Pikmin 4 is my first foray into this long-beloved series, and what a great entry point! One of the coolest, coziest games I've played this year.

When you haven't played a Pikmin game before, it's extremely simple to pick up and learn, and then the difficulty curve is steady enough that you have plenty of chances to get your hands dirty with the mechanics to figure out cool strategies and tricks when the game tosses puzzles and hard-to-get treasures your way.

The controls seemed complicated at first, but you adjust quickly and gradually become a supreme Dandori master by the end of your run!

The atmosphere is beautiful, trying to gather Pikmin and collect treasures is such a fun experience, and and I LOOOOVED exploring all the caves. This was the stuff that made me sort of interested in Pikmin 2 back in the day, so I'm glad they eventually released a successor to it with all the QoL features to make it a near-perfect experience in playing.

Absolutely one of my favorite games of 2023 so far! I hope it gets a DLC expansion or something, because I want more, more, MORE!

Purple Pikmin are the best, I love them. Louie's the worst. I hate him. But Oatchi's such a good boy.