[djur]

I'm surprised to see "Metroidvania" described as a genre where you can rush the boss quickly. Neither of the two defining games that name the genre, (Super) Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, allow you to reach the final boss without having explored a substantial amount of the world map and collected the majority of available upgrades. Both games do have low% and any% speedruns that skip a lot of stuff, but those require the use of glitches. Do you have an example of a game you're thinking of?

[filleduchaos]

Neither low% nor any% speedruns of Super Metroid or Castlevania: SotN require the use of glitches. From personal experience, Super Metroid is beatable with less than 20% completion without using any glitches at all. Sequence breaking is not a glitch (which is an actual bug).

But also Hollow Knight, Salt and Sanctuary and Axiom Verge are some pre-BotW games that I've personally played where you can rush the credits without experiencing a significant portion of the game once you've gotten out of the early game.

shout out to Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World which, while not metroidvanias, have the same "rush the final objective once you can with minimum exploration" vibe that many of them have.

[djur]

I see what you mean, but in order to win Super Metroid you still have to beat all the bosses to open Tourian, and the same with the five bosses you need to beat to get to Dracula in SOTN. In BOTW, once you're off the Plateau, you can literally walk directly to Ganon. And, like you mention, being able to skip a substantial chunk of the game to get to the final boss is as present (if not more so) in other genres; it's been in Mario since the NES!