In case you didn't read the introduction, a Tear to My Eye is a series where I will talk about parts of great games that I feel don't get any love. It will not be remembering parts in games where I cried, unless that moment is the focus of that entry. To start this series, I'm going to talk about how I feel Pikmin 2 has some of the best boss fights out of any Nintendo game, talk about each boss, and why these bosses should be used as a blueprint for boss design.
I feel that I could write a whole entry on the brilliance of this boss alone.
This might seem like high praise for a game that released ten years ago, but I assure you it isn't. For those of you who don't know, the Pikmin series is a strategy game where you command a bunch of small creatures called Pikmin. In Pikmin 2, there are five different types of Pikmin with their own abilities. The red Pikmin are great at fighting and are resistant to fire, blue Pikmin can go in water, yellow Pikmin are thrown higher and are resistant to electricity, white Pikmin are resistant to poison and damage enemies when eaten, and purple Pikmin are slow, count for ten Pikmin when carrying anything, and stun enemies. These different abilities are then mixed with how many Pikmin you can keep with you (100), so you must construct your ideal squad to delve into the dungeons for treasure.
One thing that unifies all of the bosses in the story caves (minus the Burrowing Snagret) is that they give you useful items to fill up your "survival gear." This might be making you resistant to electrical damage, fire damage, unlocking a co-op mode in the menu, or allowing you to pluck Pikmin with your horn. While each boss fight is not required to beat the game, each are worth it not only for the fun fights, but because of the rewards from the bosses. This all changes in the games final three bosses, which are done only for completing the game.
Most of the bosses appear again in a cave called the Hole of Heroes, or Cavern of Chaos which adds a devious twist to all of the battles. The bosses that don't appear again are the Giant Breadbug and the Water Wraith. There will be a paragraph explaining the changes to each boss in the final caves.
At your first boss, the Empress Bulblax, you only posses two types of Pikmin, the red and purple types of Pikmin, and it's a fairly straightforward fight. The most important part of the battle against the queen Grub-dog is the fact that you must watch your enemy for signs that they are about to attack. The signal is incredibly obvious, with the hulking worm shaking off all of your Pikmin before rolling around the room. The Empress Bulblax then rolls it's position, around the room that it's in, and back to it's original position. It's a great introductory boss that sets the stage for more complex bosses.
I think the size of this beast is important, as it provides an easy target for those still learning to use the aiming mechanics in the game.
The next boss, the Burrowing Snagret is more of a challenge, and is the first boss that has multiple approaches for fighting it. The Snagret emerges from the ground, and pecks at your Pikmin with startling range. When it emerges from the ground, sometimes it gets stuck, which makes it unable to attack you for the few seconds after it emerges from the ground. If you're cautious, you might wait until it's stuck before barraging it with your Pikmin. If you're going in guns blazing, you'll attack it whenever it's above ground. If you're heartless, you'll let the Snagret eat your white Pikmin to kill it.
The Snagret's head is the only part of it that takes massive damage from your Pikmin.
Those are the only two bosses that have to be done in that order, but there is a recommended order for tackling the eleven caves available to you in the story. I'm going to cover all of the bosses, even those that are repeated fights, as the circumstances and location of each fight with bosses changes. This might be the addition of new abilities to bosses like the Empress Bulblax, or having to fight multiple Burrowing Snagrets at the same time.
The next boss is the Beady Long Legs, which is another boss that has multiple ways you can come after it. You can use your newly acquired yellow Pikmin to constantly attack this boss, as it's weak point can only be reached by yellow Pikmin. You can also use your red Pikmin to attack it when it lowers it's head, but this makes you unable to constantly attack it. It is one of the easier bosses, as you only have to watch out for its feet. By beating the Beady Long Legs, you unlock a co-op mode in the main menu.
The real danger this beast has is giving you a heart attack when it falls from the ceiling.
