Copy paste from the other thread:
They reused the same armor in the four regions.
They reused like 90% of BOTWs music even the cold theme you've heard for 500 hours in BOTW.
The UI is largely the same.
Shrines still look the same.
In the depths you get BOTW DLC armor as major reward.
The story is still told through BOTW's copy pasted memory system despite the story begging for linear story telling (you were even able to spoil yourself). The story structure is very similar, even down to going to the same 4 regions again. Cutscenes after clearing the dungeons are nearly identical (Secret stones, demon king?)
There's just one new "town" in the game.
90% of assets were carried over.
Depths and sky islands sucked and had copy pasted content over and over and over.
I have no clue how they got away with this but one thing is for certain, 15 fps, 30 fps, 60 fps, 120 fps, it doesn't matter, this is the Zelda that completely damaged my trust in the team.
IDK, I don't think it can get more lazy than this. I'm not aware of any other sequel that copies so much over from its predecessor while having new content that actually sucks. For example., GoW Ragnarok had an old map carried over but it was completely different (unlike TOTK with its few irrelevant caves and one major redesign, Eldin) and the new content was fresh and exciting while TOTK's depths and sky islands were copy paste heaven and boring.
It seems like all the effort went into the building stuff which I don't care about.
The game is a direct sequel to BOTW. The map layout isn't going to change.
The towns themselves start out changed btw, in case you decide to look into it yourself instead of just copy pasting.
The entirety of Rito Village and the surrounding region is covered in snow - which is also accompanied by one of the best music tracks in game:
Once you complete the dungeon and accompanying boss fight you change it back to the state it was in BOTW. A Boss fight btw that also has it own phenomenal boss music:
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This is true for every region. The Gerudo Desert is covered in a sandstorm and the town itself is completely overrun by Gibdos - so much so that all the townfolk have hidden underground. The waters of Zoras domain are dirtied with sludge and Gorons in Death Mountain are going crazy from eating Gloom rocks. Lost Woods is completely inaccessible from ground level, you have to go down into the Depths and find your way up directly into the grove.
Your Ragnarok comparison is weird considering how much new content is in the game. You can say you don't like it but to call it lazy is actually braindead mentality. The fact that you can fuse so many things together, the fact that you can recall objects and ascend though terrain must have been a nightmare for the testing team. There are plenty of unique caves as well as sky islands. The smaller ones tend to not have anything of note but pretty much every big piece of land you see in the sky has it's own accompanying puzzle to it. The giant spheres, the three-layered labyrinths, the Thundering Isles, The skydive challenge isles, certain ones where you have to rotate parts to create walking pathways or ones where gravity is low letting you jump higher.
The depths is underutilized, there are some fun things to find though - the coliseum fights are fun, the Yiga clan bases are too easy but as you get farther in the depths they have their own traversal puzzles to them. The aforementioned Labyrinths. There's also two dungeons down there. One is fantastic, the other is pretty unique and you get to pilot your own construct.
There's 40 new armor pieces in TotK btw. And I wouldn't want the older armor gone either, and coming across a piece was always neat. You get entirely new armor for each of the regions btw, usually with "attack up" depending on the element of the region as well as the old armor from BOTW.
I agree about the story to a certain extent. What's there is mostly servicable, the tears should have unlocked the story in a set sequence instead of randomly. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
TLDR: There's a weird subset of people with a hateboner for either Zelda or Nintendo or both. As if the game being considered "great" somehow lessens their favorite franchise or something.
