Shrines are awesome.
I think in BotW they just bore too much of the burden of the gameplay loop. Like pretty much everything significant ended in a shrine. Even if the stuff to get to them was varied and had environmental puzzles and riddles in the world, it still ended in a shrine. Which is fine, but that’s where I agreed with the “well shrines should have more variety then if they’re gonna be the core thing”
In TOTK it’s different though. Shrines still have the same very important purpose, but they aren’t the end goal of everything you do. I can go into a cave (which can have varied looks, lengths, obstacles), explore it, solve a puzzle or fight a boss and get a unique piece of armor. I can go to a sky island, solve an environmental puzzle or beat a boss and get a sages will. I can explore the depths and get schema stones as rewards, beat hard enemy encounters and get battery upgrades or unique armors as rewards. No shrines involved.
There’s way more permanent upgrades in TotK, and a much bigger variety of how you get them. BotW has none of that. Hell the only examples of non purchasable armor were found IN shrines lol.
Hell, I’ve found myself solving a sky island puzzle, getting a super cool new armor and thinking that was the end of it and being totally satisfied, only to find a blessing shrine right after. At that point it’s just the cherry on top, like I didn’t even expect it or need it lol.
So I find myself resonating less with the shrine complaints I shared with BotW, because they’re just a part of something much bigger and more varied here. In BotW I wanted them more varied because they were the end goal of everything, in TotK they’re a comfortable constant in a massively more varied world.