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Discussion Pikmin 2 Caveless Edition (ROM Hack)

Stopdoor

Stopdoor

????
I came across this new Pikmin 2 ROM Hack on YouTube the other day:



(links to download are provided in the YouTube comments for some reason)

I just finished a run of it on original hardware and it was a dream, very satisfying! The creator recommends playing without Purple Pikmin (added in the latest version) but tbh I didn't find it that big a deal, I was playing for speed and didn't spend too much time farming and honestly the nerf to their stun and fact they can't solve elemental puzzles makes them naturally less useful/more balanced. It even capped off with a buffed up boss for what I found a satisfying finale, no Titan Dweevil though!

Can you beat my run of 13 days?? I wasted an entire day forgetting to dig up a treasure in Valley of Repose lol. Other pro-tips, the day ends early if you finish the debt and unlock Wistful Wild, each level has 5000 pokos of treasure so you might want to try to clear two of them 100% first for maximum efficiency. Treasures you dig up or take from an enemy also reset each day, so you gotta give yourself some buffer time to collect them.
 
ngpdrew said:
What have they done to my boy…
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lol I'm sorry, I swear I respect the cave design but you gotta admit this is a cool alt-universe thing

Would be kind of cool in a similar way to play a Pikmin 1 or 3 hack with caves, for some reason Pikmin 2 hacks are way ahead though

BassForever said:
...why would you want to get rid of the caves? That's like half the content of the game.
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c'mon, we both know the reasons. Whether you like them or not, it makes for a different experience and especially one more amenable to speedrunning the game.

Pierceyonder said:
This looks to be a pretty cool mod that appeals to me, thanks for sharing. I think I'll give the co-op a go sometime.
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It took me a bit of fiddling today to get the co-op codes to work via Swiss on the actual hardware, let me know if you need any advice 🤔
 
as pikmin 2's caves are objectively... bad, this appeals to me greatly and had no idea anyone was working on something like this
 
Yeah, caves in 2 are the lowest point of the series in an otherwise excellent game, I'm all in! Thanks for he heads-up OP!
 
Happy for those who don't like the Pikmin 2 caves, but sadly this mod isn't for me. Caves introduced a change of pace that i was very thankful for, not because i didn't like Pikmin (otherwise i would have never bought Pikmin 2 to begin with) but because i like this kind of switches from time to time.

Though i think i'll try this mod. Curious to see how Pikmin 2 would feel without caves.
 
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Stopdoor said:
lol I'm sorry, I swear I respect the cave design but you gotta admit this is a cool alt-universe thing

Would be kind of cool in a similar way to play a Pikmin 1 or 3 hack with caves, for some reason Pikmin 2 hacks are way ahead though



c'mon, we both know the reasons. Whether you like them or not, it makes for a different experience and especially one more amenable to speedrunning the game.



It took me a bit of fiddling today to get the co-op codes to work via Swiss on the actual hardware, let me know if you need any advice 🤔
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Clearly we don't as I've never had an issue with Pikmin 2's caves and find the axe grind with them bizarre from people.
 
BassForever said:
Clearly we don't as I've never had an issue with Pikmin 2's caves and find the axe grind with them bizarre from people.
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The first trailer lays it out pretty well. The concept of caves is fine and their execution in 4 pretty much cements that, but the random generation in 2 is fills them with frustrating jank like enemies attacking through walls and the vast number of instant death traps it throws at you can make the whole experience frustrating even when you’re experienced and familiar with them.

A cave de-randomizer would also have been acceptable in my eyes, but my favorite part of Pikmin’s always been the overworld exploration and puzzle solving and this mod delivers the experience I would’ve initially expected all the way back in 2004.
 
Boyfriend said:
The first trailer lays it out pretty well. The concept of caves is fine and their execution in 4 pretty much cements that, but the random generation in 2 is fills them with frustrating jank like enemies attacking through walls and the vast number of instant death traps it throws at you can make the whole experience frustrating even when you’re experienced and familiar with them.

A cave de-randomizer would also have been acceptable in my eyes, but my favorite part of Pikmin’s always been the overworld exploration and puzzle solving and this mod delivers the experience I would’ve initially expected all the way back in 2004.
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I'd much rather have a time limit remover mod for Pikmin 1 tbh.
 
caves in pikmin 2 are awesome and made it the only game in the series with a good difficulty (and the best game in the series as a result). 4's caves are piss easy.

This romhack looks cool as a different experience though!
 
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BassForever said:
Clearly we don't as I've never had an issue with Pikmin 2's caves and find the axe grind with them bizarre from people.
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tbh I actually don't really personally agree the problem with them is the difficulty like others are saying, I quite like that, I just find them quite obviously at odds with the time limit, making the gameplay loop much different than the sublime Pikmin 1. So yeah if you don't care for the time limit, I get it, I totally get why people love the caves but for people who like the time limit, the Dandori, it's easy to see why a mod like this is appealing, you get the feel of Pikmin 2 in a style more like Pikmin 1.

