Breath of the Wild does have map markers though? And even if it didn’t, the games still play completely differently. BOTW is a walking simulator while most of my time in Elden Ring so far has been spent either in dungeons or fighting bosses. Like I wouldn't call Fallout 2 similar to Elden Ring just because you can go wherever you want from the start in both games.
Breath of the Wild's combat is like a 1/10 in comparison and served to undermine a lot of the rest of that game for me. Engaging with the game mechanically is a waste of time; the combat isn't fun and the rewards are almost never meaningful. You break 2 uninteresting, replaceable weapons going through a moblin camp that you stumble onto and your reward is 2 more uninteresting, replaceable weapons and a red rupee or something.
They both have repetition throughout their open worlds but at least Elden Ring's is mechanically satisfying and always has an item at the end. And even if it's not something you'll use at least you're getting runes to make the numbers go up.
Also Elden Ring doesn't have any dungeons that require me to use tilt controls.
I don't want to go into a million and one analogies because we could literally argue for days about what comparison is fitting or not, but with the map markers in BotW, most of them, outside of the main ones, mark only where you got the quest or the quest givers location, they usually entail riddles or verbal directions that you need to follow.
I didn't like the dungeons in Elden ring as much as Zelda's shrines. I feel like From soft went "hey we don't have time to create all the cool shrines Zelda had, let's just slap a hundred chalice dungeons into the game". Even though the rewards weren't as good I liked the shrines a lot more.
Anyways, having put 100 hours into both I felt they had the same vibe
My top 3 open world games of all time: 1. Breath of the Wild 2. Witcher 3 3. Elden Ring
I want to do a second magic playthrough when I get a chance. I tried too recently but the shield enemies were a nightmare.
