I thought I was going to really love this game. Like REALLY love it. I remember playing it for the first time on a summer beach trip on my friends switch back in the summer of 2019 (god bless that summer) and the sound design alone made me fall in love. The way links boots sounded on the stone floor and how the noise reflected in the corner of the screen with pink sound waves was and still is so crisp and satisfying. And the art style. Oh my. How this is on the Wii U is shocking. Maybe my favorite looking game of all time. Absolutely gorgeous. But I just feel like there was a lot less in this game than I thought there would be. For example, how do I shield surf? How did I get 40 hours into this game, beat it, and never learn that? Where was that? Another thing is I felt like there was a real lack of variety in the shrines. I was never excited to hop into one for a challenge at all really. They felt like long and spaced out chores so I could level up my health because for some reason everything hits like a truck in this game. But what else was there to do in this game? The divine beasts and the shrines. That's all I really felt there was for me. Sure there were side quests here and there but I never ran into any worthwhile. Like sure I'll get you your heat resistant elixir but what's in it for me? Some rupees? The only thing I ever spent my rupees on was armor. Everything else was stuff I could find in the wild for free. Combat was okay I guess. Don't really care about that in a Zelda game but things like stasis and flurry rush put a nice spin on things this time around. Finale was absolutely sweet but not Majora's Mask level. There is great freedom in this game, that much is true, but it feels like there is too much empty space to take advantage of that freedom.