I like your point of view, in fact the possibility of traveling without a fixed destination is what I liked best in this game, but as I said before it seems to me as bare as a world and with a few varieties of enemies!
The minimal interactions with the princess I liked because it gives you that feeling of loneliness and really being the last hope for hyrule;
the goddesses as you say are very marginal in this chapter;
the lack of what happened before the 100 years of sleep left me a bitter taste and the...
In BOTW one of the defects of the game is the lack of variety of enemies and the lack of the possibility to dive into the sea or the lakes you hear! What do you think about it?
I'm sorry for the repost!