5 Features Zelda Breath of the Wild 3 Needs That BotW and TotK Never Fixed

The Thing About Loving a Game and Also Seeing Its Flaws

I have put about 150 hours into Breath of the Wild and roughly 180 into Tears of the Kingdom. These are two of my favorite games ever made. I say that upfront because what comes next is going to sound critical. But you can love a thing and still see where it stumbles. And both of these games stumble in the same places.

Nintendo fixed a lot between BotW and TotK. The sky islands added vertical density. The Depths added a second entire map. Ultrahand and Fuse gave players creative agency that no Zelda game had ever offered before. But they left some pretty fundamental issues untouched. Issues that the community has been talking about since 2017. Issues that a new Zelda on Switch 2 has the hardware and budget to tackle for real.

Here is my wishlist. Not in order of importance. Just the five things I kept thinking about during both playthroughs.

Actual Dungeons, Not Just Divine Beasts and Temples

I know this is the most predictable Zelda complaint. Every Zelda fan over thirty has been asking for traditional dungeons since 2017. But hear me out.

The Divine Beasts in BotW were fine. I actually liked Vah Naboris more than most people did. Rotating cylinder mechanic was clever and the boss fight against Thunderblight Ganon was genuinely one of the hardest Zelda fights in decades. But four dungeons that all share pretty much identical visual themes and the same structural gimmick of rotating the entire dungeon is just not enough variety for a hundred-hour game.

Tears of the Kingdom improved this significantly. The Lightning Temple had atmosphere. The Fire Temple had interesting verticality with the mine cart tracks. The Wind Temple's ascent through the storm was genuinely spectacular as a setpiece. But the actual puzzle density inside each temple was still pretty light compared to something like Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple or Twilight Princess's Snowpeak Ruins.

Aonuma has actually addressed this. In a 2023 interview with IGN, he said the team is aware that fans want more traditional dungeons and that they are "thinking about how to evolve the dungeon format within the open-air philosophy." That is not a promise. But it is also not a dismissal. It suggests the feedback has been heard at the highest level of the development team.

What I hope for is eight to ten distinct dungeons. Not all of them massive. Some could be smaller, like the Ice Cavern or Bottom of the Well from Ocarina of Time, short but memorable. The key is visual and mechanical variety. A forest dungeon should feel completely different from a desert dungeon, not just in wallpaper but in how you navigate the space and what tools you need.

Underwater Exploration

BotW has massive bodies of water. Lakes, rivers, an entire ocean on the eastern edge of the map. You cannot go underwater in any of them.

TotK added sky and Depths but still locked Link to the surface of water. In a game where you can ascend through solid rock and glide across the entire map, not being able to swim downward feels like an arbitrary limitation.

The Zora armor in both games lets you swim up waterfalls. That animation already has Link fully submerged in rushing water. The engine clearly supports underwater rendering because there are submerged treasures and chests visible through the water surface. You just cannot reach them by diving. You have to use Magnesis or Ultrahand from the surface, which feels like a workaround for a missing feature rather than intentional design.

Nintendo's design philosophy for Zelda has always been: if you can see it, you can reach it. BotW and TotK both broke that rule with underwater content, and I have to imagine the developers know it. Switch 2's extra memory and GPU power should make underwater environments feasible. And honestly, swimming through a submerged Zora palace or exploring the flooded ruins of an ancient Hyrule beneath Lake Hylia would be worth the development cost just for the screenshots alone.

A Weapon System That Does Not Make You Hoard

Weapon durability in BotW is controversial. I actually do not mind it. I think the constant churn of weapons forces you to engage with the game's systems instead of finding one sword and using it for eighty hours. TotK added Fuse, which made every weapon drop potentially useful as a fusion ingredient, and that genuinely improved the loop.

But there is still this psychological thing where you never want to use your best weapons. I had a Royal Guard's Claymore with a Silver Lynel Horn fused to it sitting in my inventory for about forty hours. I kept telling myself I would save it for a boss. Then I beat the game and I had never swung that weapon once.

I do not think Nintendo should remove durability entirely. The combat system is balanced around weapon variety. But a repair system would go a long way. Let the player pay rupees or materials at a blacksmith to restore a favorite weapon instead of waiting for a Blood Moon to respawn it. That way you can keep using the weapons you enjoy without making the entire durability system pointless.

Maybe add a weapon rack in your house. BotW let you display three weapons in the Hateno house. TotK let you build a house from scratch but the weapon displays were still limited. Let me store twenty weapons on display. Let me rotate through a collection. It makes the scavenging loop feel rewarding instead of punishing.

More Enemy Variety, Especially in the Mid-Game

Breath of the Wild has roughly twenty enemy types. That sounds like a decent number. But spread across a map the size of Hyrule, it means you spend a lot of hours fighting the same Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos in different colors.

TotK added a few new enemies. Horriblins in caves. Construct Soldiers on sky islands. Boss Bokoblins that lead monster camps. The Like Like returned from older games, which honestly made me weirdly happy. But the core roster barely changed. You are still fighting silver Bokoblins for most of the mid-game, and by the time you have fought your two hundredth silver Bokoblin, the combat has lost most of its tension.

The issue is not just variety for variety's sake. Different enemy types force completely different combat approaches. Lynels demand perfect parry timing and headshot accuracy. Guardians in BotW rewarded shield parry reflexes. Hinox fights require climbing onto its body to attack the eye. Each of these enemies creates a distinct combat rhythm that you basically have to relearn every time you meet a new one.

Nintendo has a huge back catalog of Zelda enemies to pull from. Darknuts with heavy armor that requires specific weapon types to crack. Poes that phase in and out of visibility. Wallmasters that grab you from above in dark corridors. Skulltulas that descend from ceilings. Redeads that freeze you in place with a scream. None of these appeared in BotW or TotK.

With the Switch 2's improved CPU, Nintendo could increase enemy behavior complexity too. Imagine a Bokoblin camp where the archers actually reposition when you take cover instead of standing still and shooting at a wall. Or Moblins that pick up smaller enemies and throw them at you. TotK teased this with Boss Bokoblins directing camp tactics, but the individual enemy AI did not change much.

Playable Zelda (Or At Least Co-Op)

This one is probably not happening. I know that. But the series is called The Legend of Zelda. She has been the title character for almost forty years and in the mainline games she has never been playable outside of Spirit Tracks, which barely counts because you controlled her as a Phantom suit in specific sections.

TotK came closer than any previous game. Zelda has a substantial role in the story. Her dragon form is central to the entire narrative. She is arguably more important to the plot than Link. And yet you never control her directly.

Aonuma has been asked about playable Zelda in multiple interviews. His answers have shifted from "we do not know how to make that work" in 2016 to "we are always thinking about new ways to evolve the series" in 2024. That is not a confirmation. But it is also not a no.

I do not need a full co-op campaign. Just the option to switch between Link and Zelda, similar to how Spirit Tracks handled it or how The Last of Us Part II handled character switching. Link handles combat. Zelda handles puzzle-solving with her magic. Or both characters have different traversal abilities that you need to combine to reach certain areas.

If the cross-dimensional rift rumor is real, the mechanic practically writes itself. Link stays in one dimension. Zelda in the other. Each character manipulates their version of the environment to create paths for the other. That is a full game built around cooperative puzzle design that does not require online multiplayer or split-screen.

I am not holding my breath on this one. Nintendo moves slowly on character changes. It took them until Metroid Dread in 2021 to let Samus actually talk. But a person can hope.