Pikmin 2 / YMMV - TV Tropes

Accidental Innuendo: The Arboreal Frippery is the leaf of a Japanese maple tree, which happens to look a lot like a marijuana leaf. The European version of the games change its color from green to red, which carries over in all regions in the Switch version.
Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Olimar is frequently told off by the ship for not giving Louie proper instructions on how to navigate the planet. Disregarding the fact that it's used as a method to explain controls to the player, one can only wonder if Olimar, who is otherwise so on top of things, privately believes that Louie will slow him down. This becomes more obvious in the third game, where Olimar's data files and video logs are very dismissive towards Louie (granted, Louie himself wasn't making things easy, so it's partially understandable).
- What exactly is the Waterwraith? Olimar's notes theorize it may just be a hallucination caused by paranoia and fear, but the ship can detect its presence and specifically states that it's in another dimension. Making matters even more confusing is the Waterwraith drops a treasure upon its defeat, which wouldn't make sense for a simple hallucination. Pikmin 3 goes even further by introducing the Plasm Wraith, which shares several similarities with the Waterwraith, such as the -wraith suffix, a humanoid shape, and an almost invincible form with supernatural properties. Olimar himself even notes the similarities between the two, but any actual connection they have or if they are meant to be the same creature has yet to be explained.
- Was Louie really in control of the Titan Dweevil like Olimar and the ship theorize, or was he kidnapped by it, and the Titan Dweevil was simply attacking Olimar and the President for entering its territory? If it is indeed the former, was Louie attacking his boss and coworker in revenge for Olimar leaving him behind, or to keep them from learning the truth about the company's debt? Or was it a mixture of both?
Anti-Climax Boss:
- The final boss of the first game, the Emperor Bulblax, becomes this here. All you have to do is throw a bunch of Pikmin — they don't even have to be purple — at it, and it will die before it even gets the chance to attack. Even the bomb rocks that only stunned the original can now be lethal if it swallows just three. At least they had the decency to make these Bulblaxes a lot smaller than the one from the first game.
- The Raging Long Legs. On one hand, it has the most HP of any boss in the game. On the other hand, it is horribly slow, and unlike its "lesser" version, the Beady Long Legs, it can be attacked at any time due to its massive size, which also makes it nearly impossible to miss. At worst, you may lose Pikmin if you don't clear out during one of its retaliatory rampages, which are very telegraphed and easy to get away from. Now consider that this is the second to last boss in the game, and boss of what is probably the hardest dungeon.
- The Waterwraith. This thing has been following you through the entire dungeon, but once you've got a few purples, it's basically powerless to harm you. The second phase of the fight is actually just a big joke! It barely even poses a threat to your army and views its victims as terrifying bullies. (Though on the other side of mileage, some may view this as highly cathartic after all the crap it's put them through.)
- Even what the game presents as the final boss, the Titan Dweevil, can fall into this. Sure it can use each of the main elements of the game but only electricity is immediately lethal so as long as you have yellows and make sure to call them when they get hit by the other elements there is little to worry about. And if you have all the suit upgrades for the captains you don't even need Pikmin except to retrieve the treasures after the boss is defeated.
Awesome Music: The famously disconcerting theme for the Submerged Castle does an exceedingly good job at warning the player that this cave will be far, far creepier than anything they've encountered so far.
Best Boss Ever: The Waterwraith being an anticlimax after horrifyingly stalking you throughout the dungeon makes it one of the best bosses in Pikmin 2 to beat down. Revenge is a dish best served with purple rain.
Best Level Ever: While many of the dungeons are rather divisive, there are a few of them that get a lot of praise:
- Most, if not all of the caves in Perplexing Pool are considered this:
  - The Glutton's Kitchen. It's fondly remembered mostly for being a pretty easy Breather Level, aside from the random Spotty Bulbear encounter, as well as re-introducing the fan favorite Breadbug enemies from the first game, the delicious food themed treasures, and for having a very vibrant and colorful toy house setting that makes it stand out amongst the other dungeons. In fact, some people even welcome the random Spotty Bulbear encounter, stating that it keeps the cave from feeling too easy.
