This probably has more to do with my personal gaming habits in 2023 compared to 2017 but I played 70+ hours of BotW while I’ve only played like 5 hours of TotK during its launch weekend and haven’t played since.

I found the combat more annoying with the fusing which just makes it more grindy. plus the world is just not as impressive as it was in 2017 which was really a mind blowing experience. The traversal is just awful as well.  

I truly don’t understand how anyone could prefer BotW unless you’re a)talking about innovation for the time of release or b)really just love the stronger sense of isolation in BotW. Otherwise TotK is basically superior in every way and does indeed make BotW seem like a rough draft.

BOTW, but that doesn’t take away from TOTK being one of the best games of all time as well. That first 20 or so hours of BOTW first time playing it is hard to duplicate.

I'm with firebush03 in that I'm surprised to see how negative the thread is about TotK in comparison to BotW. This KratosLives quote above is what I expected to see in this thread as that seems to have been the general consensus since TotK came out. ie bigger, more improved, more content, more interesting gameplay mechanics, etc.

The only thing I can think is that after a while people simply got a little bit disappointed that TotK, being a direct sequel reusing a modified BotW map with high/low parts added, took place in the same world. One of the main things that made BotW so amazing and worth hundreds of hours of wonderful playtime was exploring the vast world. By reusing the map in TotK, even with additions and modifications, Nintendo basically largely took away that sense of exploration and wonder from TotK.

From what I've heard a significant portion of the development time of the game, the reason why it took so long for it to come out despite being able to reuse much of what was made for the first game, is to perfect the ultrahand/build mechanic. And it sounds like some people also just got tired of messing around with that as well after a while. Since that is sorta like the big new game mechanic that separates it from BotW, if you get tired of that, and you only have a modified/expanded BotW map to explore, I can sorta see how some people soured a bit on TotK after a while and it slipped from being "BotW but bigger and better / BotW is one of the best games ever but was just a first draft to this game" to being "another round of BotW with new stuff but without the appeal of first-time exploration so the sense of awe is gone".

I wonder if Nintendo, instead of spending all that time creating the badass building mechanic, if they had instead used that time to make TotK be set in a whole new world, and just focused on perfecting the exact BotW formula (bring back classic temples, fill up the world a bit more, a lot more enemy variety and bosses, streamline cooking, more of a story) in a new map, if that would have been more or less satisfying to gamers in general as compared to the route they took of same world with new gameplay mechanics. Given how large these games are, taking like 200+ hours to truly properly play through, I can definitely see how some people would prefer to have just had a new world with largely same gameplay but with the little gripes from BotW fixed, rather than having to spend all that time on what many feel is largely the same world  even though they get all new gameplay mechanics to play with.

I don't have an opinion, cuz I haven't even started on my copy of TotK yet haha, hell I'm still exploring the vast BotW world. But this sorta seems to me to be the main complaint people are settling into after having played through TotK - the sense of awe and exploration from BotW is gone because it's the same world, and the new gameplay mechanics don't make up for that.

I would've preferred that. The building often felt cumbersome to me, and I often didn't do it unless it was required for a quest.

I would've waited months or another year to get a newer Zelda in terms of the map and such. I wouldn't want to wait until Switch 2, as that would mean Switch would be the second Nintendo platform in a row without a new Zelda exclusive to it (and you know Nintendo would not do that). 

A bit is an understatement

Regardless, you guys are putting way too much weight on our words. People largely think TOTK is a good game, just that BOTW is better. This reaction about the consensus of the superiority of BOTW in this thread has been exaggerated 

It's interesting, I ran this same poll on Famiboards, one of the biggest Nintendo forums, and the result there was the other way around, with TOTK leading by about the same degree to which BOTW is leading here.

I still think tears was significantly superior via much improved shrines.

Perhaps different age demographics?

I find as I get older I value 'quality' more in games versus 'quantity'. My younger self would probably have preferred the infinite tinkering possibilities in TotK, while now I prefer a more coherent experience which BotW delivers. I did mess around a bit with Ultra-hand building yet nothing to the level of how I went at Minecraft a decade ago. And totally different from how I tinkered with games and mods when I was in my late teens early twenties.

I also have a lot less time to spend on games nowadays and messing around with ultra-hand for an hour would be my entire gaming session while back in my early twenties I could easily go 6+ hours or all night trying out stuff. Ultimately ultra-hand felt like a distraction, taking time away from enjoying the game. Probably also why BG3 isn't appealing to me anymore. Too many options, so much inventory work and selection wheels limiting my time in the game.

In BotW I did have much longer gaming sessions compared to TotK for the reason that exploration is now the most addictive part of games to me. TotK had that a bit in the Depths, yet after the Depths my gaming sessions were much shorter in TotK.