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Discussion Which do you prefer, BOTW or TOTK?

Which do you prefer?

  • Breath of the Wild

    Votes: 86 40.0%

  • Tears of the Kingdom

    Votes: 129 60.0%
  • Total voters
    215
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Me personally I like TOTK more but I'm conflicted.

I recently returned to BOTW after messing around in Tears and was taken aback by how smooth everything felt. Combat just felt better with the ice, fire, and bomb arrows at ready.

Also, I couldn't really put my finger on it until I came back to BOTW, but navigating through menus to fuse items is extremely sluggish in TOTK compared to BOTW! There's basically a half-second pause when selecting and exiting the d-pad menus in Tears that isn't there in BOTW. Doesn't seem like much in the moment but it adds up over time. I'm hoping that this gets fixed if this game gets a performance patch on Switch 2.

On the other hand, I love the new Skyview towers in Tears aesthetically (love the blue glow at nighttime) and functionally compared to the Sheikah towers. I also like the new enemy types like the boss bokoblin which adds a lot of variety compared to BOTW. I do love the champions abilities a better in BOTW though, although Mineru in Tears is pretty damn cool to use.
 
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TotK is a 9, BotW is a 10.

BotW is wonderfully paced for an open world game while TotK doesn't feel like it earns its size a lot of the time IMO.
 
Tears immersed me for longer. After a while in botw I was too overpowered to enjoy exploring, so I mainlined it. Meanwhile, Tears was an adventure from beginning to end.
 
It’s difficult to choose.

BOTW is a large pizza with a perfect crust and the freshest toppings imaginable. The most delicious pizza I’ve ever had.

TOTK is the exact same pizza, but EXTRA large.
 
GPKs3 said:
It’s difficult to choose.

BOTW is a large pizza with a perfect crust and the freshest toppings imaginable. The most delicious pizza I’ve ever had.

TOTK is the exact same pizza, but EXTRA large.
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EXTRA large (and with EXTRA cheese) AND you also have previously eaten the BOTW pizza many times before
 
I don't think I can choose really. Totk does a lot more better but also does some things worse. I don't know if I could play another playthrough of TotK while I have done multiple playthroughs of BotW but that's because of the amount of content TotK has and I don't think I can do the time sink for it again.
 
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Breath of the Wild was a better first experience.

Tears of the Kingdom is an overall better game.
 
BotW felt like the right size and scope given its gameplay loop.

TotK felt over-ambitious and thus fell short in some areas, but makes up for it with super cool and innovative mechanics.

I'm voting BotW, but narrowly.
 
Botw left a lasting impression in me that is difficult to shake, so that's what i voted for.

Totk is an improvement of Botw in almost every level, but it does not enough to elevate what Botw did; combat is better in some ways but worse in others (not as fluid as before and the abilities casting just sucks), the world is bigger and filled with quests, but the pacing felt better in Botw, and some other minor details that i'm sure people have voiced before.

still, if i ever want to replay one of these games i think i would go back to Totk, just because the things that are improved, makes it feel a bit better, just not that much (but just thinking about the champion abilities makes not want to comeback lol).

it was very close to being a Mario Galaxy -> Mario Galaxy 2 scenario, where the second is a better versión of the first one in every way, in my opinion, but it wasn't.

i wish they patch Totk, in the future, with the gameplay improvements that hold it from being a much better package.
 
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Tears was brilliant, but I still just like BotW better; there's a bit more cohesion of ideas and, I don't know, intentionality to that experience. I think it does a better job of cultivating an overall mood and letting it sit with you; That said, I sorta see them as two complementary halves of an absolutely amazing whole at this point. Sorta in that same zone as the two Mario Galaxy games where there are things one does better than the other, and vice versa, with neither really being able to outright supplant the other across the board

Plus it's really hard to separate my feelings towards TotK from BotW; like, so many parts of that game can only really feel as meaningful and as impactful as they do because there's this built-up lens of "oh wow, look how this place/character/thing that I spent so much time with has changed and grown in the last 6 years" that everything gets filtered through. That's not a knock against TotK because I feel that's a very deliberate strength of choosing to make a direct sequel, but it really makes it hard to say TotK is outright better when part of what makes it so special imo is it's the rare case of this absolutely-amazing game coming out and then getting to literally revisit its world and see what's different
 
