Effectively skipping the tower by gliding straight on to the top is good, but not exactly a puzzle.
Which is good in my book. Imo the classical overworld puzzles in Zelda have overstayed their welcome for some 10 years and the serie's better off having gotten rif of it:
"Yeah, there's this strangely glowing blue block and the green goo mass invariably blocking access to the place you want to be. Why not use your asinine puzzle trigger items of telekinesis-on-strangely-glowing-blue-blocks and your magic vacuum of green-goo-removal. But not unless you've completed the dungeon providing you with those magical items that are the only means in the whole world of Hyrule of overcoming these obstacles."
I've said it in another thread, but on the most abstract level, "puzzles" in Zelda amount to this:
Child's play said:
The more specific and contrieved the puzzle items are, the more closely the puzzles resemble that child's toy above. And since OoT, MM and WW, items and puzzle abilities have tended to become more and more contrieved. The low points still being the train of spirit tracks and the gear (maybe also the wrecking ball) in Twilight Princess for me.
Personally, being presented with a tower which has a base covered in thorns, which can be burned, avoided by reaching another high place and gliding onto the tower, or by using an updraft to fly upwards, either created through t
hat one ability of the game, or by making a fire in the environment, is quiet a bit more compelling. It gets rid of the pretentious puzzle rubbish ("but, but, but... you can't because we couldn't help ourselves and
had to make it into a puzzle and you just
have to use this one specifc item") and flows a lot more naturally. And it doesn't force them to build environments which are plain idiotic, just so your progress is really,
really blocked until you've solve that one "
puzzle". The forest path is blocked by a bunch of monsters? Get back, walk into the forest and exit it another way, not "mandatorily beat up all five monsters and stick green puzzle item here". That's what BotW introduces in terms of world to Zelda and in our playthrough, it's been really refreshing for me.
There's still room for a lot of environmental puzzles. But ones that aren't item gated for no good reason, other than the game's creators previously bein gunable to get over their early 90's formula. White bird puzzle in the mountains? No item gating whatsoever, but quiet a clever puzzle. Entering the lost woods? No item gating either, but still a compelling puzzle.
