Greentext

A lot of BotW and TotK's systems are too damn simple for their own good.

The armor system works by simple addition and subtraction. The numbers correspond to quarter hearts. If an enemy attack was going to do, say, 12 damage, and you have 4 armor, that hit now does 8 damage, with a minimum of 1. Which is why a single trip to a clothing fairy will be the turning point from "everything one-shots me" to "I am made of adamantium." in TotK especially you'd find boss monsters that one shot you before you can even get a good look at them, later in the game they're complete pushovers.

Similarly, the weapons actually function more like ammunition than "weapons." You only have so many shotgun bullets, only so many SMG bullets, and only so many BFG bullets. You can swing this sword only so many times before it breaks. Shields, weirdly, aren't that badly designed. There's a use case and an abuse case, if you use a shield correctly it will last. They didn't implement this with the weapons, like you should use a hammer against hard foes to smash their armor and swords against soft targets. Hitting things with elemental weapons that they don't counter should break them, like it should be okay to hit ice enemies with a fire sword but normal enemies will wear it out, etc.

You don't find common weapons you're willing to break and rare better weapons you wan to take care of, the weapons ramp up basically to match the enemies so at the beginning of the game you spend 3 minutes killing a red bokoblin with a stick, and at the end of the game you spend 3 minutes killing a silver bokoblin with a Royal Highfalutin Claymore.

"Oh, I broke my weapon, guess I should fiddle fuck around with the weird quick menu system to pick out another. This doesn't slam the pace of the game to a halt at all."

I kinda like the idea of a weapon durability system that rewards players for understanding the combat system, where if you just hold left stick forward and mash Y you'll run out of weapons before you run out of enemies, but if you engage with the systems, attacking when the target is vulnerable, using the right weapons on the right enemies, your supplies will last longer. This would support a play model where you prepare for an adventure stocking food and gear, then go out on the adventure managing your supplies. Maybe you find very cool weapons along the way, maybe you manage to live off the land if you're particularly skilled.

But that's not what we got, and it doesn't work very well.