I saw this poll on Eurogamer, with (as of moment of writing this) almost 465K votes, so I thought it would be interesting to see how it plays out here.

EG poll screenshot in spoiler

Spoiler!

VGC should really have more than 10 options for poll, I couldn't cram in "Something Else", so that is left for comments.
Also, yes it's very silly poll, there's no GTA in there and Witcher is listed as action-adventure.

The Legend of Zelda is, or at least was, my favourite franchise of all time until BotW. That doesn't ruin the past games, but it does make it hard for me to care about the franchise since they've clearly gone in an entirely different direction than what I loved.

Besides that, from this list, maybe Red Dead Redemption? I thoroughly enjoyed both games and went out of my way to 100% them.

Zelda
Old school Tomb Raider

Top two for me.

LoZ is one of my favourite IPs as well, for being consistent in always providing great experiences (though I don't find them nowhere near as perfect as reviews/scores portray them), but yes, BotW and TotK have left sour taste in my mouth as well - the pendulum of exploration/dungeons have now gone too far in the other direction, so we'll probably have to wait a bit for it to finally get to its natural balance.

At least it's not completely unrecognizable, like Tomb Raider which is TR in name only since Reboot.

The series I’ve had the most fun with would be Batman: Arkham. The atmosphere, music, voice performances that are straight out of the Batman Animated series, and that ever so satisfying free flow combat led to such a satisfying and unforgettable experience.

Picked uncharted. I think the Legend of Zelda is a better series over all but uncharted is pretty much the blueprint on what I want to get out of genre.

Some of the Resident Evil games probably have their home in the same gene instead of horror.

Action adventure seems like it can pack in a lot of different games. Personally I would like to put a few games listed instead into the "Open world"-genre. I think it is mature enough to cut ties with the general action adventure games.

The Legend of Zelda.

Although some locations are repeated (in name and theme) - the locations themselves are different in design. The lore tied to each game, overall story and cast, gameplay and music makes Zelda my favorite Action Adventure series.

Edit: The games I played in the series

The Legend of Zelda (NES): 72
The Legend of Zelda A Link To The Past (SNES): 91
The Legend of Zelda A Link To The Past (GBA): 92
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (3DS): 93
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS): 100
The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask 3D (3DS): 97
The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (GCN): N/A
The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword (Wii): 96
The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds (3DS): 94
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (WiiU): 99
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition (3DS): 78
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes (3DS): 74

I agree that the action-adventure genre has become too big and amorphous. It sort of acts as a catch-all these days.

OP: the best, for me, is Zelda, followed by Metroid and Resident Evil.

The problem is Open world isn't a genre by itself - BotW is open world, but No Man's Sky and Forza Horizon 5 are open world as well, and that's all they have in common.