My problem was that it had the same gameplay loop. Find shrines to upgrade your health and stamina. Find Koroks to upgrade inventory space. Many of the Koroks were even in the same place as the previous game. I didn't do any Koroks that required more that 2 seconds of effort because in the time it took to carry a guy to his friend, I could have got 10 more by picking up suspicious rocks. So it really just felt more of the same in that regard.

And honestly, I hated shrines in BotW, so I was very disappointed to not only see them come back, but for them to be the main part of the gameplay loop once again. And just the fact that so many things were in the same places as in BotW felt lazy imo. I had to get all the same outfits again with the same perks.

It's a weird feeling. I simultaneously felt like TotK was much better than BotW, but also I didn't enjoy it as much, I think because I felt like I was just playing the same game again with a few new mechanics. It felt more like an expansion to me than a whole new game.

Yeah but some of that stuff doesn't really do anything for me. The depths are alright, the sky map is too empty, with most of the islands looking nearly the exact same, the caves all have the same look. The abilities are cool, crafting is cool, new characters are nice. I hate everything about korok seeds, and the Hudson puzzles can easily be cheesed to the point that you can use the same solution for almost all of them.