Wolfox

You keep writing "OoC" and I keep thinking "Ocarina of Crime"...

OoT was a big thing back in the days that did a whole lot of completely new things, but it admittedly hasn't aged too well. As you said the later games did a lot of games better, although I feel that few if any of them managed to pull off the complete package that well.

The Water Temple is a bit of a downside, but even that gets a lot less worse once you're familiar with it.

True, it was the first one (even if I played the remake), but in my mind, that doesn't make it immune to criticism. There are glaring flaws (as mentioned above) in it that when the game gets mentioned rarely if ever get mentioned (outside of I guess the Water Temple and Navi). And for the Remake, not having an Aiming Reticule is probably an outright crime in some regards. I'll say it again, I really like the game. but when comparing it to literally all other 3D Zelda games... it's lacking. speaking of, I found another big issue: the Switching from Adult to Child Link. Guess you gotta go back to the Temple of Time every damn time for what reason again?

Also, I'm gonna make even fewer friends here, but I greatly dislike certain character designs in OoT (lemme type it right this time. oops for the times I didn't) but I guess that's just to blame on the N64's rendering capabilities

Hm, from what you've written here your three main issues with the game seem to be long travel distances on foot, no aiming reticule and the Water Temple?

I guess Hyrule Field is the main area that could be called too big and empty. there's actually quite a number of things hidden there, but a lot of them are hidden grottos which don't do anything to fix it being "empty". If we were to make it smaller we'd also have to consider that it still needs to be engaging to ride through on Epona. In any case, child Link only ever spends about one or two minutes at once through the Fields on the path the story takes you through, so I don't feel like it's really a big deal that hurts the game. It's also a series about exploration, so having areas too small to hide secrets in would be boring. (side note: if you actually went from Death Mountain to Kokiri Forest through Hyrule Fields then that's your own fault - there's a perfectly serviceable shortcut to the Lost Woods right there in Goron City.)

It's actually interesting to me that you're pointing out TP and SS as having done that better when they're probably the games in the series most criticised for having hub areas that are far too big and empty. travelling through there on horse or bird might be faster than in OoT, but the areas are also much bigger.

the Water Temple is what it is; it's infamous and with good reason. At least you didn't have to bring up the pause menu every time you need to switch Boots like we did on the N64.
Can't really understand what your hangup with the aiming is. I never had any trouble aiming in Oo or MM; I actually prefer the aiming in those games to that in SS though that might just be because Motion Controls.

There are many wonky designs, yeah, but that's just side characters. the actually important characters are all reasonably well designed. If you're wondering what they'd look like without any vechnical limivations, then the Wikis should have artworks for all of them.