Wind Waker was piss easy, the sailing was boring as shit, and the triforce quest made me vomit. That's the trifecta of human excrement right there. If it weren't for the graphics, the music, and maybe half of the dungeons, I wouldn't have liked it. The charm only made up for so much. Oh, and the final boss. That fight was more amazing than that game deserved.
LttP is the definitive Zelda template, and pretty much every game since has copied it. It also made sure not to repeat puzzles. How many times do you light all the torches or shoot all the eyeballs or hold down switches with statues in modern zeldas? Those things each happened once, and the game never swung the camera around the room to tell you what to do. It was the perfect balance between Zelda 1's "You NEED a strategy guide to beat this" and the later games' "HEY WE'RE JUST GOING TO MAKE THE CAMERA SHOVE THESE THINGS IN YOUR FACE. HMMMMMMMMM THAT MIRROR LOOKS LIKE IT MIGHT REFLECT LIGHT OR SOMETHING!" Also, I remember all the dungeon names, because I'm not a jerk
Link's Awakening is another fantastic one because not only is nothing spelled out for you, but all of the items are absolutely critical to navigating the entire world, like in Metroid. It's not like Twilight Princes where you'll never use the fucking Spinner after the Desert Temple. You'll be stopped right in the middle of a trail because you don't have the boots to do a running leap. But the dungeons weren't very varied, you know; they were actually more repetitive since there were a limited number of colors/tiles to work with. The only standouts are the Eagle's Tower (fucking pillars) and Turtle Rock (fucking lava).
Semirelated, but I just ordered a lithograph and signed art book from the Alice: Madness Returns website. The art is the only thing pushing me through that game's tedium.