They can be good if they unlock significant new game mechanics.
The most extreme example (I know of) in that regard is https://pmotschmann.github.io/Evolve/ which has, at last counting, 12 different ways to reset, many of which are not accessible until you have done dozens if not hundreds of others. Exploring the entire game takes years of play.
Obviously, there's still lots of grindey repetition, and it's only something for people who find slow progress towards optimizing grind rewarding.
Yeah I got past it pretty much as soon as I posted, which is kind of a pity. I like the idea of playing as a plant buying amino acids from the mycorhizae with hexose. The whole coal mining fungus with banking problems thing feels a bit too rooted in the human world.
Poking through the code though, I can see that that's probably not a problem that I'll have for long.
The most extreme example (I know of) in that regard is https://pmotschmann.github.io/Evolve/ which has, at last counting, 12 different ways to reset, many of which are not accessible until you have done dozens if not hundreds of others. Exploring the entire game takes years of play.
Obviously, there's still lots of grindey repetition, and it's only something for people who find slow progress towards optimizing grind rewarding.