  - The Shower Room. It has a really unique looking blue-tiled bathroom esthetic that makes it stand out against the other caves, is home to a beautiful and soothing music track, and is also a generally balanced cave that utilizes all 4 Pikmin elements equally. It's filled with watery hazards, as to be expected, but also occasionally sprinkles in the other three elements to keep the player on their toes and give each sublevel variety to prevent them from feeling too similar and repetitive.
  - Surprisingly enough, the Submerged Castle, while counting as That One Level, is also one of the most beloved caves in the whole game. This is mainly for introducing the gimmick of the cave's boss, the Waterwraith, dropping down from the ceiling after a certain amount of time and chasing you throughout the sublevel until you escape, creating a very challenging yet very thrilling and exhilarating experience of trying to hastily collect treasure before it appears and, once it does appear, trying to swiftly avoid them and make your Pikmin stay away from them. This culminates into the final sublevel where you get to harvest some Purple Pikmin and finally kick its watery butt for all the torment it caused you. It's such an iconic dungeon to the point that it isn't uncommon to see fans being displeased that the other dungeons don't feature the Wraith, or at least some other gimmick similar to it.
  - To a lesser extent, Citadel of Spiders. While it doesn't stand out too much compared to the others, it's notable for being the point where the game begins to pick up in difficulty, has a nice variety of enemies and hazards to get through, and ends with a rematch against the Beady Long Legs from the first game. It also helps that this is the first cave where the player has a large variety of Pikmin to choose to bring with them thanks to the newly unlocked Yellow Pikmin.
- The Snagret Hole, for the beautiful and serene looking first sublevel (a bird house up in a tree), the awesome tribal sounding background music, and the clever usage of ambushing enemies that, similar to the Submerged Castle, makes for a really challenging yet really thrilling and exhilarating dungeon to play through.
- Frontier Cavern, for its unique and beautiful snowy design, whimsical and atmospheric music, and Christmas-themed treasures, on top of being a varied and difficult dungeon that makes great use of each of the game's hazards. It also includes the fan favorite Bulbmin, while being much easier than the other two caves that feature them.
Breather Boss:
- The Giant Breadbug in the Glutton's Kitchen, as to be expected from a boss that doesn't even act hostile toward you. It doesn't even get the standard boss theme, instead getting a more laid-back, goofy-sounding bassoon theme. The only way it can harm your Pikmin is if the force of its mouth is stronger than the group pulling on the object it has.
- The Ranging Bloyster is pathetically easy if one knows how to deal with it. The main gimmick of the fight is that the boss will go after whichever captain is currently controlled, but because the animation that plays when it switches targets takes a while to complete, all while preventing it from attacking, it's possible to constantly swap between leaders to keep it locked in a cycle where your Pikmin attack it, while it's utterly helpless to fight back.
Breather Level:
- The "rest levels" featured in certain caves, which have little to no harmful enemies, resources to regroup such as nectar, sprays, and Queen Candypop Buds (and Bulbmin in one case) to make up for Pikmin losses, and geysers to escape back to the surface if you feel unprepared to tackle the rest of the cave on that trip.
- Glutton's Kitchen is a relatively simple cave to navigate, with very few dangerous enemies or traps, and an overly cutesy area to navigate filled with children's toys. Even the Giant Breadbug, the boss of the cave, isn't that big of a threat to deal with.
- Among the hardest set of levels in Challenge Mode is Hidden Garden: a large, relaxed level with no hazards and the only enemies being harmless Skitter Leaves, meaning a pink flower is almost guaranteed. The only way to lose Pikmin in this level is by leaving them buried in the ground, meaning you have to be trying to lose Pikmin here on purpose.
Broken Base:
- The game's difficulty splits the fan base on whether or not it's fair or if it's a case of Fake Difficulty. On one hand, the player has access to a lot of overpowered options such as Purple Pikmin and Bitter Spray, with the infinite day count letting the player endlessly farm them. On the other hand, a lot of enemies in game are incredibly lethal, with the amount of instant death enemies the game can throw at you at once becoming absurd, which is not helped by the randomly generated caves, which can throw large groups of them together in the same space. This is on top of the number of 'gotcha' traps of bomb rocks/enemies falling from the sky in caves, which can get downright obnoxious in the late game levels. You're very unlikely to find fans who see eye to eye on the game's difficulty.
