I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
I don’t think most people consider Zelda games to be metroidvanias, so we shouldn’t hold that against those two games.
While I haven’t played TotK, I did enjoy BotW, just less than other games in the series. I felt it was unique, had great atmosphere and music, was incredibly polished… but very shallow. The long, well-crafted dungeons were replaced with many mini-dungeons that only rewarded you with more stamina or more health. Every single time. I eventually stopped even stopped even checking out the shrines I found. Also, I understand why they implemented the weapon degradation mechanic, but it’s definitely not for me. And the missing story. All the cool events in the world have already happened. Which fits the atmosphere, but it’s less fun, and gives us less story-driven things to do…
TotK fixed some of those issues, but I’m not sure it would make it enjoyable in your eyes. It follows a similar pattern of getting all the runes in the tutorial area before opening up. Each boss fight now has a longer dungeon that does give more unique abilities (and some that sort of open new areas) but not in the way metroidvanias do. Also weapons last much much much longer in BotW.