I agree 100%. The Shrines made the “dungeon” aspect of the game feel fresh for what felt like the first time since the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time. Rather than stringing up an insanely long portion of the game that might take you hours, it broke it up into smaller locations with 1-4 puzzles; I never finished TP or Wind Waker because in each game my whole progress got blocked in some kind of a hide n seek game that was on the critical path. I had to find some small item in a very large 3D area in order to progress. I could have gone to gamefaqs to look it up, I likely had done that a bunch of times already in each game for similar things - but you hit a point where it’s just like “I can’t be bothered with this crap!” And I turned it off... I probably had similar issues in OOT and MM, but I probably wasn’t sick of the formula yet.

With Breath of the Wild, if I couldn’t get past something, I’d leave and come back later (you can warp to any Shrine you’ve visited). Breath of the Wild lives and Breaths in its overworld, and that fresh air focus is quite a breath of fresh air. Forcing in a bunch of long-slog dungeons is not only regressive in the series, but it’s adding back in the elements that caused the franchise to stagnate in the first place. Putting in something that takes 2-4 hours of stuff you HAVE to complete to finish it is not better than several 15-30 minute things.

Number 1: the smaller ones means you spend a lot more time doing stuff outside.

Number 2: way less chance on getting stuck after an hour because you can’t find some little switch somewhere in one of twelve giant rooms, and you need to in order to complete this dungeon; and then there’s like ten other things like that.

If we’re talking about themes, then yeah, I have no problem with - for example - theming Mt. Doom Shrines with lava and such; Forest Shrines like the forest temple; etc... But doubtlessly, Breath of the Wild’s Shrines fixed the problem with the sloggy dungeons that caused the franchise to become stale and fall from the position of grace it held from NES to N64. Breath of the Wild is the Zelda game that put it back up there.

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. 

I've found climbing to break the game from fairly early in game - 2 stamina bars is all you need to get anywhere, and with infinite respawns of ingredients, you can cook up enough shit to even climb in rain without lot of problems.
Now, I'm all for climbing in games (especially in RPGs), been clamoring about it since forever, but it needs to be done properly - committing to that should be a playstyle decision and take a lot of skill points and learning in-game how to do it (talking RPGs in general, not BotW) - this will give you expert climber, but your character will inevitably suffer in other areas.
The way it's done in BotW just kills exploration for me, so world design becomes broken easily - just climb here, maybe find another worthless loot and glide down again with paraglider.

I skipped whole Hyrule Castle by accident really - not that I cared to bother with it much, tbh, at that point I was so bored with game that I couldn't care less. I did reload when I beat Ganon to see what I missed and went through castle - let's just say I haven't felt I've missed much first time for skipping so much of it.

In the end, it was decent game, but it just shows how much they lack when it comes to building open worlds, with proper main and side quest (well, most devs do).

When I finished it, first thing I thought of was - will I ever replay it? And unlike all other 3D Zeldas, answer was resounding no - maybe I'll even press myself to play through MM finally after this, but I'd take any other 3D Zelda over BotW.

The Divine Beasts already kinda fill that role; about the only thing that could really use improvement there IMO was if both the Beasts and their bosses were themed instead of all having the same aesthetic.

I still don't see how climbing is "broken". Typically this is used to describe something that inadvertently violates the game's rules and allows the player to do things they shouldn't be able to do; climbing in BOTW doesn't do that as it's factored into the game's design.

To get even two stamina wheels means not only putting in the effort of beating shrines, but also diverting spirit orbs away from extending your health, so your character does as you put it "suffer in other areas". The second circle is 20 orbs, so that means you're sacrificing 5 hearts to complete it.

If the game just wasn't your cup of tea though, that's fair enough.

Divine beasts were nothing like temples... maybe if they were 5-10 times longer, had intricate puzzles, find the keys, better bosses and unique layouts/designs.

I still don't see how climbing is "broken". Typically this is used to describe something that inadvertently violates the game's rules and allows the player to do things they shouldn't be able to do; climbing in BOTW doesn't do that as it's factored into the game's design.

To get even two stamina wheels means not only putting in the effort of beating shrines, but also diverting spirit orbs away from extending your health, so your character does as you put it "suffer in other areas". The second circle is 20 orbs, so that means you're sacrificing 5 hearts to complete it.

If the game just wasn't your cup of tea though, that's fair enough.

Broken in a sense, why go to trouble of making such world if you can pretty much bypass anything with a bit of climbing - even things you shouldn't be able to, like path to Zora's or Hyrule Castle. And 20 orbs is potatoes really, especially when you can rearrange health and stamina for very low price whenever you want (another broken stuff that gets you Master Sword early, and I won't even go into ridicilous "breaking weapons as incentive to experiment" koolaid mantra). Like I said, there is good way to implement climbing (I don't intend to elaborate it here, anyone with basic knowledge of something like D&D can figure it out), but BotW's way sure feels quite world breaking to me.

Puzzle shrines are incredibly easy, they all look the same, and, woopdeedo, they all give the same thing - orb. For me they are epitome of lazy design, as if they were given to interns to practice level design and in no way can replace great temples/dungeons from previous games. I never had problems with them in any Zelda, I actually like them, no matter how much I can shit on Aonuma at times, but that's mainly cause of too much focus on them alone in Zeldas, and not enough overworld stuff.

That indeed changed in BotW, but now it's unbalanced the other way around - whole time I was playing the game I had this feeiling they didn't know exactly what they wanted to make, so they've slapped several machanisms that on their own might be somewhat cool, but mixed together just don't work.

It's not a bad game by any means, I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars (I like AdventureGamers scoring system, so 3.5 reads as "A solid adventure that is generally enjoyable, though it lacks enough polish or ambition to recommend without caution"), but I sure do hope they will change plethora of things for next instalment, cause this doesn't feel like Zelda to me anymore, but a mishmash of different popular mainstream mechanisms done with Nintendo flair.

It will. It's already the highest on a single platform, and the highest excluding remasters, after just 13 months.

Skyward Sword was a good game, but it did show that the series formula was becoming very stale.

Breath of the Wild was exactly what the franchise needed; a bold reinvention.