my experience has been the opposite, actually. i've played/replayed botw & loved it, but after a couple dozen hours & 1 dungeon, i'm not getting into totk very much at all. really dislike the fidgety building stuff, & preferred botw's combat difficulty & shrines. purely subjective, but i think the sequel simply lacks the heart, & the impact, of the original...
KINDA get it, I mean, I feel TOTK has waaaay more content density which makes it basically be an unlimited stream of events/fun every time. Totally nailed it.
But at the same time, the "emptyness" complaint some had with BOTW didn't click with me, I think the blank spaces between events was actually an strength to me, the game is so "zen-inducing" letting me explore with my mind totally relaxed, same feel I got with Ghostwire Tokyo btw... and I think TOKT lacks that... But that's not bad, it's just both games are way too different and have very different approachs each other.
BTW, TOTK is so great that I was burnt out of BOTW, even played it the last time a week before TOTK release just out of "closing the circle" with it (doing what I wanted to do before moving on from it definitely), but TOTK has me hooked, I'm still burnt out of exploration and want to go to main quest but damn shrines and random events are amazing, I'm always like "Oh, gotta go there? fuck it, I'm done for now..." then I'm "damn, can't believe I got here and now can't stop playing" lol.
Still reticent to go to sky and the depts for now frequently, I'll do main stuff and shrines to get powerups and hearts/stamina, play until I'm satisfied, then leave the game while I do/play something else and come back to explore, this game is GIGANTIC, and is so different from BOTW that I don't feel like playing the same most of the time, far from iterative.
Hell, even the map is far from looking alike, most of the time I don't even know where I am even tho I'm supposed to know from playing BOTW so much, specially since coming back to do optional stuff since 2 years ago every now and then after beating it.