As fans of the original Pikmin know, the Emporer Bulblax is a fearsome creature. While not as giant as the original Pikmin game had it, the Emporer Bulblax is not an enemy to take lightly. The king of Grub-dogs returns with all of his moves intact, from his giant Pikmin-stomp to his long tongue lick. He doesn't have as much health as the first game gave him, but for people who haven't danced with the grand Bulblax, he's a tough boss. This boss introduces the fact that you can't attack enemies on all of their body. The Burrowing Snagret guided you toward attacking it's head, but attacking it's snake body still works. If you attack the back of the Bulblax, it will not go well for you. For beating the Emporer Bulblax, you get flame resistant armor.
Emporer Bulblax is judging you for only using purple Pikmin to fight him.
This next boss, at first glance, is quite pathetic. Unless you haven't been paying attention to what the Breadbugs can do (they drag treasure back to their hole, and if you don't have enough Pikmin dragging against it, it eats them) throughout the dungeon the Giant Breadbug resides in, you're safe. What makes this boss fight something other that easy, is the fact that you either need to react quicker that most other people, or learn things about your environment. Until I first got to this floor, I did not know that the enemy called Anode Beetle could even be defeated. The Giant Breadbug and the two Breadbugs that are on this floor take the treasure back to base quickly, so it's up to you to attack the Breadbugs. You might not also have learned that you can attack Breadbugs by throwing Pikmin on their back. This fight encourages experimentation against previous ideas that you have established on certain enemies, which is a valuable skill. This boss gives you armor that makes you invincible against electricity.
This boss wins the prize for being the most adorable.
While it might look like the Beady Long Legs, the Man-At-Legs is a completely different boss for many reasons. After traversing the explosion filled "Subterranean Complex," you are met with a... steaming ball in what looks like a spider's nest. Once you attack, this giant... spider thing emerges and begins firing lasers at you. If you wish for your Pikmin to survive, you must flee to the small amount of cover this floor provides you with. With only two hiding spots that constantly work, this fight proves the value of scouting out the area before you begin in any fight, if you're given the chance. This boss gives you the lightbulb, which fully illuminates every cave.
His missiles are fast and home in on your Pikmin like no other attacks. Just wait until you have to fight him again.
The Ranging Bloyster is the weirdest boss in the game, and that's saying something in a game full of strange bosses. This... I can't even come up with another name for it, it's that weird. Anyways, this boss focuses its attention to whatever captain you control. Up to this point, you have been able to take on each boss with just one captain, with two being a bonus, but if you don't have two captains, this boss is impossible. With the range that its... tongue? I don't even know. With the range of its tongue, you must switch captains constantly to sneak around to it's back and attack the small bulb it has. It's not a difficult boss this time around, but the way that you can approach it slowly affects how disorientated you are the second time you fight this sponge.
The weirdness of the Pikmin series reaches its peak at this sponge-like boss.
The Pileated Snagret is one of two examples of taking a boss and making it much more difficult. This green Snagret improves upon its relative, the Burrowing Snagret, by allowing it to hop around the arena and eat your Pikmin with ease. It has the same failings as the Burrowing Snagret, with it being stuck occasionally when it leaves the ground. But it is stuck for shorter amounts of time, throws off your Pikmin faster, and is tall enough that barely any Pikmin can reach it when it's fully out of the ground. The Pileated Snagret is a great example of an evolving boss that rises to meet your skill, and when it returns in Hole of Heroes, it has a crazy twist.
When you learn that this hops after you, it is one of the most terrifying moments in the game. Speaking of terrifying,
The Waterwraith is a constant plague throughout the cave Submerged Castle. If you take too long on any floor, the (at the moment) invincible Waterwraith will drop from the ceiling and squish all of your Pikmin. This adds a sense of urgency to every floor, because it's game over (not really, you can still finish the floor) as soon as this monster drops. This cave is incredibly stressful, given that you are only allowed to bring in blue Pikmin, yet every hazard is present in this creepy cavern. Once you finally do face off against this specter, you are armed with purple Pikmin, making it take physical form when you throw Pikmin near it. This boss terrifies me each time I play through the cave, as you never know when it will descend.
Sweaty palms throughout the entire Submerged Castle.
The second round with the Empress Bulblax changes greatly because of two things: You don't start at it's head, you need to navigate a maze filled with the upcoming creature, and it has one of the quickest devourers of your Pikmin: Bulborb Larva.
