Topic: BotW is Better than TotK

Yeah, unpopular opinion. But here's why BotW beats TotK

• It's more balanced in every way.
• A lot better controls. By this I mean the ability controls and the sage controls. This is a huge + in my books. It's just so effortless compared to TotK.
• The weapon system is easier to use. Instead of having to fuse something on your weapon and wondering how to make it look both cool and do decent dmg, you can just use the weapon. It looks cool already and does its damage too. The fuse system slows gameplay. Edit: the weapons also have cool looking sheathes unlike the fused weapons in TotK that just hang on Link's back, attached on nothing.
• Actually, pretty much everything in TotK is slower compared to BotW. Inventory management, getting to use your weapon, listening the never- ending monologues of the stable keepers, etc. BotW is just the faster game in almost every way.
• You only use the abilities when needed. In TotK, you use them all the time. Once again this slows the gameplay. I can play BotW for 2 hours straight without having to use a rune a single time.
• Opening the Great Fairies and weapon uprading is a lot easier, less costly and requires less grinding. (Edit: then again TotK is a larger game so it makes sense more work is required to upgrade armors).
• Finding the essential armor and paraglider is a lot faster process. They should've given the glider in TotK just before leaving the Great Sky Island
• TotK often feels like a collecthaton. BotW doesn't.
• Even though Zelda's part of the story and intro are a lot better in TotK, Link's part is a serious mess. BotW's story might not be as good but it's more solid- just like the game in a whole.
• Remote Bombs are better than bomb flowers/ time bombs from TotK.
• BotW looks more beautiful than TotK. The grass density is often higher, making it look softer and more alive. Lower texture draw distance in this rare case is actually a benefit. TotK also has the self- similar island pieces in every biome, making the nature look cluttered.

Two big 'Agree's from me. Distinct loss of flow about the 'moment-to-moment gameplay' (a phrase I'm convinced I coined on this site when discussing BotW years back and now see all over the gaming scene) moving from BotW to TotK.

My absolute love of BotW stemmed from the moment-to-moment gameplay and the beautiful, natural feeling world that Hyrule felt like.

I was hoping TotK would build on the beauty and naturalness, adding more little details in flowers, trees, wildlife and the weather so it felt even more 'truly wild'. But instead TotK is a game that is uglier (landscape-wise - full of uplift clutter etc) and more artificial (fusing and ascending - fun, but take things too far away from the nature-based forest folk Link heralds from).

I like BotW more, so far at least, and probably forever, but I'd avoid saying one is better than the other. Just different, and I have a preference between those differences.

I like them both, but I think they're too time consuming with resource & weapon/arrow farming. Part of the fun of gaming, for me, is sharing the experience with family or friends, but there's entirely way too much time required dawdling just to get to _______, or just to get enough __________ to ___________.

I think they pretty much feel the same.

However I do feel this point is a bit odd:

Because without using any special abilities at all, both games feature the same basic movement options and largely the same landscape.

You can still go exploring for 2 hours without using any special powers at all in TotK. However I feel the main difference is that the new suite of special powers is simply designed to make traversing the land faster, whereas in BotW the only useful abilities for movement were very circumstantial.

So basically: you use them more because they cut down on time. And that's totally understandable for someone who played BotW a lot, the land is largely the same so you’ve technically already had your fill of exploring it.

😂😂😂

It's sort of a Megaman Legends/Super Mario Galaxy situation with this game for me. The second one may be better in many important ways, but there's a certain magic in that first entry that the sequel doesn't quite capture

....They're both "meh" games for me...TotK is a little better than BotW, but in the end...they both got really boring for me. sighs

If a third game comes out I'm probably not even gonna bother. Just put Twilight Princess HD and Wind Waker HD on the Switch for me or something. lol

TotK wins because I like creating elaborate Rube Goldberg devices to solve simple physics puzzles.

I can get that not everyone's like that, but it certainly worked for me.

TotK may be a better game in many aspects, but in no way does it replace BotW. Those are two games with a lot in common, but different vibes. It's like Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2, or Portal 1 and 2.

I think the Fuse is the biggest misstep in the game. Without it there wouldn't be a need for the material menu, so they could've mapped the abilities in the same way as in BotW. I'd rather take a whole new set of basic weapons than the Fuse ability to be honest.

