Breath of the Wild: Beautiful. Mysterious. Inspired.

Tears of the Kingdom. Big. Shallow. Boring.

I found the first dozen or two hours of TotK exciting, as I encountered new mechanics and a darker side of Hyrule. But it wasn’t long before the new and exciting became endless expanses of copy/paste encounters and terrain, forgettable characters, and annoying enemies. Nothing felt clever or interesting. I lost interest in exploring, and wandered away from the game.

Then I went back to the first game for another run.