the detraction on the game using the same map is always a funny one to me. when nintendo announced this as "the sequel to BotW" i always assumed it was going to be in the same world but tweaked a little. in fact, they tweaked it quite a lot by adding the sky (though, it's quite a bit smaller than i expected originally) and depths portions to the game. were these same people who are disappointed by this aspect disappointed back when super mario galaxy 2 dropped? if so, fair enough but, i came into TotK at least expecting and fully being ok with that aspect of it.

despite this, i absolutely agree this game is not the second coming in the video game world or anything. i think it's a magnificent title and improves a lot on what BotW started but, there are certainly things that hold it back from transcending to another level. i've seen several people mention the story and that's definitely one of the aspects i think could've been improved. i do think the story is better than BotW and nintendo definitely seems to have tried to introduce some linearity back into how the game's storyline progresses in order to provide a more cohesive and grander story but, it's kinda a little too minuscule in the end. the memory system, all-in-all, was a big letdown and super lame. (even though i did like the memories exceedingly more than BotW's.)

i liked that they brought back "dungeons" in a sense for the boss battles but, was disappointed that the temples were still so proliferous and tedious after awhile. the boss battles themselves (except that stupid slime guy) were also better than the BotW copy and pasted gloom equivalent of the NSMB koopalings.

overall, i think nintendo improved on BotW and i personally think this is better than BotW. yet, i think they still have some way to go to better synthesize the linear zelda and this open-world zelda and i do think it's possible - which is exciting.

Yea the game feels like a turd to play. Get this clunky building  crap out of zelda. Get rid of fuse for weapons except for bows and make weapons unbreakable and melee combat that doesn't play like garbage. Ascend and rewind are great though. They really need to cut fix all this usless bloat in the game and in the ui. They already have Enough mechanics to make a great game. focus on the world, dungeons, UI, combat, enemy variety and dungeons and cut the world's size in half.

I honestly don't have hope and they  just made most of the issues with botw just worse.

maybe, and this might be crazy, you just aren't great at playing/controlling it?

i'll admit it was a shake up with what i was used to in BotW but, it took no more than an hour to familiarize myself with the UI and control scheme. there's some rough edges in how things are controlled that could be fixed but, it's absolutely not bad enough to call it a turd to play or clunky. 

melee combat is also not garbage, just kind of shallow. this could definitely be improved upon but also was never that deep in prior zelda titles in the first place.

you seem to really enjoy hyperbolizing. 

edit: also just saw your reply to me. i'm intrigued; what did they make worse? TotK seems like an improvement to me on all fronts over BotW. unless of course you are just going to bring up the UI and feature expansion that you didn't enjoy.

 It's Like BOTW, but removes the fun abilities and replaces them with a lot of time wasted with clunky controls and menus.
'I found a new weapon - great now I have to fuse it with something to make it viable. Let's go through my fusion items.. ah who cares, it's gonna break in 5 minutes anyway, let's just choose a random one. Select it, drop it on the floor, change ability to fuse, aim, fuse it'. One minute wasted for no reason. Why must something that should take 2 seconds within the menu itself take 30 seconds of awkward repetitive motions? Baffling. Samething with building and attaching stuff so freaking annoying with its clunky rotation and just bad controls scheme 

Then you have the melee combat in 2017 it's was barely ok in bow. it's 2023 where open world combat as vastly improved and this feels like a turd in comparison. I'm still early in thr game 12 hours in so I will wait it might click in 10 more hours.

Apparently I'm already 285 hours in??? I guess it keeps counting when I leave it on which I do all the time. Don't know how to turn the thing off with the controller and it doesn't go to sleep until after an hour when docked. Anyway it wouldn't surprise me if I played for 150 hours already and I still have only done 1 dungeon...

Good news, it did click, thanks to the Depths getting me into the game. Bad news, combat never clicked, simply not fun and feels pointless. Building is still clunky as hell but the sky islands are interesting and the shrines keep me busy now, plus all the distractions. I have no idea what the story is, delivery is far too sporadic. I found a couple memories but they are all out of order. I still feel more invested with the Yiga clan's expeditions in the Depths despite they still try to kill me all the time.

