I’ve tried botw 4 times now. It’s the whole reason I bought a switch. It bores the living fuck out of me every time I play.

I know a lot of people love it, and you might too. But I’ve never been able to play more than 3-4 hours in without being bored off my ass and going to play something else instead.

I’d say BotW has less complexity for sure. TotK adds in a fusion system to its core gameplay, not only for vehicles but for weapons and your shield.

I loved BotW’s story, atmosphere, combat… It just had an unmatched sense of wonder. TotK is great but didn’t recapture the magic to the same degree.

Play BotW first. A few years down the line, if you ever want more and are able to make time for it, play TotK. One should not play them back to back anyway.

I think both are kind of donkey shit, but TOTK is, clearly, better.

Get BotW if you haven’t played either, especially if you like less complexity. TotK adds more gameplay mechanics and areas (the sky and underground). BotW is a bit more straight forward. Plus you will appreciate TotK more after you play BotW.

TotK definitely improves upon everything in BotW, but that doesn’t mean BotW isn’t a masterpiece on it’s own.

doomcanoe has explained it well, I think for you, BotW is the way to go.

Though, just to be clear, you can’t go wrong with either option. It’s like choosing between two of my favourite ice cream flavours and I can only have one. 😀

It’s actually refreshing to see so many people supporting TotK—that’s not always the common opinion.

Honestly, both games have a lot to offer, and they’re both spectacular in their own right. But given your concerns about time, I’d actually recommend BotW. Both games are designed in a way that lets you “play at your own pace” and then wrap up the main quest whenever you feel like it—or not.

But TotK takes that concept to another level. There’s so much more to explore, the mechanics offer an incredible variety of possibilities and skill expression, and if you’re planning to dive into a game for months, TotK is definitely the one to go for. The game constantly encourages you to think, “What if I tried it this way?” or “Would this crazy idea even work?” And you can easily lose yourself for hours trying out different things, which is a ton of fun!

That said, this also means TotK can feel more “padded,” which is saying something since BotW already had its fair share of “filler content”. But frankly a lot of TotK’s content is just there to give you more opportunities to play around with the sandboxy elements.

And while these new mechanics give you fresh ways to approach the game, their freedom also opens the game up to repetitive strategies and exploits that can become tempting to use just to “get through” a puzzle anytime you get stuck for longer than you find fun. Which can start to happen more and more the longer you play.

Frankly, TotK is the kind of game I wish I had when I was 12 on summer break. But as an adult with limited time, it just makes me wish I had more time, much more. It’s kind of like Minecraft in that way.

BotW has similar issues, but to a much lesser extent. It’s a more focused game with fewer opportunities to “cheese” puzzles, and it doesn’t have as much content purely designed for messing around with mechanics. Most of BotW is made up of puzzles, events, or dungeons that you can complete in one go, giving you a satisfying sense of progress in a shorter time.

TotK makes BotW obsolete

If you want a fun game with great story telling, BOTW wins for me, unlocking all of the story required exploration and learning the map in a way that TOTK ignored.

If you want more robust fighting mechanics and a world that 2x bigger and a sandbox creative mode for the last 1/3 of the game, TOTK wins.

Related question: If someone wanted to see what all the hype behind the series is about, which game should they play first?

I typically like to start at the beginning, but the first Zelda game (I think for NES) couldn’t hold my interest for 2 seconds or my attention for 2 minutes.

The way Nintendo’s been behaving, I would ask you to buy neither for awhile longer. Continue to be patient.

Easier combat isn’t either game I don’t think; compared to Wii and earlier Zeldas the combat is faster and more involved, often involving split second timing and ability to read subtle cues about the enemies. It’s not exactly Dark Souls, but even basic enemies have tactics.

Breath of the Wild has much tighter design, everything in the game serves everything else very well. Except rain. The story actually makes sense, it’s thin on the ground…literally but it functions. There is an aspect to Breath of the Wild…Classic Zelda games often presented puzzles to the player and ask them to solve the puzzle. There is one and only one solution to the puzzle, and the game will block you from circumventing it. Not Breath of the Wild; it presents problems for you to overcome. A complicated maze? Climb the walls. Big spikey death ball rolling across the path? Put a block in front of it. Many problems have several potential solutions. You have a toolkit, and if you use those tools to reach the goal you are succeeding at the game. I played through Breath of the Wild several times, maybe someday I’ll run through it again.

Tears of the Kingdom is bloated. The story doesn’t make sense, a lot of the mechanics are in each other’s way, it has what? four different crafting mechanics? Upgrading clothing, cooking food/elixirs, weapon crafting, vehicle crafting. The game has done so much trying to be everything to everyone that no single mechanic has room to actually shine. There is a greater variety of enemies, not many of the new ones are very fun to encounter. All of the new overworld bosses I had the exact same experience with: “What is that?” Get closer, before I could even process what I was looking at I was immediately killed. The actual dungeon bosses are visually spectacular but pose no challenge at all. It’s also very hazy. The one thing I said over and over again during my one and only run of ToTK was “What am I looking at?” There’s just this persistent thick fog throughout the whole thing, you can’t see. Frankly, I don’t think it’s a very good game. It’s a miraculous piece of software, all of the crafting systems interacting with the physics system, and it seems to function perfectly…I don’t think it’s very fun. I’ve played it through once, I’m never touching it again, I’m probably done with the Zelda franchise. Been a fan since 1991, I think this is where I get off.

I finished BotW 100%, and am currently nearing 100% completion with TotK. Here’s what I would do if I were you.

Get the BotW demo. It’s free, and it contains the entire first portion of the game, the Great Plateau.

Play that, and when you’re finished, read the story synopsis on Wikipedia or wherever. Then acquire and play through TotK.

The Great Plateau gives you about 80% or 90% of what’s great about BotW in a tight, controlled package. If you’ve played Metal Gear Solid V, this is basically Ground Zeroes.

TotK is so amped up over BotW that there’s no “tutorial inside area” that showcases the mechanics of the full game, it’d basically be a carbon copy of the entire thing.

In terms of gameplay, this should give you something pretty close to the full experience.

Edit time! Looks like the BotW store demo was not actually generally available, let alone “free”. Since you’re only hurting for time, not money, you could still get the cartridge version of BotW and sell it after completing the Great Plateau. The rest of my reply should still apply.

TotK is more story focused. If that matters to you.

Totk is the better game, but botw is amazing and I strongly recommend starting with it

Play them in order, you get more story out of it that way. I promise it will be worth it! BoTW is a master piece, and somehow they topped it with ToTK