Personally, I was beyond disappointed with the story. I was hoping we were gonna get something cool with plot twists and major present time cinematics, but the memory mechanic returned, the writing and dialogue was very, very meh, especially with certain things being repeated 4 times. Ganon was barely in the game.

I’m hoping they bring back a side companion and a linear story. Twilight Princess had a fantastic story and characters, but I just really really disliked how they told the story in both BotW and TotK. The characters are cool but their dialogue is so mediocre, and there weren’t really any twists at all. Just oooooh time to defeat evil let’s do it together friendship. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Yup. I can't remember how many times I rolled my eyes at Zelda's cutscenes and writing. My God if I hear about "Secret Stones" and the "Imrisoning War" one more time. Like, this stuff might have been cool in like... 1991 but they deadass wrote the story and probably thought it was cutting edge or different. Interesting gameplay options mean nothing if there's nothing to make you movtivated imo. 

What makes it worse is, the one neat plot twist in the game was hinted at so much, you can barely even call it a spoiler.

There was this one cutscene, it's a moment where it does like little flashbacks of many moments in previous cutscenes, where the word "power" is said 6 times in the span of 5 lines, by 5 different characters - and one of those lines also includes the word "strength" just to say there's some variety I guess. Like it was bad enough that I watched it again just to count how many times it was said. Not sure why this game even bothered having various characters if all of them are just different looking versions of the same exposition about the sacred power and evil power or whatever.

For the most part every game has flaws. I been playing elden ring for the first time now and loving it but the lack and interesting NPC's and how hard it is to even complete a quest is really bad in massive open world game. like you basically need a guide to complete anything interesting or just get luck and find them. 

I've been down in the Depths since the start of the game, exploring the area as far as it lets me. While I can't comment on anything above ground yet, the Depths is both awesome and disappointing. Exploration is at its finest in the dark, making a path with bright blooms and looking around everywhere to spot the next light root. The repetition, copy paste everything is the disappointing part.

However after a while you realize it's basically the same map as Hyrule with all water turned into walls. A good idea on paper, but it lessens the feeling of discovery (you can even see the 'walls' on the Hyrule layer which doesn't hide water on the undiscovered map) and adds a lot of backtracking to get around a river. Plus some parts can't be reached at all without going back up first. Luckily the sheer vertical nature of the Depths still adds a sense of accomplishment to make your way around.

One big negative is the lack of persistence. There's no point marking areas with bright blooms, lighting a path, it all disappears after a while no matter where you stick the bright blooms. Everything eventually resets making everything you do feel kinda pointless. Also I keep running into all these things in the Depths that I guess only work after finding a quest up top. I'm currently exploring the Construct factory, yet keep running into locked gates, get access denied on the activation things. Still nice to find something else than copy paste Mines / Yiga camps / mine camps.

Without going up top only the colosseums work, the rest is all inactive or inaccessible. The flux constructs work as well, but I see no point in fighting them, nor anything else really. The random bokoblin / lizalfo spawns provide the best weapon attachments and spawn so frequently that's all I use. Sword from a statue fused with an arm combined with puff shrooms and combat is trivial. So I spend more time directing them to fight each other with muddle buds. Watch the chaos from the comedy AI in action.

And I agree about the rewards. It's either a piece of clothing from a prior game or something I already have 1000+ of. And in the rare instance it's a weapon, shield or bow, those are just rentals. I pretty much stopped using ultra hand because nothing lasts. It either resets straight away if you wander off just a few steps too far or it starts blinking and despawns all too soon. A balloon doesn't even last from the lowest ground level to the ceiling... Yes, it's a big sandbox, but it might as well been a very small sandbox without any form of persistence.

Anyway back to mapping the Depths, another week and I should be ready to head back to the surface!

Well yeah, no game is perfect. When I bring up FFXVI or Elden Ring it's not to say these games are perfect, but rather I want the Zelda team to take note of what these games are doing better than them and try to improve their craft. It is very difficult to balance an open world game but Nintendo is onto something. They just need to refine the lackluster areas of this era of Zelda.

Making quests work in open world games is very hard due to the open nature. Anything location related and you're likely to run into the quest area before finding the quest. Some games are flexible but most, including TotK, require you to find the quest NPC first. We're still stuck with linear quests and stories in open world games where it's all too easy to come at things from the 'wrong' side.

NMS' way works since you find out more of the story by finding more 'clues' around the galaxy. No need to be in a specific area, just find another story segment. Yet that only works when it all looks the same, copy paste bases, altars etc. TotK has that with the Yiga clan, copy paste bases all over the Depths where you find out more about the Yiga clan. However the Khoga quest has you go to specific locations, which are also just copy paste places. It could be flexible, I met Khoga first in the South end of the Depths, then he went to the NW corner, to NE corner and finally he's waiting in a secluded area. Maybe the first 3 locations are flexible, or it's just a coincidence I explored the same way around as Khoga moves. (I went straight south first to explore the depths clockwise)

Anyway the Khoga quest line is the only thing that works in the Depths without finding any related NPC first up top Many things in the Depths look to have a purpose but remain unresponsive)

And on the enemy side, still no better idea than to have the same mix of enemies all over the map that level up as you kill them or level up yourself. While bosses form a roadblock until you level up / get better gear.

No game is perfect, but the level of fun that I got from the game and the 140 hours I put into makes any minor flaws inconsequential.

Much of Tears of the Kingdom shows that Nintendo was unable to identify why people liked Breath of the Wild, so they didn't change the framework.

I don't think anyone liked korok seeds, but they are still in the game. Dungeons were a popular request, but the only change was that the movement was removed, so the supposed dungeons still aren't dangerous. The world is ultimately too big, so there is a lack of density when it comes to interesting spots; caves and wells sprinkled in don't mitigate this problem much.

On the flipside, the positives remained intact too. So it is a package where there is a lot to like about, but it falls once again short of being a masterpiece because there's too much bloat and too much mediocre content.

I wonder if it's true that TOTK started life as a BOTW DLC before evolving into its own game and feature-creeping all the way to the release date.

Still, it's a better game than SS, and while that is a thing that happens for most Zeldas, I'm sure the consensus reception to this game won't come down in time as hard as it has for SS.