This is also much more easily replayable - I did a run of it in about the same time as it takes to play Pikmin 1, short games like this are so satisfying
 
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Stopdoor said:
lol I'm sorry, I swear I respect the cave design but you gotta admit this is a cool alt-universe thing

Would be kind of cool in a similar way to play a Pikmin 1 or 3 hack with caves, for some reason Pikmin 2 hacks are way ahead though



c'mon, we both know the reasons. Whether you like them or not, it makes for a different experience and especially one more amenable to speedrunning the game.



It took me a bit of fiddling today to get the co-op codes to work via Swiss on the actual hardware, let me know if you need any advice 🤔
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I don’t think it can count as speedrunning if you cut out half the game.
 
Honestly I think the only reason I had grief with caves was A) it was a pain in the ass to spawn purple/white Pikmin, 2) losing them meant having to hit reset on the 'Cube, which was when you had that Warning Screen that always felt like it took forever to load before you'd get to the title screen, and iii) if you lost even a single Purple Pikmin it made getting that dumbell in the final area impossible if you didn't have a full 100 squad of purple pikmin.

I definitely won't mind giving this mod a whirl, though I'm not sure if I should do it before or after I replay vanilla Pikmin 2 lol
 
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From now on, I'm going to divide Pikmin fans between conservatives, those who prefer the original's design, and crawlers or evens, those who prefer 2's shtick; 'cause it's funny that the separation is that clear.
 
Síriocaz said:
From now on, I'm going to divide Pikmin fans between conservatives, those who prefer the original's design, and crawlers or evens, those who prefer 2's shtick; 'cause it's funny that the separation is that clear.
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You might want to workshop that first name...
 
My biggest problem with caves isn't so much the randomness and more the fact that sandboxed environments where you can't regrow Pikmin reliably is just a fundamentally flawed idea imo. When you have carrying limits for treasure, enemies (Wollyhops, Gattling Groinks) that can decimate your Pikmin, and caves that are really long even when just focusing on the exits, that inevitably incentivizes the player to do a lot of resetting. My stance is that players can and will optimize the fun out of the game when given the chance and Pikmin 2 fails pretty hard to address that. Not even getting into how certain cave layouts are just incredibly mean (see: the one with the giant log in the middle of water).
 
Paxie said:
My biggest problem with caves isn't so much the randomness and more the fact that sandboxed environments where you can't regrow Pikmin reliably is just a fundamentally flawed idea imo. When you have carrying limits for treasure, enemies (Wollyhops, Gattling Groinks) that can decimate your Pikmin, and caves that are really long even when just focusing on the exits, that inevitably incentivizes the player to do a lot of resetting. My stance is that players can and will optimize the fun out of the game when given the chance and Pikmin 2 fails pretty hard to address that. Not even getting into how certain cave layouts are just incredibly mean (see: the one with the giant log in the middle of water).
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just don't lose pikmin
 
Octavian said:
just don't lose pikmin
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Which people will do by doing tedious stuff like scouting floors with Olimar and punching things to death, oof

The lack of time limit means you don't have to balance taking things back in time either, so the safe way to play is handle the enemies and then spend dead time carrying everything back. Definitely easy to optimize the fun out of the game.
 
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Stopdoor said:
Which people will do by doing tedious stuff like scouting floors with Olimar and punching things to death, oof

The lack of time limit means you don't have to balance taking things back in time either, so the safe way to play is handle the enemies and then spend dead time carrying everything back. Definitely easy to optimize the fun out of the game.
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scouting is totally reasonable strategy. punching everything to death is not, it's too tedious that even if it's "optimal" nobody ever did it.
 
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Síriocaz said:
Ok, traditionalists.
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Not gonna lie, that's not much better

I'm someone who prefers Pikmin 1, but not because of the caves; I like Pikmin 1 more because the Pikmin AI is funnier, it has Mushroom Pikmin, there's more stuff that reminds me of 90s Era CG renders (like Beady Long Legs!), and most importantly, the game is very short.

That's not to say Pikmin 2 is bad; on the contrary, it's great! It adds one of the best new Pikmin types (Bulbmin), and the caves are really funny because of the randomly generated layouts. Plus you can find a Murasame Castle disk!

I wouldn't consider myself a traditionalist at all; Pikmin 1 ultimately just has a little more in its favor.

Anyway, this mod seems really interesting! I ought to give it a try sometime.
 
