Maybe mediocre wasn't the best description, average maybe? I mean its got its faults, but there's good things about it as well. I found the simple interactions with villages and towns to be a drastic change from the series. You've never really been able to travel and talk to people as much in this game as opposed to ooc or mm. The characters in this game play a more important role than the typical "ugh go fetch me this or kill that". There's a lot more visually appealing design choices and it feels like a living environment.
The game puts itself in an awkward position. It's like they went ahead and created this world without first developing a story, so everything plays out almost cliche like.
i havent played botw but uh, when has a zelda game ever had anything beyond basic combat mechanics lol?
I'm more or less referring to the quicktime event (that has no option to disable/deactivate btw) that activates whenever you sidestep a move, slow time to a crippling halt, and wail on the enemy without any repercussion. Even when I didn't want to use that event I was forced to wait because the game insisted that I was going to die without using this new special feature. And as far as basic goes, the combat is far from basic at least compared to other titles.