Zettelkasten was essential for this. The thing is that his original system was incredibly simple. I think that's what people are missing. Plain Org or Markdown files on a Git repository are a great way to mimic Zettelkasten. You don't need more and restrictions are actually very liberating.
blog post from my friend on this topic https://blog.montaigne.io/write-in-apple-notes
Being able to pick up any device and seamlessly continue editing the same document without messing with a third party app is pretty nice.
I also make a tool that takes one folder in my apple notes and publishes it as a site. So my site https://podviaznikov.com is basically served from the content of Apple Notes.
If you're building a complex organizational system because it absorbs your time and enables you to avoid confronting the fear of making artistic choices and putting something out into the world, it's not helping.
If you're building a complex organization system because you need it to build the thing you want to put out there, by all means go for it.
It takes a lot of introspection to be able to distinguish these two cases.