> Content sparsity. Like many open world games, most of Hyrule just feels dead to me. Towns aren't as populated and lively as OoT / WW / MM, the main reason being that there aren't as many overlapping storylines that have you return to the same location as you progress through the game. The game basically encourages you to clear a region and never return. The random encounters are repetitive.
> The shrines, what the heck were they thinking?! It feels like Nintendo hired a bunch of interns that year and needed to give them something to do. All the shrines were clearly made in a generic level editor. Felt really out of place to me.
> Most of the music in BoTW is quiet and subdued, unlike previous entries in the series. This is good for setting a certain tone, but it's less effective unless there's some flashier music to contrast with. To me, the lack of music made the game feel even emptier.
> Shallow combat mechanics, even compared to other entries in the series like OoT. Just mash buttons until enemy dead. Armor / weapons don't really matter beyond the stat boosts and occasionally some elemental matching. Guardians / Lynels require some strategy, but once you figure out the tricks it's not hard to brute force those too.
I had fun playing, for sure. It just doesn't rank very highly on my list. I'm looking forward to BotW 2, where hopefully they'll use their game engine to make a great game!
I think the sparsity of people is deliberate, it's post apocalyptic where most travelers you encounter are probably assassins from an enemy cult.
In general I felt like it was the result of a very different game approach than something like cyberpunk, where they added small things to the game one by one while making sure they meshed and were polished to a mirror finish.
The one in the Korok forest where you have to figure out the relationship between the star map and the stones took me a long time and felt so satisfying to complete.
The game is polarising because it works only for a certain kind of player. I love just jumping in a random point of the map to chill and explore and suddenly find some surprise in the middle of nowhere, but if you prefer some linear and story-driven game I don't think BOTW is for you.
Hilariously, I had the opposite experience. BotW was the first Zelda game I played extensively (I have some memories from OoT and MM because a friend had an N64 back in the day, but never played it myself for anything more than 10 minutes).
After finishing BotW, I wanted to play the Link's Awakening remake. But I had to walk away from it after about an hour because the endless barrage of music was annoying me to no end. (I have since adjusted to it.) I'm currently playing Age of Calamity, where the soundtrack does not feel as obnoxious because there's actual action going on all the time. After that, I might be able to go back to Link's Awakening.
Also:
> it's less effective unless there's some flashier music to contrast with
IMO there is tons of flashy music in this game. The cities' motifs, the champion's motifs, the castle music, the Divine Beast tracks, the fight tracks in general. I have hours-long playlists of all of that as my go-to background music for work.
Then I got a Switch for Christmas last year (I didn't ask for one, they just sprung it on me), and proceeded to buy and play through the game in its entirety again.
A strange mixture of pleasant, mildly challenging, big and awe inspiring world.