BotW/TotK as a new Zelda Player

Hi! I recently got introduced to Zelda properly for the first time in March of last year. I took a risk and purchased Breath of the Wild, thinking there was a decent chance I wasn't going to like it. BotW was my first real experience with Zelda. I'd messed around with some of the older titles like Ocarina and Link's Awakening in NSO before, but I only played for maybe half an hour and they didn't really stick with me. However, BotW really pulled me in and instantly made me a fan of the IP, and I wanted to share my thoughts on it and its sequel as a new fan of Zelda. Since playing it then, I've replayed it, played TotK for over 230 hours and am currently working on my first replay of TotK. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well on each of my points if you're interested!

Combat:

The big thing that made me less interested in purchasing BotW was the combat. I watched a little bit of gameplay and I really wasn't a fan of how the fighting looked, especially as somebody who is typically a ranged over melee person. My thoughts on it were also impacted by my little experience with the older games, I thought that the combat was pretty stiff and uninteresting (although I do see why people really love the classic Zelda titles, they have an amazing feel to them and obviously the combat is going to be different from what a modern player is used to). However, playing it for myself for the first time was incredibly satisfying. I love that you can't always just spam Y, monsters will either be quicker to attack than you are, or they'll move away. The elemental weaponry helps vary the ways in which you can defeat these monsters which keeps you thinking about the best way to tackle a specific creature. Dodging and flurry rushes are so much fun, even though I pretty much didn't start using them until TotK, I managed to get through the entirety of BotW without them since the combat system is just so open and allows for many different techniques and play styles. Another massive thing for me was the environmental combat, such as using explosive barrels or rolling a boulder into a bunch of bokoblins like it's a bowling ball. TotK somehow managed to improve on all of this. Being able to increase the durability and strength of your weapons with fused materials makes you feel a lot more confident about using up the stronger parts of your arsenal. It also encourages the player to go out and hunt for materials which is something I already loved doing in BotW, but unlike Breath, Tears actually allows you to utilize the plethora of materials properly. Ranged combat especially gained a massive boost in possibilities, whether it's through making a homing arrow with an eyeball or possessing a stampede of lizalfos with a muddlebud. I could go on and on about the combat but this segment is getting kinda long so I'll move on.

Visuals:

Breath and Tears are, in my opinion, the best looking games on Switch. Not exactly from a graphical fidelity standpoint, but in terms of their style. Graphically, Metroid Prime Remastered is probably the best, but the style of Zelda really takes the cake for me. Playing BotW for the first time felt like walking into a Ghibli movie with its bright and almost "painted" look if that makes sense. Despite the low quality textures (which are my guess as to why the file sizes for Breath and Tears are so low for the amount of content), both games still manage to be incredibly pleasing to the eye. I really hope that Nintendo's next console is backwards compatible specifically so we can see some sort of upscale or even performance upgrade to these games which have the misfortune of being stuck on a very under-powered console. Even the models themselves such as the characters, they're so low poly and you can really see the edges of the geometry at times, but they work so well with the environment and shading. For Tears specifically, my mind was blown when I saw the sky islands for the first time. So vibrant and packed with appealing foliage. You definitely get some lag in these more densely decorated areas, but they stand out a lot and really help Tears separate itself from Breath's environments despite using the same base map.

Story:

As someone who is new to Zelda, I really wasn't expecting anything from the story. At one point during my Tears playthrough, I messaged my friend like "GANON IS A GERUDO?!", so that shows about how much I know in terms of Zelda lore. However, I have heard that lots of people were disappointed in the story in both games, and I can honestly see why. It's there but not really utilized to its full potential. Link is pretty much a piece of cardboard for most of the game, majority of the story is told through memories/tears which felt kinda lazy, and I never really felt like there was enough time with the champions/sages. It isn't a big problem for me because I'm not generally a story person, but I do think that the story could've been done a bit better. I also wish that they would've shown the Divine Beasts in TotK, I kinda missed them despite the small references. There's probably a reason they're not in Tears such as being recycled, but even just seeing some of their parts would've been extremely satisfying.

BotW vs. TotK:

Something I found to be the case after replaying Breath was that I actually prefer the bigger moments in BotW, and the smaller moments in TotK. I adore the Divine Beasts and enjoy them more than the temples in Tears. Being able to control massive segments of the Beasts and using them to solve these crazy puzzles was so much fun and felt very creative. They were so open and grand, which is something I didn't really feel from the temples despite those also being large structures. However, I do far prefer the bosses of Tears, not just from the temples but from the finale as well. The only thing that really hurt the bosses in TotK for me was the sages. Having a physical NPC running around with you is cool in theory, but trying to actually catch them and use their powers was a pain. Breath made it so easy by having these powers be assigned to pre-existing controls, I wish they would've kept that for Tears. However, TotK did everything in between better in my opinion. The abilities... I mean c'mon, they couldn't have done the abilities any better. Fuse is amazing and pretty much solves Breath's weapon progression. Ultrahand allows for so much creativity and replayability, and is used very well in areas such as getting the player from point A to point B, defeating larger foes, and solving puzzles. Ascend and recall are great abilities as well which probably wouldn't be good for Breath. Tears is built around using these tools, with the caves for ascend and reversible enemy projectiles/those falling sky rocks for recall. Then there's the major surprise of Tears, the Depths. I'm honestly still shocked that we knew nothing of this third layer of the map until the game released. Even though it's not as packed with things to do as the overworld, there's a lot of fun to be found in exploring this new environment and it instantly adds a lot of depth (no pun intended,) to Tears. TotK just does a lot for me that I didn't get from BotW, despite the fact that I adore both games. If I had to choose one I'd probably choose Tears for the sheer amount of amazing content it contains.

Overall:

This post is already pretty long so I'll wrap it up here, but these are pretty much all of my main points for both games. I'm so glad I went through with getting Breath, it really made me fall in love with Zelda as a franchise. Since finishing BotW and TotK, I've played through most of Skyward Sword and have started on Twilight Princess, and I'm really looking forward to Echoes of Wisdom. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on my points if you took the time to sit through my incessant rambling, and maybe a point of view from somebody who's been with Zelda for a while!