I don’t know what percentage I finished at but I at least reached my goal of getting every shrine and lightroot. This is a picture I took after finishing my playthrough.
I'm over 80 hours in and I'm not even close to finishing the main quest. I've done 2 of the 4 initial temples, lots of shrines and korok seeds, but taking my time and enjoying every new section of the map. Not in a hurry, I've been enjoying other games in between. Plus, if this is anything like BotW, I'll still be playing it 3 or 4 years from now.
I'm like 40 hours in, did all the temples and now am searching for tears. Kind of slowed down on the game though, still struggle with lynels and ain't touching no gleeoks for a while, haha.
I ended off with about 150 hours aswell. I didn't make a super large push to do absolutely everything before finishing the story, I decided early on that I was saving it for Master Mode. On an unrelated note, it's a bit of a bummer that Master Mode wasn't in at launch. I hope they don't make the enemies regenerate health again though!
Yeah, the koroks are always really heavy weight. I think I left off with around 65%, and I had done most side quests, got all shrines + sages wills, and only about 100 koroks. I just can't find it in me to go for the koroks knowing what the reward is.
I've put around 240+ hours into TOTK but not because I am a completionist or anything, it's mostly because I don't like using fast travel and I enjoy traveling the world, finding secrets or hidden locations.
But I have to admit that I overdid it, towards the end I felt a little burned out due to this.
I got off the tutorial island 1-2 hours ago and was walking around turning area towers on. I’ve tried to enter the caves but I die within 30 seconds any time I try, so I’ve given up until I get more hearts. So far it feels like a mediocre rom hack of breath of the wild to me. I don’t feel like I get anything out of this game that breath of the wild didn’t do significantly better, it’s sloppier and less well considered imo. (Like, why does it have so many explicit unskippable tutorials for things that BOTW already taught me naturally?)
I mean...you're still in the opening of the game. The tutorials stop once you get into the meat of things. Maybe I'm just spoiled by having played Skyward Sword with its extremely pervasive tutorials, but these aren't even something I noticed in TotK.
You keep mentioning how sloppy it is. What apart from the tutorial issue do you find sloppy? I'd like to understand because the prevailing take on the game is that it is BotW but bigger and better in basically every way. I'm about 120 hours in and I tend to agree pretty strongly with that sentiment.
Like I said, breath of the wild taught me all of the same things without popping up an unskippable text cloud every 5 minutes. The starting area of BOTW didn’t basically fall apart if you happen to not follow the intended circuit around the starting area like TOTK does (I was so confused because I went to the shrines in a scattershot order and so all the linearly designed building tutorials came in the wrong order)
Honestly the only good part so far has been the building tutorials because they let you just figure shit out on your own, unfortunately like I said they’re almost incoherent if you go to them in the wrong order like I happened to.
Somehow mechanically this game feels like it’s the less refined game that would later get made into something polished and refined like BOTW despite this one being made taking 6 years and recycling the same map. It feels like a very sophisticated rom hack. Lacking all the exploration I wanted from this type of game. I really am not a fan.
About 5. It really wasn't doing it for me. I should probably try again since it was so damn expensive, but I really wasn't getting what I hoped out of a new BOTW-style zelda game.
So like mostly the tutorial area? I wasn't feeling it either for the first maybe 10 hours, but then I got most of the starter quests out of the way, started to set my own goals and the game really opened up like BotW. I'm about 150 hours in and there's still so much to do.
I got off the tutorial island 1-2 hours of gameplay ago. So far it feels like a sloppier version of BOTW with significantly more tutorials (for things BOTW taught me without a tutorial!) that is way more linear, and I really do not get the hype at all. I went around trying to turn towers on to try and feel some freedom and am really shocked by how identical the overworld is. Any time I enter caves I die instantly so apparently I’m ages off from being allowed to explore those. If I could return it I would have.
Are you from Mars or something?
But seriously, go back and give it another try. It's one of the few games I've played in the last number of years that's kept me coming back.
The depths are kinda boring - the environment is very bland, it's all the same shit. Being able to jump out of the sky to get to any land objective is convenient and kinda kills the whole aspect of riding around on your horse which I really enjoyed in BoTW. The sky areas are very cool, I do enjoy them. It was kinda neat to see the same kingdom plus changes. New abilities are cool. Vehicles are kinda meh since wings and balloons time out, and you're almost guaranteed on your land rig to quickly run into an obstacle it cannot pass, making it kinda useless. All that said, I'm still having a lot of fun with it, but it's not as good as I was hoping.
Depths are more interesting the more you explore them, especially all the yiga clan outposts. I don't think it's meant for you to stay down there too long though. The sky islands to get around is amazing, flying around feels like super hero shit. And you still need a horse to get around to areas you haven't explored yet. Vehicles and wings still last a LONG time before they expire and you can just make another one... and if your ground vehicle hits an obstacle either use bigger wheels or just pick it up... I am not seeing how any of this is an issue.
I'm on about 40-50 hours. I'm still playing but I checked out mentally after the conclusion of the Goron main quest. Why should I give time and attention to the story when there's barely any effort put into the narrative and characters? Even worse is when the story treats you like a child. I get it's supposed to appeal to all including younger audiences but surely there's a way to do that while making it genuinely interesting as an adult.
The side quests are ok. The exploration isn't cutting it for me because I've already played BOTW, and the novelty of the world has worn off with that. The sky islands and depths, while cool at first, simply isn't even enough. The copy-pasted sky islands are egregious considering how few of them there are. When travelling to a destination, it's almost never worth dropping down to check something out.
The new abilities are way better, but again after 10-15 hours it isn't enough. There's only so many puzzles involving building something before it becomes tedious because that ability is used EVERYWHERE. The fuse ability rarely makes a difference with its unique attributes it gives to weapons, most of the time being used to just increase damage. You end up just hoarding weapons, then when its time, drop a bunch of materials with the highest fuse power, fuse, use weapons and repeat. It would be the same if all weapons was just buffed and remove the need for that part.
I'm a bit annoyed that the shrine system hasn't been improved upon or reformed at all. It sucks going into a shrine always knowing what reward you'll get. Rewards are always equal, but not all shrines are equal. For the shrines where the reward is just finding/unlocking them, why do I still have to go INTO the shrine? Just give me the spirit orb. It's also great stumbling across a tutorial shrine that teaches you how to parry when I'm 20 hours in.
The new divine dungeons have better bosses, but the dungeones themselves are essentially 5 mini shrines in one with a reward worth less than 5 shrines.
Really disappointing compared to my first 15 hours of BOTW. I'm just glad I'm not playing on the Switch's hardware. It's not necessarily a bad game, not at all, and I'll keep playing it casually... but I'm a bit perplexed at how positive the critical reception has been.
It just seems like this game isn't for you, and there is nothing wrong with that. Games are entertainment, and if one isn't entertaining for you, you don't have to force yourself to play it.
Hope you find a game that you enjoy as much as we are enjoying TotK! Good luck!