I looked up some of the monsters and wow, the art in this game is something else. Not just the monsters, the environment designs and characters too. It's kinda sad that the gameplay doesn't live up to it.

@sirconnie Thank you! I'm happy you liked it! I'm also happy to hear I'm not the only one who stumbled upon this hiccup.

Phenomenal review. I have this pet peeve about people cherry-picking characteristics of Zelda to try and force it to fit into a genre (calling it an RPG, in particular), and I think I'm going to steal that line "every game is basically Zelda, because Zelda is basically every game" since it encapsulates the series so elegantly.

It's a very hard game to get nowadays, but if it ever gets a port, do consider trying the 3DS remake, the one with the "corrections" by Aonuma. It changes a lot about the game. Your mention of boss battles was what brought it to mind because those were extensively reworked to become more elaborate and to tie to each other using motifs of the main antagonist. And yet, a lot of people despise the remake. Myself, I find the remake refreshing, like a different flavor of this classic game I adore. I wonder what your feelings on it would be.