Bodysuit 23 #760 (Patreon)

I've been enjoying The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a lot.

First, I'll go through the stuff I'm not super hot on:

Still not a fan of the combat. Yes, it's nice that instead of wandering around looking for high powered weapons like in BotW you can build them using items, it's still not something I'll do if I can help it. However, I did recently finish my first dungeon (desert), and like in BotW you get powers for completing them. The one I got was the ability to have a bolt of lighting come down by firing an arrow that deals a huge amount of damage and stuns enemies. Low level enemies die in one hit by it. Since getting that combat has been more enjoyable.
It also explodes rocks, so I've been using it for mining and when exploring blocked tunnels in caves.

The story is take it or leave it. Side quest text I speed read as it doesn't grab my attention most of the time.

Start of the game felt really slow. Unlike BotW where you're thrown into the tutorial area within a matter of a minute, there's a bunch of cinematics and junk you have to get through at the start of TotK. This goes back to my not being engaged with the story.

Okay, enough of that.

Exploring is fun. I really enjoyed exploring BotW, and wandering around in TotK is just as fun despite it being mostly the same locales. The addition of caves has helped with keeping it fresh. I'll be walking along and then see this cave and immediately run in. Some of them have large, complicated networks too, like the area in front of Hyrule Castle. And best of all, with the power to jump through the ceiling to leave, there's no boring backtracking you have to do! Once you're done, you hop through the ceiling and you're back in the over world. 

The ability to create vehicles like in Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts adds to the fun. I like making hover crafts and floating about, or cars to drive around and crash off cliffs.

The shrines are better in this compared to BotW. All the new abilities you get open up the number of possibilities to complete them. There were some shrines in BotW that you could complete in ways that the designers didn't mean for you to, but it felt accidental. With TotK it looked like they watched videos of people getting creative and went "Let's do that but with all the shrines."

If you loved BotW, you will love TotK. It builds upon its foundation to create a new engaging experience. If you didn't like BotW, I can't see this changing your mind as it still shares the same DNA.