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.
Yes I know, I've played through all of that and the game does have some awesome moments (like the leadup to the Wind Temple and its boss fight)
However, this is the bare minimum you would expect in a game like this. They can't send you on the exact mission again, people would be more likely to call that out than changing a few things down the road. They changed the towns a little, some more than others, but in the end these are still the same towns. The map had so much potential to have rebuilt towns like Hyrule Market. Hateno had a cool side mission, a school and some mushrooms here and there, but is that all you expect for this kind of money in this kind of game? I expect much more. They even copy pasted the same "Guy wants to impress a girl with crickets, but only this time its frogs" side mission, I was genuiely shocked as just like in BOTW, there was no resolve of this story. Just copy pasting without even improving it. In general, the map had a lot of potential, they could have scattered 30 unqiue mini dungeons in it instead of 150 same-y looking shrines (which was a major criticism people had with BOTW, but instead of improving the concept they just made more and called it a day just like with the other aspects of it, it's genuiely so frustrating).
I was actually not disappointed when it was revealed TOTK would reuse the same map as I've already imagined them changing the map so much with actual good content that it would feel like a fresh map again, similar to Midgard in GOW Ragnarök. I didn't expect them to masterfully waste this potential so much, as from the Zelda team we are used to expect effort and innovation.
I realize the effort that went into the building mechanic and testing, yes you are right this was likely a nightmare. But that is not my problem, I don't care about the building mechanic, I've never asked for it and I'd much rather have a solid Zelda game instead.
As for the sky islands, most of them were generic copy paste deliver the green stone X to point Y. Thunderhead Islands, the sky island with the mirror puzzle and the big labyrinths were welcome exceptions, but again, not nearly enough as the Sky was the big selling point for the game.
Yiga hideouts in the depths were fine but ultimately copy pasted busywork yet again. From the depths I remember the big mine with the eye side quest and fighting Master Koga but those were the only standouts to me, I don't remember much else, except for the fire and spirit temple of course which were decent. All in all though for a map this big the amount of unqiue content is disastrous and it really shows how this game had quantity over quality like no other.
TOTK has been the most letdown I've ever being in a video game, and more of that, I had blind trust in the Zelda team that was completely shattered by all their actions I've mentioend above, sadly.
