This might have been my most anticipated game ever, and it let me down immensely. Something is just not right about this game. The gameplay was fun at first, but eventually it began to wear on me. The new abilities were great, though, I enjoyed using them. I had a fun time hunting down enemies and bosses to use their horns as new fusing material and using shield fuses to cheese shrines and get around quicker. I had a lot of fun using the new building mechanic, too, of course. Sometimes it all felt a little clunky, though, and made the menus a chore to get through. Unfortunately it feels like there's even more busy work than in BotW, which is why it wore me down- There's more shrines, more koroks, more side quests, but all of them are significantly less fun and rewarding. I did actually manage to complete all the shrines in this game, a feat I couldn't finish in my 6 years of playing BotW, but it was not worth it. The depths were cool at first, too, but eventually I realized it was just a droning expanse of darkness and gloom with little to keep me interested other than the old map locations and the lightroots to tell me where the shrines were. It doesn't really feel tied to the core experience of the game, either, just tossed in to make the game seem even bigger. The sky is equally empty. And the story, GOD the story, I think it is genuinely bad. No matter how hard I attempt to understand people who think its the pinnacle of Zelda, I just can't. It doesn't try to do anything special, or try to do anything at all really. There was a sense of mystery and excitement that the trailers gave me that just wasn't the same in-game. They bait and switch long-time Zelda fans with an Imprisoning War name-drop only to show us an event that's completely unrelated (and continue to show us that same event over and over ad nauseam). The lack of a story structure just does not work in this case and it ends up making me feel removed from what little story they have in the first place and leaves me annoyed when they show me what's essentially the same cutscene 4-5 times juuust in case I missed the other ones. It barely even acknowledges the game its a sequel to and resets the status quo in so many places. The only cool and interesting thing they do is turn Zelda into a dragon. Even then, I was able to see it coming from the first memory and it STILL had absolutely no proper build up or reason for me to care, especially since I could tell they weren't going to let her stay like that or let her choice have any consequence. The temples were a little fun (especially compared to the Divine Beasts) but still way too free-form compared to typical for me to get any real enjoyment out of them. The build-up to the Wind Temple was awesome and the boss music was a jam. I had decent fun with the Fire Temple, too, but it wasn't as good. The worst one by far was definitely the Water Temple- I was able to skip over most of the puzzles and its just so short. The Lightning Temple was great, though, it's the only one I felt like wasn't hindered by the free-form structure of the game, and aaaalmost felt like a traditional Zelda dungeon. The final boss was pretty alright, and I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it weren't bogged down by such a mediocre game. There was a level of spectacle to the final that had me hooked, and their pre-credits ending almost got me. If I enjoyed the story to begin with I'm sure it would have, as everything comes full circle in a way that could have been satisfying but wasn't. I wish this game ended up differently, it feels like something was changed in development or didn't pan out and just changed the direction of the game. This game just isn't what I want out of a Zelda game and it feels like it doesn't respect anything that came before it. I had a decent time and the game had its moments (maybe more than this highly critical review would let on), but overall it leaves a lot to be desired. Seeing all the waves of praise this game is getting with little to no criticism makes me scared for the future of what I might consider my favorite game series.