The characteristics of a wood burning appliances come from a combination of design, technology, and materials working together to produce a particular result. A material, in and of itself, doesn't make a better or worse stove. If you took a steel stove design, and replaced the steel with soapstone, the stove would almost certainly be worse for it as the rest of the stove was designed around the characteristics of the steel.
I'm not sure what the specifics are surrounding "HighBeams" experience with a soapstone stove is, but it sounds to me like he went from a manual operated non-cat burning experience to a catalytic burning experience with automatic feedback air control and is conflating the difference in experience between these stoves to be almost entirely due to the material they were made from, rather than the significant differences in burning technology employed. I would not read too much into that. The marketing wank from hearthstone can be misleading like the marketing wank from any product. Blaze King could certainly deploy their catalytic burning strategy to a soapstone stove and produce very good results as well.
Soapstone is less thermally conductive, but in many applications, the soapstone, is both the firebrick and the stove jacket at the same time, so the thermal conduction to the surface of the stove is more spread out and starts lower in the box. This has ups and downs. Lower peak surface temps combined with less radiation properties means that the heat from the soapstone stove is indeed "softer" feeling. It's not the kind of heat you feel radiating across the room or through walls, and the top of a hearthstone soapstone stove generally runs a bit too cool for cooking/simmering, but the stove is still going to put about the same thermal energy into the house but in a different way.
Many materials can be leveraged to produce a thermally efficient stove, but some materials are better suited to achieving higher peak thermal output for a given size stove. I would venture to say that in general, an "oversized" hearthstone soapstone stove, is apt to be more forgiving with regard to the "chase you out of the room" effect than a traditional steel stove. A steel stove with enough thermal mass could achieve a similar result, but in practice, most steel stoves weigh about half of what a similar size soapstone stove weighs, so they will heat up fast and hit a higher peak-thermal output, and then cool down more rapidly. With that said, a very well designed catalytic steel stove can just burn the wood slower and spread out the heat from a burn cycle in a manner that is functionally similar to the behavior of a soapstone stove but achieved through different means. These modern Hearthstone Hybrid stoves can lean into the advantages of catalytic stoves for extended burn cycles a bit, while also spreading out the thermal shock of a burn cycle over time with big thermal mass. The cat on these hybrid hearthstone stoves is less "potent" than the cats found on catalyst optimized stoves like those from Blaze King, so these stoves aren't intended to be used as wood-gasifiers the way a BK can.
There's a long list of EPA tested stoves achieving high efficiency made from all sorts of material combinations. Proving that material choice in and of itself is not a make-it-or-break-it issue. A fair number of stoves in the top 20 most efficient stoves tested are made from soapstone+cast-iron. Many are also made from steel...
Note that nearly ALL steel stoves have a fire-brick lined burning box. The firebrick is there to INSULATE the fire from the excessive thermal conductivity of bare steel. Trying to burn a fire in a bare-steel box is actually difficult because the steel will try to pull too much heat off the coals, requiring much higher burn rates to keep the fire from collapsing. If steel were the perfect stove material, we wouldn't be using in conjunction with firebrick to "fix" it. The complete working system is what matters.
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If you like the look of soapstone, and understand what behaviors to expect from a soapstone stove I see no reason it couldn't serve you well, especially a modern design with a catalyst. I'm perfectly happy with ours.
Is the basement of your home heated? Finished? Does the house have a traditional forced air HVAC unit with a central blower that can be used to help move heat around the home, and potentially, the basement as well? A warm basement has some advantages... keeps moisture levels under control, keeps pipes from freezing, and makes your floors warmer (more comfortable for feet!).
If we're talking about heating 1000sq foot, single level, with modern/new windows and 2x6 or thicker exterior walls with good sheeting/wrap/insulation in zone 6, then the Castleton or similar or smaller sized cat/hybrid stove should work very well, to the point of being a bit overkill on many days.
Alternates:
Hearthstone Green Mountain 60 / Hipster 20
Lopi Rockport Hybrid-Fyre
BK Ashford AF20.2/ Chinook CK20.2 / Sirocco SC20.2
Kuma Aspen LE / Tamarack LE/ Aberdeen LE
Vermont Castings Dauntless Flexburn Catalytic Model
If we're talking about heating 1000sq foot, + partially heating a basement, older windows, drafty doors, 2x4 construction, with mediocre insulation/wrap in zone 6, then I would go for the Mansfield or something in that 2.5-3 cubic foot range. I burn ponderosa in my Mansfield. If I put a few large diameter splits/rounds in there, let it get up to temp, then choke it way down to the lowest recommended burn rates, it will extend that burn cycle out to at least 10-12 hours or so, with a still-warm stove and coals ready to be stirred up for another fuel load.
You may be able to estimate your heating demands based on current furnace utilization. If you have or can install a logging thermostat, then you can generate some data that tells you your BTU per day utilization, then figure out a BTU/hr requirement to replicate the functionality with wood. Keep in mind that a wood burner set up to run low and slow over many hours may only put off about 10K BTU/hr on average.
For an alcove install I would skip the Heritage as it comes with a side-load-door that won't be very usable in the alcove, and more importantly, is just more moving parts and seals to fail.
Regardless of the model selected I recommend against the ash-pan option for any stove if there is an option to opt out. It's yet another source of potential air-leaks, and another point of maintenance/failures for the stove. I prefer a dedicated ash-vac for dealing with ash. It sucks it all into a metal can through a metal hose, and filters the ash through first a very fine can filter then an even finer pleated hepa filter. I wait for a warm spell in the weather and try to skip a couple nights of burning before vacuuming.
