>>13837239
It was the first 3D Zelda game, back when 3D was marketed as innovative. It featured established and beloved characters but in a new technological light, with new graphics, gameplay mechanics, and presentation techniques like cutscenes and object lighting. It was basically the BOTW for its time.
The gameplay itself isn't that bad, the things you've said can be applied to pretty much any game that people love.
>The music is boring
That's just, like, your opinion, man
>Gameplay boils down to slashing and sometimes shooting from a distance. The combat is meaningless
You can pretty much say the same thing about virtually every game with swords and projectiles. It's not meaningless, it's just simplistic, which is to be expected given that it's such an old game.
>The dungeons force you to waste time on predictable puzzles
Maybe the puzzles are predictable to you, someone who is presumably an adult with average problem-solving skills, but maybe they're not as straightforward to a childish and developing mind. The game is marketed to children, the puzzles were never meant to be complex. Besides, you're basically saying that the main content of the game is pointless. People knew what they were getting, they expected puzzles and enemies in dungeons with items and boss battles. If you expected something else, then you were misguided.
>The characters act way too serious or break the immersion with no in between
Eh, they're basically the equivalent of what you'd get from any given shonen. The characters aren't deep or poignant, they're flimsy archetypes that are introduced to explain a very basic story. It's intended for children, so of course it's simplistic.
>The travel is obnoxious
You have a horse, which can increase your movement speed to at least double Link's normal walking speed, and the map is quite small. In fact you can get from Gerudo Desert to Zora's Domain in less than 10 minutes. It's quite small, so I don't know how you can complain about the travel in such a small overworld. Not only that, but halfway through the game, you're given ocarina melodies that allow you to fast travel to various locations of interest throughout the world. What exactly is so obnoxious about travel?
I mean, I know this game has had a history of being praised to high heaven, and maybe some of that praise is unwarranted, but you must admit that it's not absolutely shit, and it manages to do the basic action-adventure decently well enough. Anyway, maybe you'll like Majora's Mask better, it has more meaningful side content and a far better atmosphere, and it's not plagued by the inconveniences of its predecessor (shit like an overly long and insufferable tutorial section and an abundance of cutscenes and unskippable dialogue), although it is effectively a more refined version of the same game, so you should expect practically identical combat scenarios and puzzles.