Pikmin’s a childhood game for me, but not one I actually played: it was way too hard for me as a youngster, but I loved watching my sister play it. I was taken in by the silly plot and characters and the creative world. Today, that wonder still remains, but now I can say as well that its gameplay is incredible, and really stands out among RTS games. And, while it’s less insurmountable than it was when I was a kid, it’s actually still really hard, especially if you’re aiming for 100%. A bit of that difficulty comes from the controls, which have not aged well - actually hitting enemies with your Pikmin is unreasonably hard sometimes - but most of it is from this being a balanced game with a strict time limit that’s aiming for difficulty. Graphically, it has aged pretty poorly, looking very blurry on a modern TV, but I’m impressed that this is a 2001 Gamecube game that runs smoothly even when you have 100 separate Pikmin on screen. The enemies are creative and challenging, the music wears after a while but is generally good, and overall, I’m so glad that this franchise started to get so much more love with Pikmin 4 - it really deserves it.