- Whether or not the caves are better in this game or Pikmin 4. Defenders of 2 tend to think the caves in 4 are too short and easy, while the fixed layouts remove much of their replay value. They also note the wide array of musical tracks that 2 uses via a surprisingly complex musical system, which added a lot of atmosphere, as opposed to 4's singular, forgettable cave track. Detractors, meanwhile, point out the flaws of 2's caves, such as the Fake Difficulty issues and the randomized layouts making it difficult to strategize and plan ahead. As a result, you're unlikely to find fans who see eye to eye on the more difficult caves from 2, or the more streamlined ones from 4.
Catharsis Factor: There are few things as satisfying as turning the tide against the Waterwraith on the final floor of the Submerged Castle, where you start chasing it instead of it chasing you.
Contested Sequel: Fans either like this game for its longer length, more in-depth puzzles, and addition of a second partner; or find it weaker than the first due to finding the randomly generated caves tedious and repetitive Padding loaded with Fake Difficulty, and believing the removal of the time limit removes all tension from gameplay. Thoughts on the approaches to storytelling also differ. Some prefer Olimar's somber end of day monologues in 1 as a storytelling medium over the more comedic emails of 2, while others prefer 2's introduction of new characters and worldbuilding for both Hocotate and PNF-404, along with the loads of Treasure Journals and Piklopedia entries.
Demonic Spiders:
- Gatling Groinks fire explosive balls, the one "element" that no Pikmin is immune to. However, sometimes the balls will just knock Pikmin back rather than killing them, but it's not reliable. In addition, they have armour on their face, meaning that you have to get behind them to attack them, not easy given that they are always alert and will often turn and drop some explosive death on your army. They are even worse on towers, when they have more HP and can only be reached using Yellow Pikmin. In the Wistful Wild, the Random Number God can actually spawn one close enough to your base camp that it'll start attacking you before you can even finish picking your Pikmin for the day. The icing on the cake, however, is that this thing can bring itself back to life, forcing you to either use a bitter spray, or bring its corpse back to the ship/onion ASAP.
- Spotty Bulbears are always alert and will relentlessly chase you once they catch sight of you or your Pikmin. Worse, they have not set patrol path, meaning they can go anywhere, so it's not a matter of if the Bulbear finds you, but when. To make matters even more annoying, they are commonly found with their young following them, which have an annoying habit of sneaking up on you and eating Pikmin while you're preoccupied with the adult. Finally, if all that wasn't enough, they have the ability to come back to life after you kill them, just like the Gatling Groink.
Ending Fatigue: Pikmin 2 will wear down players by the end if they are trying to get the true ending, due to the large amount of treasures that need to be collected from the vast amount of explorable caves, some of which can go on for ten or more floors.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Bulbmin are loved for their adorable design and high usefulness, thanks to being immune to all four elemental hazards. They frequently rank among favorite Pikmin types with fans, despite only being usable in a select few caves and Challenge Mode levels. Many fans have been looking forward to seeing them return in future games.
Evil Is Cool: The Man-at-Legs. It's a Cyborg arachnid that has an autocannon with a Laser Sight as its main attack method, and can fire at up to 400 rounds per minute, which will kill any Pikmin at close-range and blast all others very far.
Fridge Horror: The President claims that the debt collectors plan to drown him in the swamp, but nothing will actually happen to him no matter how long you take. However, in the game's files, there exists a Dummied Out Game Over screen. Suddenly, it seems like the debt collectors' threat wasn't a bluff to get him to pay up...
Game-Breaker:
- Purple Pikmin are considered this to some, as they are strong enough to kill most enemies and even some bosses by simply throwing around ten to twenty of them on it, ridding most of the strategy. Although their slow speed and lack of immunities, combined with them having no Onion and thus can only be made through the rare Candypop Buds underground, firmly lands them in the Too Awesome to Use club for others (especially since you need to make 100 of these guys in the late game to get a certain treasure).
