PIKMIN

Beat Pikmin 1 but only briefly played the other 2. In my opinion 1 has the best premise/overlying system with the ship parts in day limit thing. You can be pretty slow and probably get the good ending easily, but what I like about how it works that isn't necessarily about beating the clock but rather the order in which you do them in.

How fast you do the tasks is speed based but the actual task planning is the fun part. Sorta like figuring out how to complete Resident Evil with the least amount of trips/backtracking rather than the raw timing. I had the most fun just beating my own personal record bring the days a little bit more down even though it's not needed. Pikmin 2 does away with that and just replaces it with a currency kinda gimmick and that was a shame, though I understand the day system can be quite limiting with what you can do with the whole RTS-lite genre I didn't even bother to mention.

Pikmin 3 returned to this along with the multiple characters and the hunger stuff but I haven't really actually sat down to play it in order to compare it to the original. Though I think I enjoy just how restrained and simple the original is, the captains log parts are a very nice break from the day to day and idk there's something very comfy about the premise of being alone on a planet discovering these new alien creatures that you're forced to work with. The sequels kind of just add more characters and we already know about the Pikmin planet by now that it's not as mysterious the more we return to the concept. I think it also helps that it was an early gamecube title, so there's kind of this rawness to how the game is made that it doesn't feel too overdesigned or overthought.