I was watching "...why Skyrim?" by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it's so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn't enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It's so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!
Bethesda hasn't made a really good game since 2002, but it'll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.
I just can't jive with the rpg elements in sotn and it similarly ruined my experience with axiom verge 2
Sotn has very clumsy and super maximalist rpg elements and doesn't incorporate them into gameplay in useful ways.
Going off of memory since it's been a long time since I've played sotn but I think it doesn't make for meaningful progression in the same way power ups in metroid do. Like with metroid power ups it substantially impacts how one interacts with and traverses with the map in a way that picking up an item with higher stats doesn't. Same problem with something like borderlands or diablo.
Certain things in sotn do like double jump, turning into a bat and turning into fog and stuff, but the vast majority of pickups are number go up at best and inventory clog most often
Maybe my brain is broken, but at least in AoS I never really interpreted most of the pickups as things that were supposed to be useful, but rather as markers of exploration since the map had exactly one of each item.
AoS had a smaller map and better level design. Harmony of Dissonance is closer to sotn map wise