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Discussion Which do you prefer, BOTW or TOTK?

Which do you prefer?

  • Breath of the Wild

    Votes: 86 40.2%

  • Tears of the Kingdom

    Votes: 128 59.8%
  • Total voters
    214
Personally I find Totk to be the more fun game.

But I prefer botw since the game released and gave Nintendo brand new life, like to this day we still see botw as the killer app.

Plus it’ll always hold a special place in my heart, since it’s the game that made me want a Switch.

I personally can’t see the Switch being successful if It didn’t launch with botw, like it’s a game that has the same cultural impact like ocarina of time, with how many companies has taken inspiration from it.
 
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Irene said:
Also, Penn > Kass.
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This hurts me to my core

But more on topic, my favorite thing about Breath of the Wild was how much it felt like an immersive sim, and Tears of the Kingdom dialed that up to eleven, and then some. I'm still booting up TotK to pretend to be an engineer with the Zonai gadgets, scuttling overloaded Koroks to their doom destinations, helping poor Addison prop up his signs, or just causing havoc.
 
JorgenRaft said:
Could always just make a new user on the Switch. This is basically the only reason why I have 4 on mine lol.
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Won't work cause I'm playing it digital and I'm game sharing so my console isn't the primary of the account. I understand this is the trade off and my choice but it doesn't make sense not having save slots.
 
Time to bring out this post again for the third time lol:

I’ve been replaying BotW lately, first time post-TotK. Mainly just speedrunning to shrines and the divine beasts. Also using some mods to speed things up a bit. Anyway, replaying it has made me able to more firmly put the two games head to head. And my conclusion is: BotW was a massively impactful game and my first experience with it was one of my greatest gaming experiences ever. And that probably won’t ever be able to be replicated. But in terms of just what video game is a better video game, TotK is just a better game in all meaningful ways. Both games still rank near top of the franchise for me, but if I’m ranking the games, TotK is always going to rank ahead of BotW. For a while there, I wasn’t sure which one I truly like better. But I think the answer is pretty clear for me now. I didn’t really appreciate the sheer scope increase and mechanical polishing that TotK brings until going back to BotW.

Also something else that’s really noticeable now: TotK actually has quite a graphical upgrade from BotW. It’s sharper looking and brighter, and textures seem to have gotten a bit better. I never noticed that until revisiting BotW.
 
BOTW had a lightning in a bottle moment when it came out that TOTK could never and wasn't ever meant to reach, but as a game I enjoyed going through TOTK puzzles and dungeons and just overall atmosphere much more than BOTW, its simply a better game mechanically.

both great games, but I'll give it to TOTK as the favoured installment for me
 
I think I probably have one of the more extreme views on the matter. I place Tears of the Kingdom in maybe the bottom half of Zelda games, but consider Breath of the Wild the second best. I really do think the gulf in quality is that large.

A big part of it is I adored the story, world and writing of Breath of the Wild, something Tears of the Kingdom fails miserably at expanding upon. Tears of the Kingdom feels so insincere and bloated compared to Breath of the Wild.
 
Tears is one of the most disappointing sequels I've ever played. It's worse than BotW in almost every way that matters.

Honestly, fuck TotK. Waste of my money and time.
 
I had more fun with TotK, and took double the time to beat it. Extra content aside, the main storyline, mandatory quests, bosses, cutscenes and set pieces are infinitely better in TotK.
 
Mechanically and narratively? Tears of the Kingdom.

Experientially? Breath of the Wild.
 
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I don't know for sure yet.
I will decide, when I replay them as remasters in 5 to 10 years or so.

I know that BotW had a greater and more longlasting impact on me. That game was in my mind regularly for years.
I rarely think about TotK.
 
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I expect to go back to totk one day and enjoy it, but it lacks the elegance and novelty of the first game
 
I didn't really like either one of them but easily TotK because at least it attempts to fix some of BotW's worst aspects like giving ascend and ultrahand to help with the incredibly boring climbing, fuse to help combat how pointless durability made combat feel, the games dungeon equivalents at least looking more aesthetically different etc
 
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I won't express a preference.

Let's say that in my heart the impact of BotW was superior while recognizing that ToTK is objectively better in almost every aspect.
 
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Tears, 100%. Much respect to BOTW for being the first but despite small qualms with both, Tears is just an impossibly refined adventure. Can’t believe the amount of polish in it.
 
I certainly love actually playing TOTK more, especially thanks to the spiffy new options that are available. So, it got my vote.

Having said that, however? I adore BOTW's lore more. I'd also say that, even as much as I loved Tulin, Rauru and TOTK's Ganondorf design, BOTW had the more interesting extended cast.
 
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BOTW for sure. In BOTW you really can go anywhere and do what you want, when you want. In TOTK everything feels too complicated. There's more work and less fun.
 
