Imo the best part of the first game is that it didn't feel like it was just wasting your time with pointless stuff. There was a relatively small collection of side quests, the optional dungeons were intricate and felt meaningful, the amount of collectibles was reasonably low, and there wasn't an overwhelming amount of skills or gear choices. Like it's just nice the gear was a clear direct upgrade path, it wasn't a full rpg and it knew that it didn't need you to spend time min-maxing.

Umm, the design choices for gear and skills differ in the second one, it's still not ridiculous. The gear for the most part is still designed around the same philosophy of each piece being a tool with a really specific purpose, but there's some added complexity with skill points and different bow types using similar arrow types.