I agree with everything in this video and I'd like to corroborate your point about randomly generated caves. In theory, random generation makes a game more replayable, but I think that the caves in Pikmin 2 (or rather, the individual sublevels) are too small and mechanically shallow to warrant having an algorithm tossed onto it. There's a ROM hack for Pikmin 2 called Colossal Caverns, which condenses most of the game's treasures, enemies, Pikmin types and such to a single sublevel. This allows the procedural generation algorithm to really do its thing, because no two runs are even remotely the same. The vanilla game, meanwhile, would just place the egg of a sublevel in the nudge north of the ship pod and the buried treasure of a sublevel in the nudge to the east and then swap it around in another playthrough and maybe throw in an orange bulborb and a poison geyser so that you can't just grab said treasure. This adds nothing to the game and just serves to makes cave layouts not worth it to memorize. It's not a Dandori issue, because you can't use real-time strategy skills to predict where an algorithm will place a treasure! It's no wonder that the best and most memorable caves and sublevels in Pikmin 2 are hand-crafted and while I may not be a game designer either, I can't fathom why they didn't just handcraft the gate, enemy and treasure placement of every sublevel. I also don't get while people bemoan the difficulty of Pikmin 3 and 4. Is the combat in those games easy? Sure. Maybe not for casual players, but you don't need to be a Pikmin veteran to plow through 90% of the enemy types without losing even a single Pikmin if you just overwhelm them. However, that also goes for the first two games. Hell, I'd say that 1 and 3 are the most balanced games, as they don't really have insta-win buttons in the way that Pikmin 2 (purples, the sprays) and Pikmin 4 (Oatchi, items and all of the aforementioned) do. The only difference with Pikmin 2 is that it has just as many insta-lose buttons for the game to press (random bomb rock from the sky, tally-ho!). Pikmin 2 feels like a battle between the player and the game to see who can out-bull the other with their respective toolkits. TL;DR: Pikmin 2 is only regarded as the hardest Pikmin game because it chooses to play just as dirty as the player and that isn't good game design. People shouldn't forget that the games are highly customizable with self-imposed challenges. Play Pikmin 4 with no deaths, no using Oatchi in combat and no items and see for yourself how "easy" it is.
I spent my whole first playthrough of Pikmin 2 thinking that I needed to have my pikmin with me when exiting a cave level. This alone made caves so much more tideous for me
Long time pikmin fan here. Every time i find someone who doesn't like pikmin 2 theyre the type to use swarming to attack a bulborb from the front but not to cross a bridge. I won't pretend there isn't a bunch of jank in pikmin 2 but every game after it has become so ridiculously easy its almost boring [and im the kinda guy who can find something to like in all the pikmin games, even hey pikmin so this sint me saying i hate any of the pikmin games, i like them all tbh, i just like 2 the most].
While my ranking is 2>1>3>4, I dont disagree with your point of view. Also to note, level generation for caves is similar to how Warframe does it. There's "tilesets" that interlock and different tilesets for each dungeon environment, and once you memorize the tiles, you can much more easily strategize. 3 and 4 had the problem for me of introducing too much that deviated from the core gameplay, like too many extra, unique, overly specialied pikmin.
I don’t know if I have ever seen anyone rank the games like that. That is such a unique perspective! Typically, players who like 1 will say 3 perfected that formula whereas those who like 2 say 4 perfected that formula. My personal ranking: 2>4>3>1. I would flip 1 and 3 if the pikmin ai was better and if there weren’t so many glitches. Story and gameplay wise, it’s a great game. But, Pikmin 1 has definitely aged the worst. If the pikmin controlled like they do in 2 and if the glitches were gone, I’d be more eager to replay it more frequently.
I would amazed if someone complained about pikmin 2 without complaining about caves, not complaining about you or your video, just something that wpuld be amusing
I'm not sure how likely that is to happen since the caves are pretty much the only major thing to complain about since the rest of the stuff is generally pretty solid
