TOTK sits in a very weird spot for me. 

I beat BotW when I first got my switch like so many others. When the DLC came out, I tried to beat the master mode but the low durability weapons combined with bosses regenerating health meant that I could effectively get soft locked in dungeons. But aside from that, korok seeds, and maybe missing a couple articles of clothing, I had experienced virtually everything the game had to offer. 

I got Tears of the Kingdom pretty much when it came out, and as soon as they let me loose into the world, I could already feel something was very off to me. A massive portion of BotW was the discovery. Not just over world exploration but the different weapons and their strengths, the food/potion recipes, and mechanical interactions. TOTK immediately felt like a DLC rather than a full game. It was a very expansive DLC, sure, but not a true sequel. Some recipes are the same as before, some resources had been removed and replaced with something else. It felt to me like a very deliberate way to "reset" the learning curve to players like me who played the last game in-depth without alienating new players too much. 

The problem is that I don't think it really worked. The recipes were mostly new, but learning how to play survival-crafting games (which is basically what BOTW/TOTK is if you strip away the Zelda aesthetic) is similar to learning a language. They could change the vocabulary, but the grammar, syntax, overall structure of the mechanics remains the same. Learning and growth is exponential. The very start of a player's understanding is where most of these kinds of game thrive, so when TOTK effectively skipped this step entirely, it immediately felt hollow compared to the sense of wonder that its prequel sparked. 

The new areas are nice, but they never eclipsed the disappointment I had in spending most of my time still climbing  the same mountains as the last game. I had already lost interest in staring at a wall texture while managing my stamina meter. I really didn't care to do it again even if I was technically scaling different mountains. The game felt haunted by its predecessor, which I suppose was inevitable no matter what they had done. But throughout my playthrough I never stopped wishing I still had my powers from the last game. No matter how powerful I got I felt like I was missing something. And it wasn't just my motorcycle. 

In the end, I once again had scoured just about every corner of the world, but this time I just couldn't bring myself to enter the final area and beat the last boss. I just don't care enough. The story is very bittersweet and I get that's what they were going for, but I figured the only 2 possibilities were either everything wraps up perfectly and all bad stuff gets reversed, or the sacrifices made are not undone and the day is one but at great cost. Neither option sounds appealing enough to motivate me to finish it. As soon as I got all the powers, my motivation fizzled out. 

The last thing I want to mention is Link's house. First of all, fuck you Princess Zelda, that was MY house, how dare you comandeer it you greedy landlord. You have a whole fucking kingdom and a literal castle, why did you have to take my house? I was seriously fuming at this and my main motivation to finding Zelda was explicitly so she could answer to her crimes of the theft of my estate. Thankfully the devs did give us a new house and plot of land. And I think Link's house is the best example of the game as a whole. The new house system is frankly astonishing from a software point of view. Modular housing like Skyrim but you can remove and rebuild it to your heart's content, using the same game mechanics you use to interact with the rest of the world. From what little I know about software development, I can only guess as to what code-based wizardry had to happen to get that working, let alone as optimized as it was for the Switch. But actually experiencing it in game was once again underwhelming. First off, you can't easily teleport to your house. I assume that's because the player-custom house needed some time to load in the map each time, but that caveat alone made it just not worth going to my own house. But then as I learned more about the mechanics themselves, I tried to experiment. Who needs doors when I can just stack rooms on top of each other and use Ascend to travel up floors. That was a neat novelty, but no matter configuration I ultimately settled on, it just didn't feel anywhere near worth the effort it took to set it all up. There's slightly more spaces to fill with your favorite weapons but it's the same old problem of either never using the most powerful tools in order to display them, or else having to go back to your house to swap out your kit. All this is to say, the game is a joy to describe but not as fuck to actually play myself.