Completed Zelda 3 (A Link to the Past) and got a bit more than half way through Zelda 4 (Link's Awakening).
These were the last two Zeldas where Tezuka was listed as the director, before the reins were handed over to Eiji Aounuma.
Zelda 3 tightens the "search" aspect of the search-action formula established in Zelda 1 (which itself was iterating on Druaga) to something more self-contained and less social. Social in the broad sense which ofc. includes the derogatory, cynical sense of selling guide books and hotline game help services, as well as the more positive sense of players sharing the games' secrets with each other through word of mouth, effectively making finding the keys for the games' progress gates a mass collaboration exercise. That is to say that in Zelda 1 (and 2, for that matter), following in the footsteps of Druaga's explicit game design as attested to by its developers, effectively, farmed out the task of bombing, pushing, pulling, lighting on fire etc. each tile in the game to thousands of people. Not so in Zelda 3. In Zelda 3, there are clear visual indicators for which items may be used for which objects, patterns of navigation to reach places from one part of a screen which cannot be reached from the other, and clear textual hints for longer interaction chains involving NPCs.
On the other hand, the action part of search-action was loosened considerably, by the introduction of larger, scrollable areas. These relatively vast, sparsely inhabited fields to a large extent (but not completely) replaced Zelda 1's compact, densely populated, close quarters, single screen dodge 'em or kill 'em arenas. This is especially true for the overworld, which loses some of its character as an "outer dungeon" to make room for towns and NPCs.
No steps are taken to solve fundamental contradiction of action RPGs (in the strict definition of RPGs as numbers go up games), which is that the better the player is in making their numbers go up, the more unimportant action becomes. In fact, this contradiction is exasperated by the overworld becoming less dangerous due to sparsity. In Zelda 1, though the rewards did contradict a whole half of the game, there was real risk associated in earning them which made the initial scramble for permanent power ups an exciting endeavor. Not in Zelda 3.
I often wonder if developers were more honest in how they presented action RPGs would they have captivated the gaming audience as much as they did -- to the point where almost every popular, "big" game in the last 30 years was effectively an action RPG -- if instead of seeing Link raise a heart in triumph upon completing a heart container, you were shown a game difficulty menu, and forced to switch from "brutal" to "very hard", then the next time you complete a heart, from "very hard" to "hard" and so on, until you are playing on "baby" mode. Because, that is the honest truth of what is happening.
Zelda 4, due to the technical constraints of the Game Boy platform, is like Zelda 1 and unlike Zelda 3, strictly a screen flipper, not a scroller. As such the action, specifically within-area navigation (i.e. within screen navigation, in the case of Zelda 4), is considerably tightened. Nevertheless, the overworld is more Zelda 3 than Zelda 1 -- it is exactly twice the size of Zelda 1's world, and though I've not done the math, it feels like every second screen in this 2 for 1 deal is a screen which poses no danger at all, though of course the actual geography of the game world clusters dangerous and peaceful screens together into towns and wilderness. One nice thing about Zelda 4's overworld and its progress gate design is that there are mini-dungeons which act as keys e.g. the Moblin cave or Kanalet castle.
Speaking of progress gates and keys, in comparison to Zelda 3, Zelda 4 disguises even more of its keys as NPCs. Getting to each dungeon requires not just using an item on a specific tile in a specific area, but also entire sequence of pressing A next to an NPC to interact with them, then doing the same with another NPC some screens away, and then perhaps a third and fourth. Sometimes the NPCs follow you, but this is cosmetic, the pattern is still interact with NPC A, then B, then C. Like almost all other Japanese games with NPC interaction, there's no dialog tree to navigate (as shallow as such things are), but sometimes there is a cosmetic, pointless "yes" or "no" choice, which I suppose can sometimes save you some resources if you accidentally started dialog with a shop keeper.
One thing to note here is that NPC locations are easier to remember than, say, abstract switches -- you're more likely to remember a large crocodile which collects canned food living near the beach than a yellow switch you saw next to some bush somewhere. It's also more natural for dialog boxes to give hints as to which NPC needs to be visited next.
Speaking of shop keepers, Zelda 4 has quite the tight economy for the its first half if you don't steal, which you can, but your character gets renamed THIEF, to mark your save file as effectively cheated, or at least make it an obvious separate category for serious play.
On the topic of game economy, both Zelda 3 and 4 completely botch the failure state prevention resource economy -- the heart economy. You can refill your hearts in almost every area in Zelda 3's overworld, and you can always get to the overworld from within a dungeon after completing the first 2 (or 3, depending on how you look at it) very easy dungeons, as you obtain a mirror item that takes you to the dungeon's entrance when you use it within a dungeon (more on that in a bit). Zelda 4 likewise, except instead of using an item, you save and quit and reload.
