Yup, you get better gear and some monsters are unkillable until you get better gear + life. You also become better in combat with experience, how to dodge, how to fight on a horse, how to combine many weapons and the landscape around you etc... It's definitely not your typical leveling up RPG. It's based more on your ability to solve puzzles and to play well rather than your attributes.

Yeah, I haven't played many Zelda games in the past because they seemed fairly reflex and puzzle based rather than strategy and combat tactics. "Playing well" in those games often amounts not to thinking but to just muscle memory which I don't care for much. The puzzles I can appreciate but I have a limit. I did like Twilight Princess... maybe just something about the mood if it though.

From playing it a bit, you definitely get new abilities and items: and can start to do things you couldn't earlier. You get a horse, etc..

All which was definitely progression. Just not like you'd traditionally think RPGs are: but more of a "real-life" acquisition style.

The way I've felt this effect the most is with traversal. Climbing is a problem until you get better gear, craft better food, etc. I'll see something on a mountain peak that I want and think "I'll need to increase my stamina and prepare before I attempt that!"

There are other kinds of traversal that feels this way too, but I'll leave the discovery to you.