I’d argue nostalgia as well.
It’s the same reason some people still cling to really old titles - their first experience was ingrained in their soul and now whenever they play it, that soul gets tickled.
It's not just this. BotW has easier controls, more solid story, better weapon and environmental aesthetics and the exploration is more grounded. It feels like a real journey when you can't just hover bike over the mountains. The shrines are also better since you can't just cheese them.
These are all solid points so it's not better for many just because it was more groundbreaking.
Pretty much. TotK just felt like DLC. Another 120 shrines, some new abilities that weren't as fun, similar dungeons, sky islands were crap, depths was ok for a while but then got old.
That groundbreaking exploration and discovery of BotW just can't be replicated.
I loved the sky islands, but I wish there were more like the Great Sky Island. The other sky islands just felt like floating shrines in the sky with a puzzle attached to them (which is exactly what they were). In addition, these puzzles were often the same exact thing every time. Find this green crystal and bring it to the shrine. Shrine unlocks. Spirit orb! Yay!
Both of them are extraordinary games. It just happened that BOTW was made first. If it was the other way around we would be singing another tune.
I personally think that, the reason we love the first so much is because it was the first time we were in awe like that. Again it could have easily been flipped and everybody would still think the same since both Games are Truly Amazing.
For me it just felt like the same game plus building stuff, and I'm not into minecraft or those kind of games. Still a great game but BOTW was nicer and it was something "new".
TotK is an amazing game and did improve on several things. However, BotW was the first. The magic that was BotW just couldn’t completely be replicated with a sequel. It shouldn’t take anything away from TotK, but I think there’s definitely a nostalgia factor already for BotW. A lot of games have tried to replicate the magic that was BotW.
I bought TOTK instead of BOTW, specifically because I never played BOTW and figured i’d be killing two birds with one stone with TOTK.
I absolutely love TOTK, very glad I bought it. It is funny to me reading other comments in this thread about how building machines seems to ruin the exploratory element. That does not resonate with me as I still just wander around everywhere. Also, I have zero context story-wise and am enjoying the TOTK story. Tho, honestly, i didn’t buy the game for the story.
Yeah, agreed. I liked a lot about botw more. One thing for sure is, it felt like a survival adventure game where your just left in the wild to find your own way. But I do love totk ! Lots more to explore and do for sure .
100% I was hooked on BOTW, and hardly got into TOTK. I found it overly complex and it felt like more of a chore at times than an adventure like the first. I need to pick it back up and continue, but feel like I’d rather start BOTW over instead. They’re both great, but BOTW is as close to perfection as I’ve ever seen.
I think TotK has a cheat mechanic which takes away the fun of exploring. If you need to explore somewhere, you can easily create something to fly there.
Plus, the ending of BotW is unmatched. Nothing like going to the last battle at Hyrule castle. The music was epic.
I was talking about your trek towards Hyrule castle.
>!The music was perfect w/ it making you feel like you're heading towards the last battle. Not to mention there are like 50 ways to enter the castle. Either from underneath, through the water, front door, etc... The battles is crazy w/ tons of Guardians. Not to mention, you can sometimes jump down into a room and boom, you're face to face w/ a Lynel. Plus there are tons of secrets and weapons. It just goes on and on right before you see Calamity Ganon. I don't know about you but there is nothing like this whole section in TotK. Maybe it's been so long but you gotta go back there again and see how epic it is.!<
Exactly. I loved TOTK but with the enormous depths that were mostly empty and the sky islands that were mostly the same, it felt much more like a chore sometimes than BOTW.
That and every single shrine needing you to build things to complete it. But they obviously didn't put enough effort into making sure people couldn't just cheese every puzzle with the same tricks
The biggest strength that Breath of the Wild had over Tears of the Kingdom was the exploration - the fact that ToTK reused BoTW's overworld with very few changes means that the exploration in ToTK was far less interesting than BoTW. It also doesn't help that the Sky and the Depths, the few areas in ToTK that were completely new, were almost entirely comprised of reused content so they also weren't interesting to explore at all here.
Also, and this might be a very hot take, but I think BoTW had a much better story than ToTK - BoTW's themes were much more coherent compared to ToTK which goes back on its core theme of sacrifice just to give a cheap and contrived happy ending, and that's not even mentioning the presentation issues with ToTK's writing ("Demon King? Secret Stone?").
Agreed, I really think instead of both Depths and the Sky islands, they really should have just focused on one and really went all out to make sure all the content was fresh and unique to that biome specifically. I was really excited to explore the Depths until I realized it was 99% overworld mobs and reused bosses.
My personal opinion is that the Depths should have acted like Lorule from A Link Between Worlds in that the dark world is split into segments and that getting to a certain location is a bit of a navigation puzzle in of itself - ToTK does this with how you get to the Lost Woods but that's pretty much about it.
Well, three things.
1) BOWT was a revolution on its own, TotK is merely a BOTW 1.5.
Sure it has more content, but it only walks in BotW's steps, and some people (including me) think that it is more of a super-DLC than a stand alone game (which it was for a good portion of the development).
2) At some point, Zelda's DNA is adventure and exploration. Not playing Mecanos.
The layer of building and crafting added by TotK is deep, well thought, and a technical miracle for the switch.
But it comes with a problem : it's not Zelda.
Some people playing crafting games and all must've been in heaven doing so in a Zelda, but I (and a lot of people) hated it. Well not hated it per say, but hated how you basically spend half your time in game building stuff (or at least trying to)
Spending 15 minutes trying to build something, only for ir to fail miserably and break mid-air, it's funny once, but at some point I just gave up.
Bonus points : who TF thought it was a good idea to activate the engines... by hitting them, when vehicles are made of materials that BREAK when you hit'em ?
You better be good at aiming your attacks because a tad on the left and instead of turning on your vehicle, you just destroy it. How fun is that ?
Imagine if cars had 3 keyholes and a "self-destruct" option if you ever put the key in the wrong keyhole...
3) TotK looks bad in comparison to BotW
Lastly, I mentionned a technical miracle earlier when talking about gameplay.
Well, this miracle came at a cost, and the cost is graphics.
The framerate is horribly unstable, almost unplayable on portable mode.
And the aliasing is tremendous, which makes it look really bad compared to BotW, who was beautiful, and had a constant 30FPS with no issue whatsoever, even in portable mode.
So all in all, TotK is an interesting addition to BotW, that can undeniably be fun to some, but not much else, while BotW is a revolution on its own that sold more Switch than any other exclusive and inspired a lot of other studios after it released.
That's why I'd take BOTW any day, had I to chose, while just quitting on TotK after 12 hours because I was so fed up with playing an engineer instead of Link, plus I mostly play my Switch on portable mode and TotK's drops to 12 fps during fights with more than 2 ennemies made it impossible to play.
I think you might have an issue with your switch. I’ve played over 200 hours of both BoTW and ToTK and only had the framerate drop on either game a couple of times - playing in docked mode (which tends to perform worse than handheld) on a 55inch TV. Even sticking the build-limit of fans/rockets and flying so fast that your expect the world should struggle to render - no issues. For context, I got my switch back in 2019.
As for your point 2… it’s a shame you didn’t get into the building mechanics. I LOVE exploring and all the building mechanics did was help me find new, fun, crazy and inventive ways to explore new places, places I saw from a distance and thought “ooo that looks interesting!”. All the limits from BoTW were suddenly gone and I could go anywhere I wanted! There was a small learning curve, and once you get past it, it just becomes second nature (like any new mechanic in any new game, really).
Don’t get me wrong, I love BoTW, but I also loved ToTK for so many different reasons.
Well i don't think so, i saw a lot of people facing the same issue on the internet, but my Switch pal didn't experience it that strong, so it may have to do with some hardware randomness. Thing is, I don't have this problem with any other game at all so... it's hard not to blame the game.
As for crafting, i get how it can be funny, I really do. It simply isn't to me, and trust me i'm the first one who regret it.
I've been stuck on the tutorial for ages because I kept destroying what I just spent 10 minutes building, due to the poor choice of having to hit your engine to turn it on, as I mentioned. It very quickly stopped being fun, spending 30 minutes to build something to hop over a 6 meters gap.
Tbh, what probably didn't help is that I didn't know it would be the "same game", so the month before release I went back to BotW.
And really, playing both games in a row completely ruins TotK, because when you launch the game... you feel like you've already done it.
(Except for the depth, floating islands and Building mechanics, but the core of the game/map is the same)
I will give it another shot one day, because I want to like it, I really do. But there were too many reasons not to for me.
TBH I like them both equally. I think they complement each other perfectly. I was worried going back to BotW after TotK, but it's a different experience. Similar sandbox, different toys.
Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this.
I totally agree. BOTW feels like a traditional fantasy setting, and the fantastical stuff is based on in-world magic. TOTK feels a lot more modern, and is based more on in-world science.
For me BOTW had better runes that made it fun to spend hours doing funny stuff
It was a innovative game but totk felt like same game but with a few new upgrades
The whole building thing in Totk was deal breaker for me. I enjoyed Botw a lot. Totk felt more like build this and build that. It looked more like a building game to me so i gave up after few hours.
I like them about the same, they're terriffic games, but they don't really feel like zelda to me. Botw did a better job in some respects of keeping its new or reinvented mechanics "zelda-ish"- they did a very good job in terms of keeping the magic of the overworld exploration from earlier titles with a huge map that easily could have wound up feeling empty or pointless, but it works amazingly well even for people that don't really normally enjoy open world games. One of the major focus points of totk was the "superglue stuff together" mechanic, which is very fun and extremely well implemented, but in retrospect it felt like it was sort of outside the "spirit" of zelda and should maybe have been used in a new IP instead. I didn't mind the underworld exploration myself, but many people found it a bit lackluster compared to botw's overworld when it was fresh. Though they added a lot of changes like caves (probably my favourite parts of the game) to the overworld, didn't leave as much as an impact as the first time around as it felt mostly familiar. The sky stuff was nice, but it felt a bit underutilized, like it got mostly brushed aside after the opening hours.
TOTK is not the ideal game for someone who wants to roll credits and move on to the other 500 games in their backlog. I spent 490 hours with it, on my first file, and I found it rewarding as a lifestyle game long after finishing all 152 shrines and so forth. I loved it so much, I went back and added 100+ hours to my BOTW file.
But I suppose I'm closer to the exception than the rule.
Obviously "everyone" does not think BOTW is better than TOTK. Both games are great and both do certain things better than the other.
BOTW has more replayability for me. After what is now either close to or over 1000 hours of playtime in the BOTW Hyrule I still find returning to the game for a new playthrough is able to spark a little of the wonder and excitement of that first experience. BOTW is far more about exploration for the sake of it. The only reward for going to different places may be a Talus or Lynel fight, and probably some Koroks. There is less in the Hyrule of BOTW both mechanically and literally. Less people, less monsters, less materials, less weapons, etc. Where BOTW excels is in that exploration and freedom of movement when compared to previous Zelda titles. It is overall a more relaxing and chill experience. A great introduction to where the series has gone and likely will continue to remain for the foreseeable future.
