You've put your finger on it and named the vague sense of something being off I've been experiencing for years.
There's been so much shift for generations now towards procedural generation and that mindset has almost certainly leaked over into even the handcrafted level design space. Good level design is hard and with the flood of inferior game designers ballooning the industry...well I suppose it was inevitable in retrospect.
You've put your finger on it and named the vague sense of something being off I've been experiencing for years.
There's been so much shift for generations now towards procedural generation and that mindset has almost certainly leaked over into even the handcrafted level design space. Good level design is hard and with the flood of inferior game designers ballooning the industry...well I suppose it was inevitable in retrospect.