- Ultra-Bitter Sprays. The idea behind them was that they're supposed to be far more rare than Ultra-Spicy Sprays, having a lower drop rate from eggs and their plants for farming them often being in out of the way locations, making them far rarer and fewer between, putting them into the Too Awesome to Use club until you really needed them. However, Pikmin 2 has no time limit in regards to a set amount of days needed to complete the game unlike Pikmin and Pikmin 3, with the only major change being harder enemies start spawning after day thirty, which aren't too hard to deal with regardless and most are easy to sneak around, too. As such, if you take a few days to specifically farm Ultra-Bitter Sprays, they punch a massive hole through most of the game's difficulty, as they make even the most demonic of spiders a complete joke to beat, and killing them while in this state makes them drop nectar and possibly more sprays. The only thing that keeps them from being super obscene is the fact that they make bosses damn near invincible should you use it on them, but even then, it makes for a good panic and escape button should the boss box you into a corner.
Genius Bonus: The Shock Therapist, one of the Titan Dweevil's weapons is a flipping Crookes tube. Just how many players are gonna know what that is?
Goddamned Bats:
- Dwarf Red Bulborbs become this in sublevel 8 of the Cavern of Chaos, as it's home to over fifty of them.
- Withering Blowhogs can't harm Pikmin, but their gusts of wind can revert an entire army of Pikmin back to their slow, weaker leaf state in a single blow.
- Volatile Dweevils, AKA "bomb rocks on legs". By themselves, they're not super hard to get away from before they explode, but the caves in Pikmin 2 just love dropping them from the ceiling anytime you get even remotely close to a treasure/gate/egg or while you're in the middle of dealing with a horde of enemies.
- Careening Dirigibugs are flying enemies, already making them hard to hit. However, what makes them just downright unfun to fight is the fact that they actively generate bomb rocks. It's not too hard to knock them down before they drop it, but knocking them down also ignites the bomb rock they're holding, which usually falls right next to them. So, you have to quickly recall your Pikmin, wait for the bomb rock to explode, while in the meantime the Dirigibug has already started to recover from being knocked down, leaving you a very limited window in between when the bomb rock explodes and the Dirigibug gets back up in the air and generates another bomb rock. While not overly dangerous by themselves, they're another enemy Pikmin 2 loves to put in cramped spaces while you're trying to deal with other enemies at the same time.
- Mitites cannot harm Pikmin, but they will cause all non-purple Pikmin to panic and run around, which can easily cause them to run into a hazard or another enemy that is capable of killing them. Mitites themselves can show up randomly in any egg in any area (including from Honeywisps and those that fall from the ceiling), and they have an irritatingly high spawn chance, meaning every single egg that's broken has the potential to be an annoyance that can straight up get your Pikmin killed rather than nectar or sprays, which are helpful. The only solace is Mitites drop large amounts of nectar if killed by a purple Pikmin's stomp, but they still show up annoyingly often.
Goddamned Boss: The Pileated Snagret is equally as lethal as the Burrowing Snagret, only being able to snatch up three Pikmin at a time. Unlike its cousin, it has more health, hops around instead of staying in one place, and isn't vulnerable for very long before it goes back underground. Fights with it usually take forever because of how hard it is to throw Pikmin on it safely, even when it gets stuck trying to come aboveground; playing too aggressively to kill it faster just lets it eat more Pikmin than it should. It's even worse in Challenge Mode where you have to fight it with a time limit, and, if you're going for 100% completion, without losing a single Pikmin.
Good Bad Bugs:
- By abusing the "item get" cutscenes and its interactions with scale puzzles, it's possible to get Blue Pikmin long before you get Yellows. This is a really useful time-saver that allows one to skip most of the puzzles needed to get Yellows. This is fixed in the Switch port: you simply can't call for wild Blue Pikmin before getting the Yellow ones.
- When Spicy and Bitter Sprays drop from enemies, you're only supposed to be able to pick them up once. However, in 2, there's a brief window where you can pick the same spray up again with the second captain, effectively doubling your supply. This glitch even still works in the Switch port, presumably because it's not game-breaking like the above glitch.
- It's unknown if it's intentional, but using the Napsack makes the leader immune to boulders shot from Armored Cannon Larvae and Decorated Cannon Beetles. This can be used as a distraction while the other captain and their Pikmin sneak by, as the creature will continue to shoot boulders at the sleeping captain indefinitely.
