The problem with this game in one example:

I was working with The Railroad, an underground movement attempting to take down the Institute.

The Institute made me their leader after I infiltrated them for the first time.

I thought, okay, now I can go back and relay to the Railroad that I'm now the leader of the Institute. You know, the group that our whole goal is to take down.

You can't. I felt like I was going insane when I walked back to the Railroad base and desperately tried talking to everyone to reveal this critical information about the war I was participating in. In that moment, the veil was lifted. This is not a world, it's a shooting gallery.

What is the point of even having a dialogue system if this very common occurrence that the main quest forces you down creates this level of dissonance due to a lack of options? Why even have factions? Why have dialogue? The game would not be any better or worse than it is now.

Update:
So, revisiting the game now in depth for the first time since it came out, I realize: there IS a whole side section of quests dedicated to exactly what I was talking about but it didn't trigger for me on my first run! This does make me feel less insane and I'm glad the game is more functional now, but it's insane that a bug occured nearly ten years ago and colored my perception of the entire story so strongly.

Tears of the Kingdom is an evil video game. It is a shallow, meandering homonuculus in the shape of a "critically acclaimed video game." It is sinister in how it slithers along wearing the skin of a game we all liked seven years ago. It is deceptive in how it tricks the player into thinking it's wealth of "content" is fun. It is manipulative in how it attempts to wring tears out from the player despite the story meaning nothing.

It is a game about nothing for everyone. It is formless sludge to keep your fingers busy and your mind vacant. It is the death of art. It loots the corpses of the good Zelda games and uses them for fuel for the content mill.

It's kinda fun to skydive though

I won't call Tears of the Kingdom the worst game I've ever played - that'd be obviously hyperbolic. It's mechanically sound, looks nice, and there is some meager bits of fun to be had. But I think it's absolutely one of the worst pieces of art I've ever experienced. It does nothing to justify it's own existence, seemingly satisfied with just being. It has nothing new to say, nothing interesting to do, nothing cool to see. But hey, there's 900 Korok seeds, 700 locations, 194 caves, 152 shrines, 120 lightroots, 58 wells, 35 chasms, 35 settlements, 60 side adventures, 31 shrine quests, 139 side quests, 18 memories, it's so awesome dude there's so much content the game is great it has content I like this game because it has content I love content

Sunbreak takes the already outstanding base that was Rise and trims the fat and further polishes a combat system that has been already shined to near perfection over the last several entries. Simultaneously it ups the difficulty substantially and adds several standout monsters, both new and old. New Master Rank armor gives a greater degree of control over player build options, and the new skill swap abilities gives an unprecedented level of expression and freedom. As far as combat in video games goes, it just doesn't get better than this.

Everyone knows the story is bad. But the gameplay is bad too. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to make a 3D action game where the only controller option is the literal equivalent of an NES controller. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to give Team Ninja the Metroid IP. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to do any of the things this game does. Such a unique and intriguing disaster in every possible way.

The graphics are good for a Wii game, at least? I like that there's a secret boss that's a 3D version of the best boss in Fusion? I don't know man, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. This game is better off forgotten.

The pacing holds this game back hard. I'm a huge Fire Emblem fan and there's a lot to love here but I absolutely hate having to spend hours in between story maps doing nothing but wandering around and watching bars go up. I didn't mind it on my first playthrough, but it made subsequent playthroughs an absolute slog. The game's also obscenely ugly. This is probably one of the worst looking big budget games I've seen in a long time.

Beside those two key flaws, generally it's solid. I can see why a newcomer to the series would really love this, especially if you don't mind the slow pace. The characters are great, far more in depth than Awakening or Fates and the English dub cast does a great job, especially in the case of Dimitri. Speaking of Dimitri, this game's trio of lords are all phenomenal characters. It's good that they hinged the game's conflict on such likable characters, unlike a certain 3DS game I won't mention by name. The structure of the game into the two arcs was another solid choice. Classmates in the first act turn to bitter enemies in the second, creating a poignant feeling that I hadn't felt in a Fire Emblem game before. And I absolutely adored how the story changed in the second arc to accomodate what characters I did or didn't recruit to my house in the first.

