I'm still not sure how old 3D Zelda games ever had good puzzles and how exactly BOTW lacked those? Also i am left scratching my head even as i read this thread to what kind of itch is God of War even supposed to scratch,that BotW supposedly did not? The games are completely different.
Any 3D Zelda game, pre BOTW reused the tired old, push block on a switch, look around the room to hit the big eyeball or crystal to unlock the door and use a specific item that you found in this very linear and easy dungeon. That in question also got completely useless the second you left the dungeon. This was about as far puzzle design in 3D Zelda went since OOT. The best puzzles were in a dungeon like the Water Temple that required you to change certain things in the dungeon, which would effect it completely and how you navigate it. It actually made the player stop and think. This is something all BOTW dungeons have and it's partially the reason why dungeons in that game were a massive step up from the previous games. However stuff like this was the exception in 3D Zelda games and not the rule. The games made sure to guide the player on a linear path as much as possible with no room for true exploration.
The best dungeons in Zelda games have always been the nonlinear ones and 3D Zelda games have been stared to death for those, since Nintendo has gone completely overboard with making all Old 3D games as accessible as humanly possible even if it means making the games themselves worse. The opening tutorial hours of the games have become torture by the time TP came out. I don't think God of War ever suffers from tutorial bloat both in this new game or the old ones.
Skyward Sword took puzzle solving, (if you can even call it that) to an even more tedious level by making the mere act of basic combat a "puzzle". This meant that the game reused the same simple "puzzle" of hitting the enemy in a clearly telegraphed weak spot through finicky motion controls over a thousand times on a single play through. This made combat, slow,awkward and a complete waste of time, since the reward for beating a single enemy would usually be a completely useless trinket that you can find everywhere and would never need to use to upgrade your basic equipment since the game was laughably easy. The whole upgrading system in the game was rendered completely useless since Nintendo did not balance the game properly. This is a area where BOTW and the new God of War don't mess up.
In SS and most other 3D Zelda games since OOT dungeons became so restricted, that the only way to ever get stuck is if you somehow forgot how the past Zelda game(s) worked. The only dungeon that offered any sort of thinking on the player's part in SS was the final dungeon which was the only good dungeon in the game since it required you to shift the rooms around to progress and it did not have your annoying companion ruin it, like it did for every other potentially decent puzzle in the game. It's the only part in the game that did not feel like a Simon Say's game.
I don't even know what some are talking about when comparing the new God of War game with 3D Zelda games. This new God of War has far more exploration and the puzzles are nowhere near as simplistic as they were in pre BOTW Zelda games. In fact if you are looking for something that more resembles pre BOTW Zelda then the old God of War games would probably be more like something you would enjoy on a puzzle solving level. Since they had the push block on a switch puzzle that later games would keep reusing for no reason.
I'm not even joking when i say that the entire premise of this thread baffles me. The RE4 comparison at least made a degree of sense.
