Great review! I wonder what you'd think if you went back to give Windwaker and Twilight Princess a try at this point.
I'm guessing something similar is true for the other mines.
Hmm it's possible we just completely missed that construct, I do think it was Gerudo we followed first also. I remember that most of our wasted time was in trying to find the next statue that the last one was pointed at, because we didn't notice any indication that we had already found the final statue.
As for Dragonhead, I did enjoy exploring in the fog and finding Mineru's mask, so no complaint about that specifically. But I didn't know that Thunderhead existed at all above it, thought we had explored the entire under-the-storm island. Until eventually giving up on finding the final shrine and looking at a map. And getting the final shrine on Thunderhead in the fog was very tedious and annoying; compounded by discovering that you're "supposed" to clear up the fog before going there.
For me, the key differences are summarized in the names. In BOTW, you are in the Wild. You are (usually) alone. The music is (usually) lonely.
There are vast spaces, and many points of interest are first seen from far, far away, beckoning a journey through the intervening terrain. The basic gameplay is about navigating the wild, understanding it, conquering it but on its terms. Meanwhile in TOTK, you are in the Kingdom. You're part of a team, not only story-wise, but eventually gameplay-wise as well. You can see many points of interest from far away, but from above, where the terrain between makes far less of an impression. The basic gameplay is less about the wild itself, and more about circumventing it.
Relatedly, BOTW is more focused on the joy of discovery through exploration. TOTK is a bit more focused on the joy of discovery through experimentation. As a negative, this can mean too much wandering in BOTW (with too few rewards for some folks), but in TOTK it can mean too much 'failed experimenting' (wasting time on bad builds, useless fuses, etc).
Love this! Well-written, and really goes to the heart of the games.
The biggest highlight for me was finding Zelda's torch.
Oh we completely missed this! I think we found it, but hadn't realized the significance of it.