I mean there aren't zero linear 3d platformers? But by that point stuff like Crash Bandicoot had already been crowded out in favour of infinite collectathons, Spyros & Ratchet & Clanks & Sly Coopers & Sunshines & Blinx-es & Jak and Daxters & Taks & Ty the Tasmanian Tigers & Vexx-es, and shit. This was after your Rareware games and Tonic Troubles and whatever on N64, just an actual ocean of collectathon open-stage-y games, it also became the automatic blueprint for E-rated licensed games. Really it blows me away that no game has really tried following up the Prince of Persia 'thing'

See above, but SM64 presaged every one of the above games as well as almost all collectathons. The game mostly uses "hub castle with a bunch of levels you replay infinitely" for space constraint reasons, you can tell because when Ocarina of Time was Zelda 64, they were gonna do the same thing and have Link travel to dungeons via mirrors in a castle. It's a structure of repetition to make the most of a small cart.

NO IT AINT, like not objectively obviously but I actually wrote an insanity essay under a comment (scroll down) about how much Symphony of the Night sucks, and the "ooooo we gon gate off this area till u get duble jump" thing bores me. Idk why it'd be any better with a Z axis?