Ok, this will be kinda long. I'm bored.

A game having too many features just for the sake of the features can be a problem. They may end up detracting from the core  gameplay, feeling too tacked on and taking the emphasis away from the game's essence, or, when more integrated and integral to playing the game, making the core loop way too cluttered and it's fun parts too diluted. Unnecessary features are often detrimental. You ask how can skill trees be a negative. Well, suppose for one you take Super Mario Bros, on the NES, and just patch onto it "detective mode, radio towers, skill trees" and "billions of points of interest". Congratulations, you've succesfully ruined a great game!

Now, I recognize that's a bit of an extreme example and I'm in no way saying HZD is like that. I haven't played it. Wish I could, for all I know it's a great game. But Destructoid does speak of a "fascinating premise wrapped in a tortilla of tropes", which indicates they believe the game is guilty of some of that. "Yeah, but BOTW has many of those features, too!", one might say. But here's the thing: the problem does not lie on the features or number of features a game has or lacks, but on how well those are integrated to the game's essence, it's philosophy, etc. Now, I haven't played the latest Zelda yet either, but if there's one thing that has stood out for me on the reviews I've read it's their praise for the seamless, emergent gameplay it's features and workings weave together in a natural way. What works for a game might not for the other, depending both on each game's core gameplay as well as on the implementaton. 

Keeping with that, the way the features interact with the core gameplay can actually also make a game innovative even if it's feature list is not. People say "if you see a place, you can go there", and, sure, I could do that in Skyrim. But kinda. Have you ever tried going over a mointain on a bethesda game? It's ugly. Not the sights, of course, but the movement, the gameplay itself. Also, integrating different features in a way that accentuates different elements of the game is in itself innovative: i've seen a lot of praise for the exploration in BOTW, and in that sense it seemed to me a lot different from my experiences with an Assassin's Creed game or Red Dead Redemption, for example, which, to me, felt a lot like busywork. Morrowind would probably be my pick for most immersive open world exploration so far, and it's easy to contrast those trhee even though they're all open world and "if you see it, chances are you can get there" is valid for all of them.

That all having been said, the "map towers":

1. A tower wich just colors your map and adds the name of some big areas you can clearly see and recognize from up there, pretty much the same way that walking near those obvious, big places would do, is just extending your vision. It's essentially a vantage  point, it's terrain, and it's completelly integrated with the way you interact with the world. By giving you that vantage point, though, more options for actual exploration open up: you look around yourself, you decide a spot looks funny, you mark it, go there, and check it out. If the game's core idea is exploration, that probably enhances it. Summing, the core funcion of these towers is giving you a vantage point and extending your view. Just like, you know, towers.

2. A tower wich adds a lot of icons to your map as places of interest for you to go and get resources/do missions, specially if it litters the map with those, as well as revealing the map, makes you interact with the world in a radically different way, and serves completelly different purpuses. Notice that uncovering some of the map itself is pretty much secondary here. If you only got the waypoints but no map information you'd still interact with the world in almost the same way, They're designed as towers (or mecha things etc) to make all of this make some sense within the world (and because climbing can be fun), but their core function is not that of a tower. They're primarilly side mission/resource waypoint mass relays, not towers, and they do lend themselves very well to introducing busywork. These are the "Ubisoft Map Towers", and I'm describing them based mainly on my experience with Ubisoft games.

In conclusion, based on all of this, on the reviews I've seen, on those discussed here, and on other people's impressions:

1. These two types of towers have little in commom with each other when it comes to their actual function and that function's impact on the gameplay.

2. Zelda's towers are seen as being closer to the first archetype. That of an actual tower.

3. HZD's towers are seen as being closer to the second archetype, the waypoint mass relay of Ubisoft Map Towers.

4. In general reviewers thought tower archetype 1 was either not a problem for or improved BOTW.

5. At least some reviewers thought tower archetype 2 detracted from HZD.

Seeing as how there's no contradiction at all in any of that, could you guys please remove your thinfoil hats now? :p

The mental gymnastics done in this thread to justify the double standards in the review process of BotW should be awarded a gold medal.

+1

But then again op also ignored many other things that make botw a really good game.

Sedans and hatchbacks might both be cars, have four wheels, engines, and transmissions but they have little in common ...

Well, no, that's not true at all.

Tell me, then, how you cannot use this as a vantage point:

You're basically saying to me that a player cannot climb a tower in, for example, Far Cry, visually locate something that looks interesting, and then go explore.  I know that's not true because I did it all the time.  

That is what im thinking too. Maybe there was soooo many Positives about BOTW that really pushes things like frame rate issues aaaaaaaalllllllllllll the way at the back. 

Boy, I wish I had the talent some people here are showing, I could demonstrate that 0 =/= 0 and collect my Fields Medal :P

Looks more like a vista to me. Do you see anything interesting in that screenshot besides the gorgeous skyline? 

Well thé funny part is that if Horizon only has 5 , Zelda has more and you just have to climb.

I agree with the op, too much Silly comparisoks with far cry for Horizon compared to Zelda that only had One journalist who compared it to FC.

I Guess being à new IP you get more compared to other IPs

See the bolded.

Also, your sedan/hatch analogy is terrible. It simply ignores (not answers) pretty much everything I wrote.

Actually there are puzzles in BoTW as well. For example the tower in the Gerudo province requires you to stack boxes in muddy water that you would drown. The one in Necluda requires you to avoid spikes that would make to instantly fall to your death. The one in Central Hyrule requires that you avoid guardians that are targeting you.