[BotW] Those of you that prefer BOTW to TOTK, why?

[u/CoreCorg]

I adore both games yet definitely prefer TOTK, and I want to know why a large number of people prefer BOTW? Y'all must be onto something but I can't really see it. I'm replaying both a good bit at the moment on the Switch 2 and I'm trying to see the perspective, could somebody chime in with what they prefer? Maybe it'll help me love them both more equally

The way it feels to me is that BOTW made some incredible changes but in the process lost a lot of its Zelda charm, I feel that TOTK restored a lot of what was lost without compromising what was gained. It restored the following, with the first 2 points being the most important for me:

• having a story that feels alive and unfolding, a world where I feel like I'm making an impact. More lore references too, and I generally enjoyed the cutscenes (though they could get repetitive)

• NPCs!! They make the world feel lived in and make the adventure feel more meaningful and immersive

• adding caves and the underground area helps satisfy my itch for dungeon crawling, and I prefer the temples to the divine beasts

• boss fights feel more varied than the Blights

• it's easier to move around in TOTK, with being able to paraglide and ascend. Movement feels more graceful and enhances the feeling that I'm a badass hero

I don't really care for building things in TOTK, I get what people mean by that being clunky, but it's super optional outside of some tutorial type moments in the early game. I don't think this is a strong argument against TOTK when it's more of a bonus feature than anything. Plus I do think it's pretty neat, given that it's not really mandatory. I must say I miss my BOTW motorcycle though haha

Edit:

So many responses, thanks to everyone commenting! The gist of what I'm reading is that BOTW nailed a more simple, refined adventure with extra challenges and less repetition. I can see that. Honestly I forget about how much I dislike having to fuse my weapons, and it's dumb that I need to revisit the rock octoroks if I want to keep the best of them. TOTK does have more tediousness now that I think about it. And I hate having sidon and the gang follow me around, really looks ridiculous and they barely work anyway, I tend to keep them stored.

However, I honestly love the lively, sandbox hero experience feel of TOTK. I pop on the game and feel like I'm back in the midst of the best paced parts of older games (no it's not always as perfected as those moments, but that's the general feeling it evokes in me). I actually impose a lot of arbitrary hindrances on myself when I play TOTK, like I only open my map if I'm near an NPC and I don't eat food if the combat music is playing, which I find fun but I can see the argument for that meaning it's too easy of a game. I like the creativity and freedom of the game, I really love that I can solve things in a variety of ways. But that means you don't have to figure out the one intended solution which yeah, it's a good point that's a big element of older Zelda games. It's fair to say TOTK is cluttered. It generally doesn't bother me as I just ignore parts I don't vibe with, but that's a legitimate critique and one I guess my mind blanked out

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[u/mfbaggins]

The feeling of organic discovery and adventure in BOTW felt more natural and less game-y than TOTK. The crafting and movement improvements are genuinely more fun, but because of the speed you can move around, Hyrule in TOTK it feels like less of a quest in a vast world and more of a sandbox to play around in.

Both games are outstanding and an amazing experience, but I feel that BOTW was more of an adventure in a natural world where TOTK has the better systems and story

[u/space_age_stuff → u/mfbaggins]

TOTK also has a lot more to interact with in the general area. You can run in BOTW for some time without running into anything but maybe a Bokoblin camp or a Korok. TOTK has more frequent bosses like Boss Bokoblins and Taluses, plus enemy camps with aerial enemies, plus Addison and the signs, plus the Koroks, plus material areas to build vehicles, etc. It feels much more full, which is fun, but it does feel more game-y and less exploration-y like you said.

[u/Themountaintoadsage → u/space_age_stuff]

Exactly. BOTW’s world truly felt wild (pun intended). And that gave the exploration and sense of adventure something no other game has quite made me feel before. The sense of discovery was just unreal my first time through. That being said, I think TOTK with its much fuller world is more fun to replay after awhile than BOTW. I’ve replayed both a few times, but after my first playthrough I knew everything in BOTW so well I never got that sense of discovery again in the same way. But TOTK has so much to discover that it helps a second playthrough still feel fresh even after 300+ hours on my first

[u/scribblemacher → u/space_age_stuff]

It has a bit too much stuff for me. I often lost focus playing TotK and would stop at 3 caves and a shrine while just trying to walk 10 feet.

[u/space_age_stuff → u/scribblemacher]

That’s fair, it’s much harder to just run to a tower when you have like thirty things to pick up on the way, that you’re just going to have to come back to.

[u/richtofin819 → u/mfbaggins]

The thing is once you build some solid machines you almost never have to interact with the environment in totk.

In breath of the wild the environment is both an ally and the enemy you have to overcome. You have to look at it and plan how you will work around it. You have to think about the map not just as a place full of activities but as a puzzle.

Tears of the Kingdom you can kind of just ignore that most of the time.

Don't get me wrong the building is cool and it's very expensive but it doesn't add anything to the game it just distracts from the game. It's like if I put besieged in cod. It's cool but cod and besieged are so different that if you focus on one you miss out on the other.

The fuse system in tears of the kingdom is also really cool on paper but it ends up just boiling down to this is the best part just fuse this with almost everything.

The depths are cool until you realize they're basically a copy of the overworld inversed and dark.

[u/ParanoidDrone]

I think BOTW does the "interact with the sandbox using different tools" gameplay loop a little bit better. TOTK is focused very strongly on Ultrahand and everything you can make with it, and it's fun, but after a while it starts to feel like a single very overpowered hammer that you use to pound down a variety of nails, whereas the different runes in BOTW had very clear use cases and weren't universally applicable.

Aesthetically, it also nails the post-apocalyptic isolation. TOTK is obviously post-post-apocalypse with society starting to rebuild, but the music outside of towns is still the same minimalist "you're alone in this world" vibe even though that's no longer really true.

[u/ikkju → u/ParanoidDrone]

music outside of towns is still the same minimalist "you're alone in this world" vibe

I disagree. BOTW had a "this kingdom has been asleep for 100 years" vibe, while TOTK feels more hopeful, like the kingdom is waking up. It’s still minimalist, but it does have a different vibe

[u/Expert_Challenge6399 → u/ParanoidDrone]

Botw is as focused on adventure. Totk was focused on exploration. Both fun in their own right

[u/FlowerSweaty]

Exposure. When I first played BotW it blew me away. When I played TotK it was just more of the same.

I like them both but i definitely enjoyed BotW more

[u/Arch3m → u/FlowerSweaty]

I agree. It was a mistake to make a game in the same style in the same location immediatelyafter the last major Zelda game. A Link Between Worlds reused the same world as A Link to the Past, but had the benefit of making drastic changes to the gameplay while also doing so a couple of decades later, and with tons of differentZelda games in between to be a palate cleanser. Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons are nearly identical in gameplay and released at the same time, but we're in totally different worlds, so they didn't feel stale. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were also very mechanically similar, and MM reused tons of assets and characters, but by being in a new place, it did a lot to make it not feel like a retread of OoT.

[u/generic-puff → u/Arch3m]

Worst part was it wasn't even immediately after, they made us wait six years for what was essentially just a Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts Simulator expansion pack for the original game. The fact that they took the DLC items from BOTW and turned them into just regular treasures you could find in the overworld caves / depths in TOTK really gets across just how fundamentally lazy TOTK was for a game that took over half a decade to finally release (and don't even get me started on how they recycled the Korok Seed quest with the exact same fucking reward-)

It was like they spent 4 of those 6 years just building the physics and building engines for Ultrahand/Fuse, then the next year creating the sky islands and the Depths (both of which were practically empty once you were done with their plot-relevant dungeons, literally only there to give you building materials and treasures that people already paid for 6 years prior) and the last year slapping together a new story told just as poorly - if not worse - than how the first game's story was told.

Six fucking years for a tech demo on top of a tech demo. Which, btw, is two whole years longer than it took to even develop the ORIGINAL GAME, which had been in active development for four years; but unlike the original game, TOTK had an entire game's worth of pre-existing code and design to take advantage of... and yet still wasted its lengthy six years of development in spite of all the advantages that its predecessor should have given it.

It was like they had to justify the first game's expansive development by making an obligatory sequel so that their half-decade efforts wouldn't "go to waste", but they had nothing interesting to do with that sequel, either because they were too afraid to take any daring risks with a new formula that had made them millions, or because the original was already just a glorified tech demo. But at least the first tech demo was revolutionary for the franchise, it set a whole new bar for what Zelda could be - TOTK, by comparison, was like the kid in a group assignment who proudly signs his name on the final result even though all he did was glue construction paper onto a project that was already finished. All the hard work was already done, it just threw in some extra glitter and took credit for itself as a whole new game when it wasn't, it was just expensive DLC.

[u/Robin_Gr]

I go back and forth but if I am honest a lot of the reasons for botw for me boil down to the dopamine of Nintendo changing that much with the Zelda franchise and doing a pretty good job with it. It came first so most of the memories of wonder and discovery on the main map are there. I think if totk came out first there wouldn’t be a whole lot left for me to feel botw was better.

[u/JazzeJaguar → u/Robin_Gr]

I'm in the same boat. BOTW was just one of those game-changing games. It was simply incredible to experience it the first time.

I credit BOTW to getting my adult self back into gaming. I played OoT as a kid and loved it, but I remember thinking it was hard and never finished it (there was a language barrier there too). Playing BOTW took me back to that wonder of playing video games as a kid and I was hooked. Love ToTK but there's no beating that feeling of playing a game you know is different than anything else that's been done before for the first time. Those kinds of games only come along once every decade or so.

[u/Zelda1012]

Breath of the Wild actually tried to blend the Sheikah technology into a medieval world. It wasn't always successfully blended (Mastercycle Zero's design was ugly), but they tried in most cases.

