I'm kind of surprised how hard I fell off of TotK. Now I want to preface this compliment sandwich style by saying I put 85 hours into this game and I enjoyed every minute of it! But I doubt that with more time I'll end up logging any more than 100 hours in total to the sequel of a game I put over 300 hours into.
SORTA KINDA SPOILERS AHEAD
A lot of that isn't necessarily TotK's fault. Breath of the Wild had the advantage of being our first exploration into this version of Hyrule and the vast majority of the hours I put into BotW came from the sheer joy of finding what's behind each nook and cranny. But I did that, I've done that, and as it turns out I don't really want to do that again.
There is more to the world of TotK than what was present in BotW of course. In terms of sheer scale it's a lot! A whole underworld nearly as big as the over-world, and more sky islands than I care to try and count. Something that felt beyond impressive when I first started playing. But there's gotta be a but.
TotK feels like it falls into a lot of the worst excesses of BotW. Maybe that's not the best way to put it, but more specifically there's a sort of quantity over quality problem these open world Zeldas have had so far.
I won't rehash the common critiques people have had with BotW's shrines and divine beasts in terms of their repetitive designs and ideas other than to say I think these problems extend to both the depths and the sky islands. Both of which are great ideas and were very enjoyable for roughly 80 hours of gameplay for me. But you can't help but notice that most of these sky islands are very small and break down into just a handful of repetitive categories, and nearly all of them are just a means to get a new gadget or material. There's also only so many floating stone islands you can see before they start to lose their wonder.
This goes double for the depths which are fun in how disorienting they are, and in how much the each trip feels like a major expedition, up until the point where it becomes clear that part of the reason why they're so disorienting is because save for your map there isn't really a clear way to tell one part of the depths for another outside of the occasional colosseum or mech factory.
Now again, I really do like this game! The physic engine is the most technically impressive thing I've seen or experienced in a video game. Putting together your own machines, gadgets, and weapons is wildly fun and addictive! I actually liked the temples a good deal in this games, and the boss battles were sooo much fun. But once I played through the story just didn't find much was keeping me there.
I've heard that this might end up being a trilogy of games, and while I would definitely buy whatever comes next I don't honestly know how much more could be done with this specific version of Hyrule and I'm not sure how much more time I really want to spend there.