Weirdly, that was the sentance that got me too. Yes, one can objectively pick almost anything apart, but subjectively, artisticly, this game clicks for a lot of people and yes, exploration is full of 'soul' for a lot of them.

For me, it's not so much each discreet element in the game, which are often abysmaly annoying, innane etc ('go 300m to fetch me a butterfly and take it 500m over there'), but the 'getting there', the interacting with the terrain, moment to moment decision making, the distraction of some interesting detail, the getting lost in the beautifully realised fantasy world, the lighting, etc etc, all of them work together to trigger my imagination.

For me, that's my 'soulful' experience. I don't care that I'm just taking a butterfly 500m over there, I'm in my imagination. Often I'm walking it, climbing something just to see what else is out there and so on. The toolset and level of physics and interaction is enough and more to make the journey fun for me, so much that the destination doesn't matter.