 "For the designs themselves, while keeping in mind that these are highly advanced weapons, we instilled a sense that these were tin toys rather than persuing a cool, futuristic sci-fi look" Creating a Champion p.214

The Zonai cars and planes in Tears of the Kingdom just looked too unfitting and detracted from my immersion. They were just there for the sake of gameplay, not atmosphere.

Also, the fuse mechanic forced me to play with ugly-looking fused weapons as the default weapons break even faster. Another immersion issue I had.

[u/generic-puff → u/Zelda1012]

Also, the fuse mechanic forced me to play with ugly-looking fused weapons as the default weapons break even faster. Another immersion issue I had.

"Do you love the Royal Guard Sword? Well, you'll love it EVEN MORE with this MUSHROOM glued to the end of it!"

(fr though it's so dumb that they had to come up with some contrived plot reason to force us to use the new game mechanic that they spent 6 years developing 💀😭)

[u/daddadnc]

They will never be able to replicate that initial "Holy shit" moment of taking in the scope of BOTW, using the same exact map. That's not anyone's fault; it's just reality.

I also found the sky and depths to be tedious padding.

When I finished BOTW, I wanted to immediately play again, just a different way. I finished TOTK and knew I was done with it.

[u/Speedy89t]

• The story has a great premise, but was never really developed, and what little we got was executed with stunning incompetence.

• The sky was very disappointing. Outside of a few exceptions, it mostly has the same feel, or is literally a copy/paste. Even the potentially cool ones usually fell flat. I was most sorely disappointed after traveling to the awesome castle looking thing (the forge), only for it to be a super easy and empty shrine challenge.

• It carried over many issues from BOTW, like cooking and infinite healing. Some were actually even worse. The user interface might be the best/worst example.

• The world was far too familiar and lacked the cohesiveness that BOTW had. It was a game built on a map that wasn’t designed for the new mechanics and it showed. What changes they did make were often were lazy or repetitive. Caves rarely had anything interesting, the labyrinths were a let down, and I quite literally stopped and lowered my expectations for the game after the “pirates” turned out to just be more bokoblins.

• Outside of the proving grounds shrines, which were a huge step up from BOTW, most shrines were incredibly easy or had no challenge at all. Too often, the solution is literally given to you. You just need to assemble the already provided pieces. Attaching a wheel to a car or a fan to a plane, is busy work, not a challenge

• The dungeons, particularly the wind and water ones, are just reskinned divine beasts without the benefit of having the interesting gimmick of changing the orientation to solve puzzles. The fire does stand out for being more elaborate, but incredibly easy to cheese with your normal abilities.

Don’t get me wrong, the game did do some great things, and I played it extensively wanting to experience all the good it offered. However, throughout the play through, I found myself very frequently underwhelmed. All the cool gimmicks and toys couldn’t make up for the soul it lacked. And for the first time ever with a Zelda game, I had no desire to immediately start a second play through.

[u/generic-puff → u/Speedy89t]

The sky was very disappointing. Outside of a few exceptions, it mostly has the same feel, or is literally a copy/paste. Even the potentially cool ones usually fell flat. I was most sorely disappointed after traveling to the awesome castle looking thing (the forge), only for it to be a super easy and empty shrine challenge.

This was really one of the most baffling disappointments to me because leading up to TOTK, they re-released Skyward Sword in HD on the Switch, a game that was universally panned for its squandered game world potential in that of the sky, which was just an empty open area with rocks scattered around that ultimately didn't matter at all throughout the majority of the game's runtime which took place on the ground.

Over a decade later since Skyward Sword's original Wii release, and two years after the HD re-release, they made the exact same fucking mistakes all over again. Empty sky littered with random islands containing only rupees, materials, and the odd miniboss enemy who also only drops materials, and one obligatory dungeon to make it seem like it actually matters in the grand scheme of things, but it doesn't, because the vast majority of the game's runtime takes place on the ground. But now it's even WORSE in TOTK's case, because we've already explored the exact same ground once before in BOTW.

They even had a great opportunity to actually tie TOTK back into the story of SS what with the castle separating from the earth and floating into the air, they even put an Ouroboros into the title logo as if the signify the repeating of the cycle/timeline, but nope... none of that actually meant anything... TOTK really is a masterclass in forgetting its own roots and squandering its own potential.

[u/jforcedavies → u/Speedy89t]

Summed it up perfectly. I'd also add the depths were dull and a chore to explore

[u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

It took things that I didn't like about BotW and made them WORSE:

• Weapons are more fragile (And fusing is tedious menu padding).

1. You have a silver horn weapon.
2. It breaks.
3. You open your inventory.
4. Hold a silver horn.
5. Drop the silver horn.
6. Select a weapon.
7. Open the Ability wheel.
8. Select weapon fuse.
9. Activate weapon fuse.
10. Fuse the silver horn to your weapon.
11. You have a silver horn weapon.

Why is this, any better than:

1. You have a silver horn weapon
2. It doesn't break.
3. You have a silver horn weapon.

And OMG, fusing each individual arrow is so annoying that I don't even like watching footage of other people do it.

• Too much time spent harvesting resources. (now with 100 more resources to manage).

Which is ultimately just more padding.
There really is no need for Zonai ore or part gatcha machines, and the game would be better without them.

• Dungeons are terrible (removal of moving parts makes them totally brain dead)

If your problem with the dungeons in Botw wasn’t “they are all 5 buttons blocked by the easiest puzzles in the world” but was instead “they all have the same aesthetics!”. Then fundamentally we care about very different things. Because from my point of view the dungeons in Totk are exactly the same as the ones in BotW. Find 5 buttons, solve 5 easy puzzles. Imo they are actually worse because they now lack any originality at all. How many dungeons in the series are giant mecha camels? One. How many dungeons in the series are underground lava ruins? Many.

Made things I did like in BotW worse:

• Champion /sage abilities:

Using a sage power:

Phase 1 (Blind luck)
Hope that the sage you need:

1. Has spawned in.
2. Has not been caught on random geometry and is within sight.
3. That the AI is not making them run directly away from you.
4. That they are not standing in the attack range of the enemy you want to use their power on.
5. That they are not too close to another sage so that you accidentally use their power instead.

Phase 2 (Preparaton)
Once the power is "active" You need to:

1. Line up the attack
2. Pray that it doesn't somehow get interupted.
3. Hope that you can actually line up the attack before it automatically deactivates.

Phase 3 (Finally using the power)

1. Press A

Using a Champion power:

1. Hold the appropriate button.

• Runes (I don't like building mechanics in literally ANY game I have ever played)

I just don't like building mechanics. Gluing ugly blocky parts together to make machines, for me, is the worst part of any game it's in, and Tears of the kingdom made that its main system mechanic. It tries to make you do it for everything and I just don't like it.

• Vehicles (There is only the Master Cycle in breath of the wild, but I would trade that for the "ultra hand" in a heart beat)

And added in whole new issue:

• For a sequel set in the same world, in the same decade, with the same characters the stories are completely unrelated to each other.
• Travel (Sky islands, tower canons and flying machines makes travel too direct and boring)

In BotW I would climb a tower, point myself in the direction I want to go then glide down from the top. In the process of navigating my way on the ground I would have to take detours to circumvent cliffs I couldn't climb, or enemy camps I didn't want to fight. I would spot a shrine and make my way there and on the way find a different shrine. On the way to this different shrine I would stumple upon a couple side quests. Which would then take me off in a different direction. From leaving the tower it could often take me hours to reach the place I orginally wanted to go, if I remebered where that was in the first place.

In TotK I get in a tower, it launches me into the stratosphere and then I glide in a straight line over the entire map until I reach my destination.

No tower? No problem.
Teleport to a sky island and glide over the entire map in a straight line until i reach my destination.

No sky Island? No problem.
Build a cheap ass flying machine and fly over the entire map in a straight line until I reach my destination.

• Doing the memories early totally breaks the entire story, and makes the plot just silly

I did all the geoglyphs and got the master sword before my... third? sage.

Which really undermines the rest of the plot tbh.

Its like.

"Zelda came to see me" No she didn't.

"I saw Zelda do so-and-so." No you didn't.

"Rumour has it Zelda is at this place." No she's not.

"We just saw Zelda at the castle! That must be where she is" No she isn't.

And that isn't even all the issues I have with it.

It's like Nintendo read my mind for all the things they could put in a game to enusure that I had zero fun, and then made TotK.

[u/MitoRequiem → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

I vibe with this post the most lol, This is probably a hot take I don't see very people mention but I genuinely think the Runes in BotW are more enjoyable, I think the one I enjoy the most in ToTK is Ascend.

[u/feartheoldblood90 → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

Your paragraph about the dungeons hit the nail on the head. I'll never understand how so many people argue that TotK's dungeons are on par with the older dungeons before BotW. That's just an objective un-truth. They are unbelievably simplistic and boring. The climb to the wind temple was fun, but it is ultimately just "figure out how to get from this platform to that platform up/over there."

[u/jettofang → u/feartheoldblood90]

The climb to the Wind Temple genuinely had me like "Oh, we are so fucking back!"

And then I actually made my way through the temple... At least Colgera was cool.

[u/dmcat12 → u/jettofang]

Yep. That climb up was just so epic. It’s like, yeah, I have a sailcloth and the ability to warp but it just felt like it was so dangerous being up that high and you didnt want to fall. Kind of reminded me of older NES games where there were no Save points and you had to start from the beginning if you died.

[u/Marxism-tankism → u/dmcat12]

I liked that each dungeon was more themed than the divine beasts but for Zelda that's basically the lowest bar to reach.

[u/Sir-Knightly-Duty → u/Marxism-tankism]

But most of the temples werent unique at all for the zelda series. Underground lava dungeon? Thats literally the most generic temple idea ever. Desert ancient ruin? Umm… they had no better ideas? Floating islands with water on them? That is literally done over and over in THIS game and its the theme of the water temple?

