I couldn’t care less about the story of a zelda game. Dungeons, combat, and general gameplay are what I play for.

In that regard, totk blows botw away and it’s not even close. Personally, I thought botw was a good game, but not great - definitely nowhere near as good as people were saying.

Totk is an absolute masterpiece tho. The continuation of the sandbox development, changes to weapon and fusing, etc were great. Exploration and traversal with zonai parts is loads of fun. Hell, the last boss fight was a great moment as well - definitely much more polished than the end of botw.

I do wish dungeons were still a bit more dungeon like, and performance, while a marvel for it’s hardware, is really held back by the switch. There are definitely things to improve on for the next game

Overall tho, totk makes botw feel unfinished imo

The more I played Totk, the more I preferred and missed BotW.

I like TOTK more in pretty much every single way. The only thing I really dislike about it are the sages. They’re just annoying as hell and I hate how they look.

BOTW was pretty boring to me and I didn’t like the Divine Machines.

I do still really dislike the durability system. It makes it feel like weapons are worthless because even if you get a good one it will be destroyed pretty soon anyway. Even the Master Sword has limited use and that really grinds my gears. It’s the freaking MASTER SWORD.

I also miss the typical Zelda music in both these games. Sure there is music but it’s very sparse.

I think TotK improved on a lot of things of BotW. It was obvious BotW was kind of a “testing ground” for an open world Zelda. To me TotK is just BotW 2.0, there’s a lot to like, but because it’s so similar it carried over a lot of the downsides of BotW as well IMO.

It’s vastly improved, but I still think there’s a lot of room to improve even more. Here’s hoping we get a third game in the “series” and they can keep the momentum going

Some things I thought that improved:

1. The powers. I think the powers in TotK feel way mroe fun than the powers in BotW, and mix a lot better with puzzle solving.
2. The building. Adding a Garry’s Mod-esque building system is perfect for a “make your own fun/solutions” kind of game that an open world incentivizes
3. Temples. It’s nice to finally have temples. They could still use a bit of improvement as they’re rather straightforward and don’t require any crazy interesting puzzle solutions, but it’s better than nothing.
4. Shrines. The shrines in BotW were fun but I feel like the shrines in TotK had more thought put into creative puzzles and puzzle solutions since there was a lot more we could work with (powered flight, reversing time, being able to move through things. Manipulating items to fit into things. Fusing)
5. I think they did open world pretty decently, but overall I still think having a large open, but linear set of areas makes for a better paced game.

Some things I thought still needed improving:

1. I know this is a supier lukewarm take, but I still think these games would be vastly imrpvoed without a durability system
2. The story, while present, left a lot to be desired. I know they’re not ultimately the main draw of the game, but I still wish they put a bit more effort into it and didn’t have so much of it be so on the nose.
3. The depths. They’re a great addition and add to the minute to minute gameplay, but really it just kinda felt like a place to go just to farm specific materials or gather poe. I wish it had more a larger impact on the story or lore.

Some random things:

1. I LOVE the music
2. Playing this game on Yuzu at 60FPS and 1440p is very very nice.
3. There’s some clever puzzles and interesting things you can do to the point that I wish they included some kind of sandbox mode where you can just build and test machines to your hearts content

The story felt much more impactful to me than BotW. I was so glad they did give us a bit of linear story at the beginning, rather than starting us in the sky with none of the lead-up. I also made sure to watch the memory cutscenes in order, and basically binged the last 3 in a row because I was too excited to space them out more. And, the final battle + ending was exciting and cinematic.

There’s definitely critiques that can be made after the fact, but in the moment I was emotionally invested in a way that BotW never reached for me.

I am only 90 hours in, can’t really comment.

So far so good.

I played through BoTW but didn’t really understand the hype. It felt like a first attempt at an open world RPG from people who don’t play open world RPGs, so they were making mistakes other games figured out long ago.

TotK is such a huge improvement that I’d say you can completely skip BotW and go straight to it if you only feel like playing one.

I like them both for different reasons and in different ways. In BOTW I liked the champions better, felt more of a connection to them. Also Revali’s Gale was the best. In TOTK, I am really loving the device building and fusing in general. I miss some of the weapons from BOTW but it’s great being able to fuse different objects for different effects.

You can cheese both in various ways if you want (Revali’s Gale, or a Hover Bike, can get you pretty much anywhere).

TOTK seems to have a lot more stuff around everywhere, on the ground, in the depths, and the sky. It’s even more fun to explore than it was in BOTW in some cases. Also Tears of the Kingdom / Tiers of the Kingdom is a great pun/double meaning.

Also the froggy suit finally lets you climb wet surfaces (and ice) without slipping.

I don’t like the grinding materials to upgrade armor in either one, though. So TOTK wins because I’m a cheating cheater who refuses to update the game so I can keep duping materials as I don’t have months to spend hunting down and killing monsters.

I love BOTW because it was the first of its kind I came in contact with. TOTK feels like they came in and shored up every little snag I felt in BOTW. TOTK also now makes me feel like every cubic inch of Hyrule is full of story, detail, and life. TOTK feels like a lived-in world, with far more NPCs present to make it feel more like a living world and less like a post-apocalyptic deadland full of tiny settlements that Link has to grind through.

I like TotK more than BotW, but I’m not finished with the later.

I love both games but I have a big problem with how TotK handle the power. for the base power BotW gives more freedom to choose how to do something and whether or not use your power. TotK on the other hand scream “USE YOUR POWER” everywhere. For the support power, the fact that the IA can litterally flee with your power when you need it is infuriating. So in some way I prefer BotW for being more immersive sim than TotK, while I prefer TotK for its story, music and map.

It’s been too long for me to really have concrete memories of BotW, but at the very least I’ve spent a lot more time in Totk. I didn’t do much more than the sacred beasts before beating the game in BotW, I’ve done way more side content this time around.

Totk had a significantly wider range of things you could do, but botw challenged you more to come up with solutions (whereas totk almost encourages cheesing things with zonai tech)

My issue with TotK is the memories are explained in a quest kind of hidden. In BotW it they told you to go to kakariko and there were the memories, but in TotK lookout landing doesn’t tell you about them, you need to stumble upon Impa at a stable.

Then in BotW if you went only to the divine beasts you were given 4 memories and could kind of make sense of the story.
In TotK each regional phenomenon gives you the same information so at the 3rd I was annoyed.

TotK spilers:
(I don’t know how to markdown spoilers here haha)
:::
At the end of the TotK I had no idea at all what the dragon meant, I had no attachment to it and only thought about “what a cool fight”. After the memories I finally felt emotional thinking she wasn’t going to be back… But the bad part was that I already knew and couldn’t enjoy the same excitement of watching her again!
I’m angry, I feel like they stole me of that emotion.
:::

Casually, I enjoyed it a lot. It felt like better BOTW, with much more new stuff to explore than I expected. My only gripes where the delay on quick menus (botw did not have that, and it feels awful) and I generally think the sage mechanic leads to bad play patterns. But overall, it’s amazing.

I’ve been involved in speedrunning both games. Versioning issues in TOTK are way worse. Movement tech in botw was a lot more interesting and varied, until windbombs were found anyway. The menu lag feels even worse while speedrunning. The stuff we’ve got for inside shrines is pretty cool, and there’s some very cool out-of-bounds stuff found already. So it’ll probably stay fresh for a while. I’m not sure if it’ll hold me for as long as botw did though.