I got bored after like 8 hours of looking for things to do before I just said "fuck it, I guess I'm killing Ganon." I don't know when I am meant to go find the Master Sword but I was able to get it without having a quest and just using my knowledge of Hyrule from past games ("sword in forest!") and I activated the 4 ancient machines; but then I couldn't find many side quests that weren't just fetch quests for things I already had in my posession.

TOTK actually has shit to do. I thought BOTW was a bit bare bones before, but given it was Nintendo's first go at it I just thought it was that. But TOTK makes BOTW look like an alpha build of a tech demo for TOTK.

BotW was the first Zelda game for me, and it was such a massive disappointment. It's just open world without any redeeming qualities, with every single mechanic existing just to support open world. Felt more like a sandbox than a game. It's fun for about 2-3 hours, but then I just got really bored

I did finish it, because hey I paid for it, but it was not really something too fun for most of the time

EDIT: And I'm still mildly salty that BotW got GOTY in a year we got Nier Automata and Persona 5

Zelda games straight up have a very mediocre story. And often nothing about their world building makes much sense either. They're definitely a series built only for fun gameplay. Everything else is just glue to hold the gameplay together.

Personally, I love the gameplay and exploration, but you're definitely right about the story and voice acting.

PS: dodging should be the same as jump (x). Lock on with ZL and point the movement stick to the side you wanna dodge to, the jump. If you pull the stick back, you'll do a backflip. Whether you want to jump back or to the side depends on the enemy attack (eg, do they swing horizonal or vertical?). If you dodge juuuust before the enemy attacks, you'll get a slow motion during which you're prompted to spam y to rapidly attack. Especially useful for tough foes like lynels.

There's shrines near the start of the game that teach you to dodge & flurry rush;

While locking onto an enemy, jump while moving to the side or backwards at the last second before an enemy attacks-- if the timing is done correctly, you can flurry rush. The trick is finding the timing for each enemy type, though you start to get a feel for it.

It's a grindy mechanic, but I really enjoyed filling out the compendium once you upgrade your Sheikah Slate-- taking pictures of things became the focus of the game for a while, and I'm glad that TOTK improved upon that.

It's a decent game but once I beat it I'll likely never play it again

And it's so ok that I have a hard time getting back to it after breaking for a few weeks

I killed Ganon and still had no idea how to actually do these things.

Turn on japanese audio.