stuff" in Pikmin 3 (which couldn't come soon enough) - it needs new Pikmin. Yes, the ability to turn some of your pikmin into white or purple pikmin is very cool, and those two types do add to the gameplay (although not so much with purple). What we'd like to see are entirely new, full-fledged fleets of pikmin with their own onions (pikmin hive spacecraft) and everything. They hint at the possibility with bulbmin - a creature found only underground that turns out to be a parasitic pikmin inhabiting the body of a bulborb, controlling its movement by rooting itself into the creature's spinal chord. Now, think if you could have some of those on your team permanently! And not just to use on bulborbs - on ANY enemy! Feel like walking around with a giant mamuta behind you for defense? Very well, go throw some green pikmin on that sleeping mamuta over there - he won't mind. Strategies like that that focus much more on the pikmin themselves and less on obstacles would add so much to the series next time around. I really hope Miyamoto clues in on this.
9/10

Control
The control doesn't change or improve much from the first game. 'A' throws pikmin where you aim them, 'B' whistles them back to you, 'X' makes them split by color, and the C-stick gives you 360-degree analog control of your entire swarm. Because you play with two captains this time, 'Y' is used to switch which character you're controlling (you can pool your two characters' groups together with a correctly-aimed whistle call). I could tell before I even played the game that having two separate teams would get weird, since whichever team you're not controlling at the moment is defenseless, and boy was I right. Yes, if you 'Y' back to Olimar from Louie, Louie's pikmin will still be doing whatever it was they were. But if an enemy comes up on them, most likely, he's gonna' lose a whole crapload of pikmin. It's annoying that they can't figure out how to fight on their own, but then again, if they fought when you didn't want them to, that might be equally annoying - it's hard to say. Something here could DEFINITELY use some improvement, though.
The camera control is still a little weak. 'R' zooms at four different distances, 'L' centers the camera behind the captain(s) you're controlling, and 'Z' changes from an isometric to a top-down perspective. If you're experienced with this generation's 3D games, then you can probably already tell that this camera system is just a little bit tedious. It's not terrible, but maybe if you could control the camera freely (like in Zelda: Wind Waker or Mario Sunshine) by holding 'R' and using the C-stick, it'd be a whole lot easier to work with. Trust me, this game gets frustrating, and the last thing you need is a messy camera angle.
7/10

Graphics
The last game showed off some of this generation's nicest shadows and environmental textures, and continues to stand out in those features today. The character and enemy models were pretty crappy-looking, though, and sported some nasty-boring textures. On top of that, the animation wasn't great. This time around, though, the animations are freaking superb. The things the pikmin do look a lot more believable than in the last game (by that, I guess I just mean less cartoony), and some of the new enemies are just crazy to watch. Some of the environmental shadows are noticably more pixelly in this game, which is a shame, but the textures are more photo-realistic than ever, especially when it comes to the real world "treasures" you've been sent to collect. Only Nintendo can make Christmas tree ornaments and deli meats look beautiful.
8/10

Sound
The music is very nice overall, but doesn't quite stand up to that in the first game, in my opinion. C'mon, the Forest of Hope theme was an instant Nintendo classic! You'd think there could maybe be one or two of those in this game, but none of the songs really stand out a lot.
The sound effects are all very distinct and play a big role in this game's rooting itself in your brain. Sometimes this goes too far, though. The two alarm sounds (one that plays when one of your captains is nearing lethal damage and one that plays on a secret treasure radar instrument that you unlock a little while into the game) get extremely annoying. Because of them, I would mute the game if it weren't for the great music and Pikmin noises that cue me when something too distant to see has happened.
8/10

Replay Value
This game has simply one of the best collecting systems in any game, rivaling even Smash Bros. Melee. Every single enemy you encounter (and even some non-hostile flora and fauna) is added to Olimar's "Piklopedia", in which you can view them all like at a zoo - as if they were in their natural habitat, in full 3D. With the enemies, you can even lure them into their attack behavior by throwing pikmin-like carrots to the ground. The best things about all this, though, are Olimar's insanely detailed descriptions of the animals. Yo, all my science homies out there, he even taxonomizes all the creatures in faux-Latin (for instance, can you guess what "Pansarus gluttonae" is?) and describes exactly how all the species are related to eachother taxonomically. This, in particular, completely blew me away. There's also a huge guide to all the items you've collected. The most amusing parts of this are the names Olimar and the ship's computer give these objects. A D-cell battery to you and me is a "Courage Reactor" to the people of Hocotate, and a Dr. Pepper bottle cap is known as a "Drought Ender", whereas a Snapple cap is called an "Abstract Masterpiece" - this item in particular apparently moves Captain Olimar to tears - it's just so beautiful! Great stuff, Nintendo, seriously. This is exactly the kind of attitude that sets you apart from everyone else making games today.

Once you've collected enough treasures to get your company out of its 10,000 poko debt, the plot takes an unexpected twist, and you must return to the planet for even more zaniness that I won't spoil for those of you who wanna' check it out yourselves. Basically, it makes the game a third longer, which kicks ass no matter what game you're playing.
9/10

Overall
Pikmin never sold itself to me, y'know? I think it was the limit on the ammount of days you could spend exploring that turned me off to it the most. My friends own it, and I've played through it before, but what it comes down to is it's a much more limited experience than its sequel. Pikmin 2 gives you the time-independent caves, multiple times the items to collect, and of course, a limitless ammount of days on the surface.

If you really hated Pikmin 1, this one might have too much of the same gameplay to turn you to it. If you were just apathetic toward the original and you're a fan of games that both amuse and challenge the hell out of your brain, give Pikmin 2 a try. I can guarantee it delivers as both a solid strategy and fantastic adventure experience. Of course, I would definitely recommend the game if you were a fan of the first Pikmin, but then again, I'm sure you already own it by now. All in all, Pikmin 2 has turned out to be one of the most well-crafted games in my GameCube collection. I hope more people see it the same way before this console race is over. It definitely lets Nintendo's clever side shine as bright as or more than ever.