I think a lot of why I prefer pathfinder 1e/D&D 3.5e over 4e/5e is that basically all of a character's power in the later is just from leveling up which kinda just happens as you go or is tied to the plot, and the plot is generally about doing heroic things or adventuring for the sake of adventuring.
But the former has a lot of gear based progression, which does have a lot of balance issues, but allows for more pulp fantasy type stuff since you can be motivated by that previous stuff, or by loot either from greed, need, or curiosity. And that means the GM can give you weird magic items and abilities you didn't expect to have, and the players are more incentivised to poke around at things and explore. Just never let your players craft
Like you've gotta slap some of the power gaming out of some players if they have 10 levels of feats and gear planned out before the game starts and tell them you're not going to give them exactly what they want and not going to let them just create it, and trying to get their hands on a specific magic item is a good adventure hook anyway.
For PF1e in particular I like the automatic bonus progression rules because it means you don't need any of the boring +1 to not dying items the encounter design assumes you have, so any magic items that show up have more room to be weird https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression
oh god ABP saved my interest so hard
it is exhausting when the entire party is like "well obviously i need a +1 cloak and a +1 sword so those are my first goals" rather than letting people focus on that one cool cloak that makes you summon bees whenever people do piercing damage to you or whatever
(my old group is finally dissolving to "Real Life Too Busy" and i need to find a new group one of these days aaaaa i miss it)
better in the sense that there's way more choice and more weird options for "properties*, worse in the sense that you need to forgo those properties and take the bonuses to attack and damage instead or you're going to fall behind the intended power curve. ABP is nice since it makes it so magic items aren't useful for those bonuses, just for the weird properties