Each game in the Pikmin series feels like an alternate universe take on the core premise of "use Pikmin to carry objects back to your ship." Pikmin 2 focuses on combat, Pikmin 3 is very concerned with multitasking and tight linear missions, and Pikmin 4 is a collectathon. Levels are too wide for days to be planned down to the minute as they could be in 1 or 3, and the slow progression of abilities and types make it so you can't mulitask as hard as you could either. Instead it's a slower paced game where you explore and gather as you go. When you're in that flow of clearing out a level and carrying everything back, it feels great. It's not as stressful as the other games, but it's an understandable concession to make the games more accessible to the core Nintendo fans and casual players.

While the core gameplay is very solid, the problems lie in the little things. The controls are atrocious, with a hideous lock on system that yanks control of your cursor from you and onto any corpse, pellet or treasure, no matter what, even in combat. This makes encounters with groups far more headache inducing than they need to be. I just wish I was fighting the enemies or even the Pikmin AI instead of something as basic as the cursor controls. Whoever decided this utterly horrible lock on mechanic should be mandatory instead of a menu toggle is insane and I hope they never work on a game ever again. Beyond the basic controls, the menu and overall interface is a slog to use and looks downright amateur compared to the GameCube games. I truly don't understand how the general user experience is such a tremendous downgrade. The music is also significantly worse. There's really no memorable melodies outside of the main menu theme. It's also very, very easy, with a noticeable lack of boss fights. Characters also never shut the fuck up, and even all of them combined don't have a tenth of the personality of any of the captains from the first three games.

All that being said I can't complain too much because all things considered these are minor grievances and taken hollistically this game is very good, but with some tweaking it could've been a lot better. There's a lot to love here, some of the new levels are great, Dandori challenges are uniformly fantastic, and it's the longest game in the series by far. But there's still a nagging sense of "why the hell is it like this?!" around some of the decisions.