This is a significant flaw if you take the games' main challenge mechanism seriously -- the no death, or, in Zelda 3's case, even no load clear. Both games count how many times you die, and inform you either with a number next to your save file in the main menu, or after you complete the game. Zelda 4 even gives you its true ending slides only when you manage to complete the game with no deaths. But! A no death run depends entirely on you not bailing from the dungeon when you are low on hearts (with the mirror, hence its significance, in Zelda 3, and with a save and load, in Zelda 4, both of which you can even do from boss rooms) and restocking on hearts by repeatedly mowing any grass near the dungeon entrance with your sword at your leisure.
As a result, taking Zelda 3 and 4 seriously is an exercise in patience as much as it is in getting good, but in neither case an exciting one as it is in games where failure is more imminent. Ofc. this is only against the games' own rating system of player performance -- the "community" instead plays for time as well as continues, which actually addresses the games' flaws a great deal, (although it removes the whole search half of the game, more on that later). Nintendo's own Super Metroid (though from a completely different development team) would recognize this formally by showing the player their time to clear at the end of the game as well.
On the balance, I prefer Zelda 4's design slightly to Zelda 3's, namely for its return to the strict screen flipping format and what that entails. On the other hand, without very minor but very significant QoL rom hacks, Zelda 3 plays much more fluently than Zelda 4, which is constantly interrupted by completely unnecessary dialog boxes when you pick up power ups or accidentally press against a rock or pot without wearing power gloves. I played with a rom hack that removes those dialog boxes altogether (they add nothing!) and also restores the ability to close other dialog boxes, which for some reason was removed from the EN language releases.
Though it has been a (very) long time since I last completed them, from what I know of them and what I still remember, I can say that while Zelda 1 and 2 share exactly the same fundamental design flaws as Zelda 3 and 4, both are more meaty and less padded for either casual or serious play (i.e. routing for efficiency), moreso in comparison to Zelda 3, less so in comparison to 4.
Personally, I quite like Zelda 4's setting and characters more than Zelda 3's, though this is obviously simply a subjective matter of taste.
So why did I finish Zelda 3 and am dropping (though who knows, I sometimes get sucked back in by unfinished business) Zelda 4? Because, you see, after completing dungeon 4, a ghost NPC started following my character. "I get it, I get it", I said to myself, "the game wants me to take the ghost to the cemetery so I can get one of N keys I'll need for the next progress gate". Half way to the cemetery, the ghost instead asks me to take him to his house which he thankfully names so I can quickly look it up on the map. Ok I have to navigate from A to B, not C as I originally thought, no problem, not the most exciting thing ever but not bad, the navigation in this game is serviceable. In short time, but not no time at all, I get there, and of course the NPC then asks me to take him to C -- his grave, which is probably in the cemetery as I originally thought right? Of course not, his grave is not there, because of course it isn't when I remember seeing at least one other grave stone well outside the cemetery somewhere. "Well, I guess it's time to play find my car keys" I said to myself, followed immediately by "why am I doing this? I hate looking for car keys" -- the search part of search action, in a static world, for the most part, doesn't appeal to me at all. I like the routing in these games after the fact, but the initial search for keys to progress gates is, IMO, completely uninteresting. This is of course personal preference, and contrary to what many codexers prefer -- finding your car keys is considered a prestigious activity on this forum, the height of intellect -- but what's more, and I alluded to this earlier in this essay, when you find something, the next time you play, you don't unfind it unless you have a bad memory and even then, only if you fail to note it down, knowing your cognitive limitations. Of course, I don't mind this, as it makes the part of the game I don't care for go away, but if you take the opposite view, and like the search part of search action but hate the action, these are games you can only play *once* -- the contradiction in Zelda's fundamental design cuts both ways.
Of course, the Tezuka Zelda games offer much more in the way of non (strict) action gameplay than simply "play find your car keys". There are, among other things, single or multi-screen navigation and (non-hidden) trigger puzzles. Zelda 3's Ice Palace is an exemplar, and I enjoyed every dungeon in Zelda 4 a fair deal too. But even so, games dedicated to navigation puzzles e.g. Lupupu Cube, Meikyujima (translates to Labyrinth Island, a much more appropriate name than its actual English title Kickle Cubicle), the Eggerland series, Solomon's Key 2, and so on, are more consistent in their quality, and especially pacing -- nothing interrupts the puzzling, after all. Even for things I don't really care or admittedly know much about, like NPC interaction chains (admittedly only really a significant part of Zelda 4, though present in 3 and nascently so in 2), I know enough to be able to say that reactivity focused CRPGs like Fallout and Arcanum are more interesting in this regard.
If we look at action gameplay, then Zelda 1, 3 and 4 sit well bellow top down seek and destroy or combat arena action contemporaries e.g. The Firemen, Granada, Tank Force etc. and especially later genre stablemates Ys Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin (though admittedly, the exception here is that Zelda 2 has an excellent little combat engine that has only been replicated by one other ARPG -- Battle for Olympus -- also on the Famicom, which literally copied the parts of the Zelda 2 program