Does Pikmin 2, 3, and 4 only challenge come from puzzle solving?

So I recently beat Pikmin 1 and I’m just now starting 2 and intend to play the others as well but I just now found out that the other games don’t actually have a time limit like u can just take however many days long u need to and this is kinda disappointing tbh

cus I feel like that’s what actually gave pikmin 1 challenge mainly was that you couldn’t just take ur sweet ass time and u couldn’t just easily grow ur pikmin army to a massive number to easily cus u actually had to effectively use time management skills in order to realistically beat each level

Like I feel like with no time limit you pretty much can take ur time to massively expand ur pikmin army at least assuming that there’s enough buds and other wildlife around and with a massive army u can also take down most enemies pretty quickly and easily

And not to mention if u don’t return an artifact to the ship fast enough that’s also fine cus ur in no rush so u can just continue right where u left off tomorrow

Like it seems like they removed the actual key gameplay element from the rest of the games so that’s why I’m curious if there’s still other elements that keep the rest of the series interesting and challenging