I don't know who needs to hear this, but before you engage with my Wall of Nitpicks, I just want you to know that I had a lot of fun playing this game. It is very good. Here, I'll even give you a paragraph of the things I love about it.

This game is drop-dead gorgeous. The camera angle not being top-down anymore is a bit disorienting at first, but I do recognize that keeping it low to the ground helps emphasize just how small you are in comparison to these massive areas. You get to explore a lot of man-made structures, including a portion of a house, probably my favorite area of the game. Dandori Challenges are like the mission modes from Pikmin 2/3, but have been integrated into the main game, and they fit in very nicely. Caves are no longer randomly generated, therefore intentionally designed, and they're better off that way. The night expeditions are a fun distraction, even if they're pretty simple in execution. Pikmin tower-defense is a neat concept that I wish they did more with.

Alright, time to nitpick.

I really do not like Dandori Battle, if I'm being honest. The versus modes across the Pikmin series have always felt like afterthoughts to me. They're fun with friends, but not much else. In a 1P vs. COM setting, I just don't see the point. That, and I am absurdly bad at them. Feel free to slam me with the "dandori issue" insults, but the amount of unpredictable chaos just feels out of place to me. They also chose the worst possible style of split screen: a vertical slice. I can't see anything around me, how do you expect me to react to my opponent's actions, even though they're taking up the right half of my screen?

Why is the lock-on so bad in this game? Why can I not turn it off? Why is it exclusively automatic? Why is this such a downgrade from Pikmin 3's lock-on, which worked perfectly? Didn't this company effectively invent lock-on in Ocarina of Time, back in 1998? I feel like there's plenty that it shouldn't lock onto as well, like stray material shards. The lock-on also prevents you from throwing more Pikmin than necessary at items, which is a bit too hand-holdy for my tastes. Adding more Pikmin makes items get carried faster, but it's like the game wants you to not do that, and focus your attention elsewhere. It considers that task "done", and I'm here to say that you don't make those decisions for me, game.

Speaking as someone who finished ultra-spicy difficulty in Pikmin 3 Deluxe, I'm not sure how this game benefits from limiting the amount of Pikmin you can have in the field, and restricting you to using three Pikmin types. I know there's an overwhelming amount of choice when you have eight Pikmin types in a single game, but that's completely undermined by the game letting you push a single button to give you the exact types of Pikmin you'll probably need. Why would I ever use tools like the Survey Drone when the auto-select gives me an idea of what to expect anyways?

Oatchi is a very good boy. Too good for his own good, in many cases. It's not particularly hard to take down most enemies by gathering your team on Oatchi, charging a rush, and slamming your face into your foe. New additions like Ice Pikmin only amplify this kind of power imbalance as well. Spray 'em, Rush 'em, freeze 'em, shatter 'em, and turn them into more spicy spray droplets than I know what to do with, Oatchi alone is just that useful. On the other hand, I feel like the Pikmin AI has regressed a tiny bit. Pikmin seem to do whatever they damn well please once they've finished a task and should go idle. Instead, they gravitate towards anything they possibly can, whether it be something to carry, or something to attack. Listen, I love these little guys. I do my best to protect them, and feel remorse when I fail to do so. HOWEVER, when Steve casually decides to 1v1 a sleeping Bulborb of his own volition? That's his own damn fault, he was asking for it.

The pacing can be a real drag at times. I'm not talking about the moment-to-moment gameplay, I'm talking about the dialogue and cutscenes. Lots of repeat dialogue to sit through, and repeat cutscenes that you'll find yourself (graciously) skipping. The characters didn't really charm me as much as I think Nintendo hoped they would. They sure talk a lot for crew members that are sitting back and watching the Oatchi Rush Livestream all day, every day. Collin told me to rewind time because I lost a bunch of Pikmin during the final boss fight. Not cool, Collin. Not to mention there's like, a 30-second load time between the end of day animation and actually seeing your results. Many of the castaways you save have side missions for you to do, but they're all just busywork and things you'll already be doing anyways. Everyone begging Nintendo to add achievements to their games needs to realize that Nintendo can't make an interesting set of side objectives to save their life. The best rewards are saved for the absolute end of the game, when you won't have a damn reason to use them at all, because everything you can do has been done.

