I’m on about 40-50 hours. I’m still playing but I checked out mentally after the conclusion of the Goron main quest. Why should I give time and attention to the story when there’s barely any effort put into the narrative and characters? Even worse is when the story treats you like a child. I get it’s supposed to appeal to all including younger audiences but surely there’s a way to do that while making it genuinely interesting as an adult.

The side quests are ok. The exploration isn’t cutting it for me because I’ve already played BOTW, and the novelty of the world has worn off with that. The sky islands and depths, while cool at first, simply isn’t even enough. The copy-pasted sky islands are egregious considering how few of them there are. When travelling to a destination, it’s almost never worth dropping down to check something out.

The new abilities are way better, but again after 10-15 hours it isn’t enough. There’s only so many puzzles involving building something before it becomes tedious because that ability is used EVERYWHERE. The fuse ability rarely makes a difference with its unique attributes it gives to weapons, most of the time being used to just increase damage. You end up just hoarding weapons, then when its time, drop a bunch of materials with the highest fuse power, fuse, use weapons and repeat. It would be the same if all weapons was just buffed and remove the need for that part.

I’m a bit annoyed that the shrine system hasn’t been improved upon or reformed at all. It sucks going into a shrine always knowing what reward you’ll get. Rewards are always equal, but not all shrines are equal. For the shrines where the reward is just finding/unlocking them, why do I still have to go INTO the shrine? Just give me the spirit orb. It’s also great stumbling across a tutorial shrine that teaches you how to parry when I’m 20 hours in.

The new divine dungeons have better bosses, but the dungeones themselves are essentially 5 mini shrines in one with a reward worth less than 5 shrines.

Really disappointing compared to my first 15 hours of BOTW. I’m just glad I’m not playing on the Switch’s hardware. It’s not necessarily a bad game, not at all, and I’ll keep playing it casually… but I’m a bit perplexed at how positive the critical reception has been.