Hype Backlash: Though the game was for the longest time hailed as the best game in the series, newcomers to the franchise, especially those who grew up with Pikmin 3, have criticized the game for its unbalanced difficulty and focus on randomly generated caves over the beautifully crafted outdoor sections^note, said caves also being criticized for sometimes generating unfair or unoptimal layouts. Some have also criticized the game for not having the same isolationist atmosphere or the life-or-death stakes of the first game. The removal of the time limit, which was unanimously seen as a major improvement upon the game's release, is seen by some as a downgrade as it removes the motivation to finish the game quickly^note
Inferred Holocaust: Your Purple and White Pikmin don't even have Onions (having used the ship as shelter for the duration of the game), meaning they have nowhere to hide from enemies once you leave them behind at the end of 2. Same with Bulbmin, which cannot return to the surface with you and must be left in caves and at the mercy of enemies if you don't transform them into regular Pikmin with Candypop Buds.
Jerkass Woobie: Although the President is a greedy bastard (the first thing he does when bringing up the debt being selling Olimar's ship to pay off the company debt while refusing to sell his own ship), if you take too long to raise up enough money, he starts giving you status updates on how he's had to go on the lam to hide from the All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks and is now living under a bridge. Keep dawdling, and the loan sharks find him and threaten to bury him in a swamp if the debt is not repaid. His messages afterwards consist of him fearfully begging Olimar to work faster. It's kind of hard not to feel sorry for him at that point.
Memetic Mutation:
- The Waterwraith dropping out of the sky on steamroller wheels inevitably drew some comparisons to the famous "ROAD ROLLER DA!" scene from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders.
- The Waterwraith's design has had many fans humorously comparing it to Bubble Buddy from SpongeBob SquarePants and its rollers to the Flintstones' car.
Paranoia Fuel:
- The Submerged Castle. Feverishly attempting to clear the sublevels as fast as you can before the Waterwraith arrives. And to say nothing of after you hear that telltale roar...
- If there is one on the map, a Bulbear or Gatling Groink will find you. It is only a matter of time, since both enemies have no set patrol radius and can wander anywhere.
The Scrappy: The Hocotate ship is contentious with a number of players of Pikmin 2, mostly because it often chimes in about info the player would likely have already figured out at that point, and the cutscenes often activate at inconvenient times, and a few seconds into the cutscenes, the enemies can still attack and kill your Pikmin, while you have no control! The fact that his reactions are often really overblown over stuff that would be mundane to the player don't help, either. This seems to be a fact that Nintendo caught onto, as there's a throwaway line in Nintendo Land along the lines of "It would be better off without a voice chip", and in Pikmin 3 it gets knocked offline by the Mireclops. In Deluxe, Olimar and Louie are sent back to fix it, but the fully repaired ship is reduced to a non-speaking role in the ending.
Self-Imposed Challenge:
- It's possible to repay the debt by repeatedly going through Emergence Cave, since enemies will respawn and their corpses can be collected for a small amount of money. Key word is it's possible, but actually doing so is a whole different story. Since the most you can get from the enemies in the cave is around 22 pokos, this means you must trek through the cave over 413 times in order to grind enough pokos to reach 10,000.
- Completing the game within 30 days is no longer necessary, but you can still challenge yourself to do it in that timeframe.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: The 30-day time limit is excised completely, much of the gameplay takes place underground where there's no day timer, and many returning enemies are slower or less powerful than they were in the first game. This was a conscious decision, as the team wanted it to be a less stressful experience.
Signature Scene: The Waterwraith falling from the sky for the first time and the subsequent chase, in part from the ship clarifying just how dangerous the thing is, as well as being genuinely terrifying in an otherwise bright and lighthearted game. Submerged Castle itself has left such a long lasting impression that the final area in Pikmin 3 pays homage to it, while Pikmin 4 would include a loose recreation of it, Waterwraith and all, in the form of the Engulfed Castle.
