Just completed the game and it was a joy. I have some very minor complaints: I swear they added extra downtime when chests/keys appear or when picking up certain key items that wasn't there in the original. For that matter, I'm pretty sure keys dropped and chests appeared without stopping the gameplay before, so what happened here?
It's also very odd that this is strictly an eight-way movement game but you can only move with the control stick. They let you use the d-pad in menus, and it's even the only way to change floors when looking at a dungeon map, so why can't you move with it? I swear dashing/aiming can be finicky at times because of it. Speaking of dashing, why can't we dash diagonally if we can now aim weapons diagonally? Would it just break the game too much if we could?
Also Link getting his sword back in the original was cooler, the spin attack killed all nearby enemies in that cutscene, but not here. Tiny complaint, but still something I noticed.
Apart from that... and from this angry rant I dropped about chamber dungeons... This is a fantastic remake. The graphics are absolute perfection, they really do complement the atmosphere of the original game. It's a direct upgrade, although I'm almost certain some of the enemy models were just ripped directly from A Link Between Worlds and given minor touch-up. But it's such a joy to look at, even with the occasional choppy framerate. Would honestly love to see more remakes in something similar, just tweaked to match the style of the game being remade. Will we finally get our Zelda 1 remake?
I guess if there's only one other flaw I can mention, it's that it's admittedly sometimes hard to see south entryways in caves and dungeons. Only tripped me up a little bit, but the perspective made it slightly trickier than it did with the original sprite work. But otherwise, I highly enjoyed the upgraded art assets, especially that intro animation. Would love to see something like that return in future games... Hell, topdown Zelda games with animated cutscenes? It'd be ambitious but I'd love it.
So... yeah. I love the original game so much and this is just the definitive version. I'll admit not all of the music remixes are winners, and some small changes raise an eyebrow, but if I'm recommending this game to someone, it'd be this version. Especially a newer player, who might not have the patience for some of the quirks of the original's ancient engine. I'll also admit maybe $60 is a bit steep, but only because of the Crash and Spyro trilogy remakes being $40, so it's really uneven. Without that example, I would honestly call it fair, simply because it's still a decent length and clearly all the effort that went into this remake. I had a great time, and if all future Zelda remakes have as much effort put into them as this? Well, I'm certainly on board with more.