My opinion changed a lot the more I played this game.

When I first started it, I was completely hooked. The beginning sky island area is well designed and gets you familiar with the new cool abilities that I used much more then the ones in BOTW. The graphics and size of the world are also super impressive for being a Switch title.

Once I finished the tutorial area which took around 5 hours, everything started going downhill. The game is basically an exact copy of BOTW. The enemies are identical with the only new ones being these small robots that have replaced guardians and some dragon mini boss which I didn't bother fighting. Armor sets are also the same, there are a few new additions but to get many of them is a real chore. The main negative is that the map and story are pretty much identical to BOTW. The whole sky island I found to be a really cool concept but there's almost none of that in the rest of the game. That tutorial sky island is the largest with none of the rest being as remotely interesting anywhere. They're all very tiny with nothing on them and no reason to visit them except shrines. Another addition was an entire underground world which sounds cool and again is quite technically impressive for the Switch but after 20 minutes I decided to never go there again unless I needed to progress the story. It's all empty copy pasted land with nothing special and no reason to explore it. This leaves the main land left and as I've repeatedly said, it is an exact copy of BOTW I keep finding the need to say it over and over since I'm still amazed at how little they decided to change for this hyped $90 game. I played the shit out of BOTW in 2019 and even after 6 years so many things felt familiar, practically nothing surprised me in my playthrough. The story is very generic and worse then BOTW imo. Once again you find 4 sages then gain their powers to defeat Ganon; only this time the sages are younger kid versions who were made into anime personalities for some reason. The dungeons I found to be a downgrade and as they were much easier than BOTW, that goes for the shrines as well; they were still quite enjoyable and my favorite part of the game. I really thought I'd spend a lot of time on this game especially with the increased price tag but that was not the case. In BOTW I spend around 150hrs with 100% completion, in this game I did all shrines, a few uninteresting side quests, and the story picking up whatever korok seeds I find on my way which brought me to around 65 hours with no urge to do anything else but put it back on the shelf. Why play anymore when I pretty much experienced all of it already in BOTW? I'm very tired of this new Zelda formula and would love to see it go back to its core.

The one thing I did quite enjoy with the story was the ending. The Ganon boss fight was solid, one of the best in Zelda and a huge improvement from the BOTW final boss. The ending cinematic was also amazing. Seeing that caught me off guard, it made me wish they focused on story more as it showed they are capable. I was impressed that there could be such epic cinematics in a Zelda game and wish there was more of it throughout the story rather then using the most bare bones RPG story that goes all the way back to Final Fantasy on the NES. This game has no reason for existing. A sequel like this was not needed, this felt much more of a quality of life update with new sandbox stuff and that's about it. This was not a GOTY 2023 contender to me.

Extremely addicting and fun, but can get pretty repetitive if you want to finish every quest, do every shrine, open entire depths map, max out stats, etc.
Actually liked it way more than BotW from the outset. Probably because I already knew how to play it and didn't spend the first 20 hours learning how to do basic stuff.
The plot overall is better this time, but 4 of the main story quests are so repetitive and bland it's hilarious. Just because you can tackle these at random, the devs made every quest end with a cinematic that differs only slightly, so you basically have to watch the same cutscene 4 times, lol.
The ending is heckin great though. Epic, flashy, heartfelt, with nicely animated cutscenes. Actually made me care a bit about Zelda (which I still hate overall because of her whiny fake british voice).

I truly didn't know how Nintendo could top Breath of the Wild. I was nervous in the week leading up to this games release because I was plagued with the thought of "what if it's not as good as the last one? I don't like crafting/survival games. What if this is the first Zelda game that just isn't for me?"

Oh, how good it feels to be wrong.

This is, quite possibly, the best video game I have ever played. Tears of the Kingdom doesn't just clear the bar set by its predecessor – it flies high over it, expanding on the world of Hyrule in ways that I thought weren't originally possible. The sandbox elements of TOTK's world always had me wondering what contraption could be made to solve an issue or what bizarre combinations were possible through fusion. It frequently elicited moments where I asked myself "did the devs intend for me to do that?" and the answer was often "no, but I bet they created this toolkit with infinite possibilities in mind."

A couple of the quests after completing all four shrines were kind of unnecessary (and in the case of the robot building one not very fun at all).

I also did not do a specific side quest until quite late in the game, which taught me how to upgrade my battery level. I don’t think this type of thing should be taught in an optional quest considering how important it is to the mechanics of the game.

With those complaints out of the way, this is one of the greatest games ever. The world, the design and the story all bring it together making it my favourite game of 2023.

Started this last year only to finish it recently and it's alright overall. I feel like the story is a bit better than BOTW's and does feel more engaging but I feel there are some weak parts to it. The final boss/sequence was incredible and exactly what I would want from a game like this, even if the final phase is a bit too easy after the much harder prior phases.

I do really like the tools you get for this game a lot and how they encourage greater experimentation and creativity but with that comes with a lot of frustration for me personally. As of right now I think i prefer the tools you get in BOTW more because they're a lot more reliable in function and are less finicky to use than the Zonai stuff, but again that's just me.

Has lots of highlights though and I did enjoy my time with the game overall but I hope we can close the book on open world Zeldas for now, at least ones set in the same Hyrule. I feel like they did enough to make this feel like a different adventure but I feel like the novelty has worn thin at this point. If they truly want to make open world Zeldas the next step for the franchise I hope we can at least move on from this era into something truly new. Or give us dual hookshots and let us swing around like Spider-Man. Either is acceptable.

absolutely stunning for the first few hours, before you put it down and never pick it back up again (much like botw!) has the exact same flaws as botw, like having an open world with nothing in it, but this one has building!
hate to be so negative on this one, i did love the game for the few hours i played it, but god it fucking sucks to replay or even go super far in
if anything, i was hoping it would at least convince devs to steal the building mechanics, but then nintendo patented them. thanks nintendo!