The isometric Zeldas on 2DS/GBA are all much superior experiences, especially for a commute imo. Link Between Worlds is one of my favourite games of all time.

The 3D Zeldas have always been kind of meh in my experience. Although I did love BotW for the first 20 hours or so.

That’s been my problem with Zelda games since maybe OoT… well, maybe not exactly my problem.

My problem is mostly that if I don’t play it for a week or two, and come back to it, I can’t remember what’s going on at all and it seems like too much of a chore to re-build my context.

They do such a good job with Mario odyssey on showing you what to do and letting you teleport between worlds… there is no grinding at all I feel like. I wish they’d adopt that paradigm for Zelda too.

I do agree that progression is slow, but I never felt it was grindy. Stuff broke, but my inventory was always full of other stuff so it hardly mattered. I guess if you felt like you needed to complete all the shrines it could feel grindy? They’re all different at least.