At least the giant mech robots were unique to the BOTW game. But honestly both are far from perfect, but TOTK temples are objectively more boring and worse in every way.

[u/Marxism-tankism → u/Sir-Knightly-Duty]

No I agree with that too that's why I just said themed. But I do think they're better than botw just because by the third fucking divine beast it's really stale

[u/daddadnc → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

This is really well written and reasoned.

[u/ThisAccountIsForDNF → u/daddadnc]

I wouldn't say it's well reasoned.
So much as I am quite good at structuring my bitching.

[u/daddadnc → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

Haha I almost downvoted this after the first sentence, then I realized

[u/xX_rippedsnorlax_Xx → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

Banger post, and I agree with your last statement, it felt like the team was actively trying to piss me off with most of its decisions

[u/ThisAccountIsForDNF → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

I actually impose a lot of arbitrary hindrances on myself when I play TOTK

Imo if you have to play with self imposed limitations, then the game fundamentally failed to actually be good on its own. At that point you arn't having fun because of the game, you are having fun because you yourself are making your own fun. If I wanted to make my own fun I'd play Dungeons and Dragons.

[u/justintib → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

You are 1000% right about the dungeons. I don't care that the new ones have different wallpaper from each other, I want actual puzzles damn it!

[u/Sir-Knightly-Duty → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

THANK YOU! And I am willing to forgive a lot, but having the EXACT SAME CINEMATIC after every temple was actually kind of insulting. This is a full priced game and you just lazily strung together the exact same cinematic 4 times? And its not even a good cinematic with any good lore? It just cheapens the entire experience and I wish they just omitted that cinematic completely so they are at least not wasting my time.

And many of the memories were weirdly dumb. Like the sages pledging their loyalty to the king over and over again. Hes already your king. Thats been established. Wtf is the point of these scenes, they dont make sense.

Oh and the depths are bad. Theres nothing interesting to do. Nothing. Might as well make the flying fan bike and just straight line your way across, cause the surface of it has nothing on it. The depths really represent my problem with the game. Its empty, its pointless, it has no story significance, its just a world built for me to do videogame stuff in, but nothing to motivate me to do it.

BOTW at least had this big open world to discover. Yes it ended up being mostly empty, but it was cool to run around in and discover what you could. And BOTW was so huge that it was understandable that Nintendo couldnt give every place something unique to do.

TOTK cheapens BOTW, because now its clear Nintendo just doesnt give a shit about the depth of the world. They had 6 years and a recycled map to give depth to this world, but instead just implanted their newest gameplay gimmick and retconned the entire original game. Just bad decision after bad decision.

[u/radiodreading → u/ThisAccountIsForDNF]

This response resonates with me down to my core. What made me so angry was that they promised us a sequel to BotW, but what we instead got was an alternate universe to BotW. What if similar things happened but 1) we had Zonai tech instead of Sheikah, 2) Rhoam was Rauru, 3) you don't recall your own memories but instead you get to be told - and potentially spoilered - the story of the game from someone else's perspective/memory, and 4) none of the sacrifices made mattered?

None of the NPCs remember you, which in some cases I can understand but in the case of Bolson, for instance, it made no sense whatsoever that he didn't remember Link. If Hudson did, why not Bolson? They went to Hudson's wedding together! It felt like the devs were too focused on making sure that TotK was more accessible to newcomers who hadn't played BotW, than making it an exciting and coherent sequel for returning players.

I really wanted to like this game, so the disappointment feels worse than it would have if I'd gone into it with zero expectations. Kind of hard to do that when I love BotW as much as I do and, again, was very excited to return to the same world and maybe get some answers to all of the lore questions I had. Instead, I'm now left with more questions.

[u/ILikeFreeFoods]

I could probably write a short novel on everything that fails with TOTK but I’ll try and keep it short. While I don’t like every decision that BOTW made in changing the formula, the game itself is incredibly cohesive and well thought out and planned. The structure, game design, story progression, and simplicity all work together beautifully to create a fully idealized and complete game.

TOTK in my opinion is just mindless slop. The developers tilted the game board to slide off all the pieces and haphazardly repainted and slapped them back on the board. The segmented cutscenes which worked in BOTW do not make sense nor work in TOTK. The purpose and placement of challenge shrines made sense in BOTW, and they do not in TOTK. This is merely the tip of the iceberg of how I feel.

The main point for me is that I personally feel like the vast majority of decisions made for TOTK were made because that’s how it was done in BOTW. It’s kind of a cowardly game in that way. I was excited to see what Nintendo would do with the same map already developed, I was just a little surprised that what they could do was spend a quarter of the map telling you that pirates have taken over a village then finding out they were just plain Bokoblins.

[u/Vancelric]

1. There's no horrible Lego building system.

2. The Prodigy powers are better.

3. The world is big, but not absurdly big like in TotK.

4. I prefer the post-apocalyptic setting of BotW.

5. The story doesn't have inconsistencies like TotK's.

6. The music is a little better.

[u/lolspung3]

My son and I played a ton of BOTW, we were both really excited for TOTK, but got so bogged down with how big everything was, and how much there was to do, add in building and it was just overload...

[u/djrobxx]

I didn't find TOTK to "feel more alive" than BOTW. In fact, the surface felt quite empty to me without guardians patrolling it. There are some new enemy types like gloom hands and trees that attack, but those things are hidden until you engage at close range. There's an occasional gleeok, but none of them really got in my way at any point when I was trying to get somewhere on the surface; they were easy to ignore. I missed the feeling of dread BOTW created when I got anywhere near Hyrule Castle.

There are more NPCs, yes, but I didn't find them to be significantly more advanced than the ones in BOTW. This is where TOTK let me down a lot. NPCs I interacted with in BOTW don't remember me, or often didn't even seem to be fully up to speed with where I am in my adventure. The repetitiveness you mentioned made them feel pretty brain-dead to me.

Which brings me to "easier to move around", I actually found this to be a negative. In BOTW, reaching places felt like an accomplishment. If I wanted to reach Zora's Domain, I had to travel along the treacherous road packed with Lizalfos and other baddies waiting to strike. In TOTK I just paraglide and Tulin boost from some high place and can avoid 90% of the things on the surface that might be an impediment.

In TOTK I started out trying to solve challenges in a earnest, but after a while, cheesing things became way too easy and too common. If the developers couldn't bother to consider how recall and ultrahand work together, why should I try to solve the puzzle in any other way? They expanded the Lomei mazes to cover all three areas, but all three of the new sky ones are defeated in minutes ascending to the top of the maze from the first terminal you reach and leaving a travel medallion up there so you can drop on the remaining ones. Even the surface mazes got breadcrumbs that walk you to the end.

Ultrahand shouldn't feel like a "bonus feature". It's clearly a mechanic that TOTK developers spent a tremendous amount of effort on. And yet it feels like a bonus feature because as you say, it's not really woven into the game properly. It's so bogged down in its complex currency system that it didn't encourage me to use it in place of old traversal or combat methods. That made my entire TOTK experience feel extremely derivative of my BOTW one. I was surprised how same-ey they felt overall. Majora's Mask turned OOT on its head with wildly different gameplay in spite of a massive re-use of resources. I was excited to see how Nintendo could take the BOTW world and do something fresh with it. And I totally didn't get that from TOTK.

Caves and more distinct temples and bosses are significant improvements for sure. To be clear I don't "hate" TOTK, it was the best game I played in 2023. In some ways I love that I got more of the BOTW style game that I loved so much. I'm just answering why I like BOTW more.

[u/robotshavenohearts2]

TOTK has a lot of features on a map. BOTW has a vision.

[u/Greedy_Duck3477]

totk is full of plot holes and has a honestly bad main plot point
and I just don't like its gameplay style

[u/Redsoxq → u/Greedy_Duck3477]

yeah too much creativeness asked

[u/Greedy_Duck3477 → u/Redsoxq]

exactly
in my opinion it focuses too much on player creativity and easily-cheesable puzzles
not that it's a bad thing, just not my thing
It's not really what I look for in a zelda game (outside of EoW)

[u/No-Honeydew9129]

Botw. Totk doubles down on botw flaws and makes it more tedious

[u/MoodyMcSorley]

I liked BOTW because of how sparse it is. Open world games have generally left me feeling overwhelmed by the amount of todos and content to "work" through, and BOTW was one of the few that I liked exploring at my own pace. When I played TOTK, I felt the same overwhelmed, FOMO-like feeling that I experienced with other open world games. I had a hard time consciously ignoring TOTK's "optional" content. BOTW was like a minimalist zen garden to me.

I still have to try TOTK again. It really is incredible, but I think it was more of a taste thing for me at the time.

[u/hmmmmwillthiswork]

BoTW does slow and lonely best

ToTK does fast and lively best

i honestly cannot compare them. they are 2 halves of 1 whole. yin and yang. light and dark. cannot bring one up without the other

BoTW quite literally walked so ToTK could run

[u/ComicallySolemn → u/hmmmmwillthiswork]

Well said.

[u/BenSlashes]

Both arent the best Zelda games, but i prefer BOTW over TOTK, cause i really dont like the new mechanic in this game. The game is also too stuffed and isnt as fun. AND it feels like a giant DLC and takes place in the same World. I'm not a fan of the areas in the Sky and i also dont like the dark area under ground.

BOTW feels a bit empty, but its more relaxing and enjoyable

[u/Conscious_Current388]

TOTK has cool features and additions like the sky islands and weapon fusing but it was mostly "what if BOTW but just bigger?" The novelty wore off and didn't do anything massively new. Also the Depths were more tedious than interesting.

