This game shows that getting lost can be fun! It also shows that it can be extremely frustrating. If you want to play it the old-fashioned way, you should get out some graph paper (or a square-aligned Excel spreadsheet). If you just want to enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay without the frustration of having no idea where to go next, I highly recommend the Metroid + Saving patch, which adds save files and a map feature, but still a very authentic experience of the game, unlike Zero Mission, which is a from-the-ground-up redesign of this game.

A big change from Zelda 1, but starts to be a lot of fun after the second dungeon or thereabouts. It's very difficult, but that is normally not to its detriment. The only exceptions, in my view, are some of the puzzles which require you to find hidden spots in the overworld, and which sometimes utilize mechanics the game doesn't even teach you about. If you're really truly stuck trying to find something in the overworld, I would recommend you look it up, it probably won't detract from the experience.
The dungeons, especially towards the end, are a really fun challenge. Get out a pen and paper and draw yourself a map! It's a great experience which you don't get in many games nowadays.

When I get really into a game, I will tend to play it for a couple of hours a day. When I get really into a book, it dominates my life for several days until it’s finished.
Danganronpa was more like the latter for me. I just had to keep playing; I had to know what happened next.
The gameplay is very simplistic and extremely easy, but it’s not really there to facilitate robust interactions with the world; it’s there to force you to think about the mysteries and try and figure out what’s going on. The fact that the murders are so interesting to solve make this very effective. I always wanted to figure everything out before the trial started, and sometimes I managed to figure out most of it.
In some ways, the story is a little disappointing. It manages to land in some common pitfalls, and the ending is very open, but I was very happy with all the murders that are solved along the way, and the way clues about the overarching story are peppered in along the way.
I never really got visual novels before I played this game, and now I can see why they’re viable. It makes you feel like you’re part of the story in a way that traditional novels don’t.
It does make me yearn for a similar story where your choices actually make a significant impact on the events of the game. What if befriending a character could prevent them from committing murder? Could you create a system which allowed you to solve the murder in a way which isn’t railroaded like in this one? What about a game where you could plan and execute a murder, and had to try and get rid of the evidence?
The promise of the game is strong, so I’d love to see if there are other games which take this formula in some other directions.

(Review of the original NDS version, which didn't include the flow chart feature)
The puzzles are fun, if a little too simple.
The concept at the center of the story is great, but good luck getting all the endings to see the whole story. There's really no logic to which actions lead to which endings, so you'd better just look it up.
The gap between the gameplay and the great premise is the most disappointing thing for me.
More detail and comparison to Danganronpa on my blog.

A true delight.
It takes the formula of "A Link to the Past" and perfectly reinterprets it for handheld.
Every Dungeon is fun and interesting, and even though they may take a while, never drag.
The addition of the Roc's Feather makes a surprisingly big difference; the movement felt more fluid and fun than any previous game.
The world and story, while bite-sized, had a surprising emotional depth, and I still wonder what the ramifications the Wind Fish has on Zelda lore.
Last of all the wonderful soundtrack ties it all together perfectly.
I don't have much to say about its shortcomings. There are maybe one or two points where the puzzles are a little unclear, and it would be nice to have more buttons to map items to, but overall, the game is nearly flawless.
I've probably rated it higher than some other Zelda games which I think are better games, but I had so much fun with it that I couldn't rate it objectively.

Neat little game. Doesn't really meet the standards of modern puzzle games, e.g. some of the levels are frustratingly hard to pull of consistently due to the dependence on somewhat unpredictable enemy AI, level difficulty really jumps all over the place, and the game could be improved a lot just by adding a different sprite for the framers which give you ammunition and by letting you know how many framers you need to activate powers.
That being said, it's overall pretty fun, and some of the levels have interesting solutions, especially a lot of the ones involving Medusas. I wish I had this game as a child, I think I would have enjoyed it. It was very interesting to go back in time to some early puzzle games and see some of the people trying to experiment with what variations you could make to the sokoban formula.

While it might not have been as fun as previous entries, it makes up for this in immersion.
A cinematic experience unlike any game beforehand, you are drawn into a world that feels real.
I'd like to study the history of 3D games leading up to and following OoT, but I wouldn't be surprised if I discovered that just about every 3D game following it owes it for its advances to gameplay and immersive storytelling.
I recommend you play this game after having a grounding in the history of games leading up to this point. Make a list of games you want to play on NES, SNES, and N64, and play them in chronological order.

Coming off the back of Ocarina of Time, it took me a little while to get what this game was doing.
It starts out very slowly, and takes quite a while to get to any traditional Zelda gameplay. Zelda games up to this point had carved out a pretty particular niche for themselves, and this game differed so much from that in the first few hours that it might be argued that it doesn't qualify as a Zelda game.
What it does qualify as is a brilliant game. The entire experience feels more full than Ocarina. Every sidequest feels worth doing for its own sake, just to help people out. The dungeons, while fewer, utilise more interesting and unique mechanics.
The masks don't merely replace the functionality of the tunics from OoT, they supersede them. Each of the transformations have multiple different abilities, including major additions to movement. And that's only the three major masks.
The ocarina is (ironically) much more useful in MM, rupees actually feel useful and important (and sometimes, scarce), the world is filled with all sorts of interesting and fun challenges, etc.
All that is to say, this game is a major improvement on its predecessor. I don't know if I can think of a single thing that I like more about OoT.
I highly recommend this game to everyone. Possibly my favourite Zelda game so far.

A beautiful game, and incredibly polished. This is probably the first game in the series that wouldn't alienate modern audiences.
That being said, it was much too easy. I beat the game without dying (although I did need bottled fairies a couple of times), and I didn't feel particularly accomplished for having completed any part of it.
As a result, I had to find my enjoyment less in the combat and more in the world. Solving mysteries and problems around the world is at times tedious, but most often fun.
All this said, despite some quibbles, I love this game for all of the ways it changes the Zelda formula: the new art style, the story, and the open world.

A visually beautiful adventure platformer. The story was handled a little clumsily, but the abstract imagery used for most of the game kept me interested up until near the end.
I understand the game was trying to tell a story in the real world, but I kinda wish more stories were willing to respect the fantasy worlds they construct rather than simply making everything a metaphor for something else.
I think that fans of Limbo and Inside will find a lot to love about this game, even with its drawbacks.