I love Pikmin because it's cute. The monsters are cute, Olimar is cute, the pikmin are cute. This is a big part of its appeal to me. But there's more to it. It is a good game, cuteness aside. The concept is that you play a space explorer named Olimar who finds these strange little creatures that look like carrots on one of the planets he visits. These creatures, which he nicknames Pikmin after his favorite brand of carrots, will follow him around and help him take valuable things back to his ship. In the first game they were taking parts of the ship back to it, now in Pikmin 2 Olimar is hunting for treasure so he can pay off his debts.

The gameplay hasn't changed much. Whatever you thought of Pikmin, you'll probably get a similar feeling with the sequel. I mention this because I've seen some people claim they hated the first game, but what they've seen of the second looks great. I don't know what they're smoking. Maybe they need to go back and play the first one to refresh their memories. If you haven't played Pikmin, go do so now, because I'm not going to bother going over the core gameplay elements that haven't changed. You definitely should have played it by now.

There are some additions to the gameplay. Two new types of pikmin have been introduced, white and purple. Purple pikmin are ten times heavier and stronger than normal pikmin. If something requires 50 pikmin to carry, only 5 purple pikmin would be needed. White pikmin are poisonous if swallowed and are not effected by poison clouds. They can also detect when there is treasure nearby and they can excavate it if it's buried underground.

I was happy to see that the time limit aspect hasn't been completely removed. You still have to round up all the pikmin before the day ends or they'll die. But there is no 30 day limit. You can play for as many game days as you want. So there's no rush to get everything done right away, but there's also not an overwhelming sense of freedom. It's a good balance.

There's a new character, Olimar's slightly dim co-worker Louie. You've probably seen screenshots with Olimar and another guy that looks sort of like Olimar in the same shot. Some people assumed this to mean there was internet or LAN play. Sorry, that's not what's going on in those screenshots. You play with both characters at the same time. They can be working together or seperately. When working together, one just follows the other, only coming into action to help pick pikmin out of the ground more quickly. Seperately, they can be working with their own group of pikmin in two different areas of the map. I'm only about 3 or 4 hours into the game, but so far this strategy hasn't been necessary. However it can give you something to do if you're waiting for one group of pikmin to break down a wall or something.

Besides being cute, another charming part of the game is that the treasures you will retrieve are based on real-world items. From Dr. Pepper bottle caps to a Nintendo Game & Watch handheld. It's just fun to see that type of stuff being carried back to your ship by the relatively tiny pikmin. Plus you can go back and examine any items you've collected. You can also see any creatures you've encountered. It's sort of like the figurines in Wind Waker's Nintendo Gallery, except they're not figurines and you don't have to do anything special to get them. You can access them from the in-game menu once you've run into them once.

There is a lot of Japanese text in the game. Most of it seems to be explaining new abilities when you gain access to them. If you've played Pikmin and understand the gameplay, it should be easy to figure out anything new. I doubt my 6 year old nephew could figure it out, but if you've been playing games for a while it should be fairly intuitive.

I'm glad I imported, I really didn't want to wait until late August, especially in a game where understanding the text just isn't that important. It works perfectly well with the FreeLoader on a USA GameCube.

So, I've only played a few hours of the single player game. There is a two player mode, but I have no one to play with so I can't tell you what that's like. I'll update these impressions as I progress further into the game, if I have anything to add.

Here's a couple pictures of the case. It's cute too.

On the left is the cardboard sleeve, on the right is the plastic case.


Japanese GameCube game cases are small. I wish our cases were like this.

If you have any questions about the game, I'll do my best to answer them here.

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