Twilight Princess tries too hard to be something it isn't and stumbles along the way.
The only problem is that it's not.
Story - Twilight Princess' story is stuck. Very stuck. Stuck between trying to be complex and deep and trying to fit in with your typical children action fantasy cartoon. It loses much of its charm in this juggle; the two types of storyline are not meant to coexist. In addition, Nintendo never strays from the typical fantasy epic material. Twilight Princess' story doesn't take any risks and as a result, it's predictable from the get-go.
Graphics - Caught somewhere between cutting edge and downright atrocious. Many areas of the game - mainly the smaller ones - are lush and detailed; amazing effects and presentation, but the larger ones - such as Hyrule Field - are bleak and barren; covered with nothing but flat low resolution textures. There's no detail props to be found; it looks as though they were lifted straight from a Nintendo64 game. The Twilight Realm portions of the game have inspired art direction, but they're more often that not very plan as well and not very interesting.
Audio - The music in Twilight Princess is just there. There's not much to it; none of it is truly rousing, but it does it's job and sets the mood. Most of it is synthesized, so you're not going to see anything drastically different here. As for effects, they suffer the same fate as the music. They're passable, but none of it really sounds big. Large machines just hum along; there's nothing opposing sounding.
Gameplay - Twilight Princess' gameplay score is helped along by Link's wolf form. Combat in wolf form is only marginally more difficult than what it is in Hylian form. In Hylian form, most of Link's movement is standard Zelda fare; sword combat is passable, but gratingly easy. Dungeons don't have much depth; they consist of getting from this room to that room and flipping a switch or opening a chest. A few of them have a few small twists, like the magnetic walls int he Goron Mines, but these are few and between.
Overall - Twilight Princess tumbles trying to be something that it isn't and pays for it. The story destroys any charm juggling it's plot points and loses a lot of momentum when it tries to sound profound and fails. The graphics and audio are far from what we've seen in GameCube games in the past and serve only to establish Hyrule as existing, but don't attempt to bring it to life. The gameplay adds a few small twists to the Zelda formula, but they're not enough to prevent Twilight Princess from becoming mundane and tedious by game's end.