10 Reasons Zelda: Skyward Sword Is WAY Better Than You Remember
4. The Game Is Linear (And That's A Good Thing)
One of the biggest sticking points critics had against the game when it came out was its linearity. This being a game series that, for the most part but not always, tried to give the player as much freedom as possible. To the point where the original NES classic gave you a gray box and said "you want a map, there's your damn map" and people were fine with it because they didn't know better.
But 2011 was a LONG ass time ago, and the game industry is a very different place. Back then, it was the age of the follow-the-leader murky military shooter where players were led by the literal nose from point to point.
Now that we are in the age of the extreme opposite - where every game has to have a sandbox the size of Texas with miscellaneous activities all over the place and absolutely NOTHING of interest to see during the treks between those activities - looking back, it's clear that game journalists were just taking out their frustration with COD on Skyward Sword when it didn't deserve it.
Breath Of The Wild IS a stone cold masterpiece, but linear game design can generally tell a more engaging and faster paced story, as well as come up with interesting maps and encounters that would never have happened in a game where you have to take into account that the player may never even come across them at all.