punishment!!!
now really you'll be prrtty bashed here

A Nintendo fan doesn't have to love every franchise they made.

I don't like Metroid Prime btw. :X

Zelda & Mario you can't dislike them. How can you be a NINTENDO fan if you dislike this two franchises.
I think it's impossible.

Hating Zelda and loving Nintendo is an oxymoron.

That's not an oxymoron. It's more like a paradox

Zelda and Animal Crossing are my Nintendo top franchises.

Even I love Zelda, OOT and TP was my favourites, followed closely by Wind Waker (even if you don't like it's graphics style, it does grow on you).

I like Zelda a lot, especially Ocarina of Time cos of it's a big, almost open-world, but sadly I never finished it. I got stuck too many times, didn't have a guide or walk-through so I became frustrated and quit about halfways when I was stuck in a dungeon.

I was going to pick it up again a few years later with an internet walk-through available, but then for some reason the old game-save wasn't left on my N64 anymore.

How open or linear are Windwaker & Twiligte Princess compared to OOT?

I yet to play twligt Princess. Though wind waker not much liner. After you beat 2nd dugeon the game is your to explore.
Though how you get to places is liner. They tell you where to go most've of the time.

Like I said, just about every AAA game out there has surpassed Zelda's exploration and sense of discovery, but you really only need to look at one dev team to see just how far behind the Zelda team is. Team ICO blew by team Zelda last generation when it comes to exploration and sense of discovery.

Bad gameplay mechanics in TWW and TP? Huh... how about having to use the Wind Waker every minute in TWW to change the wind or control your partner? Good gameplay mechanic: Press A button and switch back and forth between controlling your partner. Bad gameplay mechanic: pull out the Wind Waker, play a song, watch a mini cutscene. Good gameplay mechanic: Sail in any direction regardless of the wind. Bad gameplay mechanic: pull out the Wind Waker, play a song, watch a mini cutscene.The Wind Waker itself was quite useless, unless you think it's super innovative to change the wind direction to use your Deku Leaf to hover over to another little island (why not just use a Cucco? That's all the Deku Leaf really is, a portable Cucco). More bad gameplay mechanics? I've seen many new players get frustrated with the horrible stealth sequence early in the game. Also, I'm sorry, but TWW's sailing grid with copy-pasted islands and towers compared to the open continental worlds of Skies of Arcadia? LOL.

For Twilight Princess, the entire Twilight realm was a horrible idea with poor implementation. Collecting light seeds was dull, no matter how you try to spin it I can't recall many fans saying it was a fun, worthwhile task. It broke the flow of the game, it wasn't fun, it didn't offer any new and exciting gameplay mechanics, it was a scripted mess. The Twilight realm limits what the player can do and where they can explore, it also lead to a wholly linear experience until you're a good 15-20 hours into the game.

With regards to Mario, the Mario games have an an astounding amount of variety within them, each game has been quite different from it's predecessor, while still retaining the core gameplay mechanics. The 2-d Mario games are nothing alike, and the 3-d games are quite different too. The different power ups, FLUDD, the usage of gravity in Galaxy, the Wii pointer, etc. Not to mention that the Mario team has greatly improved gameplay, and provided a large amount of variety of it too. Galaxy levels are completely different from Mario 64 levels.

I only despise the direction Zelda has gone in, which is no direction. Overloading myself? Nope, I still regularly play every game before the Gamecube generation, and I still love them, it's only the newer games that I don't touch (other than Minish Cap, I love that game, very original and unique). I don't expect Zelda to be the best at everything it does, that's like expecting GTA to be the best at everything, but I do expect it to be a bit of a "jack of all trades" type of game, which it most certainly isn't, not anymore.