An amazing game, full of invention and fun puzzles, and if a flat difficulty curve is the trade off then so be it for me. Mark's point about how dungeon puzzles can only be tailor-made for one specific item and nothing else is interesting, though I can't say I was particularly bothered by that at the time.
It's similar to Breath of the Wild, in that it's very difficult to combine free-form exploration AND a good narrative/structure. There are trade offs to creating a game both linearly and open ended.
Still adored ALBW though, my only real issue was the rehashed overworld.