Concernt said:
I think I probably have one of the more extreme views on the matter. I place Tears of the Kingdom in maybe the bottom half of Zelda games, but consider Breath of the Wild the second best. I really do think the gulf in quality is that large.

A big part of it is I adored the story, world and writing of Breath of the Wild, something Tears of the Kingdom fails miserably at expanding upon. Tears of the Kingdom feels so insincere and bloated compared to Breath of the Wild.
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I like TotK much more than you do (based on reading your posts) but I have to agree with this and am honestly surprised it doesn't come up more often: the story in TotK kind of just doesn't work by the end in my opinion. Unless I'm just misunderstanding some things (totally possible, I haven't thought too much about it) it is just not functional, I don't know how else to put it.
 
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What I felt playing BotW for the fist time in 2017 is something that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Now in 2024, after having played so many hours both games, there are zero surprises and zero real exploration for me, they are just comfort games and I don't care which one I'm playing.
 
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Tears of the kingdom is the better game but kinda iffy as a sequel like coming from botw where everything was new and fresh at the time so you end up feeling like you're doing more of the same in totk unless you never play botw
 
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Tears of the Kingdom for me.

But it does stand on the shoulder of a titan, so I think BOTW will always have the bigger impact. Not unlike Ocarina and Majora in their relationship with each other.
 
BotW was more tightly crafted, in my opinion. It felt like the developers had one goal: An adventure game with absolute freedom, where you could go wherever you felt like from the start. In turn, everything in the game (story, world, weapons/items, etc.) is designed to support this goal. TotK is more muddied. They copied BotW's general structure and map, obviously changed and expanded on its contents, but the result feels less "cohesive", with the biggest clashes happening with the story and with exploration.
 
Scharnier said:
BotW was more tightly crafted, in my opinion. It felt like the developers had one goal: An adventure game with absolute freedom, where you could go wherever you felt like from the start. In turn, everything in the game (story, world, weapons/items, etc.) is designed to support this goal. TotK is more muddied. They copied BotW's general structure and map, obviously changed and expanded on its contents, but the result feels less "cohesive", with the biggest clashes happening with the story and with exploration.
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Really agree with this. A lot of TOTK seemed like teams doing stuff separately and then at some point they try put everything together. To be honest even though I like Twillight Princess much more than BOTW it feels like this too. With BOTW they seemed to have a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish.
 
Scharnier said:
BotW was more tightly crafted, in my opinion. It felt like the developers had one goal: An adventure game with absolute freedom, where you could go wherever you felt like from the start. In turn, everything in the game (story, world, weapons/items, etc.) is designed to support this goal. TotK is more muddied. They copied BotW's general structure and map, obviously changed and expanded on its contents, but the result feels less "cohesive", with the biggest clashes happening with the story and with exploration.
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balgajo said:
Really agree with this. A lot of TOTK seemed like teams doing stuff separately and then at some point they try put everything together. To be honest even though I like Twillight Princess much more than BOTW it feels like this too. With BOTW they seemed to have a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish.
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Eh I feel like TotK’s vision was pretty clear - to bring the ultimate potential out of BotW. That’s why it sticks so close to the formula (shrines, 4 dungeons, memories etc.). Almost like a do over, but not quite - as it’s still built on top of its predecessor. But idk, you could feel a team that felt like they had so much more to say with this world and wanted to max it out.

Fans had a laundry list of improvements that they requested from the series’ first attempt at an open world game - it’s not hard to see the developers feeling the same way

The end result is one game that’s minimalist and more uniform in it’s melancholy tone, and one that’s maximalist, lively and busy. But I don’t think either of those are necessarily wrong. But I do think TotK’s maximalism is a result of the development team shooting for the moon in every respect. And it not being as all in on melancholy and isolation as BotW isn’t necessarily a fault.
 
TotK would've been a great three years later sequel to BotW.

But after a six year wait, the balance of new to old was disappointing for me.

The new gameplay mechanics were great, but I wish we also got new locations and characters to go with them. The sky and the depths were fun, but they didn't feel 'real' in the context of the world, they felt like artificial play spaces.
 
There are a lot of things about playing Breath of the Wild for the first time that I will never forget. I've never been so full of excitement to get out there and explore as when I first jumped off the edge of the Great Plateau and floated down to the vast world below. In terms of what was the most unique first-time experience, there's no game out there that really compares to Breath of the Wild.

But Tears of the Kingdom is, in my view, the better game. Novelty inevitably wears off with time, but solid game mechanics and fun gameplay loops will remain standing just as firmly. I love how Fuse enhances the weapon durability by adding further customization to the weapons, and how much more rewarding it feels to take out a tough enemy when I can harvest their horns as weapon materials. I love how versatile Ultrahand is in allowing you to manipulate your environment to a degree that Magnesis never could. I love the addition of caves and wells across Hyrule's landscape, and how easy it is to exit them through using Ascend. This remains true on my third playthrough of the game just as much as it did during my first.

