Yay, I'm not alone! There's a bunch of ways to solve things now and yet half of the time it's either something I tried the first time, missed like you had, and it didn't work, or a solution that feels like I cheesed it.
It's just not as satisfying or as as full of character as the series used to feel for me.
Yeah, this and the combat really let me down, I really liked how these things were before BotW. Also I feel a bit bad about feeling this negative towards it, because I REALL wanted to like it, but also it feels a bit like a letdown to play it. But it is a fun game with lots of fun parts, but I would love a return to a smaller scope.
Oh yeah, I still need to do the DLC in BotW. 😅
I decided to keep it for my Hero mode replay so I could experience the new stuff all at once but I suck at combat, and that's a bit of a problem since I want to do the trials as well ...
Oh yeah I'm terrible with timing based parries and dodges, I'm impressed that I was able to get somewhat decent at the Lynel fight by the end of it. Also, even with the perfect parries/dodge, the enemies feels so spongy, dunno.
I would recomend trying the new stuff on your old save, the ballad at least is a bit of a lenghty quest (IMO)
Let's just say I hope the current direction of Zelda titles takes a break after TotK 🥲
(I wasn't even able to get through the tutorial on my brother's copy, darn thing felt like a chore to me 😔)
Oof :/
I doubt the open world will stop being the main direction after the reception of BotW or Tiktok, but I hope "Ocarinalike" at least becomes another non-mainline genre for smaller budget titles, just like topdown Zelda did