Full transparency, I was literally at what I understand to be the very end of this game when I noticed my Switch battery getting puffy. I already clocked in 35 hours so considering I don't have a good way to play anymore I'm just marking it done. I really liked this one though. My experience with Pikmin prior was playing 3 over a decade ago, so I can't speak to the minutiae of this as a sequel. But as a standalone thing it really blew me away. There's a ton of content here and it almost always feels fresh and unique. The gameplay isn't overly complex and never feels very challenging, but it plays into this just being a slower paced game to relax and explore in.

The biggest flaw in my eyes are that the characters and dialogue border too hard on Nick Jr Baby Cartoon vibes. That's subjective so more power to those who could look past it, but I would've loved to see more personality in the Rescue Corps. The last area also weirdly feels like nothing to me. By this point the game has shown all the tricks up its sleeve so it just feels a push to give this game it's "one final area". The caves I was able to do played like lazily reskinned jumbles of the previous ones. There's so much you can do other than that though, I'm bummed out I won't be able to cut my teeth on side quests and unlockable content that randomly pop up left and right. Amazingly good value here. I should be recommending this for how boss Oatchi is alone.