TOTK is more BOTW in pretty well every way. More story, characters, tools, mechanics, weapons, monsters, and so on. Exploration is still key to TOTK and while it used the map of BOTW as the foundation I found myself getting lost again because just enough changed. Either the view of the horizon from a particular hill or the caves would disorient me just enough to feel like I was seeing Hyrule for the first time again. TOTK is a far busier game than BOTW and that leads to it losing that chilled out quality of BOTW. The danger is more present. Things seem to be unravelling everywhere you go. I loved my time with the game though I have walked away from it with some disappointment that I did not feel walking away from BOTW. I think the largest flaw of TOTK right now is the length of time between BOTW and TOTK allowed the audience to grow expectations. COVID absolutely messed up development and release schedules but I also partially blame Nintendo's marketing of the game. Going back and looking at the trailers for TOTK it comes across that the Zelda team was building to something story-wise that they just didn't. I would argue that BOTW did this as well to a degree but the novelty of the gameplay overshadowed that. Anyone else remember that interview with Aonuma where he said Skyward Sword would be important for TOTK? Some of what was added in TOTK looked impressive at first but ultimately was underwhelming. The depths are really cool the first few times you go down there but it is mostly empty space. The Sky Islands are fun and at least have some physics-based puzzles but they don't really serve a purpose. At least with Skyward Sword the Sky Islands are explained in the lore.
One thing TOTK did that BOTW didn't do for me is cause me to stop and just stare at a sunset or sunrise. Or just sit there and listen to the music up in the clouds. In BOTW I would keep moving to see new things. In TOTK I liked sitting and absorbing Link's surroundings. I think the disappointment I felt for the story of TOTK will be a mark against it for me as time goes on and I eventually revisit it. However, TOTK is such a full game with content and things to do. While I missed bombs I think the abilities in TOTK are better than BOTW, no question. I also think TOTK has the best final boss fight of any Zelda game. Period.
I really, really liked TOTK. but I liked BOTW even more. Same reason I preferred some of the older Marios over Odyssey. When it's just endless completion logs and collectathons, it's not as fun.
I’m one the odd people that skipped botw and started my Zelda experience with TOTK. I think I would like the simplicity of BOTW more, but it would be hard to play the game without using Ascend.
TOTK is miles better in my estimation and feels like the zenith of what they wanted to achieve with BOTW but fell short of in some ways.
They found creative solutions for things like weapon durability rather than taking the easy way out with it. I wasn’t a fan of the BOTW abilities, but loved the ones in TOTK.
I think a lot of people look at it less favourably because it will never feel *quite* the same as that first BOTW playthrough where everything was so new. I’ve seen the sentiment with a lot of different games over the years and I typically don’t agree. At the end of the day if there’s a sequel that feels like the Ultimate Version™️ of what the original was supposed to be, fine by me!
botw was more focused. totk seemed like they just kinda threw in the building mechanic and some caves and sky islands and called it a day. the underground is literally an inverted version of the map. that might seem genius to some people but if you think about it that’s just about the laziest way they could’ve done it. not to mention getting more of the same years later just isn’t the same even if there is some new stuff. the building mechanic is very unfinished to me. botw seemed like they thought about every single element, it was the first game back when the switch had just come out, you experience this new way of playing zelda for the first time, it was great. and i went back and played all the DLC years later too so i really don’t think its nostalgia speaking. i legit think its a better use of you money to get botw even though totk has a ton to do the focus of botw just makes it feel more like a masterpiece than just a sandbox with a story tacked on. i wasn’t particularly a fan of the story in either game but with botw it felt more “classic zelda” to me.
>botw was more focused.
I feel like this even applies to the main story line. In BOTW there's a constant pressure that you need to defeat the calamity that is impacting Hyrule and is clearly stemming from the castle.
Maybe I'm just playing differenty, but TOTK feels like it has way less of a central story to me. Just a lot of NPCs talking about the depths and the islands, but that feels like it is setting up a larger story that never really comes into fruition.
Totk literally have so many sky islands with nothing on them. The sky islands honestly feel like an afterthought in totk. You don't really need to go back ti them at all throughout the game. Except for a dungeon. But they are pointless
I found totk new building mechanics to be fun at first, but then a little boring and cumbersome after about 50 bours in. Take that away, and the underground areas, which can be kind of annoying, and it's basically bow, with more dialogue and less fun imo.
I liked the simplicity of BOW, and like many people have said, less is more sometimes, and BOW was just perfect in that regard. I still haven't finished totk, it just doesn't grab my attention in the same way as bow.
I wouldn't say everyone, I thought the consensus was that totk was an incremental improvement over botw.
That said I do think that totk is worse because of how bloated it is. It's a 40 hour game that stretched for over 100 hours for me with features that are cool but severly limited and combat that has not been improved pretty much at all.
The rewards were also crap most of the time, because everything in this game is so temporary, rewards don't feel like a celebration they feel like refills of your basic abilities.
The exploration was pretty weak for me as well because of how volatile lore is in Zelda games, finding shit is cool only when that shit means something narratively, and most in this game stuff just didn't really mean anything for me.
I also like TotK more but it doesn't have that same wow factor. BotW was this huge, groundbreaking tweak to the Zelda formula and TotK, while more refined and plenty impressive in its own ways, still feels like more BotW and lacks the same punch.
I think the start and the end of each game sums up this whole argument. While TOTK gives your more tools to do cool stuff BOTW gives you more freedom and incintive to explore.
Basically totk is the same [game.You](http://game.You) go to the same areas, skyworld is the exception and the underground is a dismal,depressing, repititous waste of time. The storyline is also basically the same, ganon returns, kill ganon. The weapons are ridiculously silly. Now what could have happened that would have taken more creativity and effort, would have been to expand the map into new areas on the ground, add some new races and actually have a new and interesting storyline that didn’t involve the ganon death/life cycle. The two things I liked were the character development and the fact you could drop items while a chest is opened. Other than that it is just a cobbled together mess, imho of course.
I think because most people treasure the first experience and the feelings it gave them, so BOTW, being the first of the two, delivered this for the most. To me TOTK is the best because I only played that and probably, going to the first, I would feel like “more of the same” and certainly not so wow like TOTK.
I feel like this will be massively reassessed once they’re both considered “old games” in the same way majoras mask was. But for the moment, most people who played BOTW remember the first time experience of it and the context around it when it came out. It was mind blowing because it was unique when it came out and that means the sequel built on the same engine just can’t be as unique.
I am an absolute freak who played Fenyx Rising first, and because of that I far prefer Fenyx Rising to BOTW. It’s all about context and what you’re already familiar with when you first play it. I’d never played a game like that before, i had a great time, and when i finally had a go at BoTW i just felt like “oh, it’s Fenyx rising but with Zelda characters” 😅
I personally enjoyed the exploration in botw more. I liked it being at a surface level. I think totk went too far with going into the sky and underground. Those aspects just didn't hold the same value.
I also didn't enjoy the caves as much as I thought I would. It just became more bothersome and a chore rather than enjoying the exploration.
I also liked the weapons in botw more. I didn't appreciate having to merge my weapons with material all the time. This should have been an optional approach rather than a hard force. I love the aesthetic of some weapons but to have it ruined by putting something on the end just made the game visually unappealing.
Tldr: less is more!
For me, doing main story, they're pretty interchangeable. Past that is where botw takes the lead. Totk felt a lot more bloated, armor upgrades cost money, upgrade parts seem to drop less frequently, lots of upgrade parts are also used for weapon fusing. In botw I fully upgraded every armor set, in totk I didn't even bother finding them all. Caves make it so using the radar & corresponding light roots isn't enough and it's still a pain in the ass to find some shrines, most caves feel like the same thing, half of them may as well be procedurally generated. The only point of the entire depths seemed to be to make finding shrines easier, there wasn't really anything fun or interesting in that whole half of the world, other than some challenge bosses. They didn't design an interesting area, they just inverted the topography of the surface and copy pasted it but took out all the interesting things to interact with. As a result of all these things the game just feels bloated when going for map & shrine completion.
The battery system. Building is now at the core of the game, most shrines and overworld interactables & puzzles involve or expect building to be used. However making builds is not very fun when you don't have many batteries, everything you make dies too fast and doesn't feel worth the time to build. So how do you get more batteries? You go to the depths, except exploring the depths without vehicles is slow and boring because like I said, it's mostly empty space. Furthermore half the ground in the depths is covered in Ganon's toxic jizz so you have to use vehicles to get around, but they keep dying and you just wait for them to recharge. You can't really engage with the sky much either until you have batteries and that's where a lot of my favorite content was, but I didn't get to it until 100 hrs into the game. Lots of people's solution to this was to farm the depths for parts for batteries, so every blood moon they'd just go kill 5 frox, but they cease to be fun very fast when you're grinding them over and over.
Doing it all again. I know without doubt I'd like totk more if I never played botw. In botw exploring was it's own reward and shrines, quests, materials, and collectibles were a nice bonus. In totk I'd explored the world already, so I went to all my favorite areas to see how they changed after the time skip, and after that it felt monotonous to explore again for all the shrines.
Again, I think doing the main story content is fine, I was a bit disappointed with the main dungeons but they weren't bad, just not very engaging. The lead up to each dungeon was probably my favorite part of the game. Anyway my point was that most of my complaints come between the end of the story and all shrine/lightroot completion.
Edit: I'd add to this that I'm very burnt out on massive open world games rn too. Just in general, not exclusive to zelda. I love the franchise enough that I want to keep playing the games, but the bigger they make the games the more alienated I feel from the series. I don't want to run through mostly empty space to find something cool every couple minutes. But that's just personal preference. Imo they're both too big, but my burnout was much more present in totk.
These people are crazy’s TotK is better. So much betterr. BotW always felt incomplete to me, TotK is the flushed out version.
Better story, cooler enemies, more content, caves galore, better use of items, more creative gameplay, better puzzles.
Like others said BotW was ground breaking ToTK was just a continuation rather than breaking more ground
And for me the Depths were just a drag. How long do you want to run in pitch black and climb stuff you can't see only to hit a ceiling and fall down.
It just took away from the sky and land which were fun and interesting.
I loved the temples though. Need less open world and more targeted ideas.
I might be in the minority here, but I love the weapon break system. There's a STUPID amount of weapons in the game, and had you been able to keep them all, you would've been too overpowered for it to be fun IMO. The master sword and Hyrule shield being the only two unbreakables is pretty cool too.
I also like the 120 mini dungeons with the 5 major ones. It's a nice switch up
For me, less is more when it comes to Zelda. BOTW was breathtakingly groundbreaking and the foot/horse exploration was amazing compared to anything we've seen in Zelda games prior. TOTK is an amazing game, but the addition of the robotics + building vehicles component just felt forced and out of place on the already amazing open world map that BOTW gave us.
