I absolutely get it. One of my criticism of Totk is exactly that, that the start of the game holds your hand too much. Botw was pretty much "here are the main abilities and there you can end the game. Now go do whatever you want." while totk is "this is how you do this, this is how you do that, here you can find this and there you can find that", but once you get through the initial tutorialization the game becomes more like botw.

As for instantly dying in caves, compared to botw totk is actually much harder early game. I died quite a few times at the start but after learning the tools the game gives and how I should approach certain enemies I die (or rather waste my fairies) more out of negligence than genuine difficulty. For instance I don't know why but I refused to fuse horns to weapons, which is pretty stupid because the primary purpose of the horns is to be fused to weapons to increase damage and durability.