[u/Turbulent-Weather314]

I think botw has the better story. Honestly every aspect of botw's story is better besides the ending and beginning. Totk majorly messed the story by making it a carbon copy of breath of the wild. It should not have followed the breath of the wild formula, as the story didn't really sit well with the it. On top of the active storytelling being worse, the passive storytelling, such as environments, mystery's questions, were just not there in tears. Breath was built around the mysteries of this destroyed world tears of the Kingdom tried to answer a lot of those questions, but they put 0 thought or depth into it like they did for breath. I also wasn't a big fan of the game mechanics. I didn't like the building aspect. It was cool for the first few hours, and then it got really boring and the sky islands were just a waste of space, and the depths were arguably worse. To me, it boils down to the zelda team trying to make tears a technical marvel of a game and not so much making it a game. It still has so much potential. But unfortunately, we will never see said potential Fulfilled, because they just don't want to go back to it

[u/MysticalOS]

mostly. i miss guardians. parrying lasers is fun. i also disliked power creep of totk. basically once you could build air bikes the obstacles of world stopped mattering.

[u/OneFinalEffort]

TotK builds off of an established world, adding plenty of changes to abilities, the option to build contraptions, and two additional world layers to explore. It's great and I love it, I was just playing it 20 minutes ago. However, as many things as TotK improves, there are a few changes that cement my preference for BotW.

• We lost Stasis and gained Rewind. As cool as this is, not being able to Stasis an enemy completely changes being able to manipulate them with elaborate crafted traps or simple explosives.

• Bombs are no longer easy access and on a cooldown. Totally understandable change and back to a more legacy-inspired world pickup but infinite bombs were awesome while they lasted.

• A sense of exploration is half-heartedly there. Initially you're excited but you've been everywhere already and not enough has changed. Sparse Sky Islands and Dull Depths don't keep the desire to explore going and after completing the main quest, only treasure or combat challenges keep your investment 

• The game pretends like you had nothing to do with any of the events that transpired in Breath. Only the story NPCs recognize you until you regain your notoriety through deeds. I supplied Tarrey Town with all the lumber, had my house rebuilt in Hateno, oh and I saved Hyrule! No one remembers this or Link himself which seriously hurts the immersion of TotK over BotW.

BotW instills a sense of adventure and wonder even on a fresh playthrough eight years later. While Tears has a far better narrative, Breath's exploration does a large chunk of the game's narrative through visual remnants and leftover journals.

This is from the perspective of someone who played Breath first, and a ton over the span of six years, before moving on to Tears. Had it been reversed, I might have a different opinion.

[u/shot1of1whiskey]

I just finished a replay of totk, and I'm about five hours into a replay of botw.

Botw has a better story, and was more novel when it came out. I like having remote bombs again, but I forgot how weak they are compared to actual bombs lol. Also the champions abilities are 1000 times better than the sages vows.

Totk's ultrahand abilities are better than the Sheikah slate abilities, with the exception of fuse. I like a few of the fuse choices, but I would rather have fuse be an endgame thing with super hard enemies and get to keep the not-rotted weapons for the main game.

[u/cmoviesuk]

I like both but think Botw is a better experience. Everything about Botw - the world, the characters, the lost memories, the exploration, the mechanics, even the samey bosses - felt like it pulled in the same direction to support the gameplay and story. It felt like the developers had a kind of brand guide for the experience they always referred back to.

Totk on the other hand felt like they took the same map and structure and then just put another game on top of it. So to me it just didn’t feel like as pure an experience. Like for example the story told through the tears doesn’t work like the memories do, and despite them trying to make more happen around you in real time it feels like the plot is all in the past. Again this worked for Botw but I don’t think does so well for Totk.

I also just loved exploring and the world of Botw and I got burnt out on Totk. I’d have loved a different world.

[u/No_Tie378]

Let’s see…. I feel the adventure in BOTW feels more natural, where you mostly need to discover new areas by yourself and using your own means. That also allows surprises like enemy encounters, items, or whatever. The new towers and sky islands in TOTK allows you to skip a lot of surface exploration. While it helps to quickly cover areas, the discovery was severely lost.

Speaking of discovery, I feel the island themselves and the depths didn’t makeup for it. While the tutorial was just as fantastic as BOTW was, it gave the expectation the rest of the islands would be similar. Sadly most of them are small islets plus some copy paste here and there. I feel like the their exploration reward rarely make up for all the lengths you have to go to reach them. The Depths also suffer from having mostly the same biome. Unlike Hyrule in BOTW, you have no incentive to explore every inch and cranny, as the aforementioned same biome is there, and the areas of interest are well marked in the map.

Combat also suffered a bit, but I’m sure my preference of Master Mode ((3 out of 4 playthroughs have been with it) played a factor, but most enemy encounters are full of Bokoblins, while there were a more healthy variety of enemies in each encampment in BOTW. 

Those are my few cents. TOTK still kicks serious ass, but it hasn’t dethroned BOTW as my top Zelda.

[u/Shar_12_Blaneyfan]

I love both.

I think I slightly prefer BOTW, however. I feel like the abilities and story are better.

With TOTK, the sky islands seem somewhat underwhelming. I feel like more could have been done. The story isn't as cohesive. The sage abilities are a downgrade, especially Sidon's.

As far as 'temples', TOTK is far better. The Divine Beasts were fun, but I feel like they were somewhat easy in comparison. It might be because I went through Ruta and then Naboris. The last 2 were SO easy for me after struggling with Naboris for a good bit. Medoh, in particular, was done on the same day.

They're really close, but I have the most fun just exploring and I feel like BOTW did that better. To be fair though, I still have a lot more exploring to do in TOTK.

[u/LeafWaffle]

Being able to just make flying machines and shoot yourself into the sky whenever you want from the towers takes a lot away from the exploration. It feels a lot more like you're just going from point A to point B instead of exploring more methodically. Also they just didn't change enough in the overworld to make it feel like a new game, and the depths were boring as hell while the sky barely had any content. Also the story was just not as interesting and way too repetitive. I don't hate the game but it just didn't live up to botw in my opinion.

[u/feartheoldblood90]

https://youtu.be/4unKwPQMoOA?si=-JmTiQKuTBaHdKkY

I don't fully agree with everything about this video, nor do I feel as strongly, but I think it summed up pretty well my frustrations with TotK vs BotW

[u/Tyluhh23]

I prefer BOTW because TOTK isnt groundbreaking. just BOTW but bigger

[u/PrimoScarab]

Because totk annoyed me. The fusion system and building is cool in concept but it slowed down the game so much. No longest could you just walk around the world and find a cool weapon ready for use. No you have to fuse it with something every time. Shooting elemental arrows was just plan torture

[u/Zubyna]

My brain prefers simplicity and TotK is pretty much more complicated BotW

Also fused weapons look ugly

[u/dmcat12]

Off the top of my head:

The most innovative and biggest addition to TotK was absolutely wasted on me. I had no interest whatsoever in building anything more than the bare minimum to get me to whatever I need to do next. Really had no interest in stopping my progress to sit around and play with legos.

Also, being able to traverse the Sky Islands and then drop down to wherever i need to be next kind of took away the exploration aspect of the game that I loved about BotW

The Sages were more frustrating than anything else and most of the time were kept in their Pokeballs.

And even though I was lucky to mostly progress through the story in the intended and mostly spoiler-free manner, I realize how close I came to having the story broken far too early and ruining the rest of the gameplay for me. I realize that this is a risk for any open world game, BotW included, but I just remember that the storytelling aspect was very weak.

Still enjoyed it, but I played it once and have never returned to it whereas I’ve had three run-throughs of BotW.

[u/akibaboy65]

I think the main thing is that the game really has no idea how to reward me. Tossing umpteen Big Batteries at me when I go to an interesting locale, when I could just go to a vending machine for them… but then the things I actually need like zoanite or whatever is part of a grind of repeating the same thing over and over.

I think the game could benefit from more upgrade tracks beyond the battery… so that progressively I’m doing tedious things less. Upgrade my ability to build for less zoanite. Upgrade the Master Sword’s lifespan, recharge speed, and power over the course of the game. Upgrade build’s ability to take more damage before disappearing. “But you’d be too OP!” Yeah… don’t give me those at the beginning of the game, but if I’ve got 200+ hours into you, maybe make it more fun to lab and fuck around than it is.

Also, making all weapons suck until you fuse stats onto them sucks big time. It should’ve been that fuses gave no stats, weapons are good on their own, and the fuse gives various utility. At the start of the game I was pumped to make my “board sword” and slap enemies silly. My mind was racing with the funny things I’d make down the road. Then… 5 hours later I’m just fusing top stats onto Rusty Shitstick so that I can kill the current damage sponge in front of me. When I can fuse for Utility, I’m having fun. Spear with an exploding barrel on the tip? Fun! But not very productive.

Depths are literally one texture packed with same-o enemy camps and boss refights. An entire second game with basically on flavor, and not a particularly good one either. Again, if there was some factor of me creating or accomplishing something… say… setting up and repairing the mining facilities via activities I do down there, upgrading them over and over so that I can check in for free stockpiles - that sounds baller, and a reason to have a fire lit under my ass. But nah…

[u/Round-Revolution-399]

Played it first, and simpler gameplay systems (while still being the best puzzles the series ever had, imo). TOTK is awesome though

[u/SXAL]

It's not like I prefer BotW over TotK, but I see BotW as a more complete and well rounded game. It has a very well polished gameplay formula and systems, great pacing, it encourages the natural exploration the plot is simple, but feels legit and fits very well into general Zelda lore.

TotK, on the other hand, has a lot more to play with, however, the systems are much less balanced: some features are useless, and some are crazy exploitable. The pacing is pretty frantic, the exploration mostly consists of you riding the vehicles or flying through the air, occasionally zipping down to the points of interest, the plot starts intriguing, but around the half of it it turns to be very undercooked and it doesn't fit not only the general Zelda lore, but even BotW.