BOTW was easy to play for hours on end. TOTK, at least for me, felt somewhat like a chore.
BOTW worked better for me because TOTK suffers from what a lot of sequels suffer from: system and feature creep. Too many systems to manage, just layering things on top of existing things.
To those who love TOTK: that's awesome for you. I hope you enjoy your game. I just felt like BOTW was a more balanced package.
BotW also stands for Bottom of the Well, which for masochistic Ocarina of Time horror fans, makes them reminisce about seeing their favorite dungeon just from seeing those 4 letters in the correct sequence when playing Breath of the Wild.
>!Does this actually apply to anyone?!<
Im waiting to beat the game on switch two. Botw & totk are probably the only 2 zelda games i like. The problem is that totk is upgraded but not the switch. If you try to use equipment too fast the frames drop, if you use grapple hand you lose frames, & if you have too much going on with your creation the frames drop. I love this game so much idc if its in 30. My problem are the drops to 10-20 frames. The switch coughs up blood when i loud it up.
For me, the story and characters were a lot more compelling (I really liked having the Champions, and I thought the Divine Beasts were more interesting of a mission). Also, I kind of prefer the simpler gameplay as I’m not the kind of person who really goes crazy with the new things you can create in TOTK, I just kind of make what’s necessary lol
TOTK felt like the game encouraged me to build machines in order to avoid interacting with the world they created. BOTW felt like it was saying "please actually walk around and interact with everything we created"
Everyone is different. I’m the opposite, I feel like all I hear is TOTK is amazing and BOTW was nothing in comparison.
Personally I loved BOTW but didn’t love TOTK. It didn’t work for me. They took what I loved about BOTW and restricted it. I didn’t care for the sky islands or the deeps. The deeps were the real issue though. All that space, a whole map, and it was all the same. All the game play when you were above was like someone screaming at you to “go below” and it felt awful honestly. After lighting up the whole thing I was bored. In contrast I have over 1000 hours in BOTW. The restricting of materials and movement felt awful.
I honestly didn’t even really enjoy the mechanics of building all that much. There were so many people that felt lonely in BOTW, and overwhelmed with all
That space and no villages, Hyrule, etc so TOTK worked better for them and that’s ok. For people like me who loved the open exploration, TOTK had way too much restriction.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm older now and worse at video games but BOTW seemed easier to me, if I pick up TOTK I feel like everything is going to 1-2 hit me and I don't remember feeling like that squishy with BOTW
I didn't play TOTK (and I have the game) for the sole reason that the craftsmanship feature made me go "ewwww". True, it gives you a sense of freedom to make everything you want, but for me it feels overwhelming.
More is not necessarily better. BOTW is a much better and subtly designed game. It has balance and nuance. TOTK was a lot of fun, but it felt like too much sometimes. I didn't enjoy the way the game unfolded nearly as much, and often felt like the design ethos was buried under more of everything.
Things like the caves in TOTK exemplify this for me. I found them repetitive, tedious and boring. The depths too often felt quite repetitive. BOTW never felt repetitive. It unfolded naturally, and kept me engaged right to the end. It allowed me to revel in the world, without feeling overwhelmed by more and more stuff.
I came to play Zelda, not build stuff.
To me, TOTK was like when Microsoft bought the rights to Rareware, and made my beloved Banjo Kazooie into a car game.
I love both equally (maybe even TOTK a little more), but I think part of it is the fact that the world you explored in BOTW was completely new. TOTK uses the same map and, whilst it adds some new things to it, it’s fundamentally still the same Hyrule.
I liked the familiarity of the world, though. It worked particularly well for the regional phenomena where you could see just how much disarray the four main settlements were in (Rito Village and Gerudo Town hit hardest imo)
I like the great plateau more than the great cloud island.... and I feel like the majority of Totk is spent scrolling through what to attach to an arrow or weapon- takes me out of the game every time I open that dang sliding menu and proceed to flip through the entirety of my worldly possessions to find the ding dong old wood.
Totk is too similar to botw so didn’t feel magical or special in any way, they added to the game but botw was really special and beautiful to play totk was more of the same, a new map would have been nice
Honestly they are both great. I think its a Mario 3 vs Super Mario World. At the end of the day Im grateful to have both. Personally I put 80 hours into BOTW but I was playing in docked mode. I bought a Satisfye grip for my Switch Oled and im at 180 hours in TOTK. I have a ton left to do in both games.
As many people said, it’s just a result of ToTK feeling like an expansion to BoTW. ToTK needed to do more with sky islands and The Depths to really make it feel like its own world. Because it is…. just the same world as BoTW.
I like TotK more. It took a good game, and made it even better. I myself liked the >!time travel aspect to the plot and storyline better!<
For those who liked BotW wild better because it's "groundbreaking".. are probably the same folks who wish they could replay BotW again, but for the first time, so they have that preference anyways.
I like Totk more. Breath of the Wild world feels empty by comparison. Not as many creatures or people wandering about. I enjoy those random encounters in Totk.
Because BOTW was an incredible fantasy adventure.
TOTK was Legend of Zelda: Minecraft. They also slowed down a lot of the combat, removed all my favorite parts of BOTW, and did not conjoin the two stories very well. TOTK is only popular because most gamers have a Minecraft headspace
I feel like it's better paced, looking back the beginning of BOTW was great. You wake up you explore the plateau right away and bits of the story is dripped to you as well as the mechanics. My jaw dropped when I realized the game was much much larger than the Great Plateau. Totk drags too much at the start.
Because the Nintendo Switch is ancient at this point, and BOTW was a launch title, while TOTK was it's sequel. There are still quite a few people that think Halo CE is better than Halo 2. And to some degree, it is objectively better. If you could get the quality of life improvements from TOTK into BOTW, it would be a much better experience than it already is.
TLDR; nostalgia, mostly.
BOTW had so much to explore and discover, I loved looking for things around the map and discovering little surprises everywhere. TOTK didn’t have the same feeling as it’s a map we’ve already explored. It’s still great, but felt kinda like a giant DLC to me.
it is kinda like a race not many people remember who was in second place to me TOTK it at best a 6 years old DLC which the team told us is how TOTK started
Alright so
I find totk very derrivative of botw. It improves on the gameplay ofc, but it doesnt actually come off as very original as a zelda game. Its more like a zelda toybox.
Its a fun but its a very bad sequel
I'd say it comes down to the fact that botw was an entirely new adventure set in an entirely new/unexplored world. It was amazing being able to explore an open world Hyrule for the first time and see the various landscapes and the various new towns. I was ecstatic to see what the various Hyrule races (gorons, etc) looked like with the new art style and aesthetics.
Additionally, we had an entirely new OST, new enemies, new combat mechanic, cool physics, new sound design, new animals, new interesting characters to meet, new feel/identity, and so much more. It was an entirely fresh adventure.
And then we have totk. It could be argued that it brought a lot more to the table with caves and more sophisticated and much improved physics mechanics, however, I felt like I was playing the same game again. I was fighting with the same enemies, meeting the same characters, finding many of the same armors and weapons, hearing the same sounds and music, doing many of the same things, seeing the same things, and so much more.
When exploring the additional areas, the feeling of wonder like we got from botw kicked in. Then, you come to realize there is nothing if substance to discover. The skies are small, barren, and copied and laster. The Depths was a copied and pasted aesthetic covering a region the size of Hyrule, with so little of interest to find.
Additionally, the story and world in botw felt more organic. You were exploring the ruins of a destroyed Hyrule, and discovering the cause. You felt the presence of those events as you wandered the world, and it was done so beautifully and organically. Seeing the world populated with animals, ruins covered in vegetation, old battlegrounds, etc. In TotK, the world was there to be a playground for the new building mechanics. Lacked soul.
And the story was kind of dumb and lifeless imo. Lastly, while there was a butt-ton things to find in TotK, none of them had much of anything of substance. There was no new discoveries of the unique caliber as the lost woods, the great temple, the darkened fortress. As least not that I can recall.
BOTW was new, original and fresh. It was a launch Switch game. For a lot of people it may have been the first Zelda game they played. TOTK was a continuation of BOTW, not something completely new and for whatever reason, some people hate that approach and some people don’t mind. I wonder if people were overwhelmed with all the weapon and item combos and with the ability to engineer anything they essentially wanted (if they could figure out how to make it work).
Both games are awful, but BotW at least had a few nuggets of tightly designed areas and a general design philosophy that I could at least understand the thought process behind. TotK has none of that. It’s a copy and pasted world only now with 3 times as much filler content, and the new mechanics just exist to let you skip the few pieces of actual game design leftover. All in a game that took 6 years to make and cost $70
BotW was simply bad, TotK was *insulting.*
BotW for me was just so new and different. I also liked how empty and melancholic the world felt. In TotK Hyrule is more full of life, understandably so but I think the emptiness was what made BotW feel special to me.
Also I struggled to play another huge Zelda game when much of the Hyrule map is the same, the wow factor was lost for me in a way.
I love both games but BotW is my favourite.
I’ll describe it like this:
Playing BOTW after playing TOTK is like coming back home after going on holiday. On holiday, you’ve got all these fun amazing things you’d never have back home. But at the end of the day, home is home and there’s no place like it.
BOTW for a lot of people (me) is comforting in how foundational it is to TOTK. And I think the surface area of BOTW is bigger than TOTK, cause TOTK had to also incorporate the sky stuff
I think it is more of the "wow factor" of a new format of gameplay added to the point it is a launch window game. It is not a bad game and I do like it, but personally I prefer the more structured gameplay in TOTK added to the fact that the game has more music overall (BOTW had a lot of empty noise in between)
Even when a game comes later on the console life and it is technically better it is difficult to live up to a launch window game. One example is Gran Turismo 4 is absolutely better in every single way compared to 3 except the camera stiffness, still, 3 sold more and is more talked about.
I disagree when people talk that making TOTK take place on Hyrule again was a mistake because even if Nintendo decided to make a completely different and unique map it would still miss the novelty factor. BOTW surprised everyone but it is impossible to surprise a person and be surprised twice.
Because Ultrahand is wildly unfun for me, I don't want to fuse and create my own weapons, and the whole story of waking up again, finding towers, and no mention of the sheikah stuff seems dumb to me.
I'll never finish TotK. It just plays as one giant chore for me.
Sky Islands and the depths aren't Great. But they're requierd to play Through. Breath of the wild doesn't have them, instead, it has surface things, which are better.
I think it comes down to originality and what it did at the time. I think Super Mario Galaxy had the same issue (maybe more so). The 1st Mario Galaxy was groundbreaking and fun. It helped validate the Wii. The 2nd came out and was just a straight up better vesion, but hardly anyone talks about it.
I liked discovering new things in botw and the variation with which you could solve puzzles. I also really preferred the abilities and how they're activated I'm botw too.
