So breath of the wild or any post apocalyptic world without a strong narrative doesn’t have good exploration? Strange take.
Exploration has nothing to do with NPCs. Finding an NPC can be an exploration reward but there’s 0 intrinsic link there.
Souls games have weapons, armors, spells, bosses, and entire play styles to reward the player all of which are more intrinsically motivating than an occasional NPCs to play pretend with.
Good because the combat is a crazy downgrade from Nioh 2’s and the enemies, bosses, level design, traversal, and itemization are shoddy by soulslikes standards.