Hype and having a huge new game to explore is a big part of the launch praise.

While playing I followed the TotK threads on Reddit and there it already became the consensus that BotW was better in different ways and many were saying that the Zonai stuff became detrimental to the experience. Next to some disappointment over the Sky Islands, the temples and monotony of / lack of things to do in the Depths.

I spend more time with TotK vs BotW as well, but prefer BotW. More is not always better.
A poll from a month ago pretty much shows the same split
https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_the_Wild/comments/177ovri/breath_of_the_wild_or_tears_of_the_kingdom/

That's the BotW reddit though, couldn't find a recent one on the TotK reddit.

I understand the honeymoon phase is over…but that doesn’t mean the game should drop from being the most incredible game ever made to a shell of its predecessor: Some of the responses on here are pretty aggressive.

Also, it’s strange of you to assert that you’ve played games for longer, thus you can see the flaws more clearer; hence, your opinion is more valid. I’m not entirely sure what relevancy that point even holds to the discussion?? Are you simply saying that you maintained a consistent opinion on the game, even during the honeymoon period? Congratulations…? I don’t know what you want me to say lmao. Never said the game was perfect, though it’s certainly a more-than-worthy successor to arguably one of the greatest games of all time. They are definitely comparable: this goes in contrast with many scathing remarks stating how “TotK is just Minecraft, it misses the point of exploration entirely! It’s a horrible game”. Like that’s just unnecessarily harsh in my opinion. This is what I’m commenting on.

Actually my opinion on TotK got better while playing. I was pretty critical of it as first and took a long time to warm up to it. A stark contrast to how BotW grabbed me from the start. Which is also a reason why I prefer BotW overall. My opinion wasn't consistent, rising yet never quite reaching the heights of BotW.

Both are great, I rank BotW as my #8 game of all time, TotK sits at #11, both beaten by Windwaker which sits at #4 :)

The length of games works against my all time rankings, as I take replayability into account. The longer a game, the less replayable for me. More is not always better :)

I'll assume you were replying to me.

I think you misunderstood me - playing games for longer (it's really about amount of games in different genres), by anyone, does not make their opinion more valid - but it can mean that they can see cracks in the paint much sooner or, on the opposite end of spectrum, they can be disappointed because a lot of what they see in the game is "been there, done that". I'd say, for lot of people honeymoon phase for BotW was a lot longer (and for some maybe never ended), for TotK, it seems that a lot of folks got out of that phase much, much earlier due to TotK eventually turning out to be type of sequel they didn't wanted. And since we live in insta-opinon age, where everything is often broadcasted on the net the moment it is happening, you have waves of initial praise that build the hype (or add to already artificially inflated pre-launch one, which is the case this year with both TotK and BG3), with cool down period after that as there is more progress through the game - in case of TotK, that cool down seem to be much, much faster.

I haven't seen "horrible" game remarks anywhere, I can't really understand anyone who can call TotK that (as that implies something like 2-3/10 score), though it is more than believable that there are people out there who really think that. Personally, I never had honeymoon period with TotK, I was expecting it to be around what it turned out to be - I did have some hope that they will make something different (and better) after the first reveal trailer, but that was me as Zelda fan who didn't enjoy BotW at more than 7/10 (which is Good), not me as someone who understands how much money BotW formula made for Nintendo (I guess there are few of us like that). I'm also guessing there are quite a few BotW fans who think that TotK took a wrong turn in fixing some of BotW issues and not doing enough of new things (or doing them wrong). And that reused Hyrule map certainly doesn't help.

After all, it seems that TotK will sell a lot less than BotW on much bigger install base, which is telltale sign that they didn't quite hit the mark with people who liked BotW (or maybe that there are quite a few people who didn't like BotW very much and had no interest in sequel).

That was a correct assumption: I was in fact responding to you :).

I see what you’re saying, though I do disagree: I believe the reason why TotK has lost a lot of that initial love has to do with a trend of overhyping leading to ppl who typically wouldn’t enjoy the BotW/TotK formula being left disappointed. Same thing with Spider-Man 2, Starfield, and Final Fantasy: all fantastic games, but we’re left being called underwhelming for the simple fact that these games could never live up to their over-inflated hype.

For those who loved the BotW formula, they loved TotK. For those who were mixed on BotW, they either loved or quickly grew bored with TotK: you seem to fall in the latter camp.

(Also…TotK will sell less than BotW because it missed the mark?? I feel it goes without saying that’s a…horrible point: TotK is a sequel that has releasing in the final year of the console, whereas BotW was the flagship title from the launch of the system. Similar deal with MM/OoT, SMG2/SMG, Mario Wonder/Mario Odyssey, etc. Sales figures aren’t a fantastic indicator to the quality of games.)

Only Starfield was called underwhelming 

There others are well liked. Very much so, for SM2 we might wait a little though, it's too new maybe if 3-4 months the criticism will start appearing. FF is widely regarded as the best FF in many years.

TOTK reuses the map, has crappy story and follows the same gaming beats as BOTW. This alone make it inferior to BOTW. Innovation and wow factor are the biggest sellers of BOTW. The design of BOTW encourage exploration and discovery, reusing the map means TOTK by default lost its main appeal. Things like shrine hunting are nice, I love the puzzles. But those are things to do while exploring, in BOTW I've found most of them organically while simply having fun walking trough Hyrule. TOTK was much more like a task list of things to do before beating the game. It was fun all the same, but if I need to pick which one is more engaging and looks more well done then it's an easy choice here 

TOTK is a great game but this in an uphill battle TOTK was bound to lose

I agree that sales are not an indicator of the quality of a game, though they might be sometimes. And there are plenty of sequels (and that is what TotK really is) that outsold the original. But that's pretty much irrelevant, because I never mentioned quality of the game - I said "telltale sign that they didn't quite hit the mark with people who liked BotW (or maybe that there are quite a few people who didn't like BotW very much and had no interest in sequel)", which is quite different thing.

The focus of this discussion doesn’t feel strongly anchored: The initial comment I made was that people had suddenly become very critical on the game after having had a few months to digest everything. To clarify the initial comment, I was claiming that while this trend is consistent with the end of a honeymoon period, the shift was significantly more aggressive than usual. There was no mention of theories on my end in the initial post, though later I would provide explanation as to why I believe this to be happening (also, SM2 has arguably been getting a lot of heat recently specifically for playing it’s cards way to safe, as well FF has been called “great…but not FF”): i.e. The Overhype Effect™️.

That being said, I can’t give much of a response to your most recent comments because I have become very confused by the direction of this discussion. Your perspective on the game isn’t objective, neither is mine: If you find TotK to be inferior in many ways, then that’s your opinion. My opinion falls in stark contrast to what you have said…but there’s no point in arguing opinions. It’s just a waste of time.

I feel the story telling was limited in botw. Few cutscenes of talk and that's it.

Tears of kingdom dwarfs it in scope. Better combat, environemts, things to do, better boss fights, better caves, shrines, bigger scale.I;ve sunk in 120 hrs and have yet to fight a Lynel