Twilight Princess simply came at the right time. There was this fake trailer of link fighting ganondorf and we ended up getting Wind Waker. At the time many gamers felt they got the ol Bait and Switch.
Then TP gets shown and people loose their minds. It finally was the mature Zelda game fans always wanted. The kids who grew up in the 90s finally got a Zelda game that aged with them. It is dark, graphically stunning for the time. For the first time Link did a “finisher” with his stabbing downward lunge attack. The wolf parts were meh but that was a small price to pay.