I agree with you. TOTK (and other open world games) on the Switch is an unpleasant experience. The hardware just isn’t capable of it
I do however think the developers did put some effort into attempting to mitigate the underperforming hardware - hence the seeming emptiness of the world. It just wasn’t enough. There are games that run well on the Switch - Metroid Prime Remastered is incredible, for example, but we must ask why: the answer is that that game’s world consists of a large number of small rooms, basically the polar opposite of an open world design.
Art style trumps graphical fidelity, but you do need a decent baseline capability to be able to pull it off.
Also, if you enjoyed TOTK don’t let me ruin your fun - it’s a subjective thing. Just don’t tell me there’s objectively no problems with it, because there clearly are
I think that’s part of the fun of an “ask people” forum, the answers reveal the common understanding of the definition of the question itself!
For example, In this question the term “male loneliness” is seemingly semantically meaningful. It seems to be a name given to the popular perception or understanding of a certain phenomenon.