That One Achievement: Completing the entirety of the Piklopedia, both creature and treasure catalogs. Certain creatures, like the Golden Candypop Bud, are very rare and only appear once in the whole game and thus are very easy to miss, and since backtracking can be quite a grind in this game, especially the dungeons, one can start to see where problems arise. The random plant scenery is also included as well and, like the creatures, some are rare and only appear once throughout the whole campaign. But they're arguably even easier to miss due to only being minor scenery that one may not think much about. So prepare to tediously run around and touch every ounce of scenery in sight just to see if it's an entity apart of the Piklopedia, which again is something that many players probably won't think of doing on their first run unless knowing them beforehand. Completing the Treasure side is even more grueling, as it requires the player to 100% complete the game and go through some of the toughest caves that are filled with tough bosses and Demonic Spiders just to collect them and obtain their logs.
That One Boss:
- On a no-Pikmin-death run, the Segmented Crawbster probably takes the cake. It becomes this due to the difficulty to dodge its rolling attack, as well as the fall of the ceiling's rocks after it hits the wall. Even on no-death runs, it's still a pain by virtue of being able to kill loads of Pikmin at once, if not causing a Total Party Kill.
- Also for no-death runs, Snagrets, mostly because it's incredibly tricky to aim for their narrow hit area (the head) while avoiding their strikes with anything but a tiny squad of Pikmin. It can also kill Pikmin by taking them underground, whilst in later games it will release them if they haven't yet been swallowed. The Pileated Snagret is bigger, packs a bigger health bar, and can hop above-ground to reach your Pikmin.
- Empress Bulblax, the second and third times around. Her continuously spawning babies kill Pikmin instantly, and it's easy to let one slip from your sights and have a feast without you realizing until it's too late.
- Man-at-Legs. It can easily waste a whole group of 100 Pikmin with its extremely fast and deceptively accurate machine-gun attack if you're careless enough and don't take cover. Worse still, the shots from his attack are a One-Hit Kill to anything hit, and its tendency to skitter around quickly means it's very hard to attack the thing and pull your Pikmin out of the area before it fires. It's especially annoying in the Hole of Heroes, where you have to fight it in a pool of water, meaning only blue Pikmin (and Bulbmin) can fight it. It's possible to lure it to where non-blues can get it, but it's difficult to the point of probably not being worth it.
- The Waterwraith on levels 1-4 of the Submerged Castle. It's easy enough if you're prepared, but when you don't expect it and are not prepared, you can be devastated quickly, because it's merciless. The upside is it homes in on the leading captain, so one of your captains can distract it while the other flees.
- The Titan Dweevil can be absolutely punishing if you're unlucky. While the player most likely won't have to worry too much about the Shock Therapy, thanks to Yellow Pikmin^note, the other weapons can be a massive issue. While the player can use their Whistle when a Pikmin is hit with an element to save them before they die, if the Captain gets hit by an attack, even if they have all the suit upgrades, they can and will get knocked down, most likely preventing the player from saving a few Pikmin. The Flare Cannon and Comedy Bomb in particular can easily stunlock the player if they get hit by it since both hit multiple times, preventing the player from getting up while the Pikmin run about every which way. And if the player decides to split the Pikmin across two Captains (one Captain takes Yellow Pikmin to fight the boss while the other stays out of the main arena), the Monster Pump peppers water in random directions across the arena, making it very likely a few will hit the Pikmin staying with the other Captain. Also not helping the fact that each part has a lot of health, so if the player is lacking in Ultra-Spicy Sprays, it'll take quite a while to deal with each part. And there's throwing the Pikmin onto the parts to begin with, as if their aim is off, the Pikmin will either bounce off the Titan Dweevil's body or just miss the weapon entirely. And if you lose too many Pikmin (or at least 3 Purple Pikmin, as each weapon has a weight of 30), you won't be able to carry any of the weapons back to the ship. And if you leave without taking the weapons to the ship, the boss will re-attach the removed weapons when you return.
That One Level:
- The Submerged Castle, with the Waterwraith dropping in if you linger on a floor for too long. There's also the fact that you can only take Blue Pikmin in when the dungeon has all hazards — including the one that instantly kills Pikmin. Luckily, you get Bulbmin (and to a lesser extent, White Pikmin via Ivory Candypop Buds) to alleviate the problem.