In totk, everything has to be solved with fusing or building, which I'm just not a big fan of. I really enjoyed the dungeons in totk, but a lot of other things are just more of the same, but LOTS more - the underground area is just not as interesting as discovering Hyrule was, and I found a lot of the sky islands underwhelming.
It feels more...focused? I don't know. I feel like they've made TOTK too much of a sandbox in some ways. BOTW was perfect to me in how it did things; weapons, shields and bows all break, so you have to study the map for where the good spawns are, where higher tier enemies will be located.
In TOTK, you can just fuse shit and become really overpowered right away.
I also am just not the biggest fan of Ultrahand. Building things is fun the first few times but I don't play Zelda for constructing stuff; I think of Zelda for swordfights, exploring, etc. I miss the powers which directly interacted with the game world (magnesis, stasis, cryonis etc).
TOTK feels less concise and cohesive to me, but I can see why it feels like an upgrade in every way to someone like you. And that's totally fine! I'll still play BOTW and love it!
Because BOTW was a totally new game with new everything.
TOTK was a game with cool dungeons (especially spirit) and some new areas, and a major new physics mechanic, in a game I'd already played repeatedly.
BOTW was hundreds of hours of novelty and exploration. TOTK was only dozens.
If the games had been released in the reverse order, I'd like TOTK better.
I think it’s better. Plus the weapons are better. Fuse sucks. There is no shitty boring annoying depths. And there’s kass.
Botw is superior in my opinion
I think most people recognize that TOTK is a better game, but BOTW may have a special place on their heart. For me personally, BOTW got me back into gaming after a very long hiatus so that experience will always be above everything else. TOTK was better in nearly everyone way, but because of BOTW is wasnt as much a new and shocking experience.
How different BoTW was compared to the rest of the series actually turned me off from it, and I like ToTK more because there’s actually less wow factor but my expectations were more adjusted
As many others have said, it's botw with just to do. I didn't like the new skills. I hated running around with a sword on my back with a rock attached to it.
I miss the master sword trials and master cycle, as hard as they were it was so much fun to have an OP master sword and motercycle after putting in all that hard work. Other than those DLCs totk is slightly better game imo.
Totk seems like they just threw a bunch of shit at the wall to see what sticks haha. Idk. I think the water Temple was wayyy too quick and easy, the wind temple was fun to get to but then also super easy. Not a fan of building things, I'm just not super creative in that way. Not enough bomb flowers, I really miss remote bombs and being able to windbomb around the map after my first playthrough of BOTW heh. Sky islands are just kind of bare with little to do. Same with the depths. Shrines are too easy. Just feels like a DLC in many ways.
Just a few examples, I can't quite put my finger on everything, but I have put like 130+ hours into botw with two playthroughs, and haven't even beaten TOTK yet. I just lost interest after the week it came out
It's just boring playing TOTK after BOTW, like there isn't enough new. When I first got it, I completely loved it, but after a bit, it just got boring. I could beat the final boss if I wanted to, but I just haven't. I guess it's because I have tried, I died because I didn't have any food, so I just did something else and I haven't wanted to go back.
This reminds me of the comparison people make between Portal and Portal 2, and I'll always say Portal is superior to its sequel.
The common argument is that, if something is good, more of it is obviously better. But I disagree.
For this analysis, I will assume that each game is being played without knowledge of the other, yet somehow at the same time any references to previous games, including references in TotK to BotW, will still retain their Easer egg-esque value. ALSO, I love both of these games a lot.
1. BotW rewards all exploration. There are, from my experience, no spots to which you can traverse that don't seem to have some sort of worthwhile reward waiting at the end. By comparison, in TotK, there are many zones (I'm looking at you, Depths!) to which you can spend a long time travelling to, only for there to be nothing worthwhile at the end. For instance, the Lake Hylia Chasm has literally nothing of value within. It has a Lightroot. Based on Yiga journals that discuss "noises beyond the walls," one might assume something impressive in this Chasm, like a Colosseum or depot, but nope. As a result, BotW is much tighter.
2. BotW forces you to explore the ground the way they want you to while giving the illusion of freedom (better than any other game). It can reliably guide a player through certain areas and ensure its best moments won't be missed, because, by the time you have the stamina required to brute-force your way across the map in a line (instead of using horses and roads), you have already had to traverse a great deal of the map to get to the necessary shrines to get that freedom in the first place. TotK, on the other hand, gives a great addition to the map with verticality (which I love), but unfortunately, it is simply too easy to skip large swaths of the map with creations. I was able, for instance, to pull the Sword from the dragon with a series of those floating platforms, way too soon, and I was kind of done with the most of the sky before going for a second sage. And, unlike stamina, it's really, really too easy to get a full battery. They really should've made you work harder for it.
3. That leads nicely to the other issue with the sky: there's nothing up there. I remember thinking it was a red flag when the starting zone was 10 times larger than anything else up there. By comparison, the Great Plateau from BotW \*felt\* like it would be the largest spot on the map, only to end up being the smallest. In BotW, the world felt big, and turned out to be gigantic. In TotK, the sky felt like brimming with possibility, and then turned out to be anemic. And then there's the depths, which have the land area but no reason to see it all. This is made more frustrating by the fact that the various stocks of parts every 100 steps or so don't seem to be designed for the area in which they were placed. Often I find 4 racing wheels and a time bomb at a depot surrounded by cliffs or water. Thanks for that.
4. Because there's so much more game to play, and more hours to sink in, a lot of the quests seem to be there for the sake of existing and don't appear to serve much of an ulterior purpose. BotW had some of these too, but TotK really ramps it up. It should have been that, corresponding to the scale increase, there was a dungeon increase. I understand not wanting to increase the sage count, but they could easily have done an entire set of dungeons that "activate" the Secret Stones or something. This is a world map that should have had 10 big dungeons, at least. That's the consequence of a larger game. Instead, the map felt like it had all this extra space you could explore, but didn't know what to put in it. As a side note, Hyrule castle was somehow more interesting the first time around as well. Probably again because using constructed vehicles to basically warp to the top give away how complicated of a place it \*isn't\*. Although, it's worth pointing out the most of the shrines are improved experiences. But since none of them are in the depths, and only a few in the sky, those places remain in need of content.
5. Finally, TotK has better storytelling in general. The characters or more characterized (Ganon in particular is no longer some amorphous vague existential threat), but the original had a simplicity that worked very well for its mood and gameplay, discovering your memories and your story as you discover the world.
6. (minor issue) what's the deal with Lizalfos tail drops?
Conclusion:
I find BotW to be the superior game because it is a focused experienced that sets out to do something extremely impressive and achieves its goal with 100% satisfaction and attention to detail in every crevice, including how gameplay factors into it. TotK is a game that sets out to do 3 times as much and achieves its goal to 90% satisfaction, but has areas that leave a lot to be desired and feel as though the developers didn't put the same amount of thought into them.
TotK is extremely impressive. I like BotW more though.
I honestly don’t like totk. Instead buy Elden ring. Once you’ve played other games you realize totk fell short of what a sequel should be and Elden ring surpasses it.
i agree that TOTK is amazing and is an upgrade, but the feelings of playing BOTW for the first time is so unique and is extremely difficult to recreate
For me personally it’s a couple things.
First totk looks like absolute fucking ass. The textures are muddy, the aliasing is atrocious like ps2 era bad and shadow quality is awful too mixed with the aliasing issues and it’s hard to look at the game. Botw wasn’t some graphical masterpiece but it was significantly better than this game.
Second I was already turned off with botw design being less streamlined. I learned to enjoy a lot of what it did but totk turned it up way too high. It’s just too much mindlessness mixed with mechanics that heavily focus on trying to give people something they can make cool YouTube videos with. Having the physics of botw was cool but this second game feels like they saw how that was all the hype in YouTube so now they went crazy with it and it just became too much. The fusing stuff is really cool and the building stuff is also really cool but at the end of the day that stuff just made me not really connect with the game. I got tired of playing it really early into the game because it’s just too much.
Sometimes simple is better and totk imo tried to make things more complex than they need to be. That’s fine for someone who wants that game in this package. I can’t say they shouldn’t make the game they want to make but coming from botw i ultimately was disappointed in what I played and didn’t enjoy it the same.
I don't, personally. But the common sentiment I see is that botw was so groundbreaking, just having more of it doesn't hit the same.
This is it. Totk is great but doesnt have the same wow since we've been here before.
BOTW felt like an empty box to me. TOTK is much more busy. I like it :D
That's a great answer
I got this with God of War 2018, absolutely loved it. But Ragnarok just never hit the same.
I’d argue nostalgia as well. It’s the same reason some people still cling to really old titles - their first experience was ingrained in their soul and now whenever they play it, that soul gets tickled.
This is Link's Awakening for me.
LTTP for me
It's not just this. BotW has easier controls, more solid story, better weapon and environmental aesthetics and the exploration is more grounded. It feels like a real journey when you can't just hover bike over the mountains. The shrines are also better since you can't just cheese them. These are all solid points so it's not better for many just because it was more groundbreaking.
Is this how people feel about Super Mario Galaxy 2 too?
Pretty much. TotK just felt like DLC. Another 120 shrines, some new abilities that weren't as fun, similar dungeons, sky islands were crap, depths was ok for a while but then got old. That groundbreaking exploration and discovery of BotW just can't be replicated.
I loved the sky islands, but I wish there were more like the Great Sky Island. The other sky islands just felt like floating shrines in the sky with a puzzle attached to them (which is exactly what they were). In addition, these puzzles were often the same exact thing every time. Find this green crystal and bring it to the shrine. Shrine unlocks. Spirit orb! Yay!
Both of them are extraordinary games. It just happened that BOTW was made first. If it was the other way around we would be singing another tune. I personally think that, the reason we love the first so much is because it was the first time we were in awe like that. Again it could have easily been flipped and everybody would still think the same since both Games are Truly Amazing.
For me it just felt like the same game plus building stuff, and I'm not into minecraft or those kind of games. Still a great game but BOTW was nicer and it was something "new".
100%. I gave up on TotK because inventing new tools and experimenting with what works is very tedious and not fun
TotK is an amazing game and did improve on several things. However, BotW was the first. The magic that was BotW just couldn’t completely be replicated with a sequel. It shouldn’t take anything away from TotK, but I think there’s definitely a nostalgia factor already for BotW. A lot of games have tried to replicate the magic that was BotW.
I bought TOTK instead of BOTW, specifically because I never played BOTW and figured i’d be killing two birds with one stone with TOTK. I absolutely love TOTK, very glad I bought it. It is funny to me reading other comments in this thread about how building machines seems to ruin the exploratory element. That does not resonate with me as I still just wander around everywhere. Also, I have zero context story-wise and am enjoying the TOTK story. Tho, honestly, i didn’t buy the game for the story.
Less is more sometimes
Yeah, agreed. I liked a lot about botw more. One thing for sure is, it felt like a survival adventure game where your just left in the wild to find your own way. But I do love totk ! Lots more to explore and do for sure .
