Yes. Just because a game is open world, doesn't mean you gotta explore for 400 hours. Whocares. Do the main quests, and finish it. I didn't care about the memories. I didn't care about upgrading. Did not care about learning all the ways to cook, or make exlixers. Or cared to beat every shrine. I got what I needed to advance the game. Got armor for one boss fight. Killed tons of animals, for heart healing. Went to shrines to get two stamina bars. Cleared all divine beats. just had 10 hearts. Beat the game.

I've put in over 45 hours in BOTW just exploring and getting better weapons. Once I discover all of Hyrule I'll get to the story.

I was happy with the ending I got. Hyrule Castle doesn't get restored, post game. So I didn't care. I'll get the memories, if the DLC allows the land to be fully restored. I had no incentive, to bother with those memories. I only bothered to get two. Because I ran into the one, climbing up the castle. And the Gerudo market.

Only 80 hours? That's about when I visited Koriko village for the first time. I spend 172 hours on the game, exploring the entire map without ever using fast travel and leaving the towers until last to avoid spoilers. I was laser focused on exploration the whole time!

I'm trying the same approach with HZD atm yet that game likes to punish you for exploring. Just yesterday I ran into an auto reload barrier again losing an hour of gameplay for crossing some invisible line I wasn't supposed to cross.

Zelda is great at exploration based gameplay. I wouldn't rate it all that high when played linearly, the divine beasts are clever yet not much more than a distraction and Ganon a disappointing anti climax. Luckily the Lynels saved the day, awesome enemies.

I think I got to Kakoriko Villiage within 9 hours. The previous hours was me unlocking the map.

I spend a lot of time in open-world games just doing what I want to do.  Games themselves are about "wasting time" so there is no guilt for me.

For instance, I built this over the last few days (still a work in progress):

Why?  It doesn't serve any kind of in-game purpose.  I could throw up some shacks and it would be the same difference as far as the settlers are concerned.  I just enjoy doing it.  I'm also building a large slave farm.  Yep, going the raider route.

I also spend hours tweaking my character.  She changes clothes all the time but she also changes looks.  This is her latest:

One of the things that I love, for some reason, is to make enemy factions fight.  I go way out of my way and do all kinds of convoluted things just to bring that about.  Yesterday, I dragged a Mirelurk Queen into a pack of enemy robots.  I was very satisfied.  

There's an even more disappointing ending? I actually don't remember the ending since I was so disappointed with that final fight. Not that it mattered as you return right back to before beating Ganon, completely pointless. It looked good, yet gameplay wise it was terrible.

Ofcourse having close to 500 shock arrows stocked up and a bunch of 38x5 savage Lynel bows kinda broke the game.

I don't know why people would feel guilty lol

It's a built like the GTA series in that most of the fun is spent just wondering about. No harm in that.

Personally, I wouldn't call either a bad ending. Lacking...probably, but I find it more accurate to say "default ending" or "extended ending." The only real difference is that you miss out on an extended scene showing the fate of the characters...as far as I know the default ending ends with the credits. When I see these type of things in games, I treat them as the same ending, only one happens to show more.

As someone who plays a lot of RPGs with multiple paths, and where a certain path might end up with core characters dead, or the world absolutely screwed, maybe I just have a different understanding of what a "bad" ending really is. :P

As for the boss, I wouldn't say it was challenging, but I also found it par for the course for 3D Zelda. I remember my first time playing Twilight Princess, I finished the four-phase final boss fight only losing 5 hearts. At least with Calamity Ganon, I had to eat something during the fight.

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