I’m yet to finish Skyward Sword, and have had an urge to revisit Wind Waker again recently. Anyone here from the OoT generation played Breath of the Wild?
OoT generation here: I never thought I'd love a game as much as OoT because I thought it captured a particular moment in late childhood where it was just a perfect fit for how my brain likes to "play". Breath of the wild proved me wrong - it's even better than Ocarina of time, at least to me. The exploration and discovery was always my favorite part of Zelda games, and BotW has that to an extreme, with just the perfect amount of contrasting fighting and only-rarely frustrating puzzles.
OoT was the first to master both story telling and third person control. It was a step above SM64 as it made you feel connected with the game's lore and characters.
I am from the ALttP generation but I think I can answer.
BotW is Zelda without the good parts (the dungeons) but with the filler in-between extended to a full game (the exploration). It's not as bad as Skyward Sword which is a disgrace but still painfully boring.
Likewise aLttP generation. I really didn’t like the lack of enemies and lack of treasure in BotW. The soundtrack and graphics were outstanding but the game was woefully repetitive and boring. I wanted to win something after so much exploration and work, and I never was rewarded for that work.
Everything in BotW has that formulaic/modular/cookie-cutter feel that a Bethesda game does. None of the side quests particularly stood out to me, whereas I’ll frequently recall hidden gem areas in OoT and Wind Waker with fondness.
It’s clear that it was a game that was produced highly in parallel, with independent parallel teams (of interns?) and obscene levels of modular asset reuse. Exploration is often rewarded with a cookie-cutter item, or (even worse) a Korok seed rather than an expansion of the lore or new stories.
Many of the things I hate about procedurally generated games or the recent spate of mass production open world games (ie Genshin Impact) are present in BotW.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are games like Dark Souls, with relatively little asset reuse and great lore-expanding rewards for exploration.
I agree with others who say that Breath of the Wild is missing a lot of things that made prior Zelda games amazing.
That said, Breath of the Wild is one of my absolute favourite games ever. I agree with criticism that the Open World can feel empty sometimes, but the places where it doesn't feel empty are incredible. The game is a huge fun sandbox for me, with tons of ways to approach different scenarios. The puzzle shrines are usually really good imo.
I'd like to see Nintendo split it out, kind of like how Metroid and Metroid Prime are two very different game styles. I would love to get new Sokoban style Zelda games, and I hope we continue to get new Breath of the Wild style Zelda games as well.
Link to the past was my first Zelda, played them all, and Breath of the Wild is unquestionably the best. Really it's the best open world game yet made, even if it's a silly Nintendo game