Generally yes, a curated link page needs some original value to rank, curation logic, descriptions, context, an overview, because a bare link list has no information gain over the pages it points to. Search engines reward pages that give a searcher something they cannot already get more directly elsewhere. A list of links to existing pages, with nothing added, fails that test by definition: every piece of information on it lives on a better page one click away. The original layer is what makes the page worth surfacing rather than skipping straight to its destinations.
That original value does not have to be long-form writing. It is the curation itself made visible: why these resources and not others, what each one offers and who it serves, how they relate, and what a reader should take from the set as a whole. Descriptions, framing, a clear organizing principle, and an overview that orients the reader all count as original content here. The point is information gain, the page should leave a visitor knowing something, the landscape, the best options, the reasons, that the raw links alone would not have conveyed.
There is a real exception, the genuinely useful navigational or directory page where the curation is the value. A well-built directory that gathers, categorizes, and makes findable a set of resources people actively want to navigate can rank because the act of assembling and organizing them is itself the service the page provides. Even then, the organizing work is the original value, the page earns its place by being a better map than anything else, not by simply holding links. The exception proves the rule rather than escaping it.
So when you build a curated link page, plan the curation value before the link list. Decide what selection logic, descriptions, context, and overview you will add so the page gives a reader something its destinations cannot. If you can only picture a bare list, the page is unlikely to rank, build in the original layer, or expect the destination pages to outrank it every time.