There are two things that lay the foundation for Zelda. Adventure and Dungeons. The game aims to give the user the thrill of adventure but falls short by skimping on dungeon depth for dungeon breadth. Shrines are small and generally lackluster, with a large amount being the same fight against one type of guardian, and the divine beasts sat on the average side of regular Zelda dungeon design, with three having rather similar gimmicks (rotation).

This leads to my major flaw with the game and that is "incentive". Due to the lackluster shrines and the knowledge of what I would get for doing them, I ended up ignoring them by the end of the game. Korok seeds are bad incentive for exploring as it is likely you won't be able to use them for most of the game. It lead to there only being a few times where I was happy after jumping off the main road and I can honestly say that not wanting to explore in a game mostly aimed at enticing me to do so is a problem.

Luckily the world is charming, and characters particularly are good. Although I wasn't a fan of the voice acting, I enjoyed talking to just about anyone I could and I applaud the translation team. Taking pictures was also a nice addition.

Overall, this is an easy game to recommend as a time-consumer, but there are other games I'd recommend for exciting dungeons, and stronger examples of open-world games. This game just may be too much Sandbox for my tastes.