While it definitely has the personality and charm of Pikmin, the moment to moment is still fun, there’s just so many choices in this one that annoyed the hell out of me and drag my opinion of this game down. Tutorial texts are frequent and intrusive, most of the maps are just recycled from the first game, I don’t like how much time is spent in the caves, I find them really bland and unmemorable in terms of art and layout and they deal in a lot of cheap bullshit, things like bomb rocks randomly falling out of the sky and nuking half your pikmin (if any purples or whites were among the casualties, I would just reset), not to mention the exploration is downplayed in favour of a more guided lock and key kind of progression which I don’t think really fits Pikmin. It’s fine, hence the score, but I really didn’t have the motivation to beat it before the release of Pikmin 4. Maybe I’ll come back to it at a later date.