- The Hole of Heroes. It is filled with bosses, many of which are designed to be extra challenging (i.e: the Pileated Snagaret has a regular Burrowing Snagaret assisting it, while the Man-At-Legs' arena is surrounded by water), with one sublevel filled with every kind of the most dangerous Bulborbs. It's also the longest cave in the game, with a whopping 15 floors to go through.
- The Dream Den isn't much better. It's filled with difficult enemies and traps that aren't fun in the slightest to deal with, and is only one sublevel short from the Hole of Heroes. It's usually around this floor that Ending Fatigue will set in for players.
- Several Challenge Mode levels fall under this:
  - The Collector's Room when going for a pink flower. You are provided with 50 white pikmin and a few sprays, and each floor has a large bulborb that must be fought for the key. Problem is, you don't have enough sprays to use on every floor and the bulborbs are very inconsistent in their behavior (sometimes they bite, which is guaranteed to eat a few pikmin, other times they shake, which gives you time to finish them off), meaning it mostly comes down to luck if you lose a pikmin or not. If that wasn't enough, the final floor has a Gatling Groink that will immediately start shooting the SECOND you start, so if you didn't know it was coming up and didn't have a bitter spray saved up, you may as well restart.
  - Concrete Maze, as its name implies, is a large maze only providing you with a measly two white pikmin. Not only are the sublevels randomly generated like every other cave in the game, the key and and exit are as well, and you aren't provided much time at all to look around on top of it. It's all too common to find the key and bring it back to the ship, then not have enough time left to locate the exit. Sublevel 2 is even worse, as it's even bigger and constantly drops bomb-rocks and volatile dweevils on top of you, forcing you to waste precious time fleeing from them. Sublevel 3 is thankfully much more straightforward, but it's still tedious due to the low amount of pikmin you have. This leaves you with a level that is almost entirely luck-based, and is tedious on top of it. Truly one of the more irritating levels in the game.
  - Subterranean Lair consists of a large room with not one, not two, but THREE Spotty Bulbears that have a nasty habit of grouping together to gang up on you. While you are provided sprays, the Bulbears' children make it difficult to take them all out with no Pikmin deaths, and they tend to sneak up on you while you're preoccupied with the adults.
  - The Secret Testing Range. Thought fighting Man-at-Legs was bad enough? Now not only are you on a timer, but if you want 100% completion, you have to do it without losing a single Pikmin. Not helping matters is that it's not just a fight with the aforementioned Man-at-Legs either — before that, you need to complete a floor with two Gatling Groinks on it. Dealing with them isn't particularly tough since they're on the first floor and it won't take much time to restart if they do kill a Pikmin, but having to go through them each and every time you slip up against the Man-at-Legs is a massive pain.
  - Cave of Pain, which is fittingly named, as you will want to inflict pain on whichever developers were responsible for this level. It's an amalgamation of bombs, tough enemies, and rocks that fall from the sky every few steps and will keep pestering you throughout the whole level. It's to the point where the best strategy is just to grab the key and not bother with any of the other treasures. It's like they took a level from a ROM hack and put it in the official game.
That One Sidequest:
- Getting the Doomsday Apparatus is easily the most aggravating treasure to obtain since you need to grow 100 Purple Pikmin in order to lift it. Purple Pikmin can only be grown by converting another type via Candypop Bud, making it a tedious process to grow that many. On top of this, even if you use every single Violet Candypop Bud you come across and never lose a Purple at any point, you still won't have enough, meaning you have to backtrack to a cave at least once at some point. Even when you do have enough Purples, the treasure itself takes at least a quarter of a day to carry back, meaning you'll be stuck waiting around for it to get there.
