Every time someone asks how Breath of the Wild is, you get a gamut of people who are either
A: Fans of previous Zelda games that are upset at the lack of puzzle force-feeding
B: People who didn't click with the game and suffered hype backlash to the point of telling everyone to the high heavens how much they hate each individual flaw
or
C: People who actually liked the game but refuse to elaborate on why.
As someone who, for context, personally dislikes the exact things that traditional Zelda fans are upset are missing from BotW. . .the big draw for BotW is that it's a systems-based game paired with an incredibly pretty world to play around with those systems in. If you're the kind of person who, like me, attempts to clip up rocks, trees, and buildings in other games because how dare the game set a predetermined path and frankly you want to feel tall, BotW provides actual, legitimate mechanics for climbing up that stuff that most other games can't be arsed with. If you're the kind of person who sees a game mechanic and finds it absolutely fascinating when you poke a thing with another thing and it does a thing, BotW has that kind of stuff everywhere. If pulling out a bow and arrow in the caldera of a volcano and watching the arrow catch on fire is a neat party trick, if solving puzzles in ways that weren't actually intended makes you feel smart, if wearing an icy sword in the middle of the desert and actually having it help cool you down is the best strategy ever for you, BotW is a warm hug in the form of a video game.
If you're looking for, like, a combat system, probably better off looking for another game. Maybe not even an open world game at all. Personally I like Smash Bros, people will get into entirely different arguments about that, though. Story is also very light, but while I haven't played any Witcher games I'd imagine if a franchise based off of a book series isn't for you that story isn't the factor you're missing.
Generally speaking, if you see all the gameplay footage of people messing around and you're enamored, you're likely to get a good playthrough out of it. If not, your money's probably spent on a different title if only to avoid adding another voice to the chorus of people who absolutely cannot shut up about how the game peed in their crops and burned their cereal. Breath of the Wild is very much a catharsis game if you're sick of a certain stiffness in other games. There's a je ne sais quoi about it that can roughly be pinned down as "wanderlust." But it's kind of a tradeoff, it's weak in a lot of ways that most other games are strong, too. So it depends what you're looking for. Personally I loved it, but like, it comes down to what you need out of a game whether it has anything for you or not. If you don't get anything out of systems then you don't get anything out of systems, man.
