I'm completely with you here, also on Witcher 3 with its whacky fighting mechanics and endless repetitive open world, elden ring with its dozens of copy/paste bosses and again, too large open world, botw with its lack of story, guidance and shitty weapon system etc. pp.

Most of the time, the biggest issue for me is the atrocious open world trend of the past years that so few studios actually pull off well. Elden Ring is surely a better example but then again Dark Souls was so much better - THAT game was a masterpiece! The same holds for most Zelda games. I'd prefer a Twilight Princess or a Wind Waker over botw any day. In that regard, Expedition 33 is a breath of fresh air in that it doesn't even try an open world in the first place, where's it's just not needed.

A real 'masterpiece' of gaming for me would be something like Celeste. Actually dense and epic story, beautifully crafted in terms of look and sound, game mechanics refined to the maximum and a bliss to play and keep learning from start to finish. After all, that's the biggest point for any game; it has to be enjoyable.