I don't want to downplay Breath of the Wild too much because it's an amazing achievement in it's own right, but I definitely prefer Tears of the Kingdom. But to your point in the OP, I do hope if they do have a next-gen patch or rerelease for the successor to the Switch they add in some of the QoL improvements to the controls from TotK to BotW and they improve on those performance issues from TotK. It was obviously a technical marvel for Switch, but that hang time in the menus should definitely be fixed.
 
grobla123 said:
Lets put it this way, if TOTK had come first, would BOTW be nearly as well regarded?
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of course not. Totk is the better game, because it improved on the base that was Botw. But that's like asking if the NES would be as well regarded had it come after the SNES (not the best analogy, but i hope it gets my point ilustrated).
 
totk has some great things going for it but i never liked the create a vehicle thing and that seems to be most of the fun people have with this game vs botw.
 
I have had more fun with TotK primarily due to the world being expanded from the inside out with more intriguing biomes like caves and the interesting traversal methods that came from using Ascend and skydiving.

The Ultrahand ability was a fun puzzle solving tool but I rarely used it just for the sake of building, I kept a few designs in Autobuild for reliable transport and weaponized drones and that was it.
 
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TOTK over BOTW:
Ability to drop weapons when opening a chest.
Ability to sort items in the quick menu.
The item throwing system in TOTK.
The freefalling/diving system in TOTK.
Rebalanced cooking, more recipes, and a recipe book.
Faster flurry rushes.
Faster loading and overall better performance experience.
Slip-resistant armor and potions.
TOTK dungeons > BOTW dungeons
TOTK bosses >>> BOTW bosses.
Zonai abilities >>> Shiekah slate runes
TOTK world > BOTW world.
TOTK story > BOTW story.
TOTK soundtrack > BOTW soundtrack

BOTW over TOTK:
Faster item switching (they added a slight delay in TOTK to reduce glitches, not worth the tradeoff IMO. Also not the type of thing I would expect to be fixed with a performance patch, sorry OP.)
BOTW champion abilities >>> TOTK sage abilities.
BOTW grinding > TOTK grinding (As in there is less overall material grinding in BOTW)
Guardians > Gloom Hands.

So I much prefer TOTK because of the major QOL improvements, the larger world, and the much more fun abilities. But both are 10/10 games.
 
Breath of the Wild.

Totk repeats my least favorite things about botw and doesn't have comparable highs.
  • I didn't like the durability mechanic and it introduces fuse, another friction step.
  • I always complained about BOTW menu usage during battle and now it's 100x worse.
  • Shrines and Koroks were an interesting concept in 2017 but not as interesting in 2023. And by the end of BOTW I was already tired of them.
Ascend, recall and caves were my favorite addition. Even tough I'd advocate for less caves and focus on the most interesting ones if it makes a comeback.
Ultrahand as mechanic was magical but I never felt motivated to be that creative with it. Pretty sure I was more creative with my inventions when playing bad piggies, because the game required so. For example, I don't remember an instance where the game created some sort of scenario or challenge where I needed to create automatic bots. To be honest when I remembered this mechanic from the final trailer I was already near the end of the game. So the mechanic itself was awesome but the level design weren't on par for me.

About the story, I was not fan of BOTW storytelling but at least it didn't get in the way. For me Totk story detracts from the game. Got distracted everytime (not as much as people complain) a person didn't recognize Link but it felt like they should, the questionable Ganondorf comeback, the monster disguised as Zelda thing and nobody has a clue, the formulaic structure...
The cherry on top was ruining the interesting lore of BOTW in retrospect with the "Everything was Zonai" idea. I saw great potential for make new games in BOTW timeline but after TOTK I'm not interested anymore. It made me feel like Spirit Tracks ruining Wind Waker timeline for me.

Final thoughts: In the end I played BOTW for more than 500 hours through 2 and a half playthroughs. I finished TOTK in a 100+ hours playthrough but never came back. Also never felt motivated to complete at least shrines or quests.
 
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Breath of the Wild. It feels like a Portal 2/Doom Eternal situation where you're either a fan of the new mechanics for the wild depth, or you think it's bloat that overcomplicates and gets in the way of itself. Tears of the Kingdom is a lot of game. It's more of the first game but bigger. But that also means it inherits all of the problems BotW had, and arguably makes them worse.

