What's the "true criticism"? You've made a couple posts on this page about it that seem to just be "it's overrated" and "they re-use some assets a lot" and "other open-world games exist."

Neither of those are particularly compelling. Did they invent the game style? No. But this is the closest anyone's came to perfecting it. Exploration is encouraged and facilitated, without overloading you with "here are fifty map points of interest all at once." There are harder/deadlier enemies and areas, but you can usually get out easily enough and won't get stuck if you wander there before you're leveled up enough. The mechanics and responsiveness of interaction are super crisp. The inventory is quite well balanced and pretty thorough and allows a good number of different play styles (TOTK especially, obviously).