I liked horizon zero dawn too, but though it had some problems. The combat kinda turned into a giant cluster fuck when multiple enemy were involved but was really good against few large target. The gear/loot system was kinda of wasted, I had all the gear I could possibly want about 1/3 of the way trough the game and from there own it was just small incremental upgrade that didn't change anything. The world was fun and just varied enough, with the occasional machine dungeon. I did not like Aloy, or rather I didn't care for her at all, she was just this boring bland of perfect and uninteresting with the whole jesus/mesiah thing (also didn't care for most character). I also wasn't crazy about the present storyline (ie the tribe and stuff) but I really liked the story about the past and how the world ended up the way it was. Anyway just things to keep in mind for comparison.
Can't talk about BoTW, but horizon zero is a very different game compared to TW3. TW3 is well remembered for it's writing, character and that's pretty much it. The combat is ultra generic, you can win everything by mashing the attack button, you can technically customize how Gerald fight, but no matter how you play you'll have to use basic attack (no real way of focusing on range/magic), and this work for every monster/human you fight. Gerald doesn't have combo or stamina, you can attack forever, so the way enemy break your attack string is by automatically countering your attack after a certain number of hit, 2-3, so once you know the number of attack you can do, you just attack that number of time, stop and rinse and repeat to victory. Giant monster don't have weak spot or anything really, just mash away to victory. The enemy variety is also a bit on the low side.
The environment looks good but is very repetitive, there's 4 main open world area in the game, in order they are, forest, forest, city, forested island. Occasionally you'll have a ruin, but those are pretty short. And the open world doesn't really do much, every quest is marked on the map (in fact everything is marked on the map, even random encounter) and there's not really exploration to be done. Most quest area also pretty repetitive, usually go something like: talk to dude, follow a red trail, find item, talk back to dude, follow second red trail, kill enemy, done.
But the writing in those quest is very well done, so that'll alleviate most of the monotomy. Similarly the characters are varied and colorful, they go trough interesting arc and don't neatly fall into the usual stereotype. Sadly the plot is very weak for most of the game, it's just a poorly though out excuse to have you do long chain of quest that really don't have anything to do with the main plot. I remember a point in the game where you have to rescue someone so they'll help you rescue someone else, to get there help to rescue some other person who will eventually give you information to rescue the main character your trying to rescue.
So anyway, I think TW3 is pretty much the opposite of HZ
, honestly I'd recommend watching a let's play of it over playing it, you'll get all the good without most of the bland.
