The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (NS) is the most successful stand alone Zelda title (not counting remasters/other versions)

[Wyrdness]

contestgamer said:

curl-6 said:

I never found climbing "broken" in the slightest; you can bypass some of Hyrule Castle by climbing, great; you'll miss a bunch of secrets and stuff if you do, but if you're impatient to just get to Ganon, the game lets you. 

And I'd actually say some of the shrine challenges in BOTW are among the coolest puzzles in the entire series, such as the one where you guide a rolling ball through a Rude Golberg esque course of mechanisms, or another where you have to get a cube of ice through a gauntlet of fire-based obstacle while it slowly melts. I quite liked that it broke the dungeons down into digestible chunks that I could pick off at my own pace.

I think its hard to deny that BOTW would be a much better game if it had 5-6 OOT/MM style temples in it in addition to the shrines. 

Not really dungeons were the reason the series became stale to begin hence why BOTW moved away from all of that, the dungeons became too much of a focus on the game were as in BOTW the focus became the whole of Hyrule. Players who enjoy BOTW will talk of the fun they have in the game's world and the things they're finding in it as well as can do in it unlike in a game like TP were the world outside the dungeons is non existent.

This is why the shrine were such a good idea as rather than force the whole dungeon thing on players they can take part in it if they want and it's not a long drawn out slog through them.