Just finished my first playthrough of SS. Solid title but nothing great aside from the 1:1 swordplay and the more fleshed out story. Overall, I liked it a lot more than TP but my expectations heading into each probably played a large factor in my enjoyment of both games. My hype for TP was through the roof since I had played the other 3D Zelda games for the first time in the few years prior to TP. Whereas, my expectations for SS was low after being disappointed by TP.
The Silent Realm sections were a big improvement over the wolf tears sections in TP, especially since they weren't thrown at you in the beginning, making a slow start to the game even worse. Creating the urgency to evade the guardians during the fetch quest made things more interesting. OTOH, it was disappointing that they didn't fully fix the issues with dialog boxes explaining every item to you each time you loaded the game. TP did that with items and rupees while SS only does that with item drops. Apparently, that was fixed in the TP HD remaster? Don't know how Nintendo couldn't figure out that was annoying by the time SS was made.
Fi was annoying (and is probably worse on subsequent playthroughs) but it didn't quite ruin the experience for me. Again, not playing a Zelda game in 8 or 9 years probably allowed me to overlook that part of the experience more easily.
MM > OoT > WW >= SS > TP as far as the 3D titles go
Time to order a copy of BoTW
