all true, but the downside of it - and that's why i absolutely don't like this progression system - is that everything has become very linear and repetitive.
It is as if you would find an encyclopedia, always starting with letter A, then you'll find B, and so on...oh you want to know something starting with letter T...well what a shame you're only at letter F, but at least you know exactly how many letters you will - and have to - find.
Well it's a fair and equal to all system, that I admit, but on the other hand, as I said, I find it too repetitive and so somewhat...well not to say boring, but lacks a bit of excitement and diversity
Especially the food progression also doesn't make much sense in that "lil pieces of knowledge" way of thinking.
Food recipes should be completely independent from each other, you don't need to know how to make a soup to be able to make a steak or a cheesecake.
And also I liked it very much in former playthroughs, when you sometimes got lucky and found e.g. the bacon and eggs recipe very early on. These were good moments, food could be checked off the list and one could happily focus on other stuff.
But also when you couldn't find it, it still worked fine, it didn't block your progress, just made it a different challenge/experience because you had to rely and focus on other things to keep you fed, but maybe you got lucky in another context.
Things like these lucky moments made it a little different every time, and I miss that a lot now that you know exactly what you get next every single time.
At first I liked it, because there was always this "just one more magazine of..." motivation, but that has deflated fast after a few new starts.