BotW sits at a 97 on Metacritic, this game should score higher, as everyone playing it has said it’s an improvement in every possible way. But I think it’ll top out at 95.
Performance is gonna factor heavy this time, and I think that’ll be the main gripe with TotK.
there is a rumor that suggests Switch Pro was scrapped during COVID and they moved on to developing Switch 2, that's a damn shame because their tentpole open-world game would've benefitted massively from better hardware and Switch needed a Pro more than any other system. it's not that big a power leap from Wii U so we've for real been dealing with the same Nintendo graphics since 2012.
either way, chalk me down as another that sees this getting 94-95 MC, even though it improves on BoTW in almost every way. critics are going to acknowledge that the OG made it all possible and was still the foundation for this game. plus the performance isn't as acceptable as it was in 2017 when BotW dropped.
i can also see them going the other route and not knocking it so hard because it's one of the few open-world AAA games that dropped in a finished, polished, and stable state. so we will have to see.
too many fukking companies are quick to put a game out that is buggy garbage for months and years then still slap a $60-70 price tag on it.
from what i hear from people emulating, the only bugs they are running across are some weird emulation stuff.