I recall having an absoulute utter and fucking blast with this fanhack. It was also incredibly revolutionary within the Pikmin modding scene at the time, with its complete reshaping of Pikmin 2, creating a brand new game using the original game as a foundation, being genuinely incredible at the time. It helps that the game as a whole is also just fun. It's challenging, and clearly designed in mind for those who have mastered the original Pikmin 2. Luckily, I'm one of those people, and I'm overjoyed with what this hack delivered.

Also holy shit, using the Mystic March soundfont with Aquatic Ambiance was an all-time genius move, that fucking remix is so goddamn good.

I'm not quite sure how to describe my thoughts on this game overall. I had a pretty good enjoyable time overall, but ultimately don't have a lot to say about it, I'll try and say what I can though.

The game-feel and level design definitely feels like a notable upgrade from 2, just feeling much more substantial overall. A lot of 2's level could feel incredibly short or almost mindless at points, and I think this game generally is a massive improvement over that, with only a few of the side objective levels being somewhat mindless, I think overall most levels are fun and engaging.

I want to give a special shoutout to the final level of this game, which despite somehow being almost over 20 fucking minutes, never genuinely felt obnoxious or boring to traverse. It's one of the best examples I've ever seen of feeling genuine progression in a level in a platformer, and has an absolutely incredible atmosphere to it as well. I was genuinely pretty caught up in the experience.

The finale also goes completely off the rails like the previous 2 games did, the story revelations were frankly batshit insane and I'm not sure how I feel about it all. The final boss felt a little underwhelming compared to the last two entries.

The absolute best thing about this game without a second thought however, is the soundtrack. A beautiful, largely big-beat score is something I've wanted games to return to desperately. Every single track on this OST slams hard as fuck and is something I'll gladly listen to outside of the game itself.

Overall, a pretty enjoyable high-speed platformer, and if you're an Adventure era Sonic fan, this might be the exact game you've been looking for.