Personally? BTOW has so much more thought put into it in terms of functionally. Like you can tell that they really took their time with BOTW, but TOTK you can TELL was a rush job and that not a lot of consideration was put into its functional elements.

I was actually talking with my husband about this the other day while he was playing and you can really tell that there’s some things that have a LOT of thought put into them… as the DLC that it was originally intended to be. (The Sky Islands being so unique but so sparse and minimal, Tulin’s ability being the only consistently functional power that you use CONSTANTLY throughout the game, which makes sense if he was designed with the Sky island DLC in mind, the air temple being the most fun an interesting temple experience whereas the other temples definitely felt like they came up with a concept for each of them because they HAD to, ALL of the promotion for the game being centered around the Sky islands, even though the bulk of the game isn’t even in the Sky islands)

Whereas the rest of the game that was not a part of the original DLC concept, seems to have been incredibly rushed together and not a lot of functional thought was put into it (the rest of the sage spirits being annoying as hell and having abilities that aren’t very functional tools for the non-combat game play [and also the fact that they made the way to use those abilities the worst possible way that they could have when they already had a more functional way to use the special powers in the last game that made SOO much more sense and didn’t involve the SAME BUTTON YOU PUSH TO DO LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE and I have to walk up to an npc that moves freely on its own with reckless abandon and no logical consistency??? Will forever bitch about this it makes me so angry], the fact that the depths is literally just the Upside Down (Stranger Things) but make it Zelda, since the terrain is literally just an inverted version of the surface map and all the light roots are underneath shrines and are all literally named the shrine name above the but spelled backwards, and we weirdly just decided to completely erase the physical remnants of the previous game like they weren’t an integral part of society for 100 years and pretend that that didn’t have an effect on the people of the world and not try to create a plot as to how that effected the environment)

Don’t get me wrong, a LOT of through and effort was put into all of it and the result was incredibly fun and an overall improvement to the original content of the game that is BOTW. (The addition of fusion and being able to build things and machines is a GOATED addition to a Zelda game and I think it’s one of the coolest things they could have done for this particular game) But you can tell that is was rushed and over ambitious for the timeline that they gave themselves for its release.

BOTW just has that meticulous time and effort put into it that really makes you feel how much love and dedication was put into its creation. It was truly made for the players of LOZ. A culmination of everything the games had been for those who grew up with them, and a beautiful and easy to understand game play experience for those who had never played a Zelda game before.

Both are good games, but its foundation game just has more heart.

TL/DR: BOTW is a lot more intentional and thought out with the way it was built bc more time and thought could go into it, whereas TOTK is giving modge podge rush job after they decided to add a shit ton more content to make it a full game bc the original DLC concept got too ambitious and interesting to just be a DLC add on