Listen, I'm sorry to those who think this game is a masterpiece. I'll reiterate, I still had a ton of fun with this game, my rating is just a stupid number! All the Pikmin games are good (except maybe the 3DS one) and you should play them! Miyamoto and his team cooked this one for a full decade, and you can feel that with how much content is condensed into this game. It may have ended up being too much for me though.

It's fine. The more I think about it, the more issues I have with it, mainly pertaining to Oatchi and his ridiculous arsenal of abilities that make him into a bonafide powerhouse by mid to late game. Combat is more mindless than ever since you can just use Oatchi's Rush attack to instantly latch your squad of Pikmin onto an enemy. I hardly ever felt the same kind of satisfaction I'd get from besting a Wollyhop in the first two games, hell any enemy for that matter. It was all about the timing, knowing when to bait for an attack and then when to back off, how many Pikmin to throw before you gotta whistle them back. That's largely gone in 4, replaced with an utterly dull system with little to no strategy required. There's no real weight to losing Pikmin anymore either. It always hurt to lose Pikmin in 1&2 since every one of them counts, meanwhile in 4 I felt nothing when losing any of my little guys since I have a tank in the form of a dog.

Even the bosses left me feeling underwhelmed (especially considering a good chunk of them are recycled from 1&2). The Water Wraith was neat to see again, although not even half as threatening as it could be in 2. Would've been better if it was a different kind of "wraith" akin to the Plasm Wraith.

I also really hate how you can only have 3 types of Pikmin out on the surface, worse yet it TELLS you which Pikmin you'll need for the area. In prior games, I was always carefully considering which Pikmin types I'd need and how many of each, but in 4 you just have to push X. Would've made for an interesting challenge paired with the new Survey Drone, but oh well. So much for asking the player to think for themself.

I think the areas are okay, but they hardly hold a candle to anything in 1 or 3. It really does feel like a sequel to 2 in that way. The areas in both games largely serve as sandboxes. I honestly preferred the linear area design of 3, because what you got were carefully designed challenges that I felt took advantage of the abilities of the Pikmin in far more interesting ways than what 4 tries to do. By that I mean the areas look nice at first glance but they feel very... empty? It's partially an issue with the fact that there's no day limit, so you're under no stress to explore any faster. That's always been one of my favorite things about Pikmin, working to beat the clock by figuring out which challenges to tackle first. Micromanagement played a key role in 1&3. Yes, you can easily beat them with plenty of time to spare, but it's the fact that the game pushes you to do better with little things like the more triumphant music that plays at the day end cutscene if you've collected a large number of fruit. Stuff like this makes it immensely more satisfying to play my best, learning and adapting my strategies when necessary. It's a core value of 1 that is lost in 2 and lost again in 4. I had some fun exploring the areas in 4 but they're really nothing special.

At the very least the caves are a step in the right direction, they have some neat new gimmicks that make for some fun little puzzles to solve. Miles better than what 2 attempted with its randomly generated cave layouts. The caves in 4 are a bit too short though, most of them don't get enough floors for their gimmicks to be fully fleshed out.

Oh yeah there's also the night expeditions which were rather dull. They're far too easy, even the later ones end just as the difficulty starts ramping up. I've got nothing else to say about these, they're very unimaginative.

Pikmin 4 plays it way too safe for the sake of appealing to new players, to a point where it loses some of that edge the prior games had. Not to say the rest of the series is perfect, I have my issues with each of them. It just happens that 2 is my least favorite, and 4 takes after it in more ways than one.

If you've never played a Pikmin game before, I'm sure you'll love 4. I can't say I did, unfortunately.