With this game, I have finally finished my trek through all the Pikmin games. Yeah, I went in backwards order. Honestly, I wish I hadn't as that made this game somewhat worse. At least, worse than 3, because nothing is beating 2. Still, The Pikmin AI in this game is BRAINDEAD and the environments don't feel all too special or memorable. However, I loved the time limit and stress of having to get at least 25 (but really 30, if you don't go for 30 what's wrong with you) ship parts. It's better than the treasures in 2, and fruit in 3 even if I enjoy this a tad less than 3. Banger game.

Positive note - the little cutscenes you get of Pikmin doing Pikmin things are cute and give those little flower creatures a lot of character that you don't see as much in the mainline games, and that charm did a lot of heavy lifting here.

It's a shame then those same cutscenes kill all momentum you might have in every level in an already glacial-speed platformer. I feel like there are nuggets of good ideas here which I think could have been turned into a decent puzzle platformer-squad management combination but it's something that's barely explored and most of your time devolves into slowly wading through a level and bashing the screen throwing your Pikmin from that stage (usually of just a single type) at any enemy that appears with no thought whatsoever. Some levels have two types of Pikmin (and maybe one has three!) but I only counted a single occasion where this change required any additional thought.

It takes 8 worlds (per world that's 5 stages, one boss encounter, one bonus level and four puzzle levels) for any semblance of challenge to appear and only then because of the risk of falling off a stage and being sent back to the very beginning.

At least it's better than Chibi-Robo Zip Lash.