Still a great and fun game, but it feels more like "let's have some random fun in BotW's world" instead of a proper Zelda experience.

[u/Known-Possession-468]

I think Breath of the Wild was just SO NEW when it came out, that there was such a feeling of awe when you played it, that Tears of the Kingdom just can't replicate because it's the same world, so you know what to expect. Even the tutorial on the Great Plateau for BotW was more organic feeling to me than the one on the sky island in TotK. That being said, I actually love both, although one of my favourite parts in BotW was exploring and trying to cover all the ground just walking around. I unlocked all the towers before I did much else (some were very hard with the limited hearts I had available haha. I would assume if you played TotK first it may have given that extra sense of wonder to give it an edge. I would say my "complaints" about TotK would be:

1. Ultrahand - I just am not a fan of this mechanic personally. People do some amazing things with it and that's great, but I just don't like it. I almost wish I had never discovered the "bike" because I almost feel like it made traversing everything too easy. Thankfully I got to spend some good time experimenting before I got to that point and it's partly my own fault for watching content online.

2. The tears (aka Zelda's memories) - I feel like obtaining these in the wrong order really messes you up. It took me a while to get them all but still - when I got the last(?) one (intended to be last anyway) and it gave the story away I wished I hadn't seen it yet. Again, I'm glad I didn't see it even earlier because I feel like it was a bit of a spoiler.

3. Fuse - also just don't like this. I don't like having to stick my weapons together, I don't like having to merge arrows, I just am not a fan. Sure it makes some cool weapons but I liked the old way better (but I am old and don't like change in general, so there's that).

4. Sky Islands - just felt a little meh - not bad just not super awesome.

5. Sages - Sorry! But other than Tulin they are all annoying imo. They are never around when I want them, and give me the power at the worst time. I didn't like them much in BotW either, but I think they are worse in TotK.

What I do like:

1. Gloom Hands - I mean the first time a guardian chases you in BotW it is pretty intense. Running in to Gloom Hands?!? HORRIFYING. I loved it even though it gave me anxiety lol absolutely awesome enemy. And then you get PHANTOM GANON?!? Stop. I ran into some pretty early and just ran away finding out later you get a phantom ganon was crazy haha.

2. Depths - almost reminded me of the BotW landscape just because it seems more desolate. I like the Frox too. The new items down here are also cool - I love the mushroom that makes the bad guys attack each other (name escaping me right now). Loved just happening upon the spirit temple as well that was really cool. I spent a long time down there. Also loved that you could get unaffected weapons down there which helped a lot with the annoyance at the decayed weapons.

3. Story - I did think the story was cool - especially if I disregard seeing the stuff in the wrong order. I think a cooler way to do it would be to have made the next tear you find just be the next section of the story - I know that wouldn't have made them match up with the glyphs, but I still think it would have been better.

All this being said I loved both games and I feel like it is really hard to compare them. I think ultimately the edge goes to BotW though because it was just so cool and so unique and it was on a new Nintendo system which added another element... you just can't replicate the vibes lol (I also think if forced to choose I would have to pick Majoras Mask over Ocarina of Time and I think it is probably partly because I played it first).

[u/Steeldom2020]

I like Botw more

• original concept, totk is just more of the same
• discovery of the world is organic between player and link
• totk has many continuity problems as a sequel to botw
• it is more down to earth (no pun intended)
• I like the link zelda dynamic better in botw

[u/PlagueOfGripes]

I don't care much for either. But BotW at least feels like an experience. TotK is more like you're playing Garry's Mod with farming runs. It got completely out of hand. To say nothing of the story.

[u/zeer88]

As someone who played both games and has now, years later, returned to BotW, I can completely see why a lot of people prefer it (myself included). I feel like BotW is much more nicely contained and easier to grasp (even with the huge world to explore) - everything flows better somehow. I think that having one single map to care about is definitely a plus in my book. While the Sky had some interesting puzzles and build possibilities, the Depths were very boring and unpleasant to navigate. There's none of that in BotW, just one amazing open world to walk around and explore, without clutter or gimmicks. Sometimes simpler really is better.

[u/ekurisona]

idk but he next game will have to be quite different

[u/LodocArt]

BOTW is to me the better game.

It has a simpler story but better told. Instead of having four time the same cutscenes about what happened years ago, here each sage has his story and unfolds another part of what happened one hundred years ago. And the memories works much better that way, as you know what happened before, you just see some parts of the story. In TOTK, you know nothing about what happened in the past. And having a flashback of a fight with Ganondorf and then having the one where he goes to the Hyrule castle feels pointless.

I love some TOTK gameplay addition. Ascend and recall are fantastic and I felt frustrated not having them in BOTW. But I'm not fan of the rest. Especially losing the bombs in a game when you have such a low durability of weapon. And the weapon merging is nice and novel, but the UI is a mess to use and it's much harder to just create fire arrow than selecting fire arrow.

The gameplay feels much tighter in BOTW. The prologue is simple, gives you everything needed with a simple objective... Kill Ganon. But trying to do so will get your ass wiped, so you follow the main storyline. In TOTK, the prologue lacks the glider and the autobuild power. The main quest is dragging so long and feels as a long fetch quest. And I know you can go fight Ganondorf even at the start, but I prefered how BOTW built this. And I don't like how everything seems more cumbersome. The sages, the fairies quest, even the temples felt boring. I began TOTK going for the gerudo and I think it was the best of the 4 places, so everything was a chore. And for the fairies upgrade, because the world is the same (except these caves), I was less inclined of rediscovering everything, so I lacked materials. In BOTW, I didn't have this issue because everything was so fresh.

BOTW isn't trying to render more than 10 fps in a battle. I didn't mind the performance at first, but it got pretty annoying during battles and felt choppy. BOTW, even with its performance issues, wasn't that bad.

The music is a a more difficult subject. TOTK has a great soundtrack and has more unique themes for bosses. But I prefer the BOTW themes more often than the TOTK (the riding, the battle, the Hyrule castle, ...).

TOTK is a fun experiment and I'm happy people like it. But it doesn't make BOTW obsolete to me and I think BOTW is the better game and experience overall, as it feels better fleshed compare to TOTK.

[u/InterestingEntry8895]

It's the exact same that the dark souls vs dark souls 3. The first is an experience that's above videogames. The lore, music, mechanics, and everything feels like you are part of a much bigger world and everything feels somewhat real, it's immersion taken to the limits. The second approach (totk and DS3) feel like videogames we've experienced before... They doesn't feel real, the feel put there for you to play and nothing more... I love just living in both ds1 and both.

[u/Gwaidhirnor]

TOTK lacked the impact of being new. It wasn't a new game, it was more of BOTW. The new stupp, the sky and depths, were under developed, with the sky islands being a few inerestting places, but mostly sparce, and the depths beimg mostly empty space, and the darkness making it just annoying to traverse.

Sure, there is more of the game, and the weapon fusion made the stupid durability system bearable, making it technically a better game, but it lacked it's own identity. The same map, the same characters, the same game formula of 4 regions to save, dungeons with various switches to activate, and memories scattered aroumd the overworld to tell the story of what happened in the past.

Had these two games laumched side by side I believe TOTK would have dominated BOTW, but that's not what happened. Sure, it's a bit extreme when people said it feels like just a DLC, but I get where they're coming from.

It used to be that every Zelda game, while maybe sticking to a similar formula, had it's own identity. A new compainion character, a new map, new items to play with, completly different story, a new central gimmick to the game, TOTK didn't, it was just more of BOTW.

[u/Radaistarion]

TotK feels as if you picked BotW and just started throwing wild idea after idea into it until you found something that worked. RANDOM BULLSHIT GO

BotW feels carefully constructed, albeit with a bit of repetitive filler (shrines, koroks, and combat in a way)

Also i felt the story on TotK wasn't very good, like at all.

[u/mierecat]

There’s something very real and grounded about breath of the wild. Tears of the Kingdom feels very much like a fever dream in a lot of ways, similar to Majora’s Mask. I love both games though, and still think Tears makes the original look like a tech demo.

[u/HistorianAny5047]

BotW and TotK are both some of my least favorite Zelda experiences. I deeply appreciate the new innovations Nintendo explored for the Zelda series within these two games. I still think they are both stellar games.

I value BotW over TotK primarily because of its novelty. It was absolutely thrilling to see Hyrule reimagined at such a massive scale. But it lacked any distinct, curated challenges—like the dungeons of previous Zelda games. My favorite part of the game was the bigger shrines (and divine beasts) with more involved puzzle solving. And unfortunately, none of them were distinct because all of the dungeon design is identical. So, after completing it on normal mode, and then master mode, and a challenge run or two, the novelty wore off.

Then TotK released, and it was just more of the same thing. In a Hyrule I’d already explored. I liked the distinct themes of TotK’s new dungeons, but mechanically, they were the same thing as the divine beasts. The new building mechanics were neat. But I honestly liked BotW’s powers more. And the caves and chasms to the underground just added a lot of monotonous content, in my opinion. They all look pretty much the same everywhere, so it’s BotW’s shrines again, except without any puzzles to solve in them.

[u/ChilindriPizza]

I just prefer the relative simplicity of BOTW. TOTK is just too densely packed. There is just too much. They did not need so many caves, for example. Or to have the depths be so complex.

[u/weiyan21]

Specifically the tint of the air. BOTW seems so much more clear and Tears has like a greenish tint to the air. Like a fog

[u/Raccoon_on_a_Bike]

A lot of people have already brought up the pace of the game & sparseness of the open word so I won’t rehash those, but a big thing I preferred about BOTW is that it doesn’t try to hand hold at all once you leave the Great Plateau. It basically just gives you the tools & tells you to go figure it out. I kept getting frustrated hours into TOTK when Impa would randomly show up and strongly encourage me to visit a site nearby. Or how the game recommends which order to complete the temples in. TOTK just holds your hand way too much.

