Skyward sword had plenty room for exploration in the different biomes. It's not open world, but far from a linear experience as well. BotW feels more cohesive, indeed more like a complete world than separate areas you visit.

However the lack of persistence kinda breaks the immersion. That wobbly bridge you build over the river, gone after you come back. It can be useful as well, want 4 rockets for shields and there are only two, attach the two, save/load and they're back, attach 2 more etc. Don't feel like fighting a Lynel that spotted you, save/load and he's reset. Of course any loot laying around or Zonai devices disappear as well. And then the blood moon also repopulates all the camps.

That turns the game from 'Rebuilding Hyrule' into a resource management sim. The camps and enemies are just there to provide resources, there is no point clearing anything out nor in fixing anything. Apart from quests everything remains the same no matter what you do. So it's good you can skip all the enemies now simply by flying over or running past and save/load reset the agro. It's worthwhile farming the Depths for Zonaite, poes, puff shrooms and bomb flowers, yet on the surface I see no reason to raid camps. Maybe I'm missing something.

Also no reason for horses anymore. In the Depths they're useful to run over the gloom yet that's never really a problem. Just got to sprint from clear spot to clear spot and let the timer reset. However can you trade in the game? You can have a horse pull a wagon, so I guess you can use that as extended inventory, put excess weapons/bows/shields on the wagon. As long as you don't walk too far (or enter a shrine, reload) it should stay on the wagon. Not very practical and I don't think you can sell weapons anyway? Maybe a good stress test for the game, keep loading weapons from camps on the cart, how many can you fit.

And the main problem with the open world approach is, I'm already at the dozenth temple / place that gives me access denied or a locked gate. Find the quest person first ugh. It's all an empty stage until you trigger the quest or approach from the right direction.

They just need to go back to original idea for Zelda. And no, this formula is not that.

Initial Zelda design was labyrinths (dungeons) that player accesses from main screen - think something like Demon's Souls in modern terms.
Then Miyamoto decided he wanted for players to go around and have freedom to explore (and he was into Ultima at the time), so he decided to add overworld.
Then their coder fucked up something while translating overworld from paper to actual code and ended up with only half of it - and Miyamoto decided that game is actually better that way, cause overworld he designed on paper was too big. Plus this gave them opportunity to include Second quest.
Add to this nature of the game, which is actually semi-open (or gated, whichever you prefer) given that you need certain things to progress further.

As mental exercise try to clean your mind of BotW/TotK and try to imagine that game with modern tech and some other narrative/gameplay improvements, both from Zelda's history and video game RPG history.

Yeah, there is A LOT of room for improvements.

I just started and not really enjoying it much. It's too early to say but so far the combat feels bad and it doesn't feel like zelda but more like a Lego game. It's early though and just got ascend.

It's a Zelda themed Minecraft like. Although that's doing Minecraft a disservice as you can do much more there. There's so much to do you'll find stuff you'll enjoy. The tutorial island is by far the worst part of the game, it gets a lot better once you get off there and are free to chose what to pursue. If you want the more classic Zelda experience, go directly to the towns for the regional phenomena and stick to the main quests. And maybe along the way you'll warm up to the other stuff.

I keep forgetting about Ascend as I rank that among fast travel. Thus was scratching my head in a Shrine how to solve the rotating cube room. Need ascend duh. Also made it way to hard on myself in one of the no gear fight arena shrines. Battle tank waiting an ascend and short flight away, which I found out after clearing everything the hard way. Ascend is the lamest ability, just an excuse to disable climbing in places.

Yea it's still early and controls are gonna take sometime getting used to them. I will say the game is beautiful when playing in handheld. It's way to early to judge but man i really hate the breakable weapons so far, like they literally have so much mechanics in this game do we needs breakable weapons to slow the pace even more. 

I'm still not used to the controls lol. Hate it when I accidentally throw my weapon away when trying to use ultra-hand.

The breakable weapons have changed my play style for sure, puff shroom sneak strikes, muddle buds to thin the herd, desperate strength weapons, all because replacing weapons is a chore. I haven't bothered with shields for blocking or parrying at all. I rather throw stuff than attach it to an arrow cause bows break just as easily.

But you will find durability up++ weapons later on that last a bit longer. It also seems higher dmg value weapons last longer. I wish you could actually see the stats as it's always a guessing game what to replace when finding a new weapon.

Tip: set the item menu to sort on most used. It gets very tedious to scroll through this endless bar of items to find what to attach. In my case bomb flowers, muddle buds and puff shrooms are the first 3 items. You find them a lot in the Depths.

Thanks for the tip. I just avoid combat right now. The melee combat controls, and movement are just bad in this game, then you add the weapon breaking and i don't wanna even deal with it. The UI and melee combat are some of the worst i have played in along time, and the building controls are clunky. Still enjoying it though, just a shame cause it can easily be one of the goats if they actually address these  issues. Sometimes just focus on the refining things then throwing as much as possible in a game can go a long way.

Funny enough I watched a video the other day where the guy spent like 20 minutes explaining why he had this exact same problem, it starts somewhere around 36 minutes in (yeah long video lol)

Personally I didn't throw my weapon away on accident cause I'm already used to the controls since BotW, but I did struggle with some of the changes they made to the controls since then

I never owned a switch, and mainly playing in handheld mode so imagine what i'm going through. I feel like just quitting sometimes but i'm mainly playing it at work, and only have the switch for 2 months so might as well finish it.

Goodluck finishing it in 2 months ;)

I got used to the accept / cancel configuration, so much I do it 'wrong' now on PSVR2. But that video explains very well why I'm still attempting to throw my weapon so often. The radial menu gives me trouble all the time. I let the control stick go before LB so it often registers as the opposite of what I just 'selected'. I have to make a conscious effort to keep holding the L button to make it work. Dunno how it's different from all radial menus before it as this is the first time I've run into this issue.

Anyway I still press the wrong button(s) all the time, the UI and control scheme are a mess. Plus Ultra hand rotation is terrible trying to puzzle out how to rotate in 3D using 2D rotation while hard to see what's going on with the glow effect. Another car with the wheels pointed in opposite directions :/