It does not surpass it in story...because you have to explore a lot of the game to find a bunch of the cooler elements of the story...like how there is a mission to buy a house...and depending on how much exploring you do and who you talk to you actually come to find out something special about the house...and the game has a much more light hearted tone than OOT...
But when it comes to gameplay and scope...no other zelda game is on the same planet as this...i honestly don't think any other game ever created is touching this... you want to play it as a stealth game and sneak by enemies you can...you want to just button mash through combat you going to have to level up armor and do a lot of cooking but you can...you want to say fukk these shrines I don't want to do that no problem you can cook shyt up to give you up to 20+ extra hearts...you want to just skip the whole game and go straight to hyrule castle and fight ganon 5 minutes into the game you can...i actually semi did that after my first playthrough...one temporary heart elixer + one high defense elixer and I got through 3 and a half divine beast before I died...if I had just had one more of each I would have been able to "beat" the game about an hour and a half in...the vertical aspect of the game is just amazing and almost a game unto itself...i can't even count how many times on my first playthrough I thought I was good enough to fight some enemies...got my ass kicked...said fukk this and just climbed up a mountain and flew over them
...
The soundtrack to me is second to none...I've legit gone to Hyrule castle just to listen to the main Zelda theme that I thought was flawless and they added to it in the game and now I like this version better...it wasn't until this playthrough that I am doing now that I realized the music for every town is different...because I had been to wrapped up in the gameplay to really notice it in my first two playthroughs...
I HATED the weapon break system when I first played this game...even the one weapon that doesn't "break" has a gimmick around it that I didn't like...but...as the game goes on and you get better and you fight stronger enemies they have stronger weapons...things get so durable that it becomes pretty difficult to break them...if you go the route of collecting some particular itmes you can get so many weapons slots that it doesn't even matter...by the end of my first playthrough I had 5 and 6 of the types of weapons and shields and bows in the game... the only real gripe I have with the gameplay is that you can eventually become overpowered if you explore to much and level up to much and always craft the best of the best things...by the end of my first play through i had gone from one guardian shot outright killing me to one guarding shot doing half a heart of damage and with added temp hearts I had 42 of them...and I had an ability to resurrect me after I died with extra temp hearts...and i had like 20 ferries to resurrect me again if I died again
Like...there are two versions of this game...the version you play when you don't know how to play it...and then the version you play when you do know how to play it...the way i am playing the game in my third playthrough is not even remotely close to how i played it in my second play through and it was not remotely close how i played it in my first playthrough...
You say you are not concerned with gameplay but I would wait and make that judgement until after I played the game enough to at least figure it out...it is so free and open to the point you can't REALLY start to appreciate the game until you figure out how to play it the way want to play it...
how much playthroughs u gonna do bruh? 
I have to see this with my own eyes.
maybe I should take my horse to the top of that mountain and sacrifice it for it to appear.
