>>718870818
This genre has some of the worst rose tinted glasses out there. People praise DMC1 for its "RE level design" but they completely ripped out everything that makes RE level design interesting, there's no real "exploration" it's just super fucking linear with the occasional backtracking. The only one that I would consider somewhat of an action-adventure game is NGB like you said, but its more fun as a novelty, not a blueprint for the genre as a whole.

Both DMC and NG decided that giving up connected levels for the ability for each mission to just take place anywhere and this has huge advantages. NG2 literally has you traveling to different places across the world which literally wouldn't work with NGB's level design.