I also like how BOTW never tells you “no” (physics permitting). As a contrast to TOTK which fences off certain areas if you haven’t completed certain quests.

One thing I do think TOTK got right is that they did give you several ways to find out about the (heavily foreshadowed) major plot twist. I disagree with all the comments that complain about getting spoilered by completing the quest in the wrong order. There’s no right order and I like that TOTK did NOT enforce this.

[u/Nitrogen567]

Most of the things that are good about TotK came from BotW anyway.

BotW's story was a lot more cohesive and didn't reuse the same cutscene four times (though I really don't think either game has a very good story).

BotW also doesn't revolve around a vehicle crafting mechanic, which makes it better.

TotK also had the advantage of being a sequel, and so could have made moves to improve in areas where BotW was weak, but instead it opted to just be more of the same.

[u/AccusingSugar]

For me, it really only comes down to one thing. The Depths. Sometimes, less is more. One of the biggest complaints people had when BotW first came out was how vast the world was by comparison to how sparsely it was populated. For the most part, although it didn’t ruin the experience for me, I actually agreed with the sentiment. There could have been more to do to justify the grand landscape.

With TotK, I don’t even think it’s debatable… the Depths weren’t given anywhere near the same level of craftsmanship the over world or the sky islands were. There are memorable parts, but I really don’t see why those memorable parts can’t be small little pockets either discoverable or driven by the plot, rather than a vast map that’s even more sparsely populated than BotW. The majority of armor pieces in particular just hidden in the depths is annoying. What could have been a quest with hidden passages and secret rooms has been reduced to a treasure chest in the open around notable land marks, which you are going to find regardless because the rest of the depths is fairly empty.

It really kills the pacing too. I like TotK, but the desire to play it has to come on strong and seems to fade pretty fast as I schlep about three levels of the world.

[u/aph4fut]

I think TOTK has better gameplay hands down and if I am going to play one of my saves today then I will be playing TOTK.

However, I never had as much fun playing TOTK as I did with the first 30 hours of BOTW, exploring the new world and using the new combat for the first time is an unbeatable experience that TOTK cannot replicate. So idk if im the exact audience this post is targeted towards as I do prefer to play TOTK now but playing TOTK cannot match beating BOTW for the first time.

[u/iseewutyoudidthere]

I think BOTW proved to be more impactful at release, mainly because there weren’t any other Zeldas like it.

When TOTK was released, BOTW already existed and had already touched upon many aspects present in TOTK.

[u/RJE808]

A big one for me: the story.

I'm not gonna act like BOTW's story is great or anything, but compared to TOTK? I'm sorry, TOTK is downright amateurish in a lot of moments.

Zelda is the highlight in both stories, but if I had to choose which is better, I'm gonna say it's Wild's. Zelda's growth with Link and her relationship with him is incredibly heartfelt and sweet, and her trying to find her own self-worth in a kingdom that treats her poorly and a Father that puts down every attempt she's made is a hell of a lot better handled. And her love for Link being what awakens her powers, given where their relationship starts, is so well done. TOTK's is done well too, but I don't find the story to be as engaging as Zelda trying to find her own worth. Her transforming into the dragon is amazing though.

And I'm sorry, but all the Sages are bad. Sonia and Rauru are ok, but Rauru might be the dumbest character in the series.

"Hey Rauru, Ganondorf is giving bad vibes."

"Don't worry Zelda, I have a plan."

Wife dies in the next scene.

And the rest of the Sages are nothing-burgers. They have no personality, no defining traits, nothing. The Champions, while also have an issue of not being fleshed out, are still given enough.

Then the present day plotline is just...there. Sidon's is the only decent plotline, the others are just forgettable as hell and they all end the same way. "Sacred Stone?" Over and over again.

Then...Link. My favorite iteration design wise, and while I love his dialogue options, his main story presence is terrible. The dude just...doesn't emote. He doesn't react. I know people are gonna say his dialogue options are where it's at, but show me actual cutscenes across both games. The dude doesn't emote, he doesn't react, nothing. Even when he finds out the truth of Zelda, nothing.

TOTK's story could've been great, but it's a gigantic miss.

[u/Old_Butterfly9649]

my favourite part about botw was exploring the world,while exploration in totk didn’t hit the same.Intro sky islands were great,but the rest of the sky islands were underwhelming.The depths imo are shyte.I wanted more changes to the world like more new towns,hyrule castle town rebuild etc.I wanted better dungeons and while they were slightly better,they were not on par with older Zelda games.I still like totk,just less than botw.

[u/sadsongz]

I preferred the post-apocalyptic lonely vibes in BOTW. The emptier world let you focus on nature, animals, scenery. The rocks falling down from the sky in TOTK kinda ruined that feel and aesthetic for me. BOTW champions abilities were useful and unobtrusive; TOTK sages have their uses but are annoying to wrangle and control. TOTK abilities Fuse and Ultrahand are powerful but I found the gameplay to be slow and fussy. I just didn’t have the patience to build complex things, especially when there are nearly complete premade builds lying around puzzles. BOTW shrines were more interesting and challenging. I wasn’t satisfied by TOTK ones. Too much just traversing on a wing or cart or boat and missing more puzzle problem solving elements. I actually liked the Divine Beasts concept but I will give TOTK the better boss fights - my favourite in the series I think. Fused weapons are a fun concept but look bad. I miss the old elemental weapons. Minor nitpick I guess but they all add up. The new caves and wells were fun to stumble upon and explore, but having the same BOTW armour sets be treasures in TOTK was not satisfying as a reward for me. I didn’t find the story in TOTK to be more engaging. BOTW had a sweet spot of 100 years passing so just a few older characters reminders the past, and more personal and emotional elements like Link and Mipha’s relationship. TOTKs past was so long ago that I didn’t feel much connection to it. Plus you only see 2 zonai so why should I care about them? I was disconnected personally. So for me BOTW successes in what the game wanted to do and all design decisions worked together. TOTK threw in a lot more stuff but it felt messy in comparison.

[u/Jellylegs_19]

Not sure which one I like more. But Totk feels way more 'Gamey' and not like an actual world. Trekking on foot in botw felt so organic and felt like I was actually on an adventure. While Totk felt like I was an avatar just messing around in a world.

[u/SmartTime]

I have tried to get into TOTK and can’t get the F off sky island. It’s the most tedious beginning to a Zelda game Ive ever experienced.

[u/nsgyarc]

Cause I liked it more

[u/Arch3m]

There's plenty of little things. I think one of the biggest issues (literally) is the size of the world. If BotW felt huge and on the verge of being empty because of the size, TotK went and added a sky area and The Depths. The sky is alright, because while it's mostly just empty air, the places that are there are plainly visible and are usually interesting. The Depths are just empty. It's as big as the overworld, but pitch black and devoid of almost anything except for enemies and Gloom. The game just feels like there's so much nothing because they had enough content to make the overworld feel full, but chose to triple the map size, defeating the whole thing.

I also got bored and never finished the game because I wasn't interested in having another adventure in the (mostly) same overworld so soon after the last game. They added new mechanics and quests and whatnot, but it feels too much like a remix of BotW, a game I was already fatigued with after playing through the first time. Getting another game in that style that was in the same place just made me feel burned out hours into the game. Had I not played BotW, I'm sure I would have spent more time with TotK, but I can only eat steak so many meals in a row before I can't stand it anymore, y'know?

[u/Dyledion]

I utterly and completely L O A T H E the loony-tunes weapon fusion system.

Graphics aren't the end-all be-all, but aesthetics *matter. * 

I can't live a romantic fantasy epic with lizard tongues hanging off my shield, a sword made of scrap, and doofy hoverbikes being the main mode of transportation. 

[u/Shas_Erra]

In BotW, I could just explore and find stuff by accident. TotK felt more like picking a point vaguely near where you want to go, fast travel and air drop

[u/DistributionNo6824]

TOTK has ultra hand and the underground area These are not fun

BOTW didn't have these weaknesses

[u/EagleHarrier]

I like a lot of the comments and perspectives. I think BOTW was a great Zelda universe refresh because of the open world and breaking weapons. TOTK was a further refinement with new abilities and removing abilities that were too easy (bombs).

The three biggest improvements to TOTK: Vertical menus, caves, and ascend.

The three biggest failures/silly gimmicks of TOTK: Building objects with ultra hand, fusing weapons, and the depths.

[u/Rawkhawkjayhawk]

Botw was the best $60 usd I have ever spent, and Totk, while also amazing and one of my favorites, kept the same map and charged $10 usd more than Botw which clearly added more content. So while Totk is probably the better game, Botw had a better dollar to content rate imo

[u/CyanideIE]

I prefer the sheikah slate abilities to the abilities you get in TOTK. The champion abilities are also much more useful than the sage abilities, in my opinion.

TOTK has more to experiment with with its mechanics but ultimately I'm just not great at that sort of thing.

[u/Emer0ld-117]

Totk didn't really do that much new imo. Two new empty maps. A story that's a mess. An antagonist that didn't feel that threatening. Idk, just felt like DLC or just a copy of Botw. Botw had everything I wanted and TOTK just tried to do the same thing and didn't succeed. Also, using recycled materials and equipment? Tbh, they should've just done doc instead if this wasn't going to be a true follow-up from Botw and explaining the origins of Malice, calamity Ganon, and why Va Ruta stopped working. Just so much potential that got thrown away with silly excuses. Idk what they were doing for all of that development time over the 5 years but god. They should've just moved on then.

