I can relate -- I'm a little more than 25 hours into the game right now, and I haven't done any real story quests yet (and still only discovered half of the map -- I've just been exploring the areas I've already uncovered via towers). I just don't want the game to end, so I'm doing as much as I can to balance having fun with not progressing.
Yeah, I'm trying to decide if I'm going to look things up once I "beat the game" or still keep a moratorium on that and just keep exploring (I'm pretty sure I'm leaning the latter way, with maybe I couple exceptions =).
Like:
http://kotaku.com/how-to-build-an-airship-in-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-1793370556And according to the comments you can drive the rafts around using a metal object and magnesis! Despite how much fun I'm having this game keeps making make me feel like I'm still not playing it right. Nintendo took off the handcuffs, but not in my head. I'm still playing largely within normal Zelda parameters.
That being said, I quite literally stumbled my way into Hyrule Castle last night, while trying to find one of the memories that's closest to the castle. And once I found an opening, the awesome music started playing. So I figured why not see how far I could make it into the castle itself. Turns out pretty far, even with just 7 heart containers. I chose to turn back after I felt I was getting somewhere close to the halfway point (you'll get a sense of it once you're near). Afterall, I don't even have the Master Sword yet. What was I going to do, use my soup spoon against Ganon?
I actually got that memory last night, and had the same experience my first time exploring the castle, surprised how far I could get because there was no artificial barriers one can't get around with a little ingenuity, practice, and a lot of deaths (can't fight something waiting for you in a room? Literally climb over that room! =). Oh, but there's plenty of weapons on site to use against the weaker enemies and even Ganon, the problem is they'll all break before he does! 
One last story: My totally game-deficient wife killed a Guardian last night! It took
Mipha's Grace, a lot of fairies (all of mine as a matter of fact
), and a lot of yelling, but she did it! It makes me sad because it really just means my Link is overpowered (there's little way around it once you do the main quests either, unless you just don't upgrade hearts or armor). I was actually researching buying the DLC hard mode and considering starting over with it but I guess that's not an option yet...
BTW, best armor in the game is the
Soldier's Gear, right? You get pointed to it super early and it's relatively cheap/easy to upgrade. By the time you upgrade it 3 times you don't need any special resistances so the much more costly specialized high end armors are far more inefficient. Currently rocking
a Hero's tunic, Soldier helm, and Ancient Greaves, all 3x upgraded, so when I can wear them I'm not even worried about damage anymore.
BTW Wally, that might be a reason for you to consider weaving in some main quests/bosses before you pass them by (and defeating them carries unique rewards that aid in exploration as well).
Update:
https://youtu.be/a2qalbhz-_QReview Update:(I'm going to talk about the game in a familiar way, but I'm not giving any major specifics away)
Pros: All of it?
Just kidding, I'll try to be more specific, but I think that will come more easily to the con section because there's honestly so much good it's just easier to list the bad. For one thing, it fixes Zelda! Even if you didn't think it was that broken. Awesome and engaging open world Hyrule with almost complete freedom to explore every inch of it, and a quantity AND quality ratio rarely, if ever, seen for a game world of this size. Basically, a modern open world game with Nintendo's charming fingerprints all over it, instead of those fingers squeezing the life out of a more tightly controlled experience.
Some specifics...
Climbing: This is pretty much what changes the way you play Zelda. It's also a very natural and simple climbing mechanic. At first it seems to easy, but it's also nice to be able to do it like most actions without having to hold down a special button and accidentally falling off or something. Anyway, it would be hard to go back to climbing vines or looking for hookshot targets without feeling like it's broken (though they do make you do just that for the dungeons... I guess climbing only ruins obstacle based puzzling =).
Combat: The combat is another case where it seems simple at first but you'll soon come to recognize the nuance and versatility available to you, especially when things go haywire and you have to improvise. Definitely switch the sprint and jump buttons so you can more intuitively execute running attacks or cancel your bow. The common bitch here is the durability of weapons, or lack thereof, but that basically boils down to: I want to play it like every other game and this is different, or I want to hoard shit. My answer is it is at no time a real hindrance and basically the extremity of it is what makes it truly different and forces you to play differently in response, plus there's still plenty of shit to collect and hoard. Also, if you embrace this instead of fighting against it, I found it a relief not to have to worry about falling in love with or coveting weapons because they weren't going to last; don't save anything for the end because it won't last and you need room for the next thing, so use what you got and get something better! Thoroughly enjoyable if you don't try to play it like a traditional game in this regard when it's not. Also, there IS a prominent escape hatch if you really can't stand it, but by that point you should have plenty to work with.
