Maybe I shouldn't have jumped from Pikmin 4 back to Pikmin 2. Sure, 2 is the only game in the series that I haven't played -- AND the updated switch version looked shiny. But as soon as you remove those QOL and AI upgrades present in later games, 2 feels rough around the edges.

By nature, 2 is more of a dungeon crawler where smart pikmin play and attrition prevail. You can finish the game rather quickly if you optimizer the dungeon. But the overworld magic is what I really like in both 1 and 4.