I'm not a big fan of Shrines coming back, despite some good puzzles in them, alongside the Koroks, to be clear, Breath of the Wild suffered in some ways with its content and visual repetition, not going to deny that, but I also let slide some of that because they clearly had to build a ton from the ground up, not just even the game itself but rethinking foundations of the series and how to move it forward, one can always ask for more, but BotW as it is, is good enough for that first attempt. So I won't give TotK as much of a pass now, shrines have a new background and music, but is still just one background and music track, and I don't get why bring them back, now with sky island and the depths, they could have contextualized puzzles into the great world of Hyrule, instead of being separated from it, also would make the rewards more umpredictable, like maybe I'll find a puzzle that gives me a stamina boost in this cave or something, or a heart in this sky island, without the need of loading times, going in and then back out just for a treasure chest + orb combo in some shrines, shrine treasure chests being far worse now since it seems all the armor sets are spread in the overworld, meaning that for the most part nothing cool will come from them in shrines, reduce visual repetition and make finding rewards more organic. Korok seeds are back with mostly the same puzzles plus a particularly annoying one of reuniting 2 friends, some are pretty tricky and for only 2 seeds where the pouch upgrade requirements keep increasing, it doesn't really feel worth the effort, compared to the more painless mini puzzles, with a far more populated Hyrule and more places to explore, they could have tied pouch upgrades as rewards from quests or just finding them in the world, again something a bit more organic in terms of exploration and discovery and not make more stuff feel like just a rehash of BotW. The shrine quality is inconsistent, there are some shrines that basically act as tutorials, like in the Gerudo area there will be one for a sand vehicle and the light and mirrors classic puzzle, and idk, think these are pretty intuitive to really require a shrine just for that, respect player intelligence but then have all this to kind of beat you over the head with feels counterintuitive. This also extends to the fusing, a lot of locations where you would need to combine stuff already have something done as a guide instead of letting the player figure it out, more so with optional stuff, like in th thunder temple where is not required to create a mirror shield to do the puzzles, but it would make someone feel smarter to come up with that to solve puzzles faster, but the dungeon hands you one already made from the enemies, kind of takes away from the core mechanic.
letterboxd.com
, not bad for someone who hates BOTW.
