I played BotW a lot, and really loved it. I feel like the beginning of the game was relatively easy compared to TotK, I died a few times trying out things, discovering the game and possibilities ; in TotK I died a lot and still do even with good gear and armour (1*-2* armors, 30-40+ damage weapons). You could say it’s skill issues and I would agree with you as I am not a pro player and play games once a week maybe, however I feel like the difficulty curve is far greater in TotK. That has affected how I view the game to the point that sometimes I think I dislike it (even though the new powers are the best thing they could have added, with the verticality of the world) ; that might also have to do with the much darker ambiance of the game, which can feel frightening (to me) to the point going underground is hard.
Is it just me? Should I just “git gud”?
You can get really strong weapons really fast with Fusion, so I was able to take down black enemies with ease two hours after landing on the surface when in BotW, I was avoiding them for days. Other than that, I’d say the games are equal. The new enemies like Gleeok seem hard when you first run into them, but once you find a way that works, every enemy becomes a chump.
Shrines, on the other hand, I thought were harder but not in a good way. Where BotW asked you “Can you solve this puzzle?”, TotK asks you “Can you get this to work?” and it’s just annoying when you know what to do and still need to do it several times until it works.
Somehow I ended up in the Gerudo Desert really early, and if you have bombs and arrows, Molduga fights are super easy to cheese. Just make sure you have lots of weapons for the first one. After that, they take 45 seconds.
Elixirs made of the fins and guts are also worth a lot of money.