It was certainly the most disappointing Zelda, it is sort of the Zelda equivalent to Mario Sunshine - not a bad game, but not of the high standards usually demanded of the series.
Where it lacked was in the fun-factor zone, the game had a few fun things to do, but the other Zelda games were generally always fun - except maybe Windwaker which also had a few really strange portions, like collecting 17 triforce pieces by sailing all over the place and lowering a crane -. There were lots of uninteresting portions in the game, particularly the part where you had to turn into the dog to sniff around things, and collecting 10-40 of these weird moon tear things before you could enter dungeons; that is ultimately what drove me away from the game, as soon as I saw that I had to do that YET AGAIN before the Sky Temple, I put the game down and almost thought the time of great Zelda games was over.
I don't think Twilight Princess is terrible compared to mostly all other similar games, because I tend to put them down too when I see such mechanics; but when I think of Zelda, I think of a game series that should always be the best of the action adventure genre, and Twilight Princess wasn't.
For those who are saying it is too much like Ocarina of Time, this isn't correct: Ocarina of Time had better locations, better side characters, no dog-mode, better dungeon design, and is just a whole lot more fun-focused that Twilight Princess which seems to sacrifice fun for making things wider and take longer to do. The advantages Twilight Princess has over Ocarina of Time are few, and are essentially in certain sub-weapon functionalities, better horse battling, and more polygons (but Ocarina of Time had a better art style, Twilight Princess was quite drab).
The biggest problems I felt with Twilight Princess were monotonous tasks (involving moon tears and doing tasks with the dog), the world and dungeons were stretched out too much without really much more to do (just bigger space to cross); it just ultimately felt like they fluffed the game up, they put a 10-15 hour game into a 50 hour package. Now, I am not saying that other games don't do this (it's true, most adventure games do) - I am saying that Nintendo games generally don't do this. This Zelda game epitomized the Gamecube era, it was filler.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
