It's really cool that despite them all being so mechanically similar, all 4 Pikmin games feel so distinct from each other.

Pikmin 1 is the atmospheric one focused primarily on time management
Pikmin 2 is the kind of bullshit hard dungeon crawler
Pikmin 3 is the one that leans most heavily into the RTS elements
and Pikmin 4, finally, is the "adventure game," for better and worse!

I can see some hardcore Pikmin fans being somewhat disappointed with the direction this took, and even I kind of had moments of concern with the overlong tutorial and the inclusion of... rpg elements (that's right, welcome to modern AAA, Pikmin) but I gotta say for that being what it is, I ended up liking it quite a lot! It helps that this is definitely the most fully featured Pikmin yet, with lots of variety in the main campaign and basically an entire game after the credits (it's quite frankly weird that they put the credits where they did here). Integrating the mission mode and multiplayer directly into the campaign was a really smart move, breaks up the pace nicely and makes it much more likely that players actually engage with these elements, which have always been the unsung heroes of prior Pikmin games.

Another quick note - the Treasure catalog and Piklopedia entries (especially when more is unlocked for each entry postgame) are some of the best Nintendo writing of the Switch era, equal parts hilarious and at times touching. Wonderful stuff.