Yes the mechanics in TotK are out of this world. However in 300 hours play time, they often got in the way instead of adding to the fun.
Fuse is the best new addition, but it's a shame it makes everything look ridiculous. Plus in the end you still only use a couple things and end up with a bloated inventory, while adding extra steps to get things done. Is it an improvement to fuse bomb flowers to arrows instead of simply having bomb arrows?
It's useful for weapons since you have a limited inventory, but it didn't make it more fun imo. Just more steps and a lot of searching through endless inventory items.It actually made me less inventive in combat compared to BotW since Eightfold blade puff shroom sneak strike is totally op. While mini bosses just need highest damage combination. BotW 'forced' me to adapt to the weapons at hand, TotK you simply make a bunch of what suits you.
Ascend I rarely used, only for puzzle solving. I don't like fast travel and Ascend is basically vertical fast travel, loading screen and all. It was fun to use in combat although it took any challenge away from Talusses.
Recall trivialized most shrine puzzles and a lot of combat. Too op as well.
Ultra-hand and insta build the same. Apart from it being a pita to use with the controls and camera limitations. And often the straight forward solution without ultra-hand building is much faster.
Maybe it's the overkill in bloat that made me stop using the abilities. Well also because there is no persistence and you have max 8 slots for builds. Mad respect for those building complicated machines, yet it doesn't feel like Zelda at all. But at least it allowed me to play the game without fast travel, flying back out of the Depths :)
It feels like TotK is at conflict with itself. Does it want to be Minecraft or an action RPG/Adventure. Does it want to tell a story or be a sandbox. It's trying to do both, but doesn't succeed at combining the two very well. BotW felt more coherent, abilities that fit the game play and story instead of feeling like playing with cheats enabled.
In the end, even though it's only been a few months since I played TotK, my journey through BotW has more high points in my memory. Maybe it's because of the novelty of discovering the world for the first time. But probably also since my journey through BotW was a lot more 'linear' instead of tons of back and forth in TotK. You can see how much I've worn down the roads in TotK haha.
Slow travel, horse auto follows the roads!
