finished the story:
120 shrines
all memories
over 100 hours (joins team fortress 2, ssbm, xenoblade chronicles and xenoblade chronicles 2 in the 'over 100 hours club' for me).
my current impression of breath of the wild is that it's a pretty amazing thing. the amount of work that went into detail and making sure that shit wouldn't go hilariously wrong is impressive. i just saw the mass effect andromeda shit compilation from crowbcat and it really puts into perspective the discipline in the design.
breath of the wild is a reset for the series, and i'm really happy about it. the shrines are a fine replacement for dungeons - especially with so many puzzles taking place on the overworld proper. just traversing hyrule is a lot of fun and there's a lot of methods at your disposal to getting around. it kind of shames a lot of open world games that don't really let you do a lot with their playground - breath of the wild instead entices you with something just around the corner, urging you to explore. it's an action-adventure game and one of the purest examples of the genre.
in a big way, it reminded me of the first legend of zelda, which i beat as a 12 year old. i don't remember much of it, but it stuck with me for being difficult and required my wits to survive. while i definitely appreciate this from a game design perspective - removing lots of handholding, i felt like it might have gone a little too far. botw is a new template, and my big issue with it is that it felt like i was exploring that. if i was the designer, the amount of problems to be solved would have been focused squarely on the exploration aspects too, but certain elements did fall by the wayside. particularly, the storytelling is weak. i actually loved link's characterization of a somewhat cocky/straight-to-the-point knight and zelda as a science nerd and reluctant princess. beyond that, i had a hard time caring about the happenings within botw. townspeople are charming, but that's about it. there's no bigger theme at play or any larger message like in majora's mask or link's awakening. even the villain wasn't proper motivation. it wasn't dastardly or cunning - it was just a force of nature that had to be taken down. because it was evil.
i feel like the storytelling is the major failing of the design, and it's a fairly big one. the designers were right to make the cutscenes largely part of the exploration, but that's where they stopped. i felt it could have gone further and have link step into his memories - letting the player slip between cutscenes and actions from 100 years ago so there was a larger connection. or maybe the tutorial section was 100 years ago, and the game proper doesn't start until after you've visited some shrines and accompanied zelda to a couple springs. there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of consideration given to this aspect of the game, and the weak context for the game hurts it when the series has so often done a good job on that side.
i'm looking forward to the dlc, and interested about what in particular can happen next. mainly though, i'm excited for the game in the series. it has a pretty good template to work from.