If you actually did shit in BotW's towns then we just had very different experiences. Putting some fetch quests with zero weight/reward and being able to go into the building to find nothing didn't stop me from flying over them, and only using them as areas to buy arrows or to do necessary quests like at Gerudo Town.
To me, towns aren't necessarily about any mechanical need. It's just nice to be able to see shit in the world. BotW obviously has other stuff but it's also basically a 100hr+ experience while SV is a 20hr campaign in expected length, and for me BotW kinda really doesn't have enough shit to fill in that space in actual settlements. I have replayed BotW 4 times, I know and love it, and I also know that 90% of the world is basically (the breath of the) Wild with shrines sprinkled around.
On top of this I think that the "interactable" comment has to be deliberate, because it discounts the fact that while not every SV NPC has interactable dialogue, most of them that don't have that have text that appears without a textbox. Like, is that really a bad thing? I actually decided to do some shiny hunting so for convenience, I checked Cortondo and here is the data:
This is not going to be 100% exact because I'm not spending more than like 15 minutes on this. I counted around 30 non Pokemon Center NPCs. This
10 Regular Interactable
2 Shop
14 Non-Interactable Text
5 Does Nothing
I think this is entirely acceptable. 10 interactable NPCs not counting shops is basically like other Pokemon games. 14 give text but you don't get to interact with them; this is also fine and even common/normal in modern RPGs. 5 that I counted are basically just decorative people. These towns have interactable NPCs.
Now, maybe you are trying to compare this with BotW, but I am comparing this to: Pokemon. See, here is something that is actually the opposite case between the games. BotW comes from a series of 3D Zelda games that often have very interesting NPCs, one of the games being basically about your interactions with NPCs. From that perspective, BotW is frankly a failure within its franchise with NPCs.
Pokemon NPCs are basically entirely transferred into SV with them using other forms of NPCs to keep the 3D environments feeling more populated. This basically persists the status quo, and I find that acceptable.
That's a fair point that the number of interactable trainers in SV's towns is pretty equivalent with past games in the series, and I don't necessarily hate that those that aren't have little automatic dialogue quips (I can agree that this is a good way to add more people to a location in a simpler way). What gets my goat is how those that do require interacting with have nothing of note 99%' of the time.
Just my personal opinion, but I think BotW's lack of interesting NPCs is a direct result of its story being de-linearized. All of the "interesting" NPCs are interacted with just by completing all main quests. I guess a lot of the randos aren't as distinct as they were in previous iterations of the franchise, but that's probably because they're generated using the Mii Maker and have their features tweaked to fit BotW's art style.
BotW's NPCs have side quests but I actually don't like this. I am a side quest hater. My least favorite part of Legends Arceus is the side quests. For me to enjoy side quests, they need to be well-written and be well, good. Xenoblade 3 is a good example of this. BotW and every form of sidequest we've seen in the Pokemon franchise is really boring IMO and I don't think the world would feel more full if side quests were made a bigger part of SV.
To me, stables in BotW feel far more like the random Pokemon Centers around Paldea rather than actual towns. They're practically copy pasted. I could not tell you one from another. I don't mind the mechanical disposability of Paldea's towns because I just don't care. I don't care about towns in the 2D Pokemon games, either. When I am casually playing any Pokemon game, a town without a gym is a Pokemon Center glorified; I am going to heal my Pokemon and walk forwards.
I just think it's weird that people criticize SV's RPG towns in particular because so many of its flaws are basically just, things that most games with several towns have, but they decided to just cut out the middleman of forcing themselves to put in interiors when having the interactables out in the open just saves time. This is a game that already is literally unfinished, this is one of the most unnecessary things they could have added.
There's definitely a difference in opinion in why we go to towns in Pokémon games, I can tell that much. I have historically liked exploring towns to see what items and I can find (both in the overworld and from NPCs). Oftentimes NPCs also exist to give you hints about rare Pokémon or unusual locations, too. And, what probably causes SV to fail the most in my eyes, they have also existed to offer special features. I think consolidating features like the Name Rater and Move Reminder into the player's Pokémon menu is a good thing from a gameplay perspective, but it also removes aspects of towns that gave you a reason to remember them. I'm not sure if any NPC just directly gives you an item you can't get elsewhere in its locales. There are a handful of trades, I guess (or at least one, the only one I can remember, in Levincia). Even scouring their topography to find items probably isn't necessary because of how much stuff you find in the overworld (or how many TMs you're given access to through Starfall Street).
I guess if you basically see Pokémon's towns and cities as gussied-up stages for Gyms and Centers, you wouldn't really mind the way SV handles them, but the removal of basically all interiors takes away a lot of what I liked about them: personality that existed independent of the Gym Leaders. Looking back at Gen 1, the games that probably had the closest presentation to an open-world Pokémon game before modern times, almost all of Kanto's towns had something to set each of them apart:
Petwer: Museum
Cerulean: Bike Shop (kinda weak, I admit)
Vermilion: S.S. Anne (/S.S. Aqua in the Johto games)
Lavender: Pokémon Tower (though it lacks a gym), Name Rater (IIRC???)
Celadon: Game Corner, Rocket Hideout, Celadon Mansion, Department Store
Saffron: Fighting Dojo, Silph Co., the Copycat Girl (and the Magnet Train)
Fuchsia: Safari Zone
Cinnabar: Pokémon Lab, Pokémon Mansion
Pallet and Viridian are a little lacking, but Pallet is where you start (and is closest to Cinnabar), and Viridian has the fun little backtrack to get to the final Gym right before you head west from there to go to the league. All together, these locations have multiple dungeons and sidequests to find items/Pokémon you can't get other places. Meanwhile, SV's towns exist to show off the Gym Leader (if they even have one). They do all have some sort of theming that isn't always tied to the Gym Leader, but most of the NPCs you can talk to really only talk about the Gym Leader if they talk about any specific other characters at all. Gen 1 didn't give the Gym Leaders as much of a presence as Game Freak does now, so they kind of had to give their towns life in other ways, but it would be nice if there were more than just that one important NPC per town. Why should I even consider returning to SV's towns if they don't have anything unique to offer? I haven't revisited the games since I beat it once so I forget some of the town names, but aside from the auction, the bottle cap guy, and the Tera Type eatery, I don't think there's any compelling reason to revisit the other towns.
Regarding sidequests: yeah, a lot of the time they suck. I think that's true for both Pokémon and Zelda. There's always going to be a variety of how engaging sidequests are. I like doing them because they make the world feel more inhabited, like the little bits of data disguised as characters actually care about where they live. BotW's sidequests encourage you to explore and interact with parts of the world that aren't necessarily connected to the main quest. They give you a
reason to explore the world. I guess Pokémon kind of has that inherently with, you know, Pokémon collecting, but while I enjoy the way the overworld is structured generally (really easy access to go around collecting Pokémon and items), I think it would be nice to have other places to visit that had more to them. I also think the way BotW's NPCs change depending on time of day (and, occasionally, location) is a nice touch for the same reasons. Pokémon doesn't really have that.