The thing is if you take out the caves in Pikmin 2, you basically turn it into a Pikmin room hack. The areas in Pikmin 2 aren't really too built on exploration and several puzzles are simply Pikmin 1 puzzles redux. I assume the mod fixes the second part but the areas aren't the most conducive to fixing the large open space problem. I feel like there should be additional areas to substitute the caves.
The problem with Pikmin 2's caves are 1 part too long and the 2nd part being the enemy attack patterns being oppressive with stuff like open pits and electricity being too deadly. Like Careening Diribugs will start a bomb rock almost the instant stop and force you to retreat when attacking to avoid the bomb blast or bulbears being aggressive enough to climb over low walls forcing you to fight them disadvantageously and the bulborb larva have very high priority attacks that will kill Pikmin near instantly before you have the chance to deal with them. And most of the time you aren't dealing with one in the tight corridors but 2-3 different enemies where it's very difficult to kite them away to take each down. It would be one thing if it was 3 or 4 floors but the later areas and pretty much all this but for 10+ floors
 
astrogamer said:
The thing is if you take out the caves in Pikmin 2, you basically turn it into a Pikmin room hack. The areas in Pikmin 2 aren't really too built on exploration and several puzzles are simply Pikmin 1 puzzles redux. I assume the mod fixes the second part but the areas aren't the most conducive to fixing the large open space problem. I feel like there should be additional areas to substitute the caves.
The problem with Pikmin 2's caves are 1 part too long and the 2nd part being the enemy attack patterns being oppressive with stuff like open pits and electricity being too deadly. Like Careening Diribugs will start a bomb rock almost the instant stop and force you to retreat when attacking to avoid the bomb blast or bulbears being aggressive enough to climb over low walls forcing you to fight them disadvantageously and the bulborb larva have very high priority attacks that will kill Pikmin near instantly before you have the chance to deal with them. And most of the time you aren't dealing with one in the tight corridors but 2-3 different enemies where it's very difficult to kite them away to take each down. It would be one thing if it was 3 or 4 floors but the later areas and pretty much all this but for 10+ floors
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it's sort of true, some of the levels are weirdly linear like Valley of Repose, but I still had a great time playing the hack, I think it worked better than you'd expect. I might be trying to play it co-op over the weekend and then I feel like it would really stick out as a more fully realized take, because swapping between Olimar and Louie as a single player never felt quite right without being able to direct them more
 
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plenty of discussion about how the caves in Pikmin 2 are the best part of the game, but the large amount of nerfs Purple Pikmin have gotten as part of the mod also needs to be brought up.

if they're "optional", why even bother weakening them? the whole point is that they're useful for combat and carrying things more easily.
 
Krvavi Abadas said:
plenty of discussion about how the caves in Pikmin 2 are the best part of the game, but the large amount of nerfs Purple Pikmin have gotten as part of the mod also needs to be brought up.

if they're "optional", why even bother weakening them? the whole point is that they're useful for combat and carrying things more easily.
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Well, I think the author made the right choice nerfing their stun, combat is already so much more trivial in Pikmin 2 than 1. There still seems to be a kind of mini-stun and in the latest version they gave them back their full carrying capacity. At the same time they also made them less bog-slow while running behind you which is nice, I think it's well-considered personally.
 
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Krvavi Abadas said:
plenty of discussion about how the caves in Pikmin 2 are the best part of the game, but the large amount of nerfs Purple Pikmin have gotten as part of the mod also needs to be brought up.

if they're "optional", why even bother weakening them? the whole point is that they're useful for combat and carrying things more easily.
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I never gave much weight to the discussion about Purple being OP because there are enough checks on their power: They are slow as molasses and difficult to reproduce. You want a few in your party at all times but too many puts you at risk of them getting curb stomped by even the weakest enemies. If they get curb stomped, you'll have an awful time reproducing their army to a respectable size. They can stun enemies, but you can't throw them recklessly in battle so beyond that you have to show restraint.

I dunno. I think the developers handled them pretty well all things considered. Besides, regular Pikmin are as "overpowered" as purples in 3 and 4, and I don't hear nearly as much complaining about that!
 
ngpdrew said:
I never gave much weight to the discussion about Purple being OP because there are enough checks on their power: They are slow as molasses and difficult to reproduce. You want a few in your party at all times but too many puts you at risk of them getting curb stomped by even the weakest enemies. If they get curb stomped, you'll have an awful time reproducing their army to a respectable size. They can stun enemies, but you can't throw them recklessly in battle so beyond that you have to show restraint.

I dunno. I think the developers handled them pretty well all things considered. Besides, regular Pikmin are as "overpowered" as purples in 3 and 4, and I don't hear nearly as much complaining about that!
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I think it's less Pikmin are overpowered and more how nerfed enemies have got over time, man, going back to Pikmin 1 even Fiery Blowhogs and Wollyhops are way more intimidating than in Pikmin 2. It's funny Pikmin 2 has the reputation for difficulty it has but regular enemies are a lot easier on their own
 
I don't have the time nor the passion for Pikmin as a franchise to play offshoot hacks of Pikmin games (especially since I'm pro-Cave), but I sent this over to a friend who's a mega fan of the franchise but is pretty down on 2 for the caves. He spent the day playing it on and off and unsurprisingly he really dug it. It sounds like the content they added doesn't really "replace" the caves given how much of Pikmin 2's runtime they took up, but what comes as a result is a more bite-sized and abridged version of the game that alleviates its more frustrating qualities.
 
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