It has more Stuff, but I'm less interested this time around, and the new stuff I didn't like.
 
Breath of the Wild for sure. Tears of the Kingdom has some brilliant moments, but the overall product is significantly messier in a lot of different ways.

Breath of the Wild is one of the few, maybe even the only open world game to genuinely earn its size and scope. It’s not perfect, but it does everything it needs to do brilliantly. Can’t say the same about Tears of the Kingdom.
 
Breath of the Fun > Tears of the Menus

Also what's the deal with the first cave in TotK that's pitch dark and introduces the lightseed things and you actually need to light up the cave, and then every other cave in the game is hazy brown but you can get by without lighting it up? That still bothers me.
 
Tears of the Kingdom.

Improvements I had wanted from BotW like themed dungeons, caves, way better bosses. Literally can’t go back to BotW without caves.

Gameplay variety that makes BotW look limited and carries its massive runtime even better. I still have fun with combat 160 hours in and find surprising and valid ways to approach it whereas that ran out much quicker with BotW. The four core abilities have way more possibilities than the equivalent BotW set. Even the most straightforward, single-purpose one - Ascend - just never gets old

Sky islands and verticality were brilliant additions and made the scale jaw-dropping. I love the aesthetic of both new layers of map.
Prophet64 said:
Breath of the Fun > Tears of the Menus

Also what's the deal with the first cave in TotK that's pitch dark and introduces the lightseed things and you actually need to light up the cave, and then every other cave in the game is hazy brown but you can get by without lighting it up? That still bothers me.
Click to expand...
Definitely was supposed to go for a “tutorial area as a microcosm of the whole game” moment and that was supposed to represent the Depths.
 
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A feeling I haven't seen anyone else discuss is how lost you feel in Tears of the Kingdom. It's the same world from a game I've played three times, but I felt lost and naked, in a way. It is a world that was perfectly designed for you to identify key / interesting points from the Great Plateau (intended as your 'spawn point' in this map), but Tears just drops you right in the middle. This might feel like a petty nitpick, but I feel like it breaks your relationship with the world in multiple ways. It just wasn't built to be explored like that.

The first thing I wanted to do as soon as I left the Great Sky Island was go see how the Zoras were doing. In Breath of the Wild, I instinctively knew how to get there. In Tears of the Kingdom, I ended up in a mountainous region I had never seen before in the first game on my way there, and just awkwardly got there, somehow. I just couldn't shake this feeling ever in my playthrough.
 
I think Tears of the Kingdom was better in every aspect except the one thing that Open Air Zelda really shines in, and that's exploration.
So for me Breath of the Wild is still the more remarkable and better game.
 
LegendHero said:
There are other pitch black caves besides the one on the Great Sky Island.
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Perhaps, only played through the game once and I had to force myself and focus on the main story path to even complete it. My point with the caves was it should have been every cave or at least an existing clear light source already present. The hazy brown was a literal eyesore for me. Having to light them up myself would have been more interesting visually and an extra challenge as well.
 
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Probably an unconventional answer, but honestly I don't know. Both games are probably some of the most fun I've had with games in the past 7 years, but I also don't really feel like I have a set opinion on them. I didn't even beat Breath of the Wild because I got stuck thinking I was missing some clothing that negated all heat on the way to the Goron divine beast. Tears of the Kingdom on the other hand I loved a lot of things about it, but I also didn't like a lot of things about it and the scripted events in the game I almost always disliked - I think I'd even say the dungeons were honestly worse than Breath of the Wild's.

I feel like my opinion would be more set with a replay of both games, but also both games don't seem particularly replayable, so I'll just say i'm not sure but probably Tears.
 
I don't know I voted Tears but will see when I ever return to BotW. Wish I could start a new save without overwriting the previous one
 
I voted for TotK but I've been thinking about this recently and it really depends on my mood since both games feel very different in what they set out to do.

BotW is a much more magical, ethereal and more focused first experience. The relative barrenness of the world, the limited number of Things To Do™ very much deliberate and in service of the meditative and almost lonely adventure it is. It's full of these little and big moments of discovery as you come up a hill or turn a corner - there's so many long stretches of just walking or climbing - and find these little specks of life in a world that just barely managed to hang on. Hyrule has been split into multiple borderline isolated settlements that are held together by a weak network of stables and roads. I'm not really sure if the feelings it evokes can ever be replicated again.

