Tears of the Kingdom Was there anything you feel BotW did better than TotK?

[The Dashing Darknut]

So while I have not finished TotK’s story but I am very close. So far I think TotK does almost everything better than BotW, basically BotW new and improved. But there’s one thing I think BotW did better than TotK and that’s that the champions are better than the sages with no names aside from Mineru, the champions weren’t great but at least they weren’t just randos with masks behind their faces for Sidon, Tulin, Yunobo, and Riju to take their place.

I also prefer the remote bombs greatly to the bomb plants

And that’s really I can think of. But is there anything you think BotW did better?

 

[MW7]

I agree with both of your thoughts, but I also have some additional things that are related to both of those.

I preferred how the champion abilities were implemented compared to the sages, and I preferred dungeon items to both of these. I thought the avatars were okay as combat followers, but I thought having to be next to them to activate their abilities was a bad choice. The exceptions of when it was easy would be when gliding with Tulin or riding a vehicle with Yunobo. Otherwise the avatars were always running around, and the trick to whistle to gather them didn't work all the time. There were areas in caves where the avatars would become stuck. For example there would be a small path where you crouch and then Yunobo would be hanging out on the other side of the wall where you couldn't use him. To me it felt like the game designers went out of their way to recapture the feeling of dungeon items in a creative way, and just giving us things like an unbreakable hammer and hookshot would have been more fun.

Having infinite bombs was more fun. Related to this is that the breakable rocks in caves were a pain. I know they would put materials to break the rocks next to and inside big collections of rocks, but there were just way too many rocks making it feel like wasted time. Even with Yunobo it could take multiple uses to break through some collections of rocks.

One thing that BotW may have also done, but I don't specifically remember it happening is that TotK had a few sidequests where you could stumble upon a location and have no chance of solving the puzzle unless you happened to stumble upon the initiation of the quest far away in the world. For example I spent literally like 3-4 hours trying to break into the Thundra Plateau until I gave up and looked up that you actually have to go to a cave near Death Mountain to initiate a series of quests to learn the clue to access the cave in Thundra Plateau. It would have made more sense to have a clue near the actual location. A similar issue I had was with the great skeletons. You had to go to a specific NPC in Akkala to start a series of quests before you could put together skeletons. It would have been better if that NPC would just be at each skeleton and you could start the quest anywhere rather than have to go through it in a specific sequence.

As negative as this may have sounded, TotK is amazing, and I can't imagine anyone saying BotW is better overall after playing TotK.

 

[Moblinking5000]

I feel like that while TotK is better than BotW overall(which is saying alot considering how much I love BotW), there's a few things I like better in BotW:

-The shrine quests were better in BotW; almost all of them involved cool and interesting puzzles and riddles to figure out. There's some decent ones here, but too many of them revolve around the whole ''transport green crystal to location'' which gets old.

-On the topic of shrines; while I feel like the combat shrines are huge improvements over the ones in BotW, and the puzzle shrines in TotK are quite good and generally better than the ones in BotW, I feel like the absolute best puzzle shrines in BotW(Trial of Power, Blue Flame, Electric Path, and maybe a few others) are my favourite puzzle shrines across both games.

-From a gameplay perspective, I might prefer BotW's Great Plateau over TotK's Great Sky Island when it comes to the better tutorial, but they're both pretty close, and I really LOVE the atmosphere of the Great Sky Island(and the sky islands in general).

-The champions were great, and had more personality than the nameless sages from the past of TotK

-This is a nitpick, but WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THE FULL DAMAGE VALUE OF THE MS??? You could in BotW. Very strange change...

Overall, TotK is better than BotW, but both games are still worth playing in 2023.

 

[Volt]

The Great Plateau conveyed the idea of an open world so much better than the Great Sky Island, the pacing feels nicer on BotW, the runes were more distinct than Ultrahand (even though hand is a lot stronger), the Master Cycle is straight up better than a lot of what you can build for land traversal in TotK, the champion abilities are handled better than the sages'...

And the story absolutely dunks on TotK's. Seriously, it's not even close.

Ganondorf > Calamity Ganon any day though, but then again, Dorf was always the better antagonist. His new design is amazing too.

 

[DivineDragoness]

I'm not really sure on this, but the atmosphere and game feel?

Maybe it's because Tears is just so similar, but that sense of wonder, loneliness, and survival just isn't there for me like I got in Breath. I dunno, maybe it's because BotW was so new, and it really was this post-almost-apocalypse where Hyrule wasn't exactly thriving. Both of those things just don't exist for me in Tears.

