Despite playing through mostly everything, completing every single shrine and lighting up entirety of the depths along with most of the important side quests, I still find myself super torn on this game, part of me really likes the mechanical freedom it allows and just how fun and convenient it is to simply get from point A to point B while another part of me absolutely despises how little the open world has changed even though it's a full blown sequel to BoTW (which lead me to stall finishing the game for quite some time)
Pros (I'll mostly just be comparing and contrasting to its direct predecessor)
(+) The new abilities are hands down the best part of this game. The amount of freedom Ultrahand, Fuse and Ascend gives to the player is absolutely unparalleled. Compared to these three BoTW's abilities feel useless and yes that includes stasis which everyone would abuse to solve shrines with endless trial and error
(+) This game takes the most tedious part of BoTW and turns it into the most fun part of the game, flying over Hyrule feels like the intended way of traversing its messy and uneven topography. A simple hoverbike with 2 fans can take you anywhere and everywhere in this game pretty efficiently unlike BoTW where your only method of travelling faster was using the stupid horse which was a genuine nightmare to control
(+) The sky Islands aren't ground breaking or anything but still a decent addition to the open world and the puzzles deeply implement the newer mechanics making it feel something exclusive to the game unlike the other addition to the map I'll be talking about later
(+) ToTK fixes most of the issues in BoTW and amplifies all of its positives in the most unorthodox way imagineable. Prime example of this would be how the combat in this game is still pretty bad and the weapon durability system is just as obnoxious as ever but the inclusion of zonai devices here actually incentivizes you to come up with multiple different ways of massacring mobs instead of just avoiding them all together because you might break your weapons
(+) The shrines here are actually varied enough to justify hunting for every single one and there are plenty of ones that actually have you interact with the surrounding environment to solve the shrines, which is an infinitely better approach than having them be completely removed from the open world. The combat shrines here are basically miniature edition of Eventide Island where you have to survive with limited equipment which is also a drastic improvement over fighting the same one mob 50 different times
(+) Exploration in general feels way more rewarding here than in BoTW and because of the gazillion different indicators helping you discover caves shrine or anything remotely hidden plus the fact that you can get to everywhere in the map just from the towers that instantly shoot you into the stratosphere alone also makes it far more convenient and not a stupid chore
(+) The main dungeons are way less of a headache and you're given plenty of freedom to solve them however you wish just like most of the dungeons
Cons (New issues plus ones that roughly remained the same from BoTW)
(-) Depths is an absolute worthless addition to Hyrule, it's a bloated whole bunch of nothing which has no right to be as massive as the entire map as hyrule. The most fatigued I was ever playing this game is when I was trying to explore the entirety of the map, it contains absolutely nothing of interest, the entire reason you'd ever go into the depths is to farm for zonaite which is directly tied to the most fun part of the game, which leads me to my second biggest gripe with this game
(-) This game will constantly in every opportunity blue ball you from having fun and forcing you to go into the depths and mine zonaite whenever you run out and trust me you run out a lot. At one point I got so fed up that I started exploiting the dupe glitch, I can't be assed to go into the depths and mine the same place just so I can make a hovercraft
(-) The major boss fights in this game are just shameless interactive movies with ONE gimmick and that's it
(-) The open world bosses remained roughly the same as BoTW with few new additions which are also extremely boring to fight and are spread out throughout the map way too many times
(-) The major bosses get reused several times in the Depths only to lose their uniqueness
(-) The durability system became much worse because of the introduction of decayed/pristine weapons but I won't give them too much slack here since zonai devices can pretty much kill every single mob in the game with ease but then again tying the pristine weapons to RNG and in the DEPTHS was one of the worst decisions they made, would have made so much more sense if they were chest/quest rewards
(-) Just like BoTW the main dungeons all play out exactly the same giving the whole game a sense of repetitiveness in the process
I enjoyed my time with the game but I also found myself burnt out on multiple different occasions. BoTW truly is a shitty tech demo compared to ToTK
Pros (I'll mostly just be comparing and contrasting to its direct predecessor)
(+) The new abilities are hands down the best part of this game. The amount of freedom Ultrahand, Fuse and Ascend gives to the player is absolutely unparalleled. Compared to these three BoTW's abilities feel useless and yes that includes stasis which everyone would abuse to solve shrines with endless trial and error
(+) This game takes the most tedious part of BoTW and turns it into the most fun part of the game, flying over Hyrule feels like the intended way of traversing its messy and uneven topography. A simple hoverbike with 2 fans can take you anywhere and everywhere in this game pretty efficiently unlike BoTW where your only method of travelling faster was using the stupid horse which was a genuine nightmare to control
(+) The sky Islands aren't ground breaking or anything but still a decent addition to the open world and the puzzles deeply implement the newer mechanics making it feel something exclusive to the game unlike the other addition to the map I'll be talking about later
(+) ToTK fixes most of the issues in BoTW and amplifies all of its positives in the most unorthodox way imagineable. Prime example of this would be how the combat in this game is still pretty bad and the weapon durability system is just as obnoxious as ever but the inclusion of zonai devices here actually incentivizes you to come up with multiple different ways of massacring mobs instead of just avoiding them all together because you might break your weapons
(+) The shrines here are actually varied enough to justify hunting for every single one and there are plenty of ones that actually have you interact with the surrounding environment to solve the shrines, which is an infinitely better approach than having them be completely removed from the open world. The combat shrines here are basically miniature edition of Eventide Island where you have to survive with limited equipment which is also a drastic improvement over fighting the same one mob 50 different times
(+) Exploration in general feels way more rewarding here than in BoTW and because of the gazillion different indicators helping you discover caves shrine or anything remotely hidden plus the fact that you can get to everywhere in the map just from the towers that instantly shoot you into the stratosphere alone also makes it far more convenient and not a stupid chore
(+) The main dungeons are way less of a headache and you're given plenty of freedom to solve them however you wish just like most of the dungeons
Cons (New issues plus ones that roughly remained the same from BoTW)
(-) Depths is an absolute worthless addition to Hyrule, it's a bloated whole bunch of nothing which has no right to be as massive as the entire map as hyrule. The most fatigued I was ever playing this game is when I was trying to explore the entirety of the map, it contains absolutely nothing of interest, the entire reason you'd ever go into the depths is to farm for zonaite which is directly tied to the most fun part of the game, which leads me to my second biggest gripe with this game
(-) This game will constantly in every opportunity blue ball you from having fun and forcing you to go into the depths and mine zonaite whenever you run out and trust me you run out a lot. At one point I got so fed up that I started exploiting the dupe glitch, I can't be assed to go into the depths and mine the same place just so I can make a hovercraft
(-) The major boss fights in this game are just shameless interactive movies with ONE gimmick and that's it
(-) The open world bosses remained roughly the same as BoTW with few new additions which are also extremely boring to fight and are spread out throughout the map way too many times
(-) The major bosses get reused several times in the Depths only to lose their uniqueness
(-) The durability system became much worse because of the introduction of decayed/pristine weapons but I won't give them too much slack here since zonai devices can pretty much kill every single mob in the game with ease but then again tying the pristine weapons to RNG and in the DEPTHS was one of the worst decisions they made, would have made so much more sense if they were chest/quest rewards
(-) Just like BoTW the main dungeons all play out exactly the same giving the whole game a sense of repetitiveness in the process
I enjoyed my time with the game but I also found myself burnt out on multiple different occasions. BoTW truly is a shitty tech demo compared to ToTK