The game is sparse and sterile, the characters are boring and generic, the story/dialogue is cringe inducing, the world is empty and plain, and there's nothing to do.
It borrows heavily from open world game tropes, and it doesn't add anything. Once you've played about 5-6 hours you've seen the entire game, just not all of its permutations.
This is the first game where I've had a real disagreement with everyone else about its fun factor. Previously I was extremely disappointed in Diablo 3, but there were plenty of people who understood and agreed with my sentiments quite vocally.
With BotW it's like people are playing a different game, or they're somehow mentally wired differently. I sincerely don't understand what happened there. I'm usually very good at acknowledging high quality games, even if I don't personally like them... BotW is not a great game, it's mediocre at best.
I liked the style, I generally enjoy world exploration and that was fun in BotW, and there were many cool experiences scattered around, but it does end up feeling a little empty.
I still played it a ton mind you, but I don't consider it an important or ground breaking game the way many seem to.
I have heard plenty of people talk about how new the open world is to them in BotW (in a way that clearly suggests they've never tried it before). The novelty factor of any (to the user) new game genre amplifies the positive reaction.