TotK takes this foundation, turns it up to 11 and in the process loses some of the simplicity of its predecessor but this also feels deliberate. You constantly run into someone to help or something to do which shows that this is a Hyrule that isn't just surviving but actually recovering, people are coming together and work towards a common goal. The density of its world makes it messier but also more engaging throughout. Zelda means something different to different people but I always go back to that moment in Ocarina of Time where I hit the wooden sign with a sword to split it in half and one of the parts fell into the water. The reactiveness of the world and the physicality of the player's presence in it is very much at the core of what I look for in Zelda (at least the 3D ones) and TotK is the best one in that regard.
 
Tears of the Kingdom.

BotW has some merits that surpasses TotK. I prefer the Sheikah aesthetic over the Zonai, I think the lore is better, and there’s a feeling of minimalism that makes the game stand on its own and gives a unique quality that I understand that many might prefer.

The story stuff is probably a tie - TotK has a bit of a messy story with amazing high high but also some irks. BotW is more consistent and I like the more intimate focus of it.

But dang… I’m just a massive, massive fan of everything TotK brought to the table. Ultrahand is like a game within a game, and a fucking spectacular one on top of that. The depths has one of the most addictive gameplay loops I’ve ever experienced that more than made up for the monotony. The sky islands, while formulaic, never failed to enthrall me and I adore the sheer feeling of scope, scale and verticality that came from seamlessly travelling between them and the surface. And I think the overworld is just so thrilling to rediscover, as you find the various things that has changed, from the fashion fever in Hateno and the expanded Tarrey Town, to the mist-free Typhlo Ruins and the infiltrated Great Plateau. Combat is better, shrines are better, dungeons are better, bosses are WAY better, side quests are more fleshed out and Ascend rules.

Also, Penn > Kass.
 
Totk has many things that are an improvement, but the only thing that I really miss when going back to bite are the caves. That was one thing u wished back then.

Overall I prefere botw. Many people explained why already, I won't add to that. I'm happy that a year out it got back to be more balanced.

After release people pushed for it "replacing" botw. I never expect it to be 50:50, but seeing 40:60 feels correct, overall totk is the better game in to many aspects, but note does some stuff simply better, and if you care for that more, then bore can be better for you. It's not replaced by total.
 
Tears of the Kingdom for me

As much as I loved BotW it never quite immersed me the same way it did for most other folks. TotK giving me the Ultrahand so I can create a bunch of different vehicles that help make traversing the world much more fun for me, that was what got me truly immersed in the game. I think there's something immensely satisfying about making your own creations and seeing how well they get you through the game and TotK did that for me perfectly.
Like yeah sure, I can build a simple raft to cross a body of water or I could use every piece of wood I can find in this shrine and try and build a stylish vessel just because I can. That is the core element that helps TotK outshine BotW for me.

I also had more fun with the story, dungeons, and bosses in TotK, in most cases it was a step up for me. I did like what BotW did with its Divine Beast dungeons but they do feel like they were originally designed with the Wii U gamepad in mind and unfortunately never got to show off their true potential.

But yeah, TotK for me. Just an incredible experience seeing how everybody approached things differently and it still being able to work for them, even if they did overcomplicate it.
 
Botw was an experience that very few games gave me. Everything just felt right about it. It has alot of flaws sure, but none of them ruin the experience

TOTK is a better game that fixes some of the most common complaints of BOTW (dungeons, bosses, weapons, enemy variety) and Ultrahand is brillian, but there are too many things that are simply mediocre/bad or worse than it was in BOTW. Champion abilities are worse, story and characters are worse, sky Islands and Depths were wasted and it's just way too grindy. Zonai devices are great, but take away all the fun from exploring the world

Overall, I prefer BOTW
 
I find it impossible to choose. TotK is "objectively" the better game in the sense that it has far more content, and refines everything that was carried over from BotW. But TotK is just so utterly dependent and intertwined with BotW; it literally could not exist without it. TotK is all about taking BotW and making it MORESO. It adds new paths, new crevices, new modes of exploration. I feel like if you skipped BotW and just jumped into TotK you would quickly become overwhelmed and confused. There is also value in BotW's raw simplicity, relaxed pacing, and the sheer novelty of emerging into its new, open world.

