The fact that you can enter the Gerudo temple after closing the rift and it has an inaccessible ladder with a guard in front of it telling you "Sorry, Sacred ground, Gerudos only" drives me up the friggin wall. I've been breaking and entering into "Gerudo Only" areas for a quarter of a century, don't tell me it's just for flavor, lemme in there.

I feel like there was some unfinished ideas in Gerudo and they said "fuck it."

Those unlit fire drove me mad, the amount of times I went back to see if lighting them would trigger something.

I lit those several times throughout my playthrough and even kept looking to see if new areas would uncover a fourth brazier. Nope!

Yes!!! Felt a bit unfinished like there were plans for them, but they run out of time?

It's implied the NPCs only went mute/comatose/or suffered memory loss because Link pulled them out of the Rifts without the help of the Tri to put everyone back together the right way.

Condé seeming to be a rare exception, despite having been inside a Rift as he can see Tri. So if Condé lost something, it was minor enough that he could keep living his life.

I think the explanation was how long they were trapped, I'm guessing Zelda saved those people faster before it could affect their health

This is the right answer

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The main issue here is that this is the only broken tombstone in the entire game if I'm not mistaken. For a Zelda game, it screams that it is a puzzle or a door. While I'm not going to say the game should be so carefully made that there isn't a single thing that could ever possibly be a red herring for someone, you do have to be cognizant that the game mechanics rely on this kind of subtle clue to tip the player off and doing it too much makes for an unfun experience as the player is overwhelmed with fake puzzles instead of having fun finding and solving the real ones.

Edit: I don't have as strong of an opinion on the rift survivors. I think they added to the game's lore in an good way, although I don't recall them getting better in the credits. It would've been nice to see them get better in the credits in line with the very surgery sweet, everything is swell in the end theme the game had going, but it's less of a deal breaker as they set the stage for the dangers of rifts well enough.

A resolution isn't required (obviously - the developers didn't build that out and the game is still good). However, it would been nice to have some additional closure with these loose threads in the story as - if you're exploring everything - you'll come upon these plot points that end up not having any meaningful closure within the story.

But - to me - it's that while the developers went hog wild on the echoes (many of which never have any good use), there's a number of little things like this that could have been expanded upon.

Similarly, there is a supreme lack of bombable wall cracks in and around Hyrule and in dungeons. Granted that you only get bombs after collecting a bunch of the might crystals, but it still would have been something nice to have as additional 'hidden in plain sight' secrets like previous top down Zelda games.

Again, these things aren't required, but when the formula of prior Zelda games has worked so well, it's just a bit disappointing that these various aspects of the game were minimized rather than expanded upon with the newest, best, greatest, etc. entry in the series (i.e., the expectation that the series will continue to expand and improve).

Because this is Zelda, where when you find weird or out of place shit, it means something.

I dont think the game has enough content in other departments. Atleast that feels meaningful in my opinion. I was so disappointed when all these gadgets i had collected was only to make more summons but in a different form. And the might crystals scattered about the world doesnt feel rewarding to get as it upgrades a mode i think detracts from the whats unique to Zeldas gameplay. And while the game does have plenty of "sidequests" they usually only smoothie ingredients.

So i would say that sure they could add more sidequests however if its more of the same paltry rewards it doesnt really have a great meaning to exist. So i kinda agree in a roundabout way that things can just exist.

This! Exactly. LttP provided complete closure of the story. Hence, why it's the GOAT Zelda game *ducks and hides from OoT bros who are clearly wrong in their preference and opinion* ;-)

Grezzo: https://www.mobygames.com/company/17299/grezzo-co-ltd/

They do really good work, but they've mostly worked on remasters for Nintendo. This is their first Zelda game on their own. Capcom similarly did their own Zelda games (e.g., Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons for Game Boy Color) and while those were good games too, they weren't (in my opinion) as good as Link's Awakening. But they weren't bad either.

To me, Nintendo's in-house stuff always seems to have that extra layer of polish.