@Switchcraft The same thing happened to me on 898 of 900 Korok seeds before they released the tracker mask. Imagine my terror.
And stimulating shrines were pretty rare. There were the two blue fire ones which were fun to progress in, and I appreciated the Shadow Temple nod. I think the most well rounded shrine was the one at the bottom of the hill you had to roll the snowball down a track to get into. It actually had a shrine inside (it was one of the blue fire ones) instead of just a reward load.
I liked the Gerudo Colossus puzzle but that was just another reward shrine. I remember the throne of thunder or whatever it was called being disappointing when I finally came back to it.
And of course the two that made you use cryonis differently were good because it was the only time a 3D Zelda item has progressed since like 2011.
When I am at the mazes in BotW, I always assume they are same labyrinths from the original LoZ. Because the dungeons in that game were called Labyrinths and were very maze-like.
I really like the mazes, including the dark one, the music and feeling they have give me some of that fuzzy sense of wonder that ancient ruins and some abandoned places give (which is basically all over the place in this game).
It's like the Forest Temple (OoT) and the Snowpeak Ruins.
The mazes kind of ruined the Lost Woods for me because they reused the music but I heard it there first so its specialness had been diminished.
They seem just like giant ways to fill space on the barren map to me. Totally incomperable to either real Zelda dungeons or lead up areas like the Sacred Meadow (which wasn't even a maze it just had tight corners and limited view angles).
I preferred the sand seals in gameplay because they were obviously a lot more fluid, I wish they had more use than two boss fights and crossing the empty areas of Gerudo. And I guess it's possible that camels and mammoths were around during the time of the techno Sheikah when the Divine Beasts were built... but that was never explained, and there were none in the entire rest of the series.
There are also no Dodongos, which is presumably what the Rudania was fashioned after, not a mere little lizard.
I wanted to ride a Dodongo and fire breath people GTA style. Sad.
Also, on people who say Breath of the Wild critics expected too much, Nintendo employees did say that there would be dungeons during Treehouse live. Aonuma or Trinen said that Breath would be 'like the ultimate Zelda game,' those words left their mouths. We're only guilty of taking the Zelda team at their word.
Alrightey, finally finished the game. These are my thoughts, which people have no doubt been waiting anxiously for (brief spoilers, obviously). Sorry for the length, but then I guess this thread has slowed down in terms of activity. Happy to hear any counterpoints:
Positives
-Brilliantly designed beautiful world with so much variety of locations.
-Except for Goron City, the rest of the towns were some of the best in any Zelda game. This Goron City was awful compared to the cool one in Ocarina.
-Best fighting mechanics in any Zelda game, easily.
-The puzzle variety and quality was incredible. In the shrines and on the overworld. Big environmental puzzles on the overworld were one of the highlights of the game.
-Almost no poorly designed or written characters. All were interesting and distinct. The 4 champions especially I liked a lot. And Prince Sidon of course.
-The 4 divine beasts are easily 4 of my all time best Zelda dungeons. I love the setting of being part of a giant beast where you can see the rest of the world in the background (camel and bird especially). The length of them was just perfect for me. I can't be doing with Twilight Princess length dungeons. And I like dungeons where the whole thing is just 1 continuous puzzle rather than just a series of random rooms in a row.
-I love the shrines. Dividing the total number of puzzles up into smaller chunks than in regular Zelda is a big improvement in my opinion.
-Hyrule castle shocked me with how good it was. That's the definitive example of how to do an open-world dungeon.
-There's something meaningful about the broader world layout. It's designed so you can see Hyrule castle from so many points, building an increasing sense of tension for the upcoming confrotation. And then the completed dungeons become permanent landmarks on the map, reminding you that you're getting closer to being ready for that confrontation and you feel less capable ignoring it. Zelda dungeons have never felt like they have such story importance as this. You normally just fetch a macguffin and then the dungeon effectively deletes itself from existence.
Negatives
-Needed a LOT more story. The story stops it feeling as epic as the gameplay and setting suggest it should be. I really wanted a narrative on the scale of something like Xenoblade Chronicles for a game this big. In terms of the narrative, Twilight Princess feels more epic a game than this, which it shouldn't.
-As with lots of Zelda games, so little incentive to 100% the game, or even get close to that. Once you've got the Master Sword, there's no real incentive to keep looking for shrines. Needed 1 more goal to aim for in terms of shrines completed. Same with Korok seeds. Collecting only about half of them is enough. No reason to bother with more.
-Almost none of the bosses are memorable. Maybe the first stage of Ganon. That's about it. I couldn't even tell you what the moves of the first Blight boss I fought had been.
-Needed a lot more voice acting. What was the point of even bothering for such a small amount?
-Maybe an ending longer than 2 minutes? C'mon, FF9 had like a 20 minute ending.
Overall
Incredibly close to being a perfect game for me. Mostly just the story issue holds it back. More story could also have fixed the problem of a lack of incentive beyond a certain point, as you tie the story up into that completion rate. I think what they should've done is have a new memory unlock every time you do 10 shrines (12 memories=120 shrines). And then if those memories were significantly longer, it'd be a good incentive to push towards completionism.
Those issues aside, the game is just so good in its gameplay, puzzles and world design, that it's way up the top of the list of Zelda games for me. I think it's probably 2nd behind Ocarina. There are just so many moments of magic in this that I think I'll remember for years to come. What this game does that seems almost unique is it makes really cool gameplay mechanics be more memorable because you used them to interact with a memorable location in a world you feel invested in.
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