Despite all my praise for the characters, the story has a terrible case of telling and not showing. The engine doesn't feel all that capable of telling a story like this. Whereas the 3DS games at least had itheir models for the story sections in a 3D environment, this game has them standing on a flat, weird looking, fucked up panorama that vaguely resembles the location it's supposed to represent. It's weird. Even worse, key story sections are rendered less effective by the poor presentation, as they all have this sort of plasticky quality about them. There's an abundance of moments that hit, of course, but there's a few oddball moments that don't hit the necessary beats due to the presentation.

Gameplay is about what you'd expect from Awakening or Fates: Birthright. Most maps are defeat the commander/rout the enemy, and aren't particularly complex, which isn't too awful, just not as compelling as I'd hope. There's a few maps (particularly in the first arc) that try a unique mechanic like warp tiles or switches and they all fall flat. Outside of map design, the freeflow character building of Awakening and Fates has been taken to a logical extreme, and while on paper more freedom is good, in the end characters end up feeling homogenized and sometimes there's no clear path for characters, as far as classes go. In general the sense of satisfaction you'd get from raising characters in past games (raising an early game cavalier into a busted paladin, or a frail mage into a versatile dark knight) is pretty much missing here.

Overall there's a lot I love here and some that I'm not so keen on, but it's a solid first FE game on the Switch; following the current trend, we'll probably see another Fire Emblem in 2021. Maybe that one will fix the graphics and general story presentatio problems I had with this one. I sure hope so. I'd say this is an about average Fire Emblem game. Doesn't come close to the heights of some other installments but it's not insulting in the way Fates was, and it does enough I like to put it above some of the more middling entries.

Edit: I didn't mention the soundtrack! It's excellent. The vocal main theme is amazing and so are most of the map tracks. I can see why some people might be bothered by the strange fixation on adding dubstep elements to some tracks, but it doesn't bother me all that much.

I don't think there's anything NEW I or anyone else can say about this game. It is, rightfully so, regarded as a pillar of modern game design. It is an absolute master class in its design, stupefying in its depth as the world loops back in on itself over and over, creating confounding connections and new paths forward. If you pay attention, there will be an "aha!" moment so often that it is difficult to keep up, as your arsenal expands rapidly, fundamentally changing your relationship to Zebes every single time you get a new upgrade. And all of that is just speaking on the gameplay loop itself, not even touching upon its excellent art, music, environmental storytelling, replayability, the depth of its many mechanics, the multitude of techniques to perfect, how it teaches the player through its design...

And yet, despite how influential and groundbreaking it is, it still feels extremely fresh and exciting. Plenty of games wear this influence on their sleeves, from Symphony of the Night to Hollow Knight, and although many of them succeed in their own ways, nothing may ever surpass the towering achievement that this game is.

it's still Pikmin 3, which is an excellent and oft-overlooked game, but there's a bizarre amount of little changes I don't like. The "hard mode" is easier than the Wii U's normal mode, the mission mode features extremely nerfed enemies, and the whistle takes up the ENTIRE SCREEN. Pikmin can be thrown no matter how far behind you they are. The new lock-on system is absolutely broken and trivializes most of the game. All of these so-called quality of life '''''improvements''''' serve no purpose but to make Pikmin 3, a game that was already not very difficult nor very long, an absolute cakewalk. What's the point? Was Pikmin obscure because it was too hard for most people? I doubt it. Maybe because of all the three Pikmin games, they came out originally on the two worst-selling Nintendo consoles in history? Considering that Pikmin 3 Deluxe is now the highest selling game in the series, I'd wager that's why.

So, I should be happy that they've introduced a new super-hard mode, right? Well, the new "ultra spicy" mode doesn't actually make the game harder. For whatever reason, their idea of making a Pikmin game harder was to cut the number of Pikmin in the field from 100 to 60. This absolutely doesn't make the game harder, outside of maybe boss fights, it just limits the amount of multitasking the player can do.

but I mean, I guess it's still Pikmin 3, and on a platform people actually own, so that's cool.