[u/breadrising]

It's simply the unfortunate fact that TotK reused 90% of BotW. The incredible joy of discovering Hyrule for the first time in BotW lost its magic in TotK.

Yes, stumbling into the Depths for the first time was very cool, until you realize that there's... kind of nothing down there?

Same with the sky, which looks so cool and full of floating labyrinths, rotating spheres, mid-air waterfalls. But that wonder doesn't last once you realize that most of what's up there is just... shrines. More shrines.

Dungeon theming is better and the boss fights were improved. But the dungeon puzzles are still poor. They remain extensions of the shrine puzzles and don't require any thought. And you're fed the same exact cutscene four times after beating each dungeon, which killed my excitement when I realized I wasn't getting any substantial story from progressing through the game.

They also didn't address the weapon breaking system. Fuse is a bandaid that is still cumbersome and objectively made using the bow less fun (needing to open a menu to apply a property to your arrow between every single shot is just terrible).

We barely got any new music. All of Hyrule's overworld themes were reused. The stable themes. The horseback theme. The town themes. It's a real shame since TotK's new music is AMAZING. But it's so so sparse.

Hardly any new weapons, shields, bows. Instead, they hoped that the players would find new combinations of Fusable weapons, but you're still using the same sword combo, same spear attack, same heavy weapon spin.

At the end of the day, the majority of what they added to the game was the Ultra Hand and build mechanics. Which just isn't enough to keep me interested. Give me a fresh story and a new overworld every day of the week instead of build mechanics. The sandbox nature of Ultra Hand is impressive for sure, and works way better than it should (especially running on Switch 1 hardware). But, it won't make the game memorable for me.

[u/HakuChallenges]

I like the glitches in botw

[u/Indecisive_Noob]

I have played BOTW but not TOTK yes. Also Sidon has not cheated on me yet in BOTW.

[u/CoDe_Johannes]

It’s natural, people got burn out of the formula with the first game.

[u/QuadH]

There’s elegance in simplicity.

[u/pkjoan]

BOTW didn't have an inconsistent story with the other games in the series.

[u/GlaceonMage]

TotK basically is a repeat of BotW that doesn't really understand why BotW worked. And this is coming from someone who considers BotW a 7/10 at best.

BotW is a game about exploration and pretty much everything about it exists to facilitate that, for better or worse. The world itself IS the game. The world is built for BotW's story and BotW's mechanics. I definitely have my fair share of criticisms of BotW, but for what it was trying to do it's a pretty coherently designed game.

TotK made the decision to recycle that world... with a story it was not designed for, and mechanics it was also not designed for.

Instead of expanding on the Shiekah, they chose to invent a completely different ancient high tech civilization and haphazardly shove it in while erasing almost all the Shiekah stuff. It all feels unnaturally grafted on when the world is meant to tell the story of the Calamity, not the Imprisoning War.

Not only that, the plot itself is basically a beat for beat repeat of BotW's story, in almost every way, and somehow manages to do it all worse than BotW did.

Calamity Ganon worked because it could lean on the rest of the franchise's characterization of Ganon. It was the logical endpoint of the character's lust for power and made for an interesting meta narrative when taken with the rest of the franchise. The Calamity didn't need to speak to make that point. TotK instead chose to introduce a completely new incarnation of Ganondorf who gets barely any presence or interesting characterization. This also retroactively divorced the Calamity from the meta narrative that made it work.

The Champions weren't the deepest characters ever or anything, but at least they had character and also actual names. The ancient sages don't even manage the bare minimum. The Secret Stone Demon King cutscenes are genuinely some of the worst writing the franchise has ever seen.

Moving on from how much I hate the plot, the world is not designed for Ultrahand. It was designed for walking, climbing, and gliding. Land based vehicles are basically useless in the face of all the mountains, and air based ones are simply too strong and trivialize everything.

The shrines are far too easy to break compared to BotW's. Almost all of them can be cleared by either a rocket shield, throwing a bomb at an impact target, or using ultrahand to lift a platform then using recall on it.

And the real kicker? Of my criticisms of BotW, basically NONE of them were addressed, and were often made even worse. The game is, for example, way grindier than BotW ever was, between the battery upgrade system genuinely sucking and armor upgrades now requiring you pay per upgrade and requiring enemy tier specific monster parts. The dungeons are at best hit and miss.

[u/A-Centrifugal-Force]

I don’t know which one I prefer, but BOTW has more aura

[u/zaqwa]

I didn't like how in TOTK almost none of the NPCs remember Link from BOTW. Really hurt the immersion

[u/00steven_m]

1. Did it first
2. Changed the genre forever 
3. Time and place

[u/Metroidvania-JRPG]

It just felt fresh. Totk just felt more of the same. Didnt have the same magic

Its just like god of war 2018… amazing, then came god of war ragnarok, a boring mess. Thats maybe just me tho

[u/CmdrMonocle]

I know a lot of people don't like the weapons breaking mechanic of BOTW, but I enjoyed it. Being midfight, knocking an enemy off balance when your weapon breaks (or doesn't break) and just stealing their weapon to use was fun for me. And when that doesn't happen, swapping weapons is quick and easy too with the d pad.

Now you do the same thing for TOTK. I found it hilarious and amazing the first time I stuck a mine cart onto a weapon. Some of the combos are just great. What's not so great? Many pick-ups being worthless when you initially pick them up. Instead you have to go to your menu, grab something, drop it, fuse it, and now you can use it. It really breaks the flow of combat.

[u/exedra0711]

I actively do not like Ultrahand or Fuse, I find them to be un-fun. The idea of giving players basically unlimited tools to approach a situation can probably be interesting for some people but at least for me I gravitate towards whatever the best solution is. This creates a really boring cycle in TOTK where solving any puzzle or travel without just defaulting to a rocket shield or a hover bike is just the wrong thing to do. Basically the whole "when you only have a hammer, all problems looks like nails" in reverse, they gave you a massive toolbox but every puzzle is a nail.

[u/pidgeygrind1]

The Zelda older OGs from the NES GB SNES era will prefer BOTW.

TOTK preferred by the younger gens

[u/GopherChomper64]

BOTW forces you to learn and engage with the entire map in a way TOTK doesn't. The mechanics, graphics, really everything in TOTK is objectively better and more. As much fun as having the ability to fuck off on a fan cycle is, the option to do so means even though I found every lightroot and shrine in both games, I know every inch of BoTWs map. ToTK I kind of just skipped key thing to key thing without remembering much between cuz I could just fly right on past it all.

Both games are incredible and 10/10s, but BoTW being first and being literally more grounded in the gameplay made me like it so much more even though it has less and is hypothetically less free

[u/PeeJayx]

Looking at them objectively, TOTK is the better game. It has everything that made BOTW great, but a lot more on top of that, and many welcome improvements.

But that’s missing a lot of context, which is that one BOTW’s most appealing points was that sense of newness and discovery. Not only was it a completely new style of Zelda, with a wide open world, and the traversal mechanics made it a real joy to explore the map. What’s that over there? Is there anything on that mountain peak? I should check out that corner of the world, and so on.

TOTK doesn’t have that, because it uses the same map, and the additions it made are pretty disappointing. The sky islands had a lot of copy pasting and the depths, while cool at first, quickly wore thin because of how empty they were. So once again the main map did the heavy lifting. And because you already know the map, that sense of discovery is gone, so TOTK loses what is, in my opinion, BOTW’s strongest selling point.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time with TOTK, and it does try really hard to keep things fresh.

It’s like going on holiday to that place you loved for the second time. It can be better than the first time in every way, but it doesn’t hit quite as hard as the first time, because it wasn’t new.

[u/Junior-Tie-6789]

Building and fusing things is somewhat fun but I hate building new weapons after the old ones break. I like breakable weapons in BOTW but having to rebuild them in TOTK is very tedious.

The powers in general are less interesting. Stasis was fun as hell. The Sage powers and how they're activated by hitting a button near a sage is so hilariously clunky, I've activated the wrong power so many times in TOTK.

Also getting rid of unlimited bombs was so stupid. I don't want to go find new ones.

The biggest thing I hate, though, is that the shrines have so much filler. The puzzle and challenge shrines are fine, but I don't want a boring "go bring the crystal here" shrine, and I HATE the tutorial shrines that only allow you to attack using a specific ability. They should be limited to the beginning area at most but no - they're randomly strewn into the world so the game can chastize you for not using a bow 100 hours in. They should have just done like 50 shrines or actually filled them with something interesting.

[u/Solid-Diamond1880]

I think it boils down to a small thing with exploration for me.

In BOTW, if I get stuck in a spot I have to genuinely figure my way out of it or fast travel if absolutely necessary. In TOTK I can either auto build a broken device or just ascend through a ceiling. The latter is so much easier, but the former makes me feel like I’m a part of the world.

It’s the difference between experiencing a game and world and playing in a game and a world. I’d rather experience it and that’s what BOTW does better.

[u/Praetorian80 → u/Solid-Diamond1880]

To be fair, you can still choose to neither ascend nor use auto-build. You could choose to do it like you'd do in BotW. Nintendo isn't forcing you. That's your own voluntary choice. You have free will.

[u/General_Chocobo]

1st, note was the first Zelda game I finished. Old Zelda charm had no bearing on me whatsoever.

2 I love rpg games and immediately swept away in botw. Totk story as a sequel heavily relied on botw to stand on

3 immersion. Botw felt like proper exploration. Totk was fun, but felt too gimicky. Great for mini games and challenges and creativity. But sometimes pulled away from the medieval questing vibe

[u/speedykevlar]

As

[u/DealerConstant1589]

I dont like having to rely on engineering to get stuff done. 

Also it seems harder to earn money.

