Just finished Link's Awakening for the first time a couple of days ago. I'd give it an 8/10. I'm tempted to give it a 7/10, because the final boss was so terrible that it left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but overall I enjoyed the game.
My favorite Zelda's are the NES/SNES ones and this is the only Zelda from that era that I'd never played. In the end it is not of the caliber of the first 3, but I still enjoyed myself. What I really want from a Zelda game is an open-world action RPG experience, and I got a lot of that from Link's Awakening. However it had even more of a puzzle-type feel than Link to the Past, and I really don't like puzzles in my Zelda games. So the game was a step in the wrong direction, but it had enough of that old school feel that it was still fun overall.