So yeah I have to reject the question because I think each enriches the other in a way that makes them utterly co-dependent.
 
Realistically, what's going to happen with me is... I'll go back to play this remaster of BoTW and be like... eh this is kinda barren compared to ToTK. and I think all future Zelda games are going to sullen BoTW more than any of the Ocarina successors did for Ocarina? Does this make sense?

Future games are going to overshadow BoTW even if BoTW was the very first to drive the series in a new direction.

There's not enough set-piece stuff in the game that I want to go back and replay. Which is completely different than the situation with Ocarina of Time and its successors. I can really take or leave the divine beast stuff and they have fairly comparable sections in ToTK. The only thing I miss is the Hyrule Castle section in BoTW.
 
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TOTK makes BOTW seem like a tech demo in hindsight.

Not that BOTW is not a jam packed game, it's just that its bonkers how much TOTK adds to the world and gameplay. Whereas occasionally BOTW had areas that felt empty TOTK just constantly had new things to discover, new places to see and new side quests. I would get so excited whenever I'd find a new well or new Cave just wondering what might lie within or weather or not it would be an item hole or a full fledged underground maze. The dungeons, while not exactly what I want from a Zelda game still, all having unique designs made such a big difference in making them feel unique. On top of that bosses not being variations on the same design really helps.

And don't get me started on the underground. I was barely paying attention to the TOTK coverage around release because while I knew I'd like the game I wasn't necessarily Hyped for it. I Was planning on starting it after I finished Octopath 2, but after hearing all the raving about it online I decided to start playing right away. Anyways long preamble to say, I did not know about the underground beforehand and it made finding it such an amazing experience. The kind of experience I hadn't really had with games since I was a kid before game coverage was so omnipresent.

The story was also more interesting, it's had a lot of elements that both felt familiar to the series and completely unique.

Since BOTW came out I never really felt like re-playing it. I didn't even finish the DLC when it came out because I was just not feeling BOTW that much anymore at that point. But just writing this here about TOTK makes me want to start a new save file.
 
It's funny, while Tears of the Kingdom is a step up in almost every regard (minus performance... minus sometimes the underground...) and a little physics miracle, Breath of the Wild was such a novelty in the LoZ IP for me, that the reused and altered world in TotK does not catch me as much this time. Objectively, I would rate TotK a little higher but BotW subjectively grabbed my heart more.
 
I played botw (+DLC) for 100h, and TotK for 237h. For me there's no comparison.
Now, of course totk didn't have the same impact botw did. But this isn't important to me.
 
Breath of the Wild is a better game.

I want to replay it. Tears of the Kingdom I will never touch again.

And in 2030, Breath of the Wild will be the most remembered one.
 
ImpromptuR said:
Breath of the Wild is a better game.

I want to replay it. Tears of the Kingdom I will never touch again.

And in 2030, Breath of the Wild will be the most remembered one.
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Sadly in 2030 we will only have 1 more game to compare to them ;)

Probably will be the best one though, for sure. My thing is, if I can get lost in a world for 100-200 hours...then why is there no budget allotment for me to get lost in dungeons for at least 2 hours? Their goals for dungeons are way off for the scale of these games.

Time allotted to main quests/main dungeons in this game is like even less than the primary questlines in something like Bethesda games. At least that's how I feel about it. And again Zelda is about getting lost yada yada. Yeah, they definitely achieved that with the open world no question. Just please create some zones that seemlessly transition into sections that are labyrinthian and difficult and longer than 30 mins. Thanks. lol

There's like bits and pieces of it.
 
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I feel like Tears is better in every way. Just the sheer amount of freedom and creativity packed into that game is astounding. You can argue that BOTW did it first, or maybe you appreciate that it is a bit more compact, but I feel like Tears does almost everything better.
 
If TotK came first I would have beaten it and not got burnt out within 15 hours of playing, but it didn't.

The reuse of BotW's map, the lackluster underground and sky islands, the reliance on the Ultrahand and Fuse mechanics (which I have 0 interest in) left a sour taste in my mouth with 0 interest in going back to try again. The only mainline Zelda game I refuse to beat and play.
 
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