I played this on my Switch 2, after having rented it from Boomerang Rentals. I love the Pikmin series. The first three I found to all be incredibly charming and relaxing. This one is exactly the same in that regard.
The first game in the series had a time limit, a fixed number of days in which you needed to use the Pikmin to recover all the parts of your damaged ship so that you could return home. The second game dropped the time limit, and added little dungeons you could enter as a challenge. When you enter the dungeon, the Pikmin you have with you become the team for the whole thing, and so you have to plan carefully. In the third game you had multiple playable characters that you could switch between to juggle the different tasks each was doing. In this game it seems like all of those gameplay mechanics return in some form. There is a mode with a day limit, there are lots of dungeons, and now you have a dog creature you can switch to. It fits together brilliantly and feels like the coming together of every idea they’ve had in the series.
There is also another large game mode in this one called night missions. In these you have new green Pikmin which instantly teleport back to you when they’re finished with their tasks. The mode is a tower-defence style game where you start by building your team as much as possible, and then defending bases from attack by creatures that wake in the night and become possessed.
The game features a lot of talk about an idea called “Dandori”, which is about the planning and efficient execution of plans. It keeps suggesting that you can use this in your day-to-day life which is very charming.
The game is really quite long, and does not feel padded at all. I think this is my favourite in the series, and I have no idea where they can take it in future sequels.