People hate Phantom hourglass because of the Ocean temple, despite the entire POINT of the ocean temple being improving your ability to skip most of it the next run. By the midpoint of the game, you can get to the midpoint of the ocean temple in a minute, without using any tricks. It's a speedrun integrated into a mainstream game that doesn't require stupid precision to be good at.
Meanwhile it had incredible music, looked really good, the combat was a great fusion of 2D simplicity with the openness and flexibility of Windwaker, the boss fights were fun and felt "Big", boat customization was great, the world was huge, writing directly on your map is a wonderful feature, the characters were lovely, I just don't understand the hate it gets.
I feel like a lot of people wanted it to be a 3D zelda game and that's why they were upset. 2D zeldas and 3D zeldas are basically two different franchises.
