I liked the direction the series was going here; collecting made rewarding via detour challenges, decent sequence breaking opportunities, travel made easy by running and jumping over regular enemies, a changing world with new enemies appearing when revisiting previous areas, fewer near useless skills and items, and an interesting if flawed card system were all good additions to the SOTN formula. This game also has some of the better platforming challenges in the MV-style CVs. And while there are certainly some issues with the drop rate and controls they can be fixed with hacks.
Alas, considering the nature of the criticism towards it and the popularity of the sequels, I guess the metroidvania fans had other priorities.