- I liked the divine beasts a lot more than any of the shrines. actually found shrines to be a let down - puzzles were too easy but more importantly too isolated and straightforward. many puzzles in oot/mm, in the gbc games (these being most recent other Zelda games I've replayed) had puzzles that took place over multiple rooms, and could have overarching themes for a few puzzles in a row. All the puzzles in botw were just single one-offs. - furthermore feel that the aesthetic design of the shrines was boring, especially spread over 120 different shrines. they all looked the same inside, had the same music, etc. - the above is a shame because I adore the artstyle otherwise. Imagine shrines that look like zoras domain inside? - music was cool. Motifs from songs in past games came through in e.g. rito village or zoras domain, but the first time I really felt like "wow this is a song I've definitely actually heard before" was in ganons castle, which to me was thematically interesting. - speaking of music, my least favorite track was the horse riding music... because it kept restarting if you slowed down too much! and the intro to that song is so long. for a game about exploring off the beaten path where you're expected to stop and look around a lot, I really didn't like this - horse riding was also annoying in so many other ways. couldn't quick travel with a horse, couldn't summon a horse from too afar with the whistle, mean that using a horse has too many obstacles. horses getting stuck on rocks, the Auto-steering on paths being inconsistent, and the tame-ness mechanics resulting in being hard to control. - for as easy as the puzzles are, combat could be brutally difficult. One mistake costs you 8 hearts in the early-mid ham game, depending on your armor. Was this game meant for kids with easy puzzles, or meant for older gamers with hard combat? - loved exploring for its own sake, didn't always love exploring for puzzles and objectives. - Many times the most obvious and straightforward solution to a puzzle was to brute force it with stamina and climbing. example: gerudo tower. It's literally faster to skip the "puzzle" part of that (getting to a high enough vantage point to glide onto the tower high enough to get to a platform quickly) by just gliding from wherever with a 3 stamina wheel and climbing that whole way... which is BORING. it shouldn't be easier and it certainly shouldn't be FASTER to solve something in the most boring way possible. This happened a lot in shrines too - bring fire arrows in to skip any puzzle involving fire. Why??? - my favorite puzzles/shrines were the ones that took place in the overworld, such as the koroks challenges, the various shrine quests, and the dark forest where you couldn't see. None of these were particularly hard but they were more interesting than the basic shrines. My next favorite were tests of strength. There were a few other standouts on the internal shrine puzzles, but not many. - the voice acting was okay, but a bit awkward at times. felt like a voice direction thing - characters forced to talk fast in order - VERY good feeling at the end to walk into the ganon fight with the green tunic, master sword, and hylian shield equipped. I had first run into that room while exploring the castle, and left because I didn't want to fight yet. while I liked all the different armors, there was something just so satisfying about putting the green tunic on at the end after getting all the puzzles done. - my experience with finishing off the shrines was quite anticlimactic, my last shrine was just a modest test of strength. A bit disappointing and it highlights my issue with the lack of structure in the game - no structure = no difficulty curve. - enemy variety was a bit poor to my taste, though the series doesn't have a huge amount of enemies in the first place. - koroks were among the worst design decisions I've seen. 0 challenge to the puzzles, limited variety of possible puzzles. the game boils down to just finding them in the world, it's always obvious what to do. feels in many ways that the goal was Just to 'reward' the player for 'exploring' - final boss a little anticlimactic