It was me that asked about the composer! My experience was pretty similar to Dmax's, but I did hit the snow area during the exploration demo intending to head towards Mt. Hylia and was surprised to see how quickly the cold damages you - barely a few metres into the snow I was losing like 1/2 a heart a second so I had to abandon that. Also I consistently kept drowning while swimming from the stamina drain so it doesn't seem like swimming is going to be a good way to get around - you lose stamina in the water at about the same rate as climbing (from my estimate) or possibly even faster. I also ran out of stamina while climbing 2 or 3 times. I think to get more freedom of exploration you'll definitely need some stamina-enhancing items, but I didn't want to waste time in the demo cooking. Some other random thoughts:
- The size of the map when zoomed out doesn't seem to be deceptive (i.e. with artificial barriers within the part where it fades out) - I put a pin on the monster on Death Mountain and it was pushing out towards the edge of the map.
- The controls of the runes (mostly the bomb one) bugged me a bit because their use of L and R instead of ZL and ZR felt unintuitive and I kept pulling out the bow by mistake when trying to detonate my bombs. This would probably go away with a bit more exposure, though I think I would prefer if I could swap into rune mode or bow mode instead of having both on separate buttons.
- The Guardians can take a lot of punishment. I went and found the one in the ground at the Eastern Abbey and 10 arrows in its weak spot barely made a dent in its health bar. The music for the Guardian fight is awesome.
- There were a lot of long loading screens - after deaths, going into shrines, fast travelling. Ate up more time of my demo than I would've liked.
- I opened 2 chests during the exploration demo and both had 10 arrows - unsure if this was changed for the demo but I think it likely; one of them was in a Bokoblin Lair near the Eastern Abbey and was a pretty gnarly looking chest so I was disappointed not to get a cool item out of it.
- I miss rolling! Felt strange not being able to do it after playing through Wind Waker very recently.
- Using the inventory system myself has really got me wondering how traditional Zelda items will transition into this game (e.g. Bottles, the Hookshot, the Boomerang, etc.), or if they even will at all. Would the Hookshot be a breakable item? What if you needed it for a dungeon? If it's unbreakable, how is that balanced with the breakables? Would it go in the weapon slot or the "important items" menu? If so how will it fit into the control scheme? It's not like there's buttons to assign items to either. Perhaps they'll phase out the items entirely, but if that's truly the case then this game is much further removed from what one would normally call a "Zelda" game than I had thought even just through cause and effect; no key items means no progression gating or backtracking to new areas outside of the runes, which you get fairly quickly. ALBW pushed the normal Zelda item system in a different way, but I'm definitely interested to see more of how BotW handles it.
- Similarly, once you obtain the Master Sword or (if they're in the game) the Hylian/Mirror shields, will the whole "picking up new weapons and breaking old ones for crits" system become completely pointless? I don't see the Master Sword being breakable, unless it maybe degrades in condition and damage and then you have to repair it.
Can also attest to performance, IQ and DoF issues - hopefully the game gets a bit of a boost on the NX.
Despite that though, the game feels great, controls quite well, has a beautiful art style, a gorgeous soundtrack and a palpable sense of adventure. The demo has definitely gotten me pumped for the full release, but I have a lot of unanswered questions I'd like to see answered.