It’s been a while but my sister went to CS Chico and I went to Cal Poly SLO and we both had a great traditional college experiences. They are both beautiful locations (although quite different) with a college-town feel. Chico, in particular, appealed to my sister because it had an old, ivy-covered buildings feel that looked like her idea of college. She’d had to turn down U of Penn due to cost and Chico turned out to be great for her.
Also, take guidebook descriptions of a school as “commuter” with a grain of salt. My dad had been encouraging me to look at SLO because it was his favorite recruiting school and I’d been turned off by it being described as primarily a commuter school so I thought it would be like CSU Northridge. Could not be more different! Commuter in a small college town is just that the kids tend to move off campus to nearby apartments after freshman or sophomore year but you still have that college town community experience in a way that a CSU in a big city is less likely to provide.