The first game in the much loved series is flawed in only one way, with unecessarily cryptic exploration.
Now I firmly believe that this game is one of the best that has ever been made. It set the standard for the fantasy genre and so many games benefited from this one. I want to meet the creator of this game and shake his hand, but I also would like to ask him what in the world he was thinking.
This game is without a doubt the hardest game I have ever played. I've been at it about 20+ hours, relentlessly fighting my way through dungeons, and trying my best to figure out the game without using a guide.
The one and only problem with this game is the difficulty. I can understand the combat difficulty, and I think it's appropriate, but the problem is that you will never find half of the items in this game without a guide. Using dungeon level 5 as a great example of the ridiculous secrets in this game, to continue through the dungeon yo have to bomb a whole in the wall. So out of hundreds of squards on the grid, in a dungeon containing probably 25 rooms, they expect you to know to bomb one particular spot.
I played 4 hours alone trying to get the recorder item from dungeon level 5, which I had learned the location of via a gamefaqs guide.
It's a wonder anyone ever completed this game so many years ago, with the unecessary amount of cryptic secrets there are. Every fan of this game will say stuff like "well you should explore more" or "test each item out and see what they do and eventually you'll just figure everything out". None of this is true. This game defines cryptic.
I would love to recommend this to any Zelda fan. Everyone should play the first game in the series that captured the hearts of so many people. At the same time I can't recommend it to anyone because the game cannot be beaten without extensive guide reading.