The Zelda franchise quirkiness is fun and a bit childish at times but heart warming if you let yourself get immersed. But when it comes down to it, the game play is so solid. It's what makes the game so great. Everything is refined so well it doesn't matter what your opinion is on the story or your opinions on Nintendo. I don't think I've accidentally fell off a cliff or missed a ledge climbing because of shotty controls. The combat system is nearly perfect. You can take your time and parry and dodge all you want and eventually take out an enemy way more powerful than you as long as you have a pack full of food... Or you can be creative and use amazing techniques to minimize weapons breaking or wasting your food you took 30 minutes to gather and cook. There's a lot of people comparing the game to dark souls because of its difficulty, but seriously it isn't at all that unforgiving. I'd you're prepared you can basically survive anything. I ran into an environment where I was literally on fire because of the heat and my health dropped within 10 seconds. I managed to last upwards of 10 minutes because I had enough supplies to heal myself over and over and over. I fought an enemy I was clearly too weak to fight, and after all my weapons were destroyed I managed to use an ability, albeit a weak ability, to painstakingly finish it off for a reward that allowed me to kill a boss-tier enemy in 5 or 6 hits.

What I'm saying is, there's a ton of mind teasers in the game called shrines, and then every single enemy encounter is a test of tactics. Or you know, you can just fire a few bomb arrows if you just want to get in and out. It's not just a Zelda game. It's Skyrim, but with ultimate refinement.