It's a much harder game than normal Zelda's.
Similarly with other combat I thought it was way harder than other Zeldas. When I was near finishing the game I went online and checked "how to fight a lynel" (the hardest enemy imo). Watching that opened up some ideas and combat got much easier and more exciting. I kind of wish I had looked it up earlier. I was literally at Hyrule Castle on my way to complete the game when I looked.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game but my previous Zelda experience also limited my thinking about what's possible. I feel like I missed a large part of the game play because of that
Breath of the Wild has far more in common with the original Legend of Zelda than with the more recent games.
Some may consider that this game approaches the difficulty of the NES/SNES Zelda titles a return to form. Though, I suppose that those are not really 'Normal' Zelda games anymore.
What? Why? I did almost no side quests until after doing all the divine beasts. There's some minor things to get into the relevant towns, and to get to the beast, but they were generally fun/interesting and part of the main quest. I don't see a reason you'd have to do any of the more boring ones.
I've noticed that BOTW which is different things to different people. I mean you could just run straight up to Ganon and finish the game in under 1 hour. Or you could play it linearly, only going where the quests take you.
Personally I just ran around finding shrines, and only finished the main quests after unlocking most of the world and many shrines.