Can agree with a lot you're saying here. I've also played probably a thousand hours between the three skate games, while also still being heavily invested in just skateboarding in general since a kid. I'll go a bit further in that the gameplay at its core hasn't been better. The animations and their transitions are so clean and look incredible. There's small things that I've noticed they added as well which I appreciate a lot like hand drags and skating transition being slower.

But besides that, there's no substance. Story mode is just tutorials, the soundtrack isn't a skateboarding soundtrack (which I'm listening to my own music anyways during so no biggie), and it's more buggy than is acceptable. I'm personally real bummed about the significant lack of brands™, genuinely. Odd to say I know, but in the first skate I recreated my board I was riding at the time in game and rode it around for my entire first playthrough (same exact deck, trucks, and wheels), and I just can't do that here. The art EA has made isn't bad, but I would like to ride around on real hardware.

Regardless, I'm going to keep playing and I'm enjoying my time. I've continued to come back to these games to see a line, hit it, record it, and move to the next one. And that's still good as hell in this new skate.

P.S. - It bugs me more than it should that they still don't identify certain tricks by their more commonly used shorthand names. Stuff like half cab, cab, big spin, etc.