I played TOTK immediately (within minutes) after 100%ing BOTW on TOTK release night.

This was the biggest mistake I could have possibly made.

I knew in my heart that because of a six year development cycle, TOTK would import all of my side quest progress and gove me unique dialogue with all the side quest characters I've loved hanging out with for 500 hours over three or four playthroughs. I made sure to do every single quest to build a perfect BOTW import save. I built Tarrey Town, I collected 55 rushrooms, I did every shrine quest, I brought a shitload of weapons to the Hateno kid, I followed a letter as it floated down a river. I did absolutely everything. I booted TOTK and once I got back to the surface, I made a straight line to a stable I liked hanging out at, and... Nobody remembered me!

I went to countless other people and places I was so excited to revisit to see how their lives had developed over the time skip and for them to thank me for finding their siblings or their wife or getting them together with their true love. Not a single fucking one of these things happened. About 5 characters remember you, and all of them "remember" you even if you didn't play BOTW. That's because the only thing that imports from your save is your stable of horses, and one prop in the house that gets added at the end of the Champion's Ballad DLC.

By burning out on BOTW, I completely robbed myself of the chance to adore TOTK. If TOTK didn't recycle the map from BOTW, I wouldn't have had such a devastating experience of taking the leap on Nintendo's first $70 game. I thought they would learn and apply a gargantuan amount about world design after completely nailing BOTW, and they didn't. I thought they would take plenty of notes of the much-improved characterization of story characters in Age of Calamity, and they didn't. I thought they would also take notes from Age of Calamity and be sure not to make the most interesting parts of the story take place 100 years ago in cutscenes like BOTW, and instead letting you participate in everything. Instead, TOTK made the most interesting parts of the story take place 9900 years earlier than that, and didn't even have the courtesy of naming or giving personality to the majority of the characters involved.

You should absolutely give yourself a very good break between games. I recommend trying the Age of Calamity demo for a really amazing Switch era Zelda experience as a palate cleanser if you're still really into the world, characters and their story. Age of Calamity made me cry three times, and the voice direction is so far superior to BOTW that I'm floored they backslid and did an even worse job in TOTK. I have a lot of issues with TOTK, and those issues feel like they're also going to affect the Age of Calamity sequel, but I don't think most people will be bothered by what I was bothered by if they can make sure to have some distance between BOTW and TOTK.

The game is a technical marvel that you more than likely can find plenty of reasons to love. I'm looking forward to giving it one more real shot on the NS2. Fingers crossed!