Game Development

I did call Godot lighter than Unity or Unreal, which I believe to be factually accurate. I have run Godot on a 2014 era laptop, it runs well on a system of that vintage.

None of that is relevant. By that metric, Pygame/Love2D are objectively the better choice over Godot, as they're smaller and lighter.

I have been working on games (and many engines) for over 15 years. I know what Godot is, and what it isn't. It's the best choice for certain team compositions and certain game types, but it isn't good at everything. In fact, it's quite bad for very large and complex productions because of architectural issues (but that's irrelevant for 99% of its users)

It's also not good for beginners for many reasons. The first is that it's complex, as it aims to be a full featured professional tool. The second is that it's weird, and does things differently from the rest of the industry. Its inheritance-based node structure was considered obsolete in the 2000s by the rest of the industry, yet Godot still uses it. They've hybridized it to introduce composition, which salvages it somewhat, but it still is a bad design with well-known pitfalls.

GDScript is a shitty attempt to copy Python, and it lacks a lot of what a modern programming language has. It also is integrated into the editor in odd ways, like the Qt-esque "signals and slots" system (which is controversial even in Qt). It's designed around OOP, yet it blurs the lines between whar an object is and what a module is, which is extremely odd.

I'm not trying to shit on Godot. Like I said, it has its strengths, and for certain types of games and team compositions it is the perfect choice. But it should NOT be recommended to beginners.

...IMO

I'd hate to try making a Zelda-like game in something like Pygame.

I gather that you're struggling to understand how Python modules work, based on how you explained Pygame. You are not supposed to write your whole game in a single python file.

Also, you can make use of tools like Tiled, Ogmo, etc to create levels and load them in Pygame or Love2D. You can even embed scripts or data onto entities within those level editors. You could even use Blender if you wanted to, either by writing a custom exporter (in Python), or hijacking one of the existing ones.

You can go very far without a full IDE like Godot has, especially if you're creative.