Sounds like it’s not the game for you. Overcoming environmental challenges is kind of the name of the game, and if the baseline “cold bad but fire hot” thing isn’t something you enjoy then I’m not sure you would enjoy trying to navigate any of the main story areas in the game.

Pretty sure they put a bunch of hot pepper plants around the entrances to that region as the hint.

If you can’t work out how to make a cold person warm, maybe this isn’t the game for you, I didn’t even realise that was a puzzle or challenge tbh

The exploration and physics IS the game. You kinda do the objectives along the way.

It really helps that you follow the road though and turning off the UI. I dont think this is for you though of you got frustrated by the weather. The old man teaches you to cook and make a fire.

Sounds like you’re still at the Great plateau which is just the tutorial area of the game basically. You can watch a few videos on YouTube to find the easy way to get past it. The weapon breaking mechanic is really annoying at first but eventually you’ll realize that they did it so that you can enjoy all the variety of weapons in the game without having a hundred things in your stash. Exploration is one of the most enjoyable parts of this game so try to look around for the old man and he will help you.

I’m going to be real- I enjoyed BotW and TotK enough, but I don’t see them as traditional Zelda games and it actually pisses me off that Aonuma has come out and said we will NEVER get a traditional 3D Zelda ever again. So the success of the open-world Zeldas is the nail in the coffin for the games we actually grew up loving. The death of the open-world fad can’t come soon enough, most of these games are nothing special.

I wanted to like this game but the story was just so uninteresting to me that I had to put it down. I know not everyone is like me but as someone who adored the stories in oot and majoras mask, I couldn’t do it man.

The weapon breaking is annoying, even in TotK still. It‘d be more bearable if you could at least repair broken stuff at a blacksmith or something, but as it is, I’m scared to lose my cool stuff to a buncha gremlins. So I‘m hoarding the good stuff and cope with poor throw-away weapons…

It‘s a bit like the „elixiers“ situation in old FF games: Game‘s over and you have 22 unused elixiers you saved for when you really need them.

The game literally tells you you can use warm clothing or elixirs to keep warm. There’s even another method they don’t tell you, equipping an elemental weapon can change your temperature. Just have a flame blade on your back and you can survive running around in snow.

Learning where to buy clothes and how to make elixirs is not hard. Just talk to people near where you’re struggling.

Weapon durability is only a problem if you don’t exercise any discretion in which weapon you use for which situation. If you use your best weapon on weak enemies, you won’t have it later when you face stronger ones. So… don’t.

I personally modded the game to remove weapon and shield durability, and it was unreal how much more enjoyable this made BOTW to me.

I got farther than you, but felt all of those things didn’t really improve or feel as fun. The weapon breaking is annoying. I feel like it’s too quick.

Edit: I eventually gave up after the ‘first’ boss (I know you can do them any order, but water blight is generally considered the easier one to do first).

A few tips for you:

Cook food. Lots of it. You can sell cooked food (especially meats e.g. rare meats) for crazy amounts of rupees. Use rupees to buy cold weather clothing from the various towns in game, then use that whenever you feel cold (same goes for hot weather, you’ll need hot weather clothes).

Don’t try to go way off into the mountains right to start. Find the shrines close to you, mark them on your map, and go there. Do the same for towns. You can then fast travel via the map around the game world, making things way easier.

Finally, when it comes to weapons, you really can’t get attached to any of them. The Master Sword is the only one that doesn’t break, but it will lose energy and take time to recharge before it can be used again. It’s just part of the game mechanics. While annoying, it does force you to plan out your attacks and consider your resource usage.

It did finally click for me, but it took well over a year. Someone told me to play for a couple weeks with no goals, and that finally made it happen. I didn’t put it down for another hundred hours.

I bought BotW right when it came out and I’m still not all that much further than you. I’ve come back to it multiple times, but just can’t get into it. I had trouble with the freezing area too. Took me an hour before I finally stumbled across a solution. I’ve gotten a bit further than you, and it just keeps getting more and more over complicated as you go.

I just don’t think the game is fun, personally. But I also don’t think Skyrim is fun. I’m not really into most open world games. I wish they would make us a new one more in the style of Ocarina and Twilight Princess, but it seems like we’re in the minority

BotW and TotK are a very different type of game from OoT. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of environmental mechanics to learn as well as how to find and use different types of weapons due to weapon durability. It’s a much more open ended game than OoT where exploration is much more of a focus, whereas OoT is more story focused and has a more specific order to do things (which isn’t 100% set in stone, as the whole Spirit vs Shadow Temple debate proves) that’s still more straightforward than the newer games. I like both types of games, especially for both OoT and BotW/TotK being gaming masterpieces for their time, and the three of them are my top 3 Zelda games for sure. But if you don’t like one or more of them that’s perfectly fine. Not every game will appeal to everyone.