There was nothing wrong with the amount of items. The problem was the way in which they were used. Look at the Ocarina of Time and Major's Mask for example. Both had a plethora of items that were used various times in each dungeon. Twilight Princess's items all had rather specific uses, and it seemed more like "find item, use item, disregard item", which made the game less interesting than past Zeldas.
As for what I'm looking for in the next Zelda, I'm hoping that they make the world more seamless. They were getting there with TP, but things for the most were still partitioned into obvious parts. In past Zeldas, you KNEW when you entered a dungeon. You KNEW when you got to the boss. With TP, this changed somewhat with the early areas surrounding Faron Woods, but the rest of the game still had a rather obvious layout.
In the next Zelda, I'm hoping that it's not so obvious that you're in a dungeon. I'm also hoping that the layout of the dungeons won't follow obvious formulas.
One idea that I had I actually stole from Shadow of the Colossus somewhat. Let's say you're wandering through a dungeon, and when you get to the "end" (you find the boss key, w/e), the dungeon would suddenly wake up! ...and it would turn out that you were actually ON the boss. You'd then have to figure out how to defeat him.







