I’ve not seen permadeath be something inherent to metroidvanias.

Also I understand that the benches are part of the difficulty but I also feel like it’s slightly inflated because of the annoyance of doing so.

When I die in such games, all I can think about is the time I just wasted or am about to waste. No matter how good a game is, my life on this earth is too short and there are other games of the same quality or higher that I can play that will respect my time much better.