On a related note, I do really love the interactions with the Yiga Clan in this game. Much more interesting than how they were in BOTW; to the point where some of them will actually give you helpful information that would normally come from other random friendly characters, before turning on you and fighting.
I love that those interactions aren't relegated to
99% getting "ambushed" by travelers. They have a more spread out influence in the overworld, some quests associated with them, and entirely new gameplay in the depths.Overall I think it's great and a lot of fun, but I don't think it's touching BotW in terms of sheer awe-factor. I'm sure there are some people out there who are playing TotK without having played BotW and it would be really interesting to know how differently the game plays for them. But like, for the most part, I've been here before. It's just about seeing what's different this time around, so I feel motivated to check out the places where I expect a lot of new stuff happening (towns, stables, the sky islands, the depths), but I'm not feeling a real drive to scour every corner of the map to see what's there any more. I think the criticisms from before release that the game was going to be nothing more than $70 DLC are unfair, since there really is a ton going on in terms of story, side quests, etc., but it feels maybe more like BotW 1.5.
I don't play many video games outside the Zelda series--are there other examples of a sequel that's structured as a new story taking place in literally the same map as a previous entry in the series like this?
I agree with your point that knowing what and where the main landmarks are has influenced the way I play, where I fwoosh across the map at the sky island level as much as possible, jumping from stable to sky tower to town and so on. When I do bother with riding from point A to point B, I enjoy the new content around (minigames, caves, the Hudson construction dude, zonai device shenanigans)... but I've already seen the vistas, collected Korok seeds and hunted minibosses before, so exploration is not as motivating. The first dragon I saw in BotW, while I was crossing the Hylia bridge at night, is one of the most magical moments I've ever experienced in gaming. But you can only see it for the first time once.
That being said, TotK is still a marked improvement over BotW in so many ways. I'm withholding a definitive opinion until I finish it (will take a while), but so far it seems like it obsoletes its predecessor. They're both such long games, I would recommend a new player to only play TotK.
On your final question, I think the only time I had experienced this before was in Pokemon Silver/Gold, which "reuses" the map from Pokemon Red/Blue, but mixed up. It was only applicable for the second half of the game, and it was a cool surprise at the time. You're still breezing through it because it's paced like an extended postgame. From Zelda games, I understand a Link between Worlds reuses the map from A Link to the Past, but I haven't played it (and I played aLttP so long ago, I wouldn't even recognize the map anyway). Quick search online brings up the Yakuza games, which are always set in the same town district, and it's a big part of their identity. The Far Cry games reuse their maps for their different-setting DLC, but it's not actually meant to be the same place; this one seems to mostly have met with bad reception, unlike the previously mentioned cases.
There are also a ton of games that have you go through the entire map again, remixed, as part of their main quest, but that's not what is being discussed here. Or sequels that nominally happen in the same place but in practice use a new map, at most reusing only small areas that were too distinctive to change.
