James Morton  👾

The shrines are easily the best part of the game for me. I haven't gotten to any of the Divine Beasts yet, since I felt like they were "endgame". Maybe I should get to them sooner?

Definitely fire it up and try one! I did the Divine Beasts immediately since I usually am not a fan of side content. However, my taste and enjoyment from games has changed in the past couple of months where now I'm enjoying content that's not strictly from the main storyline.

That's fair, I'll give that a try next time I load it up. I'm usually all for side stuff and getting distracted, but I found the game and world surprisingly empty and lacking, aside from hunting shrines. I must have been doing something wrong.

I think in the beginning of the game there's this weird "feast or famine" moment where either you discover a rich world or you don't and it colors your opinion of the game. Personally felt like the starting area could have been better designed to avoid that issue.

Absolutely. I loved how they gave you all the tools up front, but once I finished the obvious quests in Karariko, it's just "wander and hope you find stuff to do". I wandered, and either found trivial boring things, or one-shotting mobs. My main complaint with Zelda, tbh.

This was also my experience! Other people I talked to found awesome gear that allowed them to explore more places with better puzzles/interesting enemies and here I was limited to the swamp since I didn't happen upon the right chest or finding some spicy pepper plant.

Yeahhh, that's exactly my problem with the "just wander" design. Some people find the expected path and have an amazing time, others don't and the game feels utterly broken. I should probably find a guide to follow to see if it helps me get grabbed.

Pick it up and decide on a Divine Beast you want to conquer. You don't need an obscene amount of hearts or grip strength to solve the puzzles or smash the bosses (I have 10 hearts and didn't have problems with end-game content).