There is some improvement over BOTW.

Tears has sharper image quality, draw distance has been improved, and the addition of Ultrahand and with it the ability to assemble physics-driven contraptions anywhere in the game brings with it significant extra performance overhead, yet with these additions it still it runs just as well if not a little bit better than BOTW did.

The amount of whining about the way that I expressed my opinion in the OP is far more ridiculous than anything I said there.  It appears to me that many commenters have (some likely deliberately) misunderstood it, so as to not have to take my criticisms seriously.  I clearly said "reminds me of" not "this game could be on PS2", and I was very clearly only talking about a few elements.  

I have not engaged in most of that side of the discussion because it's not necessary for me to back up my opinions of what something reminds me of. It is literally impossible for me to be wrong about what I think about something.  I'm not sure how to provide evidence for what I'm reminded of when playing a game. 

Further, this idea that I'm way out in left field is ridiculous, as evidenced by the fact that at least a third of the people commenting in this thread are largely in agreement with me, and a good deal more are partially there.  

Some people feel differently. That's fine. This has been a mostly good discussion (which was my goal), aside from some people crying because I dared say anything even remotely critical of their beloved video game.  I even said, multiple times now, that I like the game.  I opened the OP with that, as a matter of fact.  But, some people, especially on the internet in forums like this, are incapable of engaging in mature discussion.  It is what it is.  

I think one issue that makes the graphics feel a little soft and squishy is the lack of contrast in some areas, and the large amount of fog.  Frankly, I find myself often wondering why the developers have chosen to make things feel washed out much of the time.  

That said, these things don't seem to be as big of a factor when playing handheld. It's when I'm playing on a large, bright TV that I notice it the most. And I guess that just kind of reinforces what you and others have said here, that Switch is really a handheld. I mostly play it docked though, so I think it subconsciously gets compared to consoles in my mind. The fact that I can play it on my TV does not make it a home console though.  

I play my Switch in docked mode primarily as well, in fact mine basically never leaves the dock. But yeah the reality is that in order to work in portable mode, the chipset inside must necessarily be mobile, which puts hard limits on performance.

I would gladly take shorter draw distance and some pop in for sharper visuals on tv. And a way to dial up the in game contrast. The game is fun, but not being able to see well what's going on while playing during the day sucks.

Maybe BotW was the same or worse, I played that in a dark room on a 1080p projector. The LCD projector is low contrast itself, better fit I guess. On 65" 4K HDR tv it's hard to see what's going on in full ambient light conditions. They probably tested it on Handheld as the primary way to play the game. It's a handheld, pretty evident by the lack of even an in game brightness setting.

Anyway it's dark again, I can continue. Descending in some very dark (and low contrast) cave on Sky Island. Still in the tutorial lol.

Just replying back to a a few people that mentioned me. Someone said there some improvement but there are also downgrades like when you move the camera resolution takes a hit over all and frame rate worse overall its hardly anything that's worth talking about

As for DF saying this is impressive its not. This engine was for the wiiu and that's something most people forgot if this was built for the switch ground up this would probably look and run much better.

They did step up sharpness over BOTW by adding FSR.

Visibility hasn't been a problem for me personally; the game can sometimes have a hazy look but never to a detrimental extent. Sure it's not your TV settings?

Resolution was dynamic in BOTW as well, and perceptual image quality is overall sharper because of the addition of FSR which wasn't there in the prior game. BOTW dropped frames in complex areas too, so its not surprising this happens in TOTK with the added burden of Ultrahand physics.

It is indeed possible that without BOTW's Wii U roots some of its graphical makeup might be better, but it's also worth remembering that BOTW on Wii U ran at a significantly worse framerate than on Switch, and at a dynamic 720p, so the additional power of Switch is still being utilized.

Yes of course but just look something like gtav it's a port from ps3 to ps4 and look at red dead 2 something built ground up for the ps4 it's generational difference. Now I know switches won't any near as big but it would probably look much better. Nintendo has been real lazy pushing graphics this gen but with switch 2 coming I hope they start caring again about graphics

You have gone out of your way to rile people up, so you trying to take some high ground is laughable. It is you that are incapable of engaging in mature discussion. You say things in the op and then act  shocked that people engage and ask why about those things.

It's also very possible to be wrong about how you feel about something, if I said I feel that textures in red dead 2 remind me of an n64 game that would be wrong. You could very easily bring up evidence for what you are reminded of, you obviously have something in mind when you say it reminds you of something, bring up some images from ps2 games that have similar foliage to this game. Give examples of 15 year old indie games that look like this.

"people crying because I dared say anything even remotely critical of their beloved video game" this is completely unnecessary no one is crying, no one here is get angry because you dared to say anything critical about the game.