Overall, I think the temples are disappointing. They all have the same basic premise, the looks are one-note, and they're still way less intricately laid out and complex to navigate than the dungeons in OoT, e.g., which came out 25 years ago (and which had twice as many of them). I don't even think they're really any improvement on the Divine Beasts, which was a pretty low bar to clear, but which at least had the interesting puzzle box mechanic.
I agree with this. I've recently replayed Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, which both featured significantly more compelling dungeons in terms of layout, puzzle design, theme, fights, etc. I was really hoping Tears of the Kingdom would improve upon Breath of the Wild by reviving those sorts of dungeons, but no.
I'd say I like the Thunder Temple and the Fire Temple a little better than any of the Divine Beasts, the Wind Temple is about equal, and the Water Temple is worse. Overall, not great.
The Construct Factory hints at what a proper dungeon could have been like...
I think the problem is that Zelda games have always been based on the two pillars of exploration and puzzle solving, and there's inherent tension between these. To emphasize exploration you want freedom, openness, nonlinearity. Then with puzzle solving, there are two ways to do this: method one involves restriction and rigidity, where the player needs to find "the" solution to a problem (or maybe one of a discrete set of possible solutions). Then there are "squishier" puzzle games where there are a continuum of possible solutions--using the tools at your disposal, get through the stage any way you can.*
Classically, Zelda games gave you freedom and exploration in the overworld, and then mostly the first kind of puzzle within dungeons--you're trying to find the right path through the dungeon by collecting keys and items and flipping switches in the correct sequence (speedrunning shenanigans notwithstanding).
But with Breath of the Wild, the degree of freedom and exploration in the overworld was turned up so, so high, and was so clearly the primary theme of the game, that I think the developers must have thought it would be too jarring and incongruous to have such rigid-style navigation puzzles within all of the dungeons and shrines. For players who liked those kinds of puzzles, they were missed, but the game just wasn't about that--it was about having a stupefyingly massive world to explore, figuring out how to get where you wanted to go within it, and using your own creativity to get there.
I think with Tears of the Kingdom, they just kept that overall same philosophy, wanting the game to be about players exploring and having as much freedom as possible to meet objectives in different ways, except now it's less about exploring the overworld (since we've already done that in BotW) and more about exploring the possibilities afforded by Ultrahand and Fuse. Again, though, it seems like more rigid and intricately designed puzzles didn't mesh with what they were trying to do. I can understand this approach, but for me it's a bit of a bummer. I really like rigid and intricately-designed puzzles, and for me they had been a big part of what really constitutes a Zelda game.
*As I'm writing this, it feels a lot like the general division in mathematics between algebra and analysis--roughly speaking, algebra is rigid, blocky, and discrete, and analysis is flowy, squishy, and continuous.