I do love TOTK but the simplicity of BOTW wins me over. I just suck at building all those elaborate vehicles and figuring out what the heck I'm suposed to build in the shrines. Plus BOTW had that wow factor and fresh feeling. Now i'm kinda sick of this whole BOTW/TOTK style and i'm hoping for a completely new take next time. I don't want zelda to stay stuck in this same rut over and over like Assassin's creed did for the first several games.

Fuse feels like the half-hearted solution to the weapon durability problem that's not really needed when you can get them fully repaired via a combination of Pelison's shop and a rock octorok.

Fusing arrows is pretty cool though. I'll take that over managing several different types as is BotW.

Is this what we're doing now? Fuse is the new weapon durability? The weapon durability in BotW was so completely overblown because you could get new weapons every ten seconds, and Fuse is far from a problem in TotK. If you don't like it and think it slows things down, don't use it. I'm not a big creator person and 99% of the times I used it was just to add a rock to my weapon. Not a big deal, it takes 1/2 a second to do and you don't have to do it if you don't want to. I don't care if you like BotW more than TotK, but at least come up with a legitimate reason rather saying there's too much stuff when you can just not worry about that stuff.

@Xyphon22 I had considered this line of thought when this thread started - 'No need to complain about the sci-fi abilities, just don't use them if you don't like them' - but so much of the game is designed around you using them, you have to go out of your way to not use them, whether you like them or not.

BOTW to me was challenging since one can't duplicate?? But Boss fight and Lynel is not fun.
TOTK power me up and let's fight.....yah.....

@Cunir, time reversal (& the other abilities like Fuze, Ascend, & Ultrahand) seem to be magical in origin so are fine (time alteration/travel in particular is par for the course in Zelda), but I agree with all the tech. I'm fine with some of it because the series has always had some technically advanced elements that seem a century or two out of place (there's an entire game centered around a Train, for example), but BotW/TotK have really taken things to the next level.

Yeah, the franchise has always used magitek, even the first game has Armos and autonomous spike traps.

(And apparently the pieces of the triforce where originally computer chips in an earlier version of the story)

I say not many of the zonai tech gadgets go beyond what is present on other games of the series. This is just the first time they give us free access to them.

Lasers, flamethrowers, electricity, cold emitters, jukeboxes, explosives, robots/golems, light bulbs, mirrors, fans, antigravity…. That’s a list of some of the “tech” in Ocarina of Time.

@gcunit I think a claim could be made for this line of thinking regarding Ultrahand. Even Nintendo seemed to think that it could get annoying and slow things down, so they created the Autobuild ability to streamline and speed up the process (I'm just making up that thought process on their part, but it seems logical). But not for Fuse. Like I said, all I ever did was fuse rocks to my weapons to make them just that much stronger and more durable. That's far from having to go out of your way to not use it. And even Ultrahand wasn't that bad after the beginning parts where you are learning about it and kind of are forced to create a raft to cross a lake. This was my major concern going into the game because I don't like games where I have to be creative and build things, I much prefer to let the professional game designers do that stuff for me. But even I never found it to be a problem (except for trying to get those dumb Koroks to their friends on top of mountains, they were super annoying). I just ran to places on foot a lot when I was probably supposed to build some kind of vehicle but didn't want to go through the hassle. Slower, sure; but it's exactly what you had to do in BotW, so it's certainly not worse.

Yep.

BotW was a generation-defining experience for me.
TotK is very cool, and expands on the original in many clever ways, but it's not as magical an experience. Some of that is familiarity, but some of it is how busy the game design is. BotW was a very... pure gaming experience. Everything melded together perfectly into one cohesive whole. TotK loses that.

And, yeah, eighty hours in, I still haven't figured out how to upgrade an armor set lol.

@Truegamer79
Nintendo is NOT ubisoft. Just because they made one direct sequel to BotW doesn't mean every Zelda game from now on uses the same base.

I'm pretty sure the upcoming Zelda games will be open world too with industry leading physics, but I'm also sure the next entry has a completely new world, new artstyle, new combat mechanics, new items and abilities.. you name it.