It's better than 2 but worse than 3, because dungeon crawling is still less fun and interesting than exploring large overworld maps. Despite the emphasis on multitasking this time I found myself multitasking a lot less than in the previous game because Oatchi, your new companion, is too valuable as a pack mule to separate from and the maps are too small to justify splitting up anyway, while in 3 the large maps and time limit encouraged you to split up the party to get more done in time. And while I know it's not important I'm angry that they retconned the first three games, I hope future Pikmin games take a broad strokes approach to the canocity of all four games.