And yeah, runes were way better in BotW. Fuse and Ascend are just so situational to me, with Godhand obviously being the darling the devs wanted to get the most attention. I just found myself using BotW's sooooo much more frequently and in less situational ways.

 

[GZ Zelda]

Spoilers below, beware.

I, overall, prefer Breath of the Wild to Tears of the Kingdom. I am generally drawn towards subversive, isolating and mystery-rich Zelda games (OoA, MM, PH, LA). These are often the sequels to more traditional, but still enjoyable, entries (OoS, OoT, WW, ALttP). BotW and TotK break this trend for me. The isolating nature of BotW's world is just more effective than the communal focus of TotK's world.

- I prefer BotW's combat: I appreciate the customizability of the Fuse system, and can get somewhat on board with cannons, construct heads, homing carts and flame, frost, shock and beam emitters for Ultrahand combat, but there is a simplicity to BotW's combat that I appreciated. Gleeok's are a tremendous new challenge, but I preferred when my combat skills were based on my ability, not my creativity with Fuse.

- I prefer BotW's shrines: Though I like TotK's puzzles more overall, like Moblinking said, the variety of Shrine Quests and shrine puzzles is much greater in BotW. The overworld puzzles in TotK all basically give armor, or aren't really puzzles? There's a couple strong ones in Gerudo, but shrines don't feel like an event like they did in BotW.

- I prefer BotW's map. Not sure why: the caves, Sky, Depths, and environmental changes more than justify the argument that ToK has an objectively better map, but I think it ties into the story: the aftermath of the Upheaval is not nearly as interesting as the aftermath of the Calamity. Which brings me to...

- BotW's story is stronger. The memories create a real sense of "oh, Zelda failed, Link failed, there is very little hope that this gets better and the entire world is in a state of paralysis." In TotK, vague-motivation Ganondorf wants to...darken the world. In BotW, demonic force of nature mindlessly lashes out at an entire kingdom, bringing it into abject ruin. It's just stronger.

- BotW and TotK have basically the same characters, and I love the development for all the minor NPCs and larger characters (Purah/Paya/Tulin/Sidon/Impa) specifically, but Zelda is just such a strong character in the BotW, and TotK doesn't really have anyone filling those shoes. And BotW layed the groundwork for Zelda's strongest stuff in TotK, which is only present in two memories. I love Mineru, Sonia and Rauru but Urbosa, Revali, Daruk and Mipha they are not. And Ganondorf has no Wind Waker motivation: he's just intelligently but mindlessly evil.

- This will be most controversial, but BotW has stronger dungeons. The way the Divine Beasts can be controlled and serve as these mammoth titans of legend and directly impact the past part of the story; the TotK dungeons are all back to generic temples with admittedly unique twists and strong design (the Lightning and Wind temple's especially). But the Water Temple, Spirit Temple, and Hyrule Castle are all weak dungeons, and don't compare to the brilliance of BotW's Hyrule Castle.

- And finally the community atmosphere of TotK is not as strong as the isolating atmosphere of BotW. I initially ranked TotK below Oracle of Ages and Link's Awakening, until I started my first dungeon quest and Tulin just started following me around. I was like, "oh wow, are Tulin, Sidon, Riju and Yunobo going to follow me around all game?" And the answer was no, their weird spirit things would. In BotW, who follows you around? Absolutely no one. Who cares if you live or die? Maybe Impa and Purah (and Paya), maybe. In TotK, the entire world knows you, you are the legendary hero who has already saved Hyrule, it just makes the entire place too familiar but they don't go all the way and allow Link to genuienly feel like that hero. It's stuck in this middle-zone. It's obviously still pretty strong, Lurelin is great, Gerudo Town is great, love Hateno and the domain, but there's not this pervading sense of failure, loss, grief, and isolation.

I think I might be holding a chip on my shoulder about the way the end of TotK completely disappointed me, and also the insane tedium of the new armor upgrades and dragon system, Korok buddies and overworld boss count, but I've sat with TotK for a month now and do think I overall prefer BotW.

 

[ZeldaFerret]

I honestly liked BotW more because it was a completely new experience with lots of puzzles and adventure in TotK most of the puzzles there's a way to cheat on and adventure is completely different. Another thing about TotK is that none of the things I was planning to do in the game are possible even though they're great ideas.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

botw had novelty going for it, and that's it

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

one has wolf link, the other does not