100% I was hooked on BOTW, and hardly got into TOTK. I found it overly complex and it felt like more of a chore at times than an adventure like the first. I need to pick it back up and continue, but feel like I’d rather start BOTW over instead. They’re both great, but BOTW is as close to perfection as I’ve ever seen.
I think TotK has a cheat mechanic which takes away the fun of exploring. If you need to explore somewhere, you can easily create something to fly there. Plus, the ending of BotW is unmatched. Nothing like going to the last battle at Hyrule castle. The music was epic.
Did you…do that last battle? It was one of the things noted as the most anticlimactic parts of the whole game! Such an easy fight
I was talking about your trek towards Hyrule castle. >!The music was perfect w/ it making you feel like you're heading towards the last battle. Not to mention there are like 50 ways to enter the castle. Either from underneath, through the water, front door, etc... The battles is crazy w/ tons of Guardians. Not to mention, you can sometimes jump down into a room and boom, you're face to face w/ a Lynel. Plus there are tons of secrets and weapons. It just goes on and on right before you see Calamity Ganon. I don't know about you but there is nothing like this whole section in TotK. Maybe it's been so long but you gotta go back there again and see how epic it is.!<
Totally agree that the journey there and then inside was absolutely incredible and truly felt like I'd want the end of a game to feel.
Exactly. I loved TOTK but with the enormous depths that were mostly empty and the sky islands that were mostly the same, it felt much more like a chore sometimes than BOTW.
Think about how cool it would've been for there to be towns or villages sprinkled in for the sky and depths?
Less is more all the time when it comes to video games in general imho.
i mean yeah sure, to a certain extent… & certainly not all the time
Idk man, Pong > All
Hard to argue this 🤣
Most exactly
For me it was because they added in building vehicles. I absolutely hated that and just wanted to do everything on foot
Same, I only made vehicles when absolutely necessary to complete a shrine or whatever
And they still managed to make horses useless again.
That’s my answer too. I hate the building mechanics. The rest of the game is fun but this part drives me nuts.
That and every single shrine needing you to build things to complete it. But they obviously didn't put enough effort into making sure people couldn't just cheese every puzzle with the same tricks
I can play it on my WiiU.
Not everyone. I love the simplicity of botw, but totk is a lot more fun
Same lol
The biggest strength that Breath of the Wild had over Tears of the Kingdom was the exploration - the fact that ToTK reused BoTW's overworld with very few changes means that the exploration in ToTK was far less interesting than BoTW. It also doesn't help that the Sky and the Depths, the few areas in ToTK that were completely new, were almost entirely comprised of reused content so they also weren't interesting to explore at all here. Also, and this might be a very hot take, but I think BoTW had a much better story than ToTK - BoTW's themes were much more coherent compared to ToTK which goes back on its core theme of sacrifice just to give a cheap and contrived happy ending, and that's not even mentioning the presentation issues with ToTK's writing ("Demon King? Secret Stone?").
Agreed, I really think instead of both Depths and the Sky islands, they really should have just focused on one and really went all out to make sure all the content was fresh and unique to that biome specifically. I was really excited to explore the Depths until I realized it was 99% overworld mobs and reused bosses.
My personal opinion is that the Depths should have acted like Lorule from A Link Between Worlds in that the dark world is split into segments and that getting to a certain location is a bit of a navigation puzzle in of itself - ToTK does this with how you get to the Lost Woods but that's pretty much about it.
I think that would be a lot better.
Well, three things. 1) BOWT was a revolution on its own, TotK is merely a BOTW 1.5. Sure it has more content, but it only walks in BotW's steps, and some people (including me) think that it is more of a super-DLC than a stand alone game (which it was for a good portion of the development). 2) At some point, Zelda's DNA is adventure and exploration. Not playing Mecanos. The layer of building and crafting added by TotK is deep, well thought, and a technical miracle for the switch. But it comes with a problem : it's not Zelda. Some people playing crafting games and all must've been in heaven doing so in a Zelda, but I (and a lot of people) hated it. Well not hated it per say, but hated how you basically spend half your time in game building stuff (or at least trying to) Spending 15 minutes trying to build something, only for ir to fail miserably and break mid-air, it's funny once, but at some point I just gave up. Bonus points : who TF thought it was a good idea to activate the engines... by hitting them, when vehicles are made of materials that BREAK when you hit'em ? You better be good at aiming your attacks because a tad on the left and instead of turning on your vehicle, you just destroy it. How fun is that ? Imagine if cars had 3 keyholes and a "self-destruct" option if you ever put the key in the wrong keyhole... 3) TotK looks bad in comparison to BotW Lastly, I mentionned a technical miracle earlier when talking about gameplay. Well, this miracle came at a cost, and the cost is graphics. The framerate is horribly unstable, almost unplayable on portable mode. And the aliasing is tremendous, which makes it look really bad compared to BotW, who was beautiful, and had a constant 30FPS with no issue whatsoever, even in portable mode. So all in all, TotK is an interesting addition to BotW, that can undeniably be fun to some, but not much else, while BotW is a revolution on its own that sold more Switch than any other exclusive and inspired a lot of other studios after it released. That's why I'd take BOTW any day, had I to chose, while just quitting on TotK after 12 hours because I was so fed up with playing an engineer instead of Link, plus I mostly play my Switch on portable mode and TotK's drops to 12 fps during fights with more than 2 ennemies made it impossible to play.
I think you might have an issue with your switch. I’ve played over 200 hours of both BoTW and ToTK and only had the framerate drop on either game a couple of times - playing in docked mode (which tends to perform worse than handheld) on a 55inch TV. Even sticking the build-limit of fans/rockets and flying so fast that your expect the world should struggle to render - no issues. For context, I got my switch back in 2019. As for your point 2… it’s a shame you didn’t get into the building mechanics. I LOVE exploring and all the building mechanics did was help me find new, fun, crazy and inventive ways to explore new places, places I saw from a distance and thought “ooo that looks interesting!”. All the limits from BoTW were suddenly gone and I could go anywhere I wanted! There was a small learning curve, and once you get past it, it just becomes second nature (like any new mechanic in any new game, really). Don’t get me wrong, I love BoTW, but I also loved ToTK for so many different reasons.
Well i don't think so, i saw a lot of people facing the same issue on the internet, but my Switch pal didn't experience it that strong, so it may have to do with some hardware randomness. Thing is, I don't have this problem with any other game at all so... it's hard not to blame the game. As for crafting, i get how it can be funny, I really do. It simply isn't to me, and trust me i'm the first one who regret it. I've been stuck on the tutorial for ages because I kept destroying what I just spent 10 minutes building, due to the poor choice of having to hit your engine to turn it on, as I mentioned. It very quickly stopped being fun, spending 30 minutes to build something to hop over a 6 meters gap. Tbh, what probably didn't help is that I didn't know it would be the "same game", so the month before release I went back to BotW. And really, playing both games in a row completely ruins TotK, because when you launch the game... you feel like you've already done it. (Except for the depth, floating islands and Building mechanics, but the core of the game/map is the same) I will give it another shot one day, because I want to like it, I really do. But there were too many reasons not to for me.
This is basically exactly my opinion and it gets downvoted in any Zelda relevant thread
TBH I like them both equally. I think they complement each other perfectly. I was worried going back to BotW after TotK, but it's a different experience. Similar sandbox, different toys.
i think i like it cause the world is more "traditional", no technology that I'm not very much into, i chose horses over hover bikes
Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this. I totally agree. BOTW feels like a traditional fantasy setting, and the fantastical stuff is based on in-world magic. TOTK feels a lot more modern, and is based more on in-world science.
I like ToTK more.
For me BOTW had better runes that made it fun to spend hours doing funny stuff It was a innovative game but totk felt like same game but with a few new upgrades
Saying botw has better powers is definitely a hot take lol
The whole building thing in Totk was deal breaker for me. I enjoyed Botw a lot. Totk felt more like build this and build that. It looked more like a building game to me so i gave up after few hours.
I just started TOTK recently and I hate the underground sections. The sky areas are amazing though. I love the verticality
I like them about the same, they're terriffic games, but they don't really feel like zelda to me. Botw did a better job in some respects of keeping its new or reinvented mechanics "zelda-ish"- they did a very good job in terms of keeping the magic of the overworld exploration from earlier titles with a huge map that easily could have wound up feeling empty or pointless, but it works amazingly well even for people that don't really normally enjoy open world games. One of the major focus points of totk was the "superglue stuff together" mechanic, which is very fun and extremely well implemented, but in retrospect it felt like it was sort of outside the "spirit" of zelda and should maybe have been used in a new IP instead. I didn't mind the underworld exploration myself, but many people found it a bit lackluster compared to botw's overworld when it was fresh. Though they added a lot of changes like caves (probably my favourite parts of the game) to the overworld, didn't leave as much as an impact as the first time around as it felt mostly familiar. The sky stuff was nice, but it felt a bit underutilized, like it got mostly brushed aside after the opening hours.
TOTK is not the ideal game for someone who wants to roll credits and move on to the other 500 games in their backlog. I spent 490 hours with it, on my first file, and I found it rewarding as a lifestyle game long after finishing all 152 shrines and so forth. I loved it so much, I went back and added 100+ hours to my BOTW file. But I suppose I'm closer to the exception than the rule.
Obviously "everyone" does not think BOTW is better than TOTK. Both games are great and both do certain things better than the other. BOTW has more replayability for me. After what is now either close to or over 1000 hours of playtime in the BOTW Hyrule I still find returning to the game for a new playthrough is able to spark a little of the wonder and excitement of that first experience. BOTW is far more about exploration for the sake of it. The only reward for going to different places may be a Talus or Lynel fight, and probably some Koroks. There is less in the Hyrule of BOTW both mechanically and literally. Less people, less monsters, less materials, less weapons, etc. Where BOTW excels is in that exploration and freedom of movement when compared to previous Zelda titles. It is overall a more relaxing and chill experience. A great introduction to where the series has gone and likely will continue to remain for the foreseeable future. TOTK is more BOTW in pretty well every way. More story, characters, tools, mechanics, weapons, monsters, and so on. Exploration is still key to TOTK and while it used the map of BOTW as the foundation I found myself getting lost again because just enough changed. Either the view of the horizon from a particular hill or the caves would disorient me just enough to feel like I was seeing Hyrule for the first time again. TOTK is a far busier game than BOTW and that leads to it losing that chilled out quality of BOTW. The danger is more present. Things seem to be unravelling everywhere you go. I loved my time with the game though I have walked away from it with some disappointment that I did not feel walking away from BOTW. I think the largest flaw of TOTK right now is the length of time between BOTW and TOTK allowed the audience to grow expectations. COVID absolutely messed up development and release schedules but I also partially blame Nintendo's marketing of the game. Going back and looking at the trailers for TOTK it comes across that the Zelda team was building to something story-wise that they just didn't. I would argue that BOTW did this as well to a degree but the novelty of the gameplay overshadowed that. Anyone else remember that interview with Aonuma where he said Skyward Sword would be important for TOTK? Some of what was added in TOTK looked impressive at first but ultimately was underwhelming. The depths are really cool the first few times you go down there but it is mostly empty space. The Sky Islands are fun and at least have some physics-based puzzles but they don't really serve a purpose. At least with Skyward Sword the Sky Islands are explained in the lore. One thing TOTK did that BOTW didn't do for me is cause me to stop and just stare at a sunset or sunrise. Or just sit there and listen to the music up in the clouds. In BOTW I would keep moving to see new things. In TOTK I liked sitting and absorbing Link's surroundings. I think the disappointment I felt for the story of TOTK will be a mark against it for me as time goes on and I eventually revisit it. However, TOTK is such a full game with content and things to do. While I missed bombs I think the abilities in TOTK are better than BOTW, no question. I also think TOTK has the best final boss fight of any Zelda game. Period.
