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”?
In some ways I think players coming from BotW are at a disadvantage over coming to it fresh.
It took me hours (too many) to finally realize that it’s a different game and I needed to play it as its own thing, not BotW 2. And as soon as that clicked it became much easier.
If you mostly play it as BotW, key additions like using thrown items take a backseat to dodge/flurry attack or such. Similar to how you might early on be climbing things as opposed to bouncing on a spring or finding a ceiling to pass through.
When it finally clicked, even though most of the BotW toolset was available to me, I barely touched it anymore.
Honestly the best learning experiences were the naked combat shrines. Don’t skip those - they become incredibly easy after you finally get using the new mechanics available to you, but they are there to force you to adapt. Same as how some of the annoying puzzle shrines if you do them the ‘right’ way are there to force you to learn how to use reverse to solve nearly everything in seconds.
Many encounters can be solved as easily as an active Zonai flame emitter you just carry around with Ultrahand.
The bow in TotK is so much more OP than in BotW. Also, thrown stuff can straight up break fights - silver lynel in depths? Yawnfest with abusing puffshrooms and a near breaking royal armament.
The one area where there’s a legit serious step up in challenge is the phantom Ganon world encounters. Those are hard fights even with all the tools at your disposal.
But the combat is much more tuned around preparation with itemization than in BotW. If you are having difficulty with parts, try using more items and play around with the options available to you. Shoot a powerful enemy with the muddle bud. Fuse a gloom sword to a gerudo dagger.
Playing it more like BotW is going to be unnecessarily painful. Forget what you knew, and don’t be afraid to experiment with radically different approaches to combat from what worked in the last game.
Also, I recommend farming the spikes from the frost dragon when you see it in the overworld. Cheap and easy way to have a freeze weapon you switch between to set up your hard hitters (frozen enemies take 3x damage on the next attack).