This is not the Quintessential Zelda, its more of a "greatest hits" that comes off as fanservicey.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1172509537
However, this Zelda is the most lackluster adventure Nintendo has ever made. I'll skip over the controls and go straight into the game design. The game starts slow as most everyone has mentioned in every review thus far, what they don't mention, is that the game STAYS slow for the next 10-15 hours or so. The beginning game boils down to the worst ideas in gaming. Mandatory collection of 15 bugs, a process that can be really boring and really long is made even more annoying due to the fact that the game forces you to stay in Wolf form and doesn't permit you to explore or even interact with other people until you've collected everything, which can sometimes take up to an hour, or two even if you've played the section before, and are going as fast as you can. Then Link returns to human form and can then ride Epona uncomfortably, as the riding animations, one of the most important in all the game, looks really odd and seems like Nintendo's animators have never seen a horse run before, which wouldn't be so bad, if they hadn't already made a near perfect horse in Ocarina. Animations seemed to have gotten the shaft in this game as the Bosses tend to be pretty robotic and non-threatening in their gestures.
Ignoring that though, once you've dispelled twilight, you must then sit through some rather awkward and mawkish "drama" where Link just stands there and looks meaningfully at other people. These portions would have been less cringworthy if the other characters were given voiced dialogue as they already lip sink to the subtitles. However, that's the fault of the hardware, as voice would not be possible on the small GC disk. But TP isn't about the story, its as predictable as Wind Waker was Shockingly unique. Its almost a carbon copy of A link to the Past's scenario.
Sadly though, its the level design itself that hurts this game the most. In Wolf Form Link must sometimes make long distance jumps only possible with the help of Midna. As interesting as it is to do so, it feels like RE4 for kids. First you must find the EXACT spot from which you can jump, which can be a pain and its artificial inclusion stands out as Link jumps from raised ledges up to the areas he needs. Wolf Link controls well, and the way he tracks down people were the best part of the game, however its used only a grand total of 3 times.
Dungeons, a mainstay in Zelda, are ridiculous in TP for many reasons. Wind Waker gave dungeon scenarios where you would explore a destroyed interior of a volcano consisting of broken bridges, realistically placed switches and interesting bosses. Even when the WW dungeons felt almost like obstacle courses, the game explained that it was a test of your endurance.
TP feels dated by comparison, its dungeons are placed in the obligatory Forest temple, lava filled Goron area, and underwater Zora temple. However this is no Ocarina. The Forest temple is a blatant obstacle course built around the use of the gale boomerang, its as though its intended purpose was never as a place of worship. the Goron Mines were far from clever, the placement of switches in areas only reachable by use of the Iron boots shows almost laziness on the part of the developers. The Zora temple is by far the least believable, no sentient being would build a temple with a single rotating stairway and call it a place of worship. TP feels very dated compared to the physical puzzles of Half Life 2 or Wind Wakers clever areas (Forsaken Fortress anyone?).
Then there's the bosses. Ocarina, Majora, and Wind Waker all had excellent boss encounters, Ocarina's Ghoma set the pace for the game and kept it going (Dodongo, Barinade, Phantom Ganon, VOLVAGIA! etc.) and Majora's Mask was intense (Odolwa, the insane Goht fight, Twinmold!) and Wind Waker's easy but entertaining fights all put Twilight Princess's to shame.
The Bosses, while large, are never threatening, and all of them tend to be more puzzle oriented rather than action oriented requiring you to solve their weakness which involves the use of the item hidden in the temple. One encounter (arbiter's grounds) even had the potential to be up to the standards set by its predecessors, but its rinky dink music almost makes me feel like I'm listening to a fisher price commercial while trying to be a badass.
The end game almost makes up for the - almost painful - journey Link's been on, but the key word is "almost", when discussing Zelda, its really a sum of its parts, and this one shows that either Aunoma can't make an Ocarina of Time clone, or that Nintendo should NEVER listen to its fans as the journey is dull, poorly paced, and at times simply ludicrous.
I can't believe I camped out for this.