These creatures might look adorable, but they devour Pikmin like nothing else. They are kinda like children, they eat all of their food in one bite and don't bother to chew. These menaces constantly emit from the Empress Bulblax's butt, and they quickly fill up the final floor of the cave. If you don't lose any Pikmin to this boss fight, you're a legend.
The final three boss fights in the game are some of the most difficult fights I have ever done. Most of what the previous fights have taught you is thrown out of the window, forcing you to create a strategy on the fly. But I feel that I should cover the changes to the previous bosses that occur in Cavern of Chaos and Hole of Heroes
In the Cavern of Chaos, you must fight the Emperor Bulblax again, except this time there is water, bombrocks, and another Emperor Bulblax on the floor. With clever use of the bombrocks, it's an easy fight, but the water makes it tricky.
Hole of Heroes is one of the best boss rushes in gaming, as it has most of the bosses in the game, and changes the environment they are in. You must fight a Burrowing and Pileated Snagret at the same time, in a room that has a whirpool of sand sucking you into the center of the arena. The Empress Bulblax starts you right at the back of it, with Bulborb Larva already spewing forth. You must fight the Beady Long Legs again, but not much has changed, and it's still pretty simple. The Ranging Bloyster has a jarring change. While in the original fight you had time to observe how it switched its focus from captain to captain, you have very little time to react to the completely open space with the boss right in front of you, with other enemies that having boulders that home in on your captain, and meteors falling from the ceiling. The biggest change to any boss is the Man-At-Legs, which is surrounded by water and has significantly less cover options. Because it is surrounded by water, this makes blue Pikmin the only Pikmin able to fight this tough creature.
The three final bosses are the Segmented Crawbster, the Raging Long Legs, and the Titan Dweevil. Segmented Crawbster is nearly impossible to keep all of your Pikmin, and this is from someone who resets every time he loses a Pikmin (no joke). He rolls around a tight space, meteors fall from the sky, and he is a large boss that squishes a lot of Pikmin. The Raging Long Legs is a lot like the Beady Long Legs, except he has larger feet, and when he shakes off your Pikmin, he stomps much faster, earning the "Raging" in his name. These two challenges pale in comparison to the final boss, the Titan Dweevil.
The Segmented Crawbster and the Raging Long Legs are both hard, but the Titan Dweevil is the true test of your minion throwing skill.
The Titan Dweevil is a formidable boss because it uses all four hazards against you. It has four weapons/treasures that wields the four hazards: fire, water, electricity, and poison. Each of these weapons are deadly, but none more so than the electric weapon, the Shock Therapist. Electricity is a one-hit-KO in Pikmin, and with balls that link electricity between them thrown all across the small room, it's hard not to lose all of your fighting force. The water weapon, the Monster Pump is equally as dangerous, except for the fact that water doesn't instantly kill your Pikmin. The other two weapons the Titan Dweevil has aren't as dangerous, but are still potent to anyone who isn't careful. You get a small warning on what the next attack is by what color the Titan Dweevil turns, which is around a one second warning. This tests everything you've learned, and your Pikmin squad has everything to do with your success, because if you don't beat the boss with at least 30 Pikmin remaining, you will have to do the boss again to complete the game.
Has an awesome theme as well.
Well, that's it! My views on each boss in Pikmin 2, and how each boss builds upon your skill until you're fighting giant behemoths with electrical weapons of death. It ingeniously trains you to quickly stratigize against the strangest monsters Nintendo can come up with like the Ranging Bloyster and the Waterwraith, to killing machines like the Segmented Crawbster, Man-At-Legs, and the Emperor Bulblax, to even stranger bosses like the Giant Breadbug. Each one is a memorable experience and are made even better by their rematches in more difficult caves. The fact that none of these boss fights truly brings a tear to my eye.
The next installment of A Tear to My Eye will be about Rayman Origin's water levels. If you have anything that makes you sad because it was forgotten by the gaming masses, leave it below, and I will try to make it into a blog. Until then, have a great time, and give Pikmin 2 a go. Maybe you'll make it to the end.