I agree with most of this and have TOTK as my game of the year so far and easily over BOTW.
But since people are clearly in the honeymoon phase with this game, I'm gonna be daring and write out a bunch of criticisms, since I've actually almost completed the game.
The dungeons. They're a lot better visually than divine beasts but still not great mechanically. Find 5 levers/checkpoints then fight a boss. That's it. I'd go a step further and say they're actually notably easier than the divine beasts. With the divine beasts, there was some unique 3D spatial reasoning required to actually position the beasts with your pad. The temples on the other hand are fully stationary. The Fire Temple is the only one that I've got at A tier by classic Zelda standards, the rest are all just ok. The bosses are fantastic though, so it balances.
The champion's abilities. They're not nearly as useful as they were in BoTW. I think the logic is that a lot of the abilities you had previously can be replaced by Zonai devices. The problem is that it's significantly more annoying. Instead of just using Revali's Gale to get high in the air, I have to carry a bunch of Zonai rockets and then fuse them to shields and then be very careful when I equip them.
Arrows. Fire arrows, ice arrows, etc have been replaced by fruits. I find it highly annoying that I have to pause while drawing my bow, sort by most used, and select the fruit type for the arrow I want. This seems like a textbook example of mechanic bloat, where you arbitrarily replace something that worked fine just to adhere to a new game mechanic.
The music. The overworld music exactly the same as it was in BOTW.
The story. We all know Ganondorf is in the game, so I don't consider anything I'm about to say to be spoilers. Ganondorf has literally no motivation besides "Mwahahah, I must get powahhhhh!!" In Ocarina of Time, it's heavily implied that Ganondorf was motivated in part by the position and treatment of the Gerudo. Here he's just evil. That's it.
The Zelda timeline. Now this is a more niche criticism, but based on certain events in the game, it's literally impossible to fit TOTK in the existing Zelda timeline. Now this wouldn't be a major problem if it weren't for the fact that Fi from Skyward Sword was literally present in the story for one of the BOTW DLC, and that multiple guidebooks for BOTW reference the timeline. Sooooo........????????????????? I guess only Skyward Sword is canon?????????????????????????????
But since people are clearly in the honeymoon phase with this game, I'm gonna be daring and write out a bunch of criticisms, since I've actually almost completed the game.
The dungeons. They're a lot better visually than divine beasts but still not great mechanically. Find 5 levers/checkpoints then fight a boss. That's it. I'd go a step further and say they're actually notably easier than the divine beasts. With the divine beasts, there was some unique 3D spatial reasoning required to actually position the beasts with your pad. The temples on the other hand are fully stationary. The Fire Temple is the only one that I've got at A tier by classic Zelda standards, the rest are all just ok. The bosses are fantastic though, so it balances.
The champion's abilities. They're not nearly as useful as they were in BoTW. I think the logic is that a lot of the abilities you had previously can be replaced by Zonai devices. The problem is that it's significantly more annoying. Instead of just using Revali's Gale to get high in the air, I have to carry a bunch of Zonai rockets and then fuse them to shields and then be very careful when I equip them.
Arrows. Fire arrows, ice arrows, etc have been replaced by fruits. I find it highly annoying that I have to pause while drawing my bow, sort by most used, and select the fruit type for the arrow I want. This seems like a textbook example of mechanic bloat, where you arbitrarily replace something that worked fine just to adhere to a new game mechanic.
The music. The overworld music exactly the same as it was in BOTW.
The story. We all know Ganondorf is in the game, so I don't consider anything I'm about to say to be spoilers. Ganondorf has literally no motivation besides "Mwahahah, I must get powahhhhh!!" In Ocarina of Time, it's heavily implied that Ganondorf was motivated in part by the position and treatment of the Gerudo. Here he's just evil. That's it.
The Zelda timeline. Now this is a more niche criticism, but based on certain events in the game, it's literally impossible to fit TOTK in the existing Zelda timeline. Now this wouldn't be a major problem if it weren't for the fact that Fi from Skyward Sword was literally present in the story for one of the BOTW DLC, and that multiple guidebooks for BOTW reference the timeline. Sooooo........????????????????? I guess only Skyward Sword is canon?????????????????????????????
