First of all, that final battle was a wild ride! One of the phases took me a minute to figure out, but it was so much fun, and really connected with some of the unique themes of this entry.
I didn’t get nearly as close to 100% as I did in BotW. In the first game, I did every shrine and all of the side quests, but there is just so much more content to this game. I worried that if I tried to complete everything before the final battle, the game would overstay its welcome, and I would finish with a feeling of “just get it over with.”
I’ve actually found that sentiment to be true with a lot of larger games recently. I want to end on a high emotional note, even if it means completing less side content.
I think it is a combination of multiple things.
The game is just too big for me. I have spent roughly the same amount of time on totk as I did on botw, but there is so much left to do.
Then, 2/5 of the world (the surface) is recycled which removes some of the joy of exploring, although I was pleasantly surprised by how different it was. Another 2/5 of the world (the depth) just aren’t that appealing to me. What made me enjoy exploration in botw was constantly seeing something on the horizon that piqued my interest, which just doesn’t work if the world is super dark.
Lastly, I am not really the creative type. I don’t get much joy out of building cool stuff with ultrahand, and other than that the gameplay is largely unchanged from botw, which made it feel a bit stale. For example, I really think they should have overhauled the combat mechanics more. Even in botw combat felt rather simplistic, and after another 100 hours of the same it got really boring.