Art: The art style is like Miyamoto meets Miyazaki, and pretty perfectly blends the more hard fantasy and cartoony styles of Zelda; much better than the compromised style of SS, this just works whether it's funny, quirky character designs or gorgeous, hyper-realistic vistas.
Music: Effectively minimalist, which makes for some nice quiet moments alone in this great big world, but it's not hard to imagine them being able to do something more memorable than smooth piano arrangements of the classics. I can't really think of an original tune from the game save for the tickling of the ivories you hear when a Guardian has you in it's sights, which is still chilling. But it's a far cry from the days of OoT essentially giving you a functioning musical instrument and teaching you to play it or Wind Waker's peerlessly evocative score, including musical cues for when there's an enemy nearby, the enemy sees/engages you, the string section coming in when/if you pull your sword, and musical hits for every successful attack and a crescendo and final victory sound upon conclusion. But, you know, the little fight bell in this one is cute. =)
In summation, it has highly addictive gameplay regardless of story progression (I beat it twice and can still go for hours at a time, oh yeah =). It's hard not to speak of those positives in generalities and superlatives though because of how wide open it is, and because that's where its strengths lie, and vice versa...
Cons: Some world building details and plot is ultimately pretty underwhelming, and what parts of the story were promising aren't really paid off well (the "good" ending is worse than the regular one =); simply put, the story works best as a setup for this world but isn't really worthy of it. None of the main characters are among their best incarnations, and the main supporting cast are just a bunch of stereotypes (the cool big dude, the arrogant showoff, the competent woman warrior, the loving healer, etc). The only exception are the characters inhabiting the world, which are consistently interesting or at least to the point with useful information or quests.
I was worried all this love for the game was going to go down with the story if it began to sink, like Skyward Sword, and it did sink, in no small part because I happened to do the most interesting story part first. But, it ultimately didn't matter because the fun of the game experience isn't so wed to your progression like recent Zeldas (which is a good change because I don't think they've got anything amazing story-wise up their sleeve). So, even though my story progress became increasingly underwhelming, the rest of the world, which is by far the majority of the game, lost little luster or joy. In fact, I continued to be impressed with it even after I'd completed the story and felt REALLY free to try anything and everything and realizing something was indeed waiting for me behind almost every stone or at the top of each peak. Of course, the game play isn't perfect either...
With so much going on there's plenty of nitpicks one could make with some of the design choices, particularly the controls and menus. But, it's streamlining so much complicated shit it's easy to imagine it being far more cumbersome and complicated. Perhaps Nintendo rightly exercised more control here, because as weird as scrolling the menus on multiple layers and levels can feel, that it actually sort of works is an achievement.
Anyway, my biggest substantive complaint is with the dungeons. By design, a lot of the dungeon crawling and puzzling has been split up into the 100+ shrines in the game, and the 4 Devine Beasts, which are moderately larger, but still quite small by past standards. I understand the point of emphasizing the overworld exploration and discovery of the shrines/dungeons themselves, but I still would have preferred larger and more challenging dungeons, particularly in the way of enemy encounters, which are great on the surface and virtually absent in the dungeons save for some perfunctory encounters and the relatively few combat shrines (which aren't even as good as that sounds). I would have preferred they reduced the number of shrines and increased the number of Devine Beasts or naturally existing dungeons accordingly. This is something that does matter to me and hurts the game world because as great and immersive as it is, I think it would have been that much better with similarly large and immersive labyrinths in addition to or even instead of the total shrine a la carte experience. Imagine how great it would be if you found and got lost in caves or dungeon ruins on a scale relative to the overworld? Well, at least that's something for next time.
Speaking of next time, and this game's place in the Zelda legacy, while I don't think it knocks anybody out of the Triforce of LoZ (Courage), ALttP (Wisdom), or OoT (Power), I do think it's worthy and fits nicely in the top 5 (let's call them The Five Champions =) along with Wind Waker (we'll see, time will tell, and the case can still be made for others of course). So, with that said, I'm going to sit back and wait for Aaz to tell me why The Adventure of Link is actually better than all those games!