- Getting a pink flower on all 30 Challenge Mode levels. To get a pink flower, you must complete the level without losing a single Pikmin. That means playing 30 levels flawlessly, since losing a Pikmin at any point automatically disqualifies you from a pink flower. Even worse, the later Challenge Mode levels (the final 10 in particular) are borderline Nintendo Hard, and those have pink flower rankings as well. The worst offenders are Collector's Room (which in itself is a nasty Difficulty Spike with how early on it appears), Rumbling Grotto, Subterranean Lair, Secret Testing Range, and Bully Den.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The removal of the product placement in the Nintendo Switch HD port. While it's understandable given the licensing issues with the brands, it has led to disappointment from fans of the original, as many viewed the use of actual real-life brand as helping contribute to the worldbuilding, further establishing the nature of this planet as a post-apocalyptic Earth.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The All-Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks eventually kidnap the president and threaten his life if his debt to them is not repaid. This would've been a good way to reintroduce a day limit like in the first game. But instead, you can take as long as possible and the loan sharks still won't have killed him. What makes it even more egregious is there's unused Game Over text in the game's files, indicating that there originally may have actually been a day limit with this exact scenario, but it didn't make it into the final game.
Ugly Cute:
- Bulborbs in this game have gotten several more variants, all equally likable.
  - Take a Bulborb, make it ten times more fluffier, and you essentially get a Hairy Bulborb. It helps that it's discolored nose makes it more resemble some kind of real world animal, such as a dog.
  - Bulborb Larvae may be evocative of a worm or a maggot, but it nevertheless takes all the cues from a normal bulborb and turns it into a Fun Size.
  - Body Horror aside, the Fiery Bulblaxes look like a bootleg minifigure version of an already silly-looking creature, with mismatched eyes and a giant overbite making it adorable in its own roundabout way.
- The Giant Breadbug has a thick hide reminiscent of a loaf of bread and makes adorable waddling sounds when it walks. It also helps that it's boss music is a strange bassoon ditty instead of the traditional boss music, all culminating to make a very goofy, and memorable boss.
Underused Game Mechanic:
- Despite having two playable characters, there's no option to play co-op in the story. Challenge mode allows two players to work together, but that's all there is for co-op play.
- Bulbmin, which are immune to all four elemental hazards, only appear in three caves, and cannot leave said caves to go with you to the surface. While you will likely get plenty of mileage out of them in Submerged Castle (since you can only bring in Blue Pikmin), they are very sparse elsewhere, with Hole of Heroes only having one adult Bulbmin on a single floor in the entire cave, and both it and Frontier Cavern allowing you to bring in all five types of Pikmin with no indication of said Bulbmin being down there, meaning you will most likely bring in 100 Pikmin and miss out on them unless you already knew they were there from a previous playthrough. Bulbmin also only appear in two levels in Challenge Mode, and have the same issue as Story Mode: Green Hole is only two floors long, and Hidden Garden has no hazards and forces you to convert at least one of the two you start with into other types via Queen Candypop Buds, so you don't get much usage of them anyway.
Unintentional Period Piece: The treasures only consist of objects that existed by the game's release year (2004), so anything created afterwards (I.E. technology such as smart phones, packaging redesigns on products, etc.) is absent from the game, which is made even more noticeable because it takes place After the End. It's even more noticeable in the Switch version, which removes the product placement from all of them, making the brands stick out even more in the original.
Viewer Species Confusion: The Arboreal Frippery treasure. It's actually suppose to be a Japanese maple leaf, but many players, specifically those in North America, mistook it for a marijuana leaf instead. The comparison was strong enough to get the treasure redesigned to look like a Western maple leaf in the European GCN and Wii versions and all Switch versions. The Piklopedia notes written for it in the Japanese version certainly didn't help either, with the ship straight up describing it as a "drug-like blanket" that would put users to a "perpetual slumber" if "used too much."
Woolseyism:
- In the GameCube and Wii versions, some of the treasures had their branding changed in order to be more familiar in other territories. For example, the batteries are National Hi-Top in Japanese, but Duracell in the international versions. The Switch port removes the branding entirely, making everything uniform across all regions, and changes the names of some of the treasure groups.
- Treasures with Japanese text or that are Japanese in nature were changed slightly for international releases. The Decorative Goo, which was an ordinary tube of paint, had its Japanese text changed to a Mario Paint reference. The Cosmic Archive, a copy of The Mysterious Murasame Castle^note, was noticeably one of the few things left untouched.
- The yield sign at the landing site in the Wistful Wild is a stop sign in the Japanese version. Stop signs in Japan are triangular rather than octagonal, so it was likely changed to be more familiar to those who live outside Japan.

YMMV / Pikmin 2

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