Interesting hearing the comments of someone on his first play through this game. I beat it on gamecube(60 hours+) then again on wii(40 hours+).

This. And for the regular enemies, they don't need to deal more damage per hit, they should just give them the ability to perform combos instead of a single strike every 8 seconds!

I wouldn't have said the OoT bosses are more challenging than the TP ones (in general). Perhaps people are getting that impression because OoT was the first game many people played like that, and the people playing TP are generally made up of people who played OoT in the past (or games that have taken a similar formula) and are thus wise enough to know what to expect.
WindWaker bosses are definately less challenging though... In part I would guess it's because it's much easier to control the camera, which can occasionally be an issue when the L/Z-target system is also the only thing that allows the player to control the camera. In fact after the initial playthrough I don't think I really enjoy any of the WW bossfights apart from Jalhalla and the final Ganondorf battle.

I think I might get Monster Hunter Tri, I am not a big fan of the ridiculous amount of levelling up and "grinding" that games like it involve, in part because I tend to get sucked in for too long till I realise I am spending hours repeating the same thing over and over for little reward, but I mostly hear good about MHTri.

I would also like to put forward that Okami has a couple of pretty epic boss battles that have a similar "Zelda 3d boss" formula but still manage to be challenging (namely the 9 tailed fox and the final battle against the sphere thing) although I have only gone through them twice, perhaps if I repeated them as much as I have in Zelda games they would get mundane too.

It was my first time against that boss, at the beginnig I didn't know what was his weak point and I got some hits. I looked at my hearts and I only lose one and a half or two at most! They are definitely less challenging than Ocarina. Like I said, the game was designed so it's almost impossible to die unless you really suck!

I agree for the most part but I would like to see regular enemies do a little bit more damage. Also they need to cut back on the number of bottles and reduce the effectiveness of potions.

Hmm, well ok. In both OoT and TP I don't tend to count the hearts I lose from boss attacks because there is no need... at least not when I am an explorer and hoarder, by the time I go against bosses that could be tricky I have found 2-3 additional hearts on top of the extras from defeating bosses, and due to the vases outside boss rooms I am always at full health on starting the fight. As such there is so much health there is little difference between TP and OoT boss damage, as the outcome is the same. The reason I thought WW was easier is that the bosses are generally quicker.

On hearing that description you have put me off MH again, I may pick it up in future (not as if there are any new games to look forward to after LoZ:SS) but I still have some older games I have not picked up that I would like to get first (Trackmania, Galaxy 2, Sky Crawlers and perhaps Conduit 2 being the ones I would like more than MHTri atm)

As for Okami I don't actually remember fighting the bosses at the end again tbh, is that before or after fighting the sphere thing? I don't think I can even remember all the bosses... There was the 9 tailed fox thing on the roof of some kind of castle, and at the top of a Japanese temple I think I fought the woman who became the fox (did she become it during that fight?) I also recall fighting 8 (or 9?) small foxes in the mouth of a whale or something. And also the final battle (which I think the first time took me about 40 minutes [including restarting the fight due to dying]) but there must have been more than 4 bosses.

As a make my way through Twilight Princess, I going to go on and say that Zelda's dungeons are actually devoid of puzzles nowadays. I mean really. Lighting torches to open a door or make a treasure chest appear, or stepping on floor switches to make doors open, or putting statues or blocks over floor switches to keep them suppressed so the door will stay open isn't really a puzzle to me. I understand that, these things are series staples and very obvious to the Zelda vet - yet Twilight Princess is full of these types of "puzzles".

I think other old-school action/RPGs like Alundra really did a great job with having well thought-out (and challenging) puzzles - much more ingenious than many of the puzzles we find in a Zelda game (though I'd have to play it again to really be sure - I'm going strictly off of memory here). I think Zelda's dungeons are more challenging due to it's well thought out layouts. i.e. knowing exactly which room is directly overtop of you or below you (most of ALttP's challenge stemmed from this mechanic), figuring out how a change made in one part of the dungeon effects other parts of the dungeon (good example would be the pillar in OoT's Fire Temple, raising water levels in OoT's Water Temple, or flipping Rockvale in MM), etc.

That's a fair assessment, I think. I wouldn't say there is a problem though. While there is a general reliance on quasi-puzzle tropes, the games do tend to create a slew of genuine puzzles from their overarching mechanics + dungeon items. What I like about these instances that that they often introduced a simple puzzle-principle (preferably with a performative edge) and then expand upon them laterally. The most famous example is probably the Magic Mirror + Light/Dark World relationship in ALttP. Twilight Princess doesn't have many instances of this kind of design, though.

I hadn't considered Xenoblade at all, the JRPG genre has never piqued my interest, although having not ever played one (well, maybe 10 minutes of Pokemon if that counts as one) I don't really know much about them at all.

    By now you're probably in the Snowpeak Ruins. I beat the miniboss there in one hit (I'll tell you how i did it after you fight it). From the Skyward Sword previews I've read and watched, I can tell they are addressing this issue and making the minibosses and bosses tougher but I'm still concerned because it looks like the regular enemies are still as stupid as ever. This takes out all the fun of fighting a horde of about a dozen enemies, which hardly ever happens in 3d zelda anyway. In the snowpeak ruins, you do get to fight these ice warriors that can actually give you trouble, much like regular enemies in most other 3d adventure games!