This is not to say that playing Tears of the Kingdom for the first time was nothing special when compared to Breath of the Wild though. The sequel had plenty of outstanding moments of its own, such as discovering the Depths for the first time or fighting a Gleeok for the first time. But to me, what made the experience truly special was a sense of re-discovery. The best way I can describe it is to point to how I felt when I returned to the Great Plateau and saw how it had changed. My pre-existing knowledge of Hyrule was driving my curiosity in the same way that prominent landmarks did in Breath of the Wild. And I would always discover something new.

The game is also full of setpieces that I enjoy a lot, even on repeat playthroughs. Some personal highlights include the defense of Gerudo Town, asssisting the monster-hunting groups, liberating Lurelin village, infiltrating the Yiga clan to learn their secret technique, and making my way to the Stormwind ark together with Tulin.

But where Tears of the Kingdom has the clearest advantage over Breath of the Wild, I feel, is in its ending. I will never forget the thrill of storming Hyrule Castle and dodging a barrage of Guardian lasers, but in terms of the final battle, there's just no contest. Ganondorf, and his subsequent transformation into the Demon Dragon, was by far the more momentous battle.
 
I love them both, but I like the vibes of BotW just a little bit more than the new gameplay additions in TotK.
 
It's a classic conflict between the revolutionary experience of playing the original vs. the improved overall experience of the sequel.

I go TOTK, absolutely loved that game
 
Mechanically, ultimately it's BOTW for me. Both games mainly differ mechanically in just how much of a sandbox they are; BOTW is a very guided sandbox with a limited set of skills you can use in all sorts of unexpected ways. No matter what you do in BOTW, the only objects you can move with abilities are those that can be targeted by magnesis (or Stasis trickery to use momentum) and that creates a careful-ish experience that still holds together if you break it.

TOTK meanwhile is a wide open sandbox. Ultrahand is essentially Magnesis on steroids; pretty much any object that isn't terrain or NPCs can be targeted by it. Unfortunately, that leaves the sandbox both very easy to break in ways that dont feel fun and the UX when using Ultrahand isn't quite as nice as using Magnesis. The new champion abilities just suck. The old ones were naturally integrated in the gameplay loop (the only one I had issues with was how easy it was to accidentally activate Urbosas Fury), the new ones just don't work at all and I usually left them deactivated unless I needed them for puzzles. Mineru on the other hand is about as cool as a reward as the Master Cycle, so big points to that one. Link riding/building a mech? Hell yes!

TOTK also both solves and makes BOTWs other problems with traversal and weapons worse in a couple of different ways. It solves the main traversal issue (rain, which in BOTW is pretty much an anti-playing mechanic since it's the only one that can't easily be mitigated) by letting you create anti-slip potions/anti-slip armor. It breaks it again by making that armor absolutely annoying to obtain and requiring much more material farming than any other set bonus in the game.

Weapons are improved by making it more clear that beating strong enemies gets you strong weapons (by directly giving you horns to stick on those weapons)... but it's broken again by making the durability worse than ever. Similarly, the arrow fuse experience is a complete mess and should have gotten a few reworks before release. BOTWs weapon problem was ultimately a case of a tutorialization failure. TOTKs is a jumbled attempt to fix it but it ironically makes other parts worse.

Story kinda is bad in both games, but the one in BOTW is a lot more focused and it serves the general open-ended nature of the game well; there's never a point in which I feel like Link is actually wasting time by beating the divine beasts and the backstory, while not award winning (the voice direction especially could use some work for characters like Mipha) is fun to figure out. By contrast, TOTK kinda wanted to have it's cake by being more traditional Zelda (tutorial prologue, a sequence of Link helping out the lands, then a central showdown against Ganon in a set of final dungeons) and eat it too by letting you do those things in any order. It results in a story that starts 4 times before it barrels towards a conclusion. The backstory similarly has the ability to absolutely fall apart if you watch the wrong memories first, something which wasn't the case for BOTWs memory sidequest.

Basically, BOTW is the better experience and a model on how to do open world right, TOTK is the more experimental sandbox that occupies a similar place in my mind as imsim games: experimental, it doesn't always work but the effort is impressive on its own.
 
BOTW has a better storyline but TOTK is superior in everything else, including dungeons. Overall TOTK is a better game.
 
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Tears of the Kingdom by a mile. Only because you can pretty much do anything without breaking the game. I care about gameplay more than story or graphics, so TotK was the perfect game for me. Still haven't even completed it but well over 300 hours in.
 
Botw was amazing, whereas I'm torn as to whether I even like totk or not.
So much of what totk added is just not very good.
 
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