For me it is part of the experience and is very pleasant as you are shaving. In general though most scents are nice even the bog standard ones.
Except for that Macca Root , that stuff stinks
especially the purported post shave face "feel"
This is not a myth, some soaps really dry my skin, others don't leading to a much more comfortable feeling post-shave. Proraso for one I find very drying so it makes my skin feel itchy after I've used it...
Yes, I agree, However, I find it hard to believe that a soap made by an artisan is somehow better at that than a brand name moisturizer manufactured by trained/degreed chemists who do this for a living in a market millions of times more competitive than that of shaving soap.
You're right however I don't want to have to faff about with moisturiser, I'd rather have non-drying soap.
I don't use any kind of AS, so the scent of the soap is the whole experience for me. I buy and use soaps entirely on the quality of the scent, so not surprisingly I have a lot of artisan soaps.
Tabac and Cella lasted one shave before being given away. Proraso and Arko lasted a week. I could marginally just about shave with Arko once in a while but the others - forget it. I read endless threads recommending these mass-market soaps, and I'd probably rather have a skunk as a pet.
The only thing I would say is you are right the formulations used by the big companies are put together by Chemists etc., but they do have a lot of conflicting parameters they have to balance that the Artisan does not, The key ones often being Cost , Easy of Manufacture, and Adaption to very large batch sizes.
Also where an artisan will push the boundries the larger makers are looking for a constant result.
But the money you save on non-artisan soap and a bottle of moisturizer that will last a year or so more than offsets the cost and you'll have more money for other items.