I think in terms of exploration, just the pure satisfaction of losing yourself in going and doing, new thing on the horizon, piece of candy, TotK is the best open world game I've ever played. It DID NOT have the visual spectacle of Elden Ring, and even it lost my interest in say caving after a while, and toward the end the depths really started to get on my nerves, but... comparatively, TotK is better. The one thing I prefer about Elden Ring is the way it reveals its map. That was a mind boggling spectacle the whole way through. (Elden Ring, you don't know exactly how big the game is going in. Your map is tiny, and you reveal more parts of it as you FIND more parts of it. So you don't REALLY have any idea how big the game is, and that not knowing is part of what makes exploration compelling. You just get on your magical horse, and GO.)
Combat was still a button mashy numbers game. (Nintendo added more numbers, bigger numbers do little to change my opinion.) I was kind of a baby gamer back when BotW came out so for the most part I avoided hard fights, only touching the big name monsters when a quest demanded it. This time I went out of my way to try a little bit of everything. For the most part... Shrug. I don't enjoy combat that makes me grind, for materials to fight with, for materials to upgrade my weapons/armor. (Weapons/armor is far less of an issue if it's PERMANENT. Upgrading weapons that break is MISERABLE. Especially since parts used for weapons are ALL used for upgrading armor.) Poor choice there, in my opinion. Making players who need extra help choose between attack and defense is not fun. (Also, getting one shot late game is also « Cow Poopoo ». It's still « Cow Poopoo » early game, but more...expected?)
It's entirely possible the controls are a part of my complaints with combat... they're bad. Can't really say how much.
The biggest improvement (imo) was the story boss fights. Except for the Zora boss, they felt both mechanically relevant and fun. I don't care how easy the Rito boss was, it was fun to crush. I wish the end fight had mimiced that a little more (in the gliding aspect, that is).
I DO NOT LIKE how the game handled continuity. I understand now that there are SOME things that are only imported in if you have a BotW save on the Switch you are currently playing TotK on, for the game to draw from. And I'm torn on that. Because I see the logic, but what about WiiU owners, and what about people who don't own the same Switch? BotW was SIX YEARS ago, Nintendo. It is VERY simple to allow players to just input whether or not they played, and if you're feeling spicy, let them tell you the choices they made, the quests they did. Games have been doing this for...more than a decade now? Well before BotW came out, for sure. Or just pick a canon like other games do, and go with it. Playing a direct sequel has consequences, whether it's for new players or old. Nintendo just chose old.
Shrines, I think were better in BotW. Not by a huge margin, but overall...yeah. The "Test of Strength" and the motion control puzzles were way worse, but the rest...yeah. I did all shrines, and did not get stumped by any puzzle. I don't want to count, but I'm also really curious what the total "Blessing" shrines were this time. I'd guess it made up the entirety of the extras, so at LEAST the 32 sky shrines worth. Maybe Nintendo just overreached. It's a shame.
It's funny, there's this series of review/critiques of the older LoZ games (the series is older) that I've watched a number of times, and the author talks about in reference to Twilight Princess, that the game came out more polished because it was SO heavily reliant on its source material (Ocarina of Time). I felt that a lot here too. It wasn't 1:1 OoT like TP is, more a mix of OoT and BotW, with touches of other Zelda games here and there. But yeah, rather than a sequel it felt like a second pass. For better and worse.
I found erasure of Sheikah irritating (actually, the whole Yiga sub plot is probably the only instance of completely screwing over new players because they have ZERO context for the Yiga Clan), but the worst bit was again the lost potential of the story.
Ganondorf spends the WHOLE story underground, and unlike BotW, he has NO reason to. Nintendo just couldn't think up a good reason for it, so they didn't.
And again, the best parts of the story happen out of sight, out of mind. Ganondorf gets ZERO character development (zero character, really), and neither do the sages. I honestly don't have any good plot ideas for any of them other than the Gerudo one. The LEAST the devs could have done was have it mimic OoT. Honestly...thinking on it, except for Zelda everybody in the whole game is pretty static. She doesn't get a LOT, but compared to nothing it's striking.
I think I keep waiting/hoping for something more like Majora's Mask, or at least Midna, to come up in a Zelda game again. But very few devs from when either game was developed are still around, and even those who are, it's been a long time.
Overall, BotW didn't mean as much to me as it did to others. What it meant mostly was an escape. The game came out less than a week before a very very dear friend of my family died of cancer. The one time in my life I've gotten blackout drunk was surviving his wake. (I kept crying, people got uncomfortable, so I found a way to stop it.) So the game has a very unique sense of nostalgia for me, same as Trio does. I was surprised at how clear my memory of the world was, how easily I was able to find things.
There's enough good about the "new Zelda formula" that I can let go of what I want for the series, I think. There's a lot of very good, older games that I'll always be able to go back to, after all. And just like TotK, I'll just focus on what I DO enjoy, and leave the rest behind.
As someone whose life as a gamer began in 1986 (When I was 8, and we got our first home computer: a Tandy 1000.) I actually long ago knew what my gaming milleu was, but once in a while, some other game breaks through. I can't resist going back to see if a really popular/highly-praised game that I KNOW I won't like will somehow actually manage to reach me.
The models are really good, though.
They watched me play through it and were all sad when it was done. My second daughter wanted to play her own run through it, and she really didn't have any trouble. Then today when I just got sick of shiny hunting and leaving the Switch on pause I asked the kids if they wanted to watch something. My oldest daughter turned down her pick of shows and pulled up the Switch input on the TV, asking to play a game. (Though for her that usually means she wants to watch someone else play, as she likes watching better than playing games when she's in the mood. I know she's not the only one, or streamers wouldn't be a thing, lol.) I went ahead and pulled up the Switch menu and asked what game and she went straight for the Pikmin 4 demo! She loves it! So we started it yet again with her profile and let her choose what her character was like. She was pumped! I don't know if I have seen her this excited about a particular game since Animal Parade. Usually games are take it or leave it for her, as she prefers active and outdoor activities, but she enjoys puzzle and farm games when she's in the mood. (She's quite the the backseat driver for games like Tetris, I tell ya.)
Haaa...
