I do agree that progression is slow, but I never felt it was grindy. Stuff broke, but my inventory was always full of other stuff so it hardly mattered. I guess if you felt like you needed to complete all the shrines it could feel grindy? They’re all different at least.
Inventory was always full with sh*t. Nothing really helpful. Sure you had to collect some stuff in OoT too, but at least the sword was always available and mostly enough to get around. The shrines are fine for me, it's just annoying to spend time to have meaningful weapons, not just sticks. I stoped playing it and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Would rather tell them to play TP or OoT.
Did you just play the tutorial and stop when you didn't have a master sword half an hour into the game?
Weapons are literally everywhere. You kill a monster, it will generally drop it's weapon. They're scattered all over the ground. They're in chests. There is never a lack of weapons, and that is one of the core points of the game.
Literally the only way you could be stuck with tree branches is if you stuck to the opening part of the Great Plateau or intentionally pretended all the weapons didn't exist.
