Endlessly delightful and replayable. The art style and music are super charming. The real star, though, is the gameplay. The game is constantly asking you to make quick decisions while jumping, and with a high combo or low life, getting too greedy could be your undoing. This high-risk, high-reward state is surprisingly nail-biting for a mobile game. It can be frustrating, but it is ultimately on you. And pulling off some whacky maneuvers, bouncing from pot to enemy to cannon, makes me feel like a god among juice-making dinosaur things.

It's been a while since I started, so my memory of specifics is a little hazy. This is indeed a great game at times, but a lot of outdated design decisions really hold it back for me.
I came to accept that I would never find some secrets without using a guide and decided to just go with the flow. I mostly succeeded and had a fun time exploring and clearing dungeons. Still, sometimes, if you didn't talk to a specific, missable npc, you would have no idea where a required item is (ice rod, for example).
The combat is nothing to write home about. It's pretty basic and button mashy, and link doesn't control super well. The shield is interesting... though I never got much intentional use out of it.
The art, music, and dialogue are all super charming and definitely the highlight of the game for me. Hyrule feels so whimsical! Even the dark world has goofy npcs.
I also have to give a shoutout to the environmental puzzles in this game. Using the mirror to teleport between the dark and light world to reach new locations is brilliant. You see a pattern on the ground or a location that is out of reach and think "Hey, what does this look like in the other world?" It led to a lot of aha moments for me.
Near the end, though, is where the game started to really grind my gears. The last two dungeons are eyewateringly difficult. I just had to buy potions and tank a lot of the damage. All the eye lasers and bottomless pits gave me PTSD. And when I ran out of rupees for potions, grinding them was too slow to do reasonably. I ended up having to look up where to get rupees quickly. And without the save state feature on the 3ds virtual console so I could save at bosses, I would have quit the game long ago. Some rooms in the final dungeons really felt like they just crammed every obstacle they could fit into each room just to make it impossible. It felt very unfair.
A good game, but wasn't quite worth the hype for me. Maybe I am just less tolerant of the bullshit because I didn't grow up playing games like that.

I played this in the Legacy Collection on PS. A fun romp that I beat in a few hours. Some archaic design decisions by today's standards, but I can see why it is a classic. Great music and super charming sprite work for the NES era. I love the enemy designs and collecting new abilities. Game constantly flip-flops between super easy and super hard for me. Of course, I liberally used the rewind button on the legacy collection. Would have been very annoyed with high-damage enemy attacks and instant deaths otherwise. The game takes the weaknesses of the robot masters very seriously. Using the move they are weak against absolutely obliterates them in most cases. The final boss is also super hard without cheese. Each energy ball is nearly impossible to dodge because of MM's big square hitbox and they take a quarter of your health. Best solution for the second phase is to go in with full health and just tank the attacks while spamming the upwards metal man blades. Not the most engaging gameplay there. And the fact the final final boss can only be damaged by the bubble attack of all things and not even the normal blaster is bizarre. It is like they want you to waste time trying every move and then dying. Thank god for the rewind. I know they had to stretch out the game time back then, though. Overall, I enjoyed it!