Dunno if I will finish the game, walking back and forth is already starting to get tedious and I know as soon as I start using fast travel the fun is over. So I'll probably focus on the Sky Islands. The fire temple was disappointing hence no urge to do more, but will get to it some time.

I read that you enjoyed the depths. I been there it's ok. but  what's the reason for being down there? Just looting those blue poe light things. 

My reason was to explore. It was still a huge unknown at the beginning with potential new things lurking in the darkness. Of course now I know the ratio between unique stuff and copy paste stuff, plus all the unique stuff being pretty much off limits without a quest or entry from the surface, I might not have done a full exploration of the Depths. I also wouldn't do it after already exploring the top, the reason it was fun was not knowing anything and slowly getting familiarized with the game language.

As for resources, it's the best place for puffs, muddles and bomb flowers, as well as plenty arrows to be found. Poes are good for money and to trade for more of those resources. Plus it's the only place for Zonaite and a good source of crytalized charges to increase battery power. The Yiga clan is interesting in their observations of the Depths and I found the challenge of navigating the place quite rewarding. Now I run across the Depths like its nothing, jumping up cliffs with max stamina, 8 rocket shields in inventory for boosts, nearly maxed battery to fly from one end to the other. Plus everything is lit up now. So yeah, it's only good at the start. Just there now to tour the forge constructs to max out the battery.

And it gives you all the locations of the shrines which is coming in quite handy since a lot are hidden on the surface. Some are tricky to find in the Depths as well, yet the map updates per light root in the Depths, no towers. Which reveals the location of the ones you are still looking for by giving you a search area, usually in the middle of the left over gaps in the map.

Oh btw, if you find any stone tablets in the Depths, take a picture. I just examined them and only took a picture of one and figured no ! so no point taking more. Now I found the quest and have to find them all again lol. Stupid. Disadvantage of going in blind first, no clue what's important. Anyway any writing that has an A prompt, take a picture.

well that kind of sums everything up, you're hardly into the game at all. for all the moving parts to click, it takes some time to understand how everything flows together. if you're still on the great sky island then you're in legitimately the worst part of the game - the tutorial zone.

also, i've seen you say you're playing at work and that just seems like the worst possible place to play to me lol. kind of kills the vibe. how did you play BotW if you don't have a switch?

also, if you liked BotW, the weapon breaking system is quite literally the exact same thing. seems odd to assign that to just TotK. i'm not saying you're wrong here, obviously the weapon breaking system is incredibly decisive to some and that's totally fair. i'm used to it and it doesn't bother me. in fact, i think TotK improved the system with adding the fuse ability as now any weapon can be a more damaging one by fusing the best pick-ups to it. you no longer find a royal broadsword and treat it like a baby, now you can fuse a soldier construct 3 horn to a stick and it's still a pretty good weapon.

also, building things with ultra hand is often not required. if you don't like it, you can simply not use it. there's multiple ways to get around the world and i think that the option to choose what you want to do and how you want to do it is a great addition from the developers. it did also take me awhile to get used to building things but once you're used to it, i think it's a piece of cake. plus, if you find the auto build ability, it makes it even easier. if you like using the things you build but get tired of building them, make sure to go to the great abandoned central mine and follow that side-quest.

BotW's abilities feel lame in comparison to what TotK brought, to me. the only drawback is not having revali's gale.

there's the forgotten temple that shows you the order of how all the memories are supposed to go and where they all are on the map, you should head there and take a pic of it for reference. the memory story telling mechanic coming back is lame but, the memories themselves are actually way better than the BotW ones i think.

something that i think is a minus on the game is indeed how sporadic it is. the quest i'm referring to above is only if you manage to find impa on a random field and then follow her to the forgotten temple. i didn't even realize that was a thing until i started noticing my memories were out of order and looked for a way to watch them in order.

the gerudo and definitely the rito dungeons are the best in the game and for sure worth doing. the zora temple is the worst in my opinion but, i thought the fire temple was pretty fun so... maybe you'll like it.