Your dripping disdain for Bedrock seems pretty biased, and it seems like you have spent very little time with it. I’ve been playing it for a solid year because it’s what my kid can play (prefers touch controls) and the bedrock experience is light years away from a modern pay to win/in-game-currency focused game such as you’d find on a tablet.
(To any reader: Skip the rest of this comment unless you are curious to hear the answer to “Isn’t Minecraft Bedrock a crappy in-game-purchase machine pretending to be a game like the crap on mobile app stores? Why would anybody ever choose it over Java?”)
I know you said you only like the “old indie” version, but all my following comments apply to it as well since they’re about its huge omissions.
Going back to Java with its archaic menu system and weird, drifty controls was jarring. (I played back in Alpha and for a couple years after, then stopped until using Bedrock last year).
Bedrock supports simple LAN multiplayer! Java makes this possible only if you have a real computer (server) and know how. Any people playing Bedrock can play a LAN game with zero preparation, even 3 consoles, a PC, and an iPad.
It contains a listing of 5 or 6 servers, yes, which is 5-6 more than Java includes helpful links to. You can also click below that and type in an IP.
Yes, avatar costume items cost money. It’s because yes, 5-year-olds cannot use the Java skin editing mechanism of “just make a PNG file.” Of course, that’s all Java even has or had. And Bedrock has that as a free option too.
Overall the marketplace is something trivially easy to ignore (btw the actual game costs $20 so it’s not “freemium”.) It’s just another option on the main menu. But my kid has “bought” all manner of both fun and educational stuff on that marketplace for completely free so I’m glad it’s there. There’s a bunch of free stuff on there. One really cool thing I liked was the special “15 year journey” map and modpacks they put up for the occasion of the game’s 15th anniversary.
Again I know there are a ton of free mods for Java but that whole scene has become a nightmare for me with all these various weird third party programs I have to use to “apply” the mods. Again, not really a safe situation either to just have even a young teen on Google looking for downloads which may or may not be Minecraft mods. Or even non-tech-savvy adults, tbh.