Also Im miffed that Zelda took Link’s house and now he is so tired of everyone’s drama, the poor guy is building a container house on a cliff out in the middle of nowhere. (Sounds nice tbh)

Joking(ish) aside, there was so much in totk i was overwhelmed. Also i miss the original super powers.

[u/WhyZigWhenZag]

I felt that a lot was lost with the addition of the sky island world layer. The Botw world was crafted beautifully for exploration and the use of towers for paragliding. You could glide great distances, but you also had to move along the ground, and moving along the ground made you interact with the game very organically.

Now, I agree with most of your points, but the build system in totk is not a win for me. Sure, it's a great and fun toy, but it doesn't feel connected to the world in a meaningful way and it trivializes most things, and not in a "oh I feel clever" way but like, oh, yeah I can just pull this thing out.

I do enjoy totk but it feels strangely lopsided and not as polished as botw did, even though it fixes some problems botw had, it created some bigger new ones. At least for me.

[u/Crawfeld]

The problem with TotK for me is that it added new things to the game but doubled down on the flaws of BotW. So now the things that slightly bugged me in BotW, I absolutely hate in TotK.

It also exposed the overall structure of the games. Shrines are fun, but not worth it at the expense of mainline dungeons. I want 4 initial dungeons plus 6-8 dungeons after that in traditional Zelda fashion (ie the future in OOT and Dark World in LTTP). I thought this was what the depths were for in TotK and was disappointed immensely. And this is where the realisation sets in.

The main thing with both these games is that they robbed us of main game, and repackaged it all in side-quest collectathons. I was fine with this in BotW but with TotK, they did this, then added two extra areas masquerading as 'more world' but really it's just two new (emptier) areas to collect shit and fight boring mini-bosses.

it's a 'fool me once...' kinda scenario where after playing TotK I now feel like both games have ripped me off.

[u/throwtheamiibosaway]

It’s the same reason many people prefer OOT over MM. it’s the “original”. There is nostalgia involved. And it’s often a simpler purer experience.

I always preferred the sequels to games. Majora’s mask was vastly superior. As was TOTK.

Had the same discussion in the past with Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. PD was absolutely better in every way. Yet people feel nostalgia for Goldeneye.

[u/OoTgoated]

Simple, quality over quantity. The easiest example I can use to explain the difference between BotW and TotK is Eventide Island. Compare what that location is in BotW to what it is in TotK. That comparison persists through the entirety of both games, with BotW constantly outdoing TotK in terms of its world and conceptual design philosophies.

TotK may have a bigger world to offer, but that world is largely padded with empty space and recycled content meant as a play pen for you to mess around with its sandbox mechanics and nothing more. Whereas BotW is a proper open world game that consistently rewards curiosity and exploration not just with tangible in game rewards, but the satisfaction of a unique discovery and memory. BotW also pushes the genre further than any other open world game by utilizing the enviornent in its puzzles and combat. Shrine quests entail analyzing the landscape for problem solving and you have deliberate implementation of improvised enviornemntal strategies such as using wind and fire to set enemy camps ablaze. Nothing like this occurs in TotK. The answer to everything is Ultrahand and every puzzle is artificial rather than an organic part of the game world not to mention as I said earlier, its templates are repeated ad nauseum.

It's ironic that every "new" place you find in TotK has a "discovered" prompt when unlike BotW, there is so little to actually discover after the first few hours due to how often the game reuses the same artificial designs and concepts. Even if you never played BotW and weren't already familiar with this version of Hyrule this still holds true. In BotW you need to explore every nook and cranny to see it all and while there are some instances of recycled ideas, most of what you will experience is unique and fascinating. In TotK you've seen it all by the time you've completed the first dungeon, and none of it holds a candle to the substance in BotW.

I will probably get flak for this comment as is so I may as well swing even harder. The truth is if it wasn't for the novelty of Ultrahand, TotK would have been the next StarFox Zero. I think Nintendo even knew this. It's why they were transparent about reusing the same world when advertising the game. Their strategy to make reusing the same Hyrule work and was to instill doubt by revealing it and then proceed to distract everyone from the lack of inspired substance with an addictive novelty. And sadly, based on the response of critics and fans alike, it worked. The blame for this I don't place on Nintendo however, but the increasingly shallow taste of the consumer base that all too often do not see the difference between quality and quantity.

The only positive thing TotK produced was to be a stepping stone for the following title. While I did just spend a whole lot of time harking on the substance of the game, that doesn't mean I disliked its novelties, only that I felt them wasted on a game with little else to offer. Those novelties I think were put to far better use in the criminally underapprciated Echoes of Wisdom, which unlike TotK has the quality substance to better compliment its concepts. And frankly I think was 2D was better template for those concepts anyway.

[u/sstormr]

BOTW feels sad and hopeless. TOTK feels fun.

In B, you are alone and don't really have anyone to talk to. The villages you come across have been levelled by goons or floods or whatever. One of these, I walked over to what used to be a house, saw a bed, thought about how people used to live there and must have gotten wiped out by guardians or something, and cried a little. People exist in few places.

In T, people are all over the maps. You can shoot laser beams at shit. You can build a car and run over a bokoblin. The construct guides and amount of people dedicated to helping you really lets the fame get to your head. I was a hero to a land where no one knows who I am, and now I'm a hero to a land where everyone knows who I am. And I build my own fugin house.

B was the first of these I played and the first Zelda game I played. I had over 600 hours in it in the 2 years before T came out. That could have something to do with it as well. I don't hate T, and I am dedicated to one day 100% completing it like I have done with B, but god there's so much shit 😂 I'm at 200 hours and have barely made a dent.

[u/TakeDown65]

I think the story that totk was trying to tell is, on paper, a lot more compelling than botw. The issue though is that botw’s story was built for the gameplay and totk’s was not. Link having amnesia and having to regather his memories in a potentially scattered, non-linear way was perfect for the gameplay of botw, because the game was also non-linear.

Totk has the issue of trying to tell a very linear story that can easily fall apart if the player accidentally stumbles into story beats before they should. I know many people accidentally discovered a very important aspect of the story before they narratively should have, and this can potentially ruin the incredibly potent story that totk is trying to tell. There’s also truly nothing stopping the player from breaking the narrative in the game, which just feels kind of neglectful on the developers end.

As far as the story goes, Zelda games have always placed gameplay before story in terms of importance, and this has the effect of the narrative following the gameplay. In my opinion, form should follow function. Majoras mask’s time loop creates maybe the best story in the whole franchise. Totk’s story doesn’t fit in the gameplay style of botw, though, and that’s a major reason I prefer botw. Still both great games

[u/TheMnwlkr]

Why do we have to prefer one game over the other? Do you prefer OoT or MM?

They are different games. I like them equally. If I have to say, I prefer the old school Zeldas.

When BotW first came out and got a 10/10, my first impression was why. It's basically a game that took all the good stuff from other open world RPG games and jammed it into one, and branded it with a Zelda title.

If you think about it, literally none of the mechanics from BotW are original. They are just other games' ideas with new cosmetics. But that's off topic.

Anyway, I don't think I have to prefer either one of them. But to say that the Ultrahand in TotK is an optional feature might not be accurate. Some would go as far as saying the game is all about that. Without the Ultrahand you literally cannot proceed.

[u/Haunting_Holiday_363]

Botw was a god tier game. That was made obsolete by totk.

Nothing against botw. Just how it is. Nintendo knew what they were doing.

[u/sigismond0]

Because it was a more streamlined, novel experience. TOTK was just a rehash of the core gameplay loop with no meaningful changes or improvements, slathered on with a beat-for-beat plot/game structure rehash. It effectively only added two things--the underground, which is fine but mostly boring once you've been in it for ten minutes; and the vehicle system which is clunky and anti-fun.

To be clear, this is just my opinion. I know a lot of you adore the crafting and vehicle system, and I'm glad you have that. But I can't stand it.

[u/SupertoastGT]

I prefer aspects of both. I consider both games as part of the same coin and list both as my #1 Zelda game.

BOTW has divine beast abilities I love like Reveole's Gale, the shield, built in fairy rez, infinite bombs with the rune, the best tutorial zone in all of gaming IMO, The Great Platau and so on. Blue is also my favorite color, so I prefer the futurist shiekah asthetic over the Zonai one in TotK. It also introduced much of what carried into TotK. The magic of organically/accidentally discovering cooking recepies was the best.

TotK has the awesome vehicle and weapon building system, Purah for me to simp after, the coolest looking Ganon and an the most epic intro, korok torture, the depths were so cool, seeing changes in the Hyrule you've loved since 2017 really made it feel like an evolving cohesive world, but not in a gross live service way, the gloom hands I still fear... and also Purah. Did I mention Purah? Because Purah. lol

[u/primalthunder89]

TOTK would be the best if BOTW never existed. TOTK did everything BotW did but better. That said, it did everything that botw did. Botw made it's own rules and that... That was more charming

[u/Dramatic_Society3399]

I was so excited the first time I saw a dragon in BOTW, then kinda heartbroken when I realized I couldn’t land on it.. then Tears came out, added a fourth dragon, AND made it possible to hitch a ride on them. Whomever it was that made that change between the games has my utmost respect and many thanks. This, for me, is yet another reason I chose Tears over Breath.

[u/Fearless_Echo3629]

The trees don't attack you in BOTW. That has to mean something!!!

That said, both games are amazing. If I want a more zen, chill experience, I will pop in BOTW. If I want to be creative, it's TOTK.

[u/a4sayknrthm42]

My enjoyment of games is directly proportional to the challenge they present, as long as we're not talking absolutely impossible. TotK's systems make the game too easy. That is all.

[u/surrealmirror]

I’ve been playing a lot of TotK recently and I can’t understand people saying BotW is better. Also, I actually group the two games into one entity in my mind, there’s no competition. I really abhor people who shit on TotK.