[Coda]

They would have designed the game around that different choice of mechanics, yes, but then it wouldn't be this game. It would be more linear, less dynamic... more traditional.

You need to break yourself of that feeling. The limited inventory is explicitly to discourage hoarding. The lack of a repair mechanic for all but three weapons is the same. You should treat weapons like ammunition -- you don't sweat over not picking up a box of bullets. The game gives you enough weaponry through normal gameplay that the only thing getting in your way is your own OCD. The game is specifically trying to encourage you to USE the things it gives you.

Again: If you sequence-broke ahead in the game and grabbed an advanced weapon, that would make all of the weapons before that point in the game almost completely meaningless. Have you ever been playing a Final Fantasy game, excited when you reach a new town because of the opportunity for upgrades, and the stuff you find there is weaker than the stuff you already have? This mechanic is a solution to that problem.

There absolutely is not that kind of weapon type rock-paper-scissors going on, at least not by design. (There is elemental RPS, but not weapon type.) That's one of the "emergent" things that the game designers are so proud of -- they support a variety of different play styles that require different skills to be proficient at, but no encounter in the game demands any specific one of them (except for a small number that require archery). If you feel like some weapon types work better against some enemies, that's not because the game is built that way -- it's because you, personally, play better that way.

Ultimately, what you're complaining about is that Breath of the Wild isn't the game you wanted. And that's a very different argument from "this is a bad mechanic." You are welcome to not like it, but there is nothing objectively wrong with the mechanics -- they are among the best implementations of those mechanics of any game I have ever seen.

For me, BotW IS in my top tier: Link to the Past and Link Between Worlds are the only ones that beat it on my list (we agree on them being excellent), and Majora's Mask is at the bottom with only OoT below it.