It took me so many attempts to get into BotW. It’s so big and scattered and just never hooked me. When it finally did I was happy I had to play very purposely I had 5 goals and just beelined each one. Get the master sword, kill the 5 bosses. Done. I didn’t do any side quests and I’ve never gone back to it. I had 95 hours in TotK in like a month which is crazy for me. Game is amazing and I did a lot more in it. I think combat is about the same. I do think TotK may be more complicated but you can simply not engage with the features you don’t want to.

I will say though TotK hits better after BotW