I like TOTK more in almost every way
TOTK was just tedious for me. I never even finished it. Played BOTW three times.
Everyone doesn’t.
I really, really liked TOTK. but I liked BOTW even more. Same reason I preferred some of the older Marios over Odyssey. When it's just endless completion logs and collectathons, it's not as fun.
everyone? they are both incredible!
I’m one the odd people that skipped botw and started my Zelda experience with TOTK. I think I would like the simplicity of BOTW more, but it would be hard to play the game without using Ascend.
I think totk is the better game but because of botw there just wasn’t that wow factor botw had.
TOTK is miles better in my estimation and feels like the zenith of what they wanted to achieve with BOTW but fell short of in some ways. They found creative solutions for things like weapon durability rather than taking the easy way out with it. I wasn’t a fan of the BOTW abilities, but loved the ones in TOTK. I think a lot of people look at it less favourably because it will never feel *quite* the same as that first BOTW playthrough where everything was so new. I’ve seen the sentiment with a lot of different games over the years and I typically don’t agree. At the end of the day if there’s a sequel that feels like the Ultimate Version™️ of what the original was supposed to be, fine by me!
I like BOTW better than TOTK because BOTW doesn't have Ultrahand.
BOTW is hard. TOTK is hard as fuck.
More focused, less whitespace. Totk is great, don't get me wrong, but it's basically just BOTW2.
botw was more focused. totk seemed like they just kinda threw in the building mechanic and some caves and sky islands and called it a day. the underground is literally an inverted version of the map. that might seem genius to some people but if you think about it that’s just about the laziest way they could’ve done it. not to mention getting more of the same years later just isn’t the same even if there is some new stuff. the building mechanic is very unfinished to me. botw seemed like they thought about every single element, it was the first game back when the switch had just come out, you experience this new way of playing zelda for the first time, it was great. and i went back and played all the DLC years later too so i really don’t think its nostalgia speaking. i legit think its a better use of you money to get botw even though totk has a ton to do the focus of botw just makes it feel more like a masterpiece than just a sandbox with a story tacked on. i wasn’t particularly a fan of the story in either game but with botw it felt more “classic zelda” to me.
>botw was more focused. I feel like this even applies to the main story line. In BOTW there's a constant pressure that you need to defeat the calamity that is impacting Hyrule and is clearly stemming from the castle. Maybe I'm just playing differenty, but TOTK feels like it has way less of a central story to me. Just a lot of NPCs talking about the depths and the islands, but that feels like it is setting up a larger story that never really comes into fruition.
yup
I like TOTK way more 😅
Totk literally have so many sky islands with nothing on them. The sky islands honestly feel like an afterthought in totk. You don't really need to go back ti them at all throughout the game. Except for a dungeon. But they are pointless
I found totk new building mechanics to be fun at first, but then a little boring and cumbersome after about 50 bours in. Take that away, and the underground areas, which can be kind of annoying, and it's basically bow, with more dialogue and less fun imo. I liked the simplicity of BOW, and like many people have said, less is more sometimes, and BOW was just perfect in that regard. I still haven't finished totk, it just doesn't grab my attention in the same way as bow.
I wouldn't say everyone, I thought the consensus was that totk was an incremental improvement over botw. That said I do think that totk is worse because of how bloated it is. It's a 40 hour game that stretched for over 100 hours for me with features that are cool but severly limited and combat that has not been improved pretty much at all. The rewards were also crap most of the time, because everything in this game is so temporary, rewards don't feel like a celebration they feel like refills of your basic abilities. The exploration was pretty weak for me as well because of how volatile lore is in Zelda games, finding shit is cool only when that shit means something narratively, and most in this game stuff just didn't really mean anything for me.
7 Years for the same world, BORING underground, and a building system? No thanks
To me BOTW is easier then TOTK I can beat breath of the wild but tears of the kingdom I have yet to beat it’s so big I can’t beat the game
I liked TOTK better but prefer all the older Zelda games to both.
If you never played the first this doesn’t matter.
For me it’s to hard, I don’t know what to do, every enemy seems to one shot kill me🤧
The jump from all Zelda games to BotW was gigantic. The jump from BotW to TotK wasn't as huge. Plus, who can ever forget their first love?
I also like TotK more but it doesn't have that same wow factor. BotW was this huge, groundbreaking tweak to the Zelda formula and TotK, while more refined and plenty impressive in its own ways, still feels like more BotW and lacks the same punch.
Quite the same way people prefer OoT over MM
I think the start and the end of each game sums up this whole argument. While TOTK gives your more tools to do cool stuff BOTW gives you more freedom and incintive to explore.
New car smell
Basically totk is the same [game.You](http://game.You) go to the same areas, skyworld is the exception and the underground is a dismal,depressing, repititous waste of time. The storyline is also basically the same, ganon returns, kill ganon. The weapons are ridiculously silly. Now what could have happened that would have taken more creativity and effort, would have been to expand the map into new areas on the ground, add some new races and actually have a new and interesting storyline that didn’t involve the ganon death/life cycle. The two things I liked were the character development and the fact you could drop items while a chest is opened. Other than that it is just a cobbled together mess, imho of course.
I think because most people treasure the first experience and the feelings it gave them, so BOTW, being the first of the two, delivered this for the most. To me TOTK is the best because I only played that and probably, going to the first, I would feel like “more of the same” and certainly not so wow like TOTK.
I feel like this will be massively reassessed once they’re both considered “old games” in the same way majoras mask was. But for the moment, most people who played BOTW remember the first time experience of it and the context around it when it came out. It was mind blowing because it was unique when it came out and that means the sequel built on the same engine just can’t be as unique. I am an absolute freak who played Fenyx Rising first, and because of that I far prefer Fenyx Rising to BOTW. It’s all about context and what you’re already familiar with when you first play it. I’d never played a game like that before, i had a great time, and when i finally had a go at BoTW i just felt like “oh, it’s Fenyx rising but with Zelda characters” 😅
Nostalgia. Refuse to think there anything else
I personally enjoyed the exploration in botw more. I liked it being at a surface level. I think totk went too far with going into the sky and underground. Those aspects just didn't hold the same value. I also didn't enjoy the caves as much as I thought I would. It just became more bothersome and a chore rather than enjoying the exploration. I also liked the weapons in botw more. I didn't appreciate having to merge my weapons with material all the time. This should have been an optional approach rather than a hard force. I love the aesthetic of some weapons but to have it ruined by putting something on the end just made the game visually unappealing. Tldr: less is more!
Ocarina of time for me. Masterpiece game, the best game ever made and it came out 25 years ago.
For me, doing main story, they're pretty interchangeable. Past that is where botw takes the lead. Totk felt a lot more bloated, armor upgrades cost money, upgrade parts seem to drop less frequently, lots of upgrade parts are also used for weapon fusing. In botw I fully upgraded every armor set, in totk I didn't even bother finding them all. Caves make it so using the radar & corresponding light roots isn't enough and it's still a pain in the ass to find some shrines, most caves feel like the same thing, half of them may as well be procedurally generated. The only point of the entire depths seemed to be to make finding shrines easier, there wasn't really anything fun or interesting in that whole half of the world, other than some challenge bosses. They didn't design an interesting area, they just inverted the topography of the surface and copy pasted it but took out all the interesting things to interact with. As a result of all these things the game just feels bloated when going for map & shrine completion. The battery system. Building is now at the core of the game, most shrines and overworld interactables & puzzles involve or expect building to be used. However making builds is not very fun when you don't have many batteries, everything you make dies too fast and doesn't feel worth the time to build. So how do you get more batteries? You go to the depths, except exploring the depths without vehicles is slow and boring because like I said, it's mostly empty space. Furthermore half the ground in the depths is covered in Ganon's toxic jizz so you have to use vehicles to get around, but they keep dying and you just wait for them to recharge. You can't really engage with the sky much either until you have batteries and that's where a lot of my favorite content was, but I didn't get to it until 100 hrs into the game. Lots of people's solution to this was to farm the depths for parts for batteries, so every blood moon they'd just go kill 5 frox, but they cease to be fun very fast when you're grinding them over and over. Doing it all again. I know without doubt I'd like totk more if I never played botw. In botw exploring was it's own reward and shrines, quests, materials, and collectibles were a nice bonus. In totk I'd explored the world already, so I went to all my favorite areas to see how they changed after the time skip, and after that it felt monotonous to explore again for all the shrines. Again, I think doing the main story content is fine, I was a bit disappointed with the main dungeons but they weren't bad, just not very engaging. The lead up to each dungeon was probably my favorite part of the game. Anyway my point was that most of my complaints come between the end of the story and all shrine/lightroot completion. Edit: I'd add to this that I'm very burnt out on massive open world games rn too. Just in general, not exclusive to zelda. I love the franchise enough that I want to keep playing the games, but the bigger they make the games the more alienated I feel from the series. I don't want to run through mostly empty space to find something cool every couple minutes. But that's just personal preference. Imo they're both too big, but my burnout was much more present in totk.
I didn’t like the constant need to build things of TOTK. It turned every puzzle into a chore
For me, it was the story. The way Link has to go around and patch the hacked hardware really hit me hard as an IT.
These people are crazy’s TotK is better. So much betterr. BotW always felt incomplete to me, TotK is the flushed out version. Better story, cooler enemies, more content, caves galore, better use of items, more creative gameplay, better puzzles.
Like others said BotW was ground breaking ToTK was just a continuation rather than breaking more ground And for me the Depths were just a drag. How long do you want to run in pitch black and climb stuff you can't see only to hit a ceiling and fall down. It just took away from the sky and land which were fun and interesting. I loved the temples though. Need less open world and more targeted ideas.
I might be in the minority here, but I love the weapon break system. There's a STUPID amount of weapons in the game, and had you been able to keep them all, you would've been too overpowered for it to be fun IMO. The master sword and Hyrule shield being the only two unbreakables is pretty cool too. I also like the 120 mini dungeons with the 5 major ones. It's a nice switch up
For me, less is more when it comes to Zelda. BOTW was breathtakingly groundbreaking and the foot/horse exploration was amazing compared to anything we've seen in Zelda games prior. TOTK is an amazing game, but the addition of the robotics + building vehicles component just felt forced and out of place on the already amazing open world map that BOTW gave us. BOTW was easy to play for hours on end. TOTK, at least for me, felt somewhat like a chore.
BOTW worked better for me because TOTK suffers from what a lot of sequels suffer from: system and feature creep. Too many systems to manage, just layering things on top of existing things. To those who love TOTK: that's awesome for you. I hope you enjoy your game. I just felt like BOTW was a more balanced package.
I didn’t finish TOTK
BotW also stands for Bottom of the Well, which for masochistic Ocarina of Time horror fans, makes them reminisce about seeing their favorite dungeon just from seeing those 4 letters in the correct sequence when playing Breath of the Wild. >!Does this actually apply to anyone?!<
I don’t. I actually hate botw but love totk
Im waiting to beat the game on switch two. Botw & totk are probably the only 2 zelda games i like. The problem is that totk is upgraded but not the switch. If you try to use equipment too fast the frames drop, if you use grapple hand you lose frames, & if you have too much going on with your creation the frames drop. I love this game so much idc if its in 30. My problem are the drops to 10-20 frames. The switch coughs up blood when i loud it up.
Everyone?! I prefer TOTK over BOTW 100%
Personally they are both great but I enjoyed TOTK a bit more
I do. I can’t even play TOTK. It’s the same map, it’s boring to me. No sense of discovery and I don’t like the crafting crap
For me, the story and characters were a lot more compelling (I really liked having the Champions, and I thought the Divine Beasts were more interesting of a mission). Also, I kind of prefer the simpler gameplay as I’m not the kind of person who really goes crazy with the new things you can create in TOTK, I just kind of make what’s necessary lol
What would you guys recommend for someone who never played both?
bcz they're dumb, botw feels empty af conpared to totk
I don’t like either of them lol
TOTK felt like the game encouraged me to build machines in order to avoid interacting with the world they created. BOTW felt like it was saying "please actually walk around and interact with everything we created"
Totk lags and it pisses me off
Everyone is different. I’m the opposite, I feel like all I hear is TOTK is amazing and BOTW was nothing in comparison. Personally I loved BOTW but didn’t love TOTK. It didn’t work for me. They took what I loved about BOTW and restricted it. I didn’t care for the sky islands or the deeps. The deeps were the real issue though. All that space, a whole map, and it was all the same. All the game play when you were above was like someone screaming at you to “go below” and it felt awful honestly. After lighting up the whole thing I was bored. In contrast I have over 1000 hours in BOTW. The restricting of materials and movement felt awful. I honestly didn’t even really enjoy the mechanics of building all that much. There were so many people that felt lonely in BOTW, and overwhelmed with all That space and no villages, Hyrule, etc so TOTK worked better for them and that’s ok. For people like me who loved the open exploration, TOTK had way too much restriction.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm older now and worse at video games but BOTW seemed easier to me, if I pick up TOTK I feel like everything is going to 1-2 hit me and I don't remember feeling like that squishy with BOTW
I played botw first but I enjoyed totk a lot more
Who is giving you this info lol
no dlc
The same reason everyone likes the first burger more then the second burger after already being full from the first one.
I didn't play TOTK (and I have the game) for the sole reason that the craftsmanship feature made me go "ewwww". True, it gives you a sense of freedom to make everything you want, but for me it feels overwhelming.
Tears of the kingdom is just more breath of the wild and we were already burned out of BOTW after playing it for over 100 hours
More is not necessarily better. BOTW is a much better and subtly designed game. It has balance and nuance. TOTK was a lot of fun, but it felt like too much sometimes. I didn't enjoy the way the game unfolded nearly as much, and often felt like the design ethos was buried under more of everything. Things like the caves in TOTK exemplify this for me. I found them repetitive, tedious and boring. The depths too often felt quite repetitive. BOTW never felt repetitive. It unfolded naturally, and kept me engaged right to the end. It allowed me to revel in the world, without feeling overwhelmed by more and more stuff.
I came to play Zelda, not build stuff. To me, TOTK was like when Microsoft bought the rights to Rareware, and made my beloved Banjo Kazooie into a car game.
It is blowing my mind. Objectively speaking TOTK is better in every goddamn respect. I simply don’t get people.
Because nostalgia
I love both equally (maybe even TOTK a little more), but I think part of it is the fact that the world you explored in BOTW was completely new. TOTK uses the same map and, whilst it adds some new things to it, it’s fundamentally still the same Hyrule. I liked the familiarity of the world, though. It worked particularly well for the regional phenomena where you could see just how much disarray the four main settlements were in (Rito Village and Gerudo Town hit hardest imo)
###Tears of the Kingdom is the masterpiece that Breath of the Wild never was There. I said it.
I like the great plateau more than the great cloud island.... and I feel like the majority of Totk is spent scrolling through what to attach to an arrow or weapon- takes me out of the game every time I open that dang sliding menu and proceed to flip through the entirety of my worldly possessions to find the ding dong old wood.
Totk is too similar to botw so didn’t feel magical or special in any way, they added to the game but botw was really special and beautiful to play totk was more of the same, a new map would have been nice
Honestly they are both great. I think its a Mario 3 vs Super Mario World. At the end of the day Im grateful to have both. Personally I put 80 hours into BOTW but I was playing in docked mode. I bought a Satisfye grip for my Switch Oled and im at 180 hours in TOTK. I have a ton left to do in both games.
As many people said, it’s just a result of ToTK feeling like an expansion to BoTW. ToTK needed to do more with sky islands and The Depths to really make it feel like its own world. Because it is…. just the same world as BoTW.
Serenity.
I like TotK more. It took a good game, and made it even better. I myself liked the >!time travel aspect to the plot and storyline better!< For those who liked BotW wild better because it's "groundbreaking".. are probably the same folks who wish they could replay BotW again, but for the first time, so they have that preference anyways.
I like Totk more. Breath of the Wild world feels empty by comparison. Not as many creatures or people wandering about. I enjoy those random encounters in Totk.
Quality of life improvements imo.
The map being basically one level. TOTK you have sky, you have the depths, and you have hyrule. For gedd abod it
I like the shrines in botw compared to totk
Because BOTW was an incredible fantasy adventure. TOTK was Legend of Zelda: Minecraft. They also slowed down a lot of the combat, removed all my favorite parts of BOTW, and did not conjoin the two stories very well. TOTK is only popular because most gamers have a Minecraft headspace
Kass
I feel like it's better paced, looking back the beginning of BOTW was great. You wake up you explore the plateau right away and bits of the story is dripped to you as well as the mechanics. My jaw dropped when I realized the game was much much larger than the Great Plateau. Totk drags too much at the start.
Because the Nintendo Switch is ancient at this point, and BOTW was a launch title, while TOTK was it's sequel. There are still quite a few people that think Halo CE is better than Halo 2. And to some degree, it is objectively better. If you could get the quality of life improvements from TOTK into BOTW, it would be a much better experience than it already is. TLDR; nostalgia, mostly.
BOTW had so much to explore and discover, I loved looking for things around the map and discovering little surprises everywhere. TOTK didn’t have the same feeling as it’s a map we’ve already explored. It’s still great, but felt kinda like a giant DLC to me.
I like them side by side. Like how a dessert course follows the entrees.
it is kinda like a race not many people remember who was in second place to me TOTK it at best a 6 years old DLC which the team told us is how TOTK started
I don’t know of a single person That likes BOTW more. Tears is an improvement in every way.
I love ToTk i waited years for it amazing game period
Alright so I find totk very derrivative of botw. It improves on the gameplay ofc, but it doesnt actually come off as very original as a zelda game. Its more like a zelda toybox. Its a fun but its a very bad sequel
It's essentially the same game, but it cost more for no reason.
I'd say it comes down to the fact that botw was an entirely new adventure set in an entirely new/unexplored world. It was amazing being able to explore an open world Hyrule for the first time and see the various landscapes and the various new towns. I was ecstatic to see what the various Hyrule races (gorons, etc) looked like with the new art style and aesthetics. Additionally, we had an entirely new OST, new enemies, new combat mechanic, cool physics, new sound design, new animals, new interesting characters to meet, new feel/identity, and so much more. It was an entirely fresh adventure. And then we have totk. It could be argued that it brought a lot more to the table with caves and more sophisticated and much improved physics mechanics, however, I felt like I was playing the same game again. I was fighting with the same enemies, meeting the same characters, finding many of the same armors and weapons, hearing the same sounds and music, doing many of the same things, seeing the same things, and so much more. When exploring the additional areas, the feeling of wonder like we got from botw kicked in. Then, you come to realize there is nothing if substance to discover. The skies are small, barren, and copied and laster. The Depths was a copied and pasted aesthetic covering a region the size of Hyrule, with so little of interest to find. Additionally, the story and world in botw felt more organic. You were exploring the ruins of a destroyed Hyrule, and discovering the cause. You felt the presence of those events as you wandered the world, and it was done so beautifully and organically. Seeing the world populated with animals, ruins covered in vegetation, old battlegrounds, etc. In TotK, the world was there to be a playground for the new building mechanics. Lacked soul. And the story was kind of dumb and lifeless imo. Lastly, while there was a butt-ton things to find in TotK, none of them had much of anything of substance. There was no new discoveries of the unique caliber as the lost woods, the great temple, the darkened fortress. As least not that I can recall.
ToTK is far better.
> Why does everyone... No.
BOTW was new, original and fresh. It was a launch Switch game. For a lot of people it may have been the first Zelda game they played. TOTK was a continuation of BOTW, not something completely new and for whatever reason, some people hate that approach and some people don’t mind. I wonder if people were overwhelmed with all the weapon and item combos and with the ability to engineer anything they essentially wanted (if they could figure out how to make it work).
Both games are awful, but BotW at least had a few nuggets of tightly designed areas and a general design philosophy that I could at least understand the thought process behind. TotK has none of that. It’s a copy and pasted world only now with 3 times as much filler content, and the new mechanics just exist to let you skip the few pieces of actual game design leftover. All in a game that took 6 years to make and cost $70 BotW was simply bad, TotK was *insulting.*
BotW for me was just so new and different. I also liked how empty and melancholic the world felt. In TotK Hyrule is more full of life, understandably so but I think the emptiness was what made BotW feel special to me. Also I struggled to play another huge Zelda game when much of the Hyrule map is the same, the wow factor was lost for me in a way. I love both games but BotW is my favourite.
I’ll describe it like this: Playing BOTW after playing TOTK is like coming back home after going on holiday. On holiday, you’ve got all these fun amazing things you’d never have back home. But at the end of the day, home is home and there’s no place like it. BOTW for a lot of people (me) is comforting in how foundational it is to TOTK. And I think the surface area of BOTW is bigger than TOTK, cause TOTK had to also incorporate the sky stuff
Thats like asking why people like ocarina of time mote that mask. One is the OG, and the other is an expirament.
I think it is more of the "wow factor" of a new format of gameplay added to the point it is a launch window game. It is not a bad game and I do like it, but personally I prefer the more structured gameplay in TOTK added to the fact that the game has more music overall (BOTW had a lot of empty noise in between) Even when a game comes later on the console life and it is technically better it is difficult to live up to a launch window game. One example is Gran Turismo 4 is absolutely better in every single way compared to 3 except the camera stiffness, still, 3 sold more and is more talked about. I disagree when people talk that making TOTK take place on Hyrule again was a mistake because even if Nintendo decided to make a completely different and unique map it would still miss the novelty factor. BOTW surprised everyone but it is impossible to surprise a person and be surprised twice.
Because its better
I prefer BOTW and I have no idea why
better story
totk is the better game of course but botw has a charm that totk wasn’t able to match
“Everyone”? Lol
Because Ultrahand is wildly unfun for me, I don't want to fuse and create my own weapons, and the whole story of waking up again, finding towers, and no mention of the sheikah stuff seems dumb to me. I'll never finish TotK. It just plays as one giant chore for me.
Because BOTW was better.
Sky Islands and the depths aren't Great. But they're requierd to play Through. Breath of the wild doesn't have them, instead, it has surface things, which are better.
I think it comes down to originality and what it did at the time. I think Super Mario Galaxy had the same issue (maybe more so). The 1st Mario Galaxy was groundbreaking and fun. It helped validate the Wii. The 2nd came out and was just a straight up better vesion, but hardly anyone talks about it.
I liked discovering new things in botw and the variation with which you could solve puzzles. I also really preferred the abilities and how they're activated I'm botw too. In totk, everything has to be solved with fusing or building, which I'm just not a big fan of. I really enjoyed the dungeons in totk, but a lot of other things are just more of the same, but LOTS more - the underground area is just not as interesting as discovering Hyrule was, and I found a lot of the sky islands underwhelming.
Because my homies tired of shit building
It feels more...focused? I don't know. I feel like they've made TOTK too much of a sandbox in some ways. BOTW was perfect to me in how it did things; weapons, shields and bows all break, so you have to study the map for where the good spawns are, where higher tier enemies will be located. In TOTK, you can just fuse shit and become really overpowered right away. I also am just not the biggest fan of Ultrahand. Building things is fun the first few times but I don't play Zelda for constructing stuff; I think of Zelda for swordfights, exploring, etc. I miss the powers which directly interacted with the game world (magnesis, stasis, cryonis etc). TOTK feels less concise and cohesive to me, but I can see why it feels like an upgrade in every way to someone like you. And that's totally fine! I'll still play BOTW and love it!
Because BOTW was a totally new game with new everything. TOTK was a game with cool dungeons (especially spirit) and some new areas, and a major new physics mechanic, in a game I'd already played repeatedly. BOTW was hundreds of hours of novelty and exploration. TOTK was only dozens. If the games had been released in the reverse order, I'd like TOTK better.
The easy answer is that BOTW was brand new, and TOTK, while great, did not feel brand new. People remember BOTW very fondly.
BOTW was new, bold and original. TOTK is more of the same, sometimes better, sometimes not.
I think it’s better. Plus the weapons are better. Fuse sucks. There is no shitty boring annoying depths. And there’s kass. Botw is superior in my opinion
I think most people recognize that TOTK is a better game, but BOTW may have a special place on their heart. For me personally, BOTW got me back into gaming after a very long hiatus so that experience will always be above everything else. TOTK was better in nearly everyone way, but because of BOTW is wasnt as much a new and shocking experience.
How different BoTW was compared to the rest of the series actually turned me off from it, and I like ToTK more because there’s actually less wow factor but my expectations were more adjusted
Because it feels like paying 80 dollars to play BotW again. The wow factor's already sucked dry from the BotW playthrough.
I way preferred TOTK over BOTW. Better story, bigger world, more stuff to do. It just felt more solid in general, and what BOTW should have been.
As many others have said, it's botw with just to do. I didn't like the new skills. I hated running around with a sword on my back with a rock attached to it.
TOTK ruined BOTW for me.
I miss the master sword trials and master cycle, as hard as they were it was so much fun to have an OP master sword and motercycle after putting in all that hard work. Other than those DLCs totk is slightly better game imo.
Totk seems like they just threw a bunch of shit at the wall to see what sticks haha. Idk. I think the water Temple was wayyy too quick and easy, the wind temple was fun to get to but then also super easy. Not a fan of building things, I'm just not super creative in that way. Not enough bomb flowers, I really miss remote bombs and being able to windbomb around the map after my first playthrough of BOTW heh. Sky islands are just kind of bare with little to do. Same with the depths. Shrines are too easy. Just feels like a DLC in many ways. Just a few examples, I can't quite put my finger on everything, but I have put like 130+ hours into botw with two playthroughs, and haven't even beaten TOTK yet. I just lost interest after the week it came out
I hate making the vehicles, the damn gluing mechanics ! They’re driving me nuts haha. Other than that I like the game but prefer BOTW.
Because it feels like BOTW had a drunken dalliance with Fortnite. And fk Fortnite.
It's just boring playing TOTK after BOTW, like there isn't enough new. When I first got it, I completely loved it, but after a bit, it just got boring. I could beat the final boss if I wanted to, but I just haven't. I guess it's because I have tried, I died because I didn't have any food, so I just did something else and I haven't wanted to go back.
Because ToTK doesn’t fix enough problems from BoTW.
This reminds me of the comparison people make between Portal and Portal 2, and I'll always say Portal is superior to its sequel. The common argument is that, if something is good, more of it is obviously better. But I disagree. For this analysis, I will assume that each game is being played without knowledge of the other, yet somehow at the same time any references to previous games, including references in TotK to BotW, will still retain their Easer egg-esque value. ALSO, I love both of these games a lot. 1. BotW rewards all exploration. There are, from my experience, no spots to which you can traverse that don't seem to have some sort of worthwhile reward waiting at the end. By comparison, in TotK, there are many zones (I'm looking at you, Depths!) to which you can spend a long time travelling to, only for there to be nothing worthwhile at the end. For instance, the Lake Hylia Chasm has literally nothing of value within. It has a Lightroot. Based on Yiga journals that discuss "noises beyond the walls," one might assume something impressive in this Chasm, like a Colosseum or depot, but nope. As a result, BotW is much tighter. 2. BotW forces you to explore the ground the way they want you to while giving the illusion of freedom (better than any other game). It can reliably guide a player through certain areas and ensure its best moments won't be missed, because, by the time you have the stamina required to brute-force your way across the map in a line (instead of using horses and roads), you have already had to traverse a great deal of the map to get to the necessary shrines to get that freedom in the first place. TotK, on the other hand, gives a great addition to the map with verticality (which I love), but unfortunately, it is simply too easy to skip large swaths of the map with creations. I was able, for instance, to pull the Sword from the dragon with a series of those floating platforms, way too soon, and I was kind of done with the most of the sky before going for a second sage. And, unlike stamina, it's really, really too easy to get a full battery. They really should've made you work harder for it. 3. That leads nicely to the other issue with the sky: there's nothing up there. I remember thinking it was a red flag when the starting zone was 10 times larger than anything else up there. By comparison, the Great Plateau from BotW \*felt\* like it would be the largest spot on the map, only to end up being the smallest. In BotW, the world felt big, and turned out to be gigantic. In TotK, the sky felt like brimming with possibility, and then turned out to be anemic. And then there's the depths, which have the land area but no reason to see it all. This is made more frustrating by the fact that the various stocks of parts every 100 steps or so don't seem to be designed for the area in which they were placed. Often I find 4 racing wheels and a time bomb at a depot surrounded by cliffs or water. Thanks for that. 4. Because there's so much more game to play, and more hours to sink in, a lot of the quests seem to be there for the sake of existing and don't appear to serve much of an ulterior purpose. BotW had some of these too, but TotK really ramps it up. It should have been that, corresponding to the scale increase, there was a dungeon increase. I understand not wanting to increase the sage count, but they could easily have done an entire set of dungeons that "activate" the Secret Stones or something. This is a world map that should have had 10 big dungeons, at least. That's the consequence of a larger game. Instead, the map felt like it had all this extra space you could explore, but didn't know what to put in it. As a side note, Hyrule castle was somehow more interesting the first time around as well. Probably again because using constructed vehicles to basically warp to the top give away how complicated of a place it \*isn't\*. Although, it's worth pointing out the most of the shrines are improved experiences. But since none of them are in the depths, and only a few in the sky, those places remain in need of content. 5. Finally, TotK has better storytelling in general. The characters or more characterized (Ganon in particular is no longer some amorphous vague existential threat), but the original had a simplicity that worked very well for its mood and gameplay, discovering your memories and your story as you discover the world. 6. (minor issue) what's the deal with Lizalfos tail drops? Conclusion: I find BotW to be the superior game because it is a focused experienced that sets out to do something extremely impressive and achieves its goal with 100% satisfaction and attention to detail in every crevice, including how gameplay factors into it. TotK is a game that sets out to do 3 times as much and achieves its goal to 90% satisfaction, but has areas that leave a lot to be desired and feel as though the developers didn't put the same amount of thought into them. TotK is extremely impressive. I like BotW more though.
I honestly don’t like totk. Instead buy Elden ring. Once you’ve played other games you realize totk fell short of what a sequel should be and Elden ring surpasses it.
BOTW imo is more pure if that makes sense... TOTK has so much going on, it drives you mad at times trying to figure out what to do next.
i agree that TOTK is amazing and is an upgrade, but the feelings of playing BOTW for the first time is so unique and is extremely difficult to recreate
I really don't, can't go back to BotW, traversal is boring. TotK to me really is just BotW 2.0, can't go back.
Less building...
ToTK is objectively better, but nothing was 'new' just more
Because BOTW is a better game and a better story.
For me personally it’s a couple things. First totk looks like absolute fucking ass. The textures are muddy, the aliasing is atrocious like ps2 era bad and shadow quality is awful too mixed with the aliasing issues and it’s hard to look at the game. Botw wasn’t some graphical masterpiece but it was significantly better than this game. Second I was already turned off with botw design being less streamlined. I learned to enjoy a lot of what it did but totk turned it up way too high. It’s just too much mindlessness mixed with mechanics that heavily focus on trying to give people something they can make cool YouTube videos with. Having the physics of botw was cool but this second game feels like they saw how that was all the hype in YouTube so now they went crazy with it and it just became too much. The fusing stuff is really cool and the building stuff is also really cool but at the end of the day that stuff just made me not really connect with the game. I got tired of playing it really early into the game because it’s just too much. Sometimes simple is better and totk imo tried to make things more complex than they need to be. That’s fine for someone who wants that game in this package. I can’t say they shouldn’t make the game they want to make but coming from botw i ultimately was disappointed in what I played and didn’t enjoy it the same.
Everyone doesn't lol.