It does? If you're talking about the hint system, that's as ridiculous as people complaining about any other super guide implementation or rewind in Forza. It's an optional and unintrusive help mechanic designed specifically for people who are stuck and aren't that good at games or interested on thinking that hard.
I played ALTTP before ALBW and honestly, the difficulty isn't that different, ALBW is slightly easier but nothing major.
It's very rare that the challenge in any particular puzzle is about what item to use, while the new item system didn't allow for many multi item puzzles and that reduced their complexity, there were actually many puzzles where you could either use a non mandatory item or an object in the dungeon, like bomb flowers. The wall mechanic alone asked for some out of the box thinkig.
No post ALTTP Zelda game is hard for an experienced player, TP has reasonably complex and challenging dungeons (and ridiculously easy combat), ST has some very tough puzzles and SS has the hardest combat of any 3D Zelda (and I don't mean just because the control method is hard for some) by far.
Zelda games aren't supposed to be super hard, they just have to provide a reasonable challenge to keep the player interested. Of course, some people consider anything less than Ninja Gaiden hard insultingly easy.
I do wish Hero mode was always available from the start though, as it makes the games
very interesting for someone experienced, but I realize that Zelda isn't geared only for the hardcore. Zelda I and II are the only ones that are really hard and that's because that's just how games were made back then, game design was at a different point.
