i don't about the GOW. while if you just play to finish the game story is great it's fun. If you wanna 100% complete the game. its really starts to show how bad the level design and traversal is. like its too big to have a maze like level design that worked for the much smaller GOW.  why make so much puzzles when they always get solved for you. hopefully they ditch this level design and make something like sekiro or bloodborne level design. or heck something like the old zeldas but the whole world being a maze is annoying.

I haven't run in to them yet  but it's good to know they are about and haven't aged. 

There are a few thing in the game that annoy me one is creatures disappearing right in front of you it is especially annoying if you are hunting/fighting a creature and having spent time shooting/hitting them need one more to finishing shot/blow and your blow goes right through it as it disappears right in front of you.

item selection is another it needs to be more sortable and not just lump disparate items together, besides the need for streamlining the main item screen, an example is attaching items to my arrows rather than flicking through numerous items to find the next attachment when the one I'm using has run out or isn't suitable, the the game should allow me to select the arrow attachment items so only the items I have selected show up when I scroll through the attach button.
I would also like the ability to be able to pick stuff up from horse back like you can in Horizon.
I'm sure there is other stuff that will come to mind till then please tell us what you think of my gripes/suggestions and what if any do you have.

They've aged, but only a little. Purah certainly has aged, she doesn't look like a little girl anymore, and Paya looks more grown up.

I'm still early into the game and open to falling in love with it more, but so far at least I very much think this too. It's definitely "better" than BotW, but in such an iterative way that it just doesn't give me that magic feeling BotW did. It feels bigger, bolder, even more full of wacky creative ideas, it feels overwhelming. BotW felt just right.

Been going over BOTW and TOTK in my mind, comparing the two.

While I'm still relatively early in the latter, having just reached the first of the regional phenomena (The Rito/Hebra one) so far I feel like each exceeds the other in different areas.

BOTW has more of a sense of wonder and discovery as both the map and its elaborate physics and chemistry system were new.

This feeling is less prominent in TOTK as these elements are now familiar, but the way it builds on its predecessor's foundation with Fuse and Ultrahand, the Depths, the sky islands, and clever twists on old places is fantastic in its own right. It's less groundbreaking, but more varied and tightened up.

They also have a very different vibe.
BOTW was a game about loneliness and introspection, about trying to reclaim a lost land. TOTK on the other hand is a game about people, about working together to rebuild.
Each achieves what it sets out to do in spectacular fashion, but despite their outward similarity, they each branch out in separate ways.

Done the part of the story after the issues in each region, on to the next part of the story. This is reminiscent of the Galaxy duo where the two games have the same template but operate with different applications as BOTW is absolute freedom to the point you can just go straight to the final boss if you want, TOTK however has more of the story built into the structure it's basically like what ALTTP did with the old template, BOTW and TOTK are effectively the modern LOZ and ALTTP. 

I'm still of the opinion that both are the top two in the franchise with TOTK being the top game due to what it sets out. For example TOTK gives practical resource managementuse to every item something even BOTW struggled to do as most items where relegated to elixirs despite some of the uses they could have, the fuse ability for instance is a huge game changer and likely to be a series mainstay as it brings an element of monster hunter and rpg like game theory. An example of this in play is the are numerous weapons with base stats but have special traits/perks on them like the swords certain enemies from BOTW use which sent out air slashes, monster parts have a base fuse power that they add to the weapon and certain monster traits carry over like elements so when fused with the said weapon you effectively fire out elemental slashes giving the weapon utility even if you have stronger weapons. 

They have aged significantly. They went from like 10 to 12 years old to teenagers of like 16 years.

Yeah, I feel like there are at least twice as many NPCs in TotK and way more sidequests. There are also more unique sidequests I feel like, with a bigger variety. That's an area where TotK improves on BotW a lot.

Yeah, there's always problem of freshness when it comes to "XYZ Game" Part 2 (which TotK basically is) - for example, to this day I find Fallout 1 to be my favorite one, though I both find and rank Fallout 2 as fairly better game, in large part because Fallout 1 was completely fresh experience for me at the time.

TotK has some of the things I like in Zelda games (like caves and Underworld) which BotW was missing, so that's immediate plus for me (even though I find much to be desired in implementation of both) and probably what tips the scale easily in favor of TotK for me - I still find everything that annoyed me about BotW to annoy me in TotK as well (some things even more), but, at least so far, I'm having a bit more enjoyable experience.