I know many hated the WiiU but I love the thing, the VC on it was a beast.  I have hundreds of games on the console.  I was never big on the handhelds so many of those titles I never had until the WiiU.  All kinds of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Mario, Mega-man, Street Fighter, ect.  I just feel like it was so much more than just a Zelda console it was a download most of the games that formed my childhood nostalgia machine.

I had so much fun playing Minish Cap on the game pad.

Depends on what you mean by combat. 

If you mean just the basic swordplay, then I kind of think of the combat as decent but nothing special.  But then again, I don't really like the combat in most 3D games.  (I like Hyrule Warriors and the Dynasty Warriors type of games, but that is mostly it.)  BotW's basic combat is better than the God of War series basic combat, but overall it wasn't anything special.

On the other hand if you think of combat as being the physics engine and the environment plus all of the things you can do, i.e. magnetism, archery, wands, korok leaf, etc..., then yeah the combat is super fun.  I've never encountered anything like it and the possibilities seem endless.  If you think of combat as "every possible way to defeat an enemy", then it's one of the main draws of the whole game.

When one group says the combat is great and another says it's "meh", they might be talking about two different things.

Hmm, that's an interesting way of thinking about it. I guess if I had to reduce combat to the "basic combat" systems and swordplay, I actually like Twilight Princess' combat the best, but it doesn't feel right to say that because in BotW the elements of the more expanded definition feel like a natural part of it that fits in organically. It doesn't feel right to separate them. Kind of like Minecraft. If you reduce Minecraft's combat to swords and bows and arrows, it has some of the shittiest combat in 3D gaming. But combat in Minecraft is so much more than that, and everyone knows it. It's the whole experience of dealing with enemies. The combat system in games with elaborate physics and chemistry engines become more than the some of their parts because they integrate with all the other systems seamlessly.

Heh, I do, in fact, consider Minecraft to have some of the shittiest combat in all of gaming.

It might have something to do with what a person wants out of a game though.  If I want a satisfying experience of Link hitting things with a sword then I will play Smash Bros or Hyrule Warriors or one of the old NES Zeldas.  Swordplay in all of those games is satisfying.  But if I want a huge world where I can explore and overcome the challenges however I choose, then BotW is by far the best choice.

So in some other thread I might be one of those people who says the combat in BotW isn't so great, but I mean the basic swordplay.  Taken as a whole, in the context of the whole game, the combat is extremely fun.

Don't really agree tbh because this way of looking at things is not really looking at depth it's like when people play DMC and say it's a button masher because they didn't really explore the mechanics, the basic level of combat is really for those who are more casual in their approach while the depth is for more avid players because of this when a games combat system is being assessed by people you really have to look at it from the whole context. An example is Smash on the surface the basic level is just you trying to land hits to knock them into the blast zone but as you dive deeper the are loads of tech, tricks, reads, interactions etc... that open up the fighting in it.

So, did I miss the BOTW2 speculation era?
I've seen many videos on youtube from certain youtubers about the game and what "it needs" (most of them are just traditional dungeons and traditional music) but I don't agree with that.

I liked the dungeons in BOTW, especially Vah Naboris, Vah Ruta and Hyrule Castle, and expect to continue in this form for the sequel.
What I expect to differ from BOTW, is the storytelling. Everything will be during the time of the game. Nothing in the past, so no more memories, but they are still going to hide many details in the environments, diaries, npc's, etc.

I love that the dungeons in BotW feel like actual locations or things I guess since 4 of 5 are giant robots, rather than enclosed puzzle boxes. But either way they do the dungeons I want more of them. Shrines are fun, but often rather short and simple. I want a meatier dungeon experience and I want more of them.

I agre, the may not even be dungeons in some future games tbh but locations in the approach like BOTW's Hyrule Castle where you sort out what ever problem its having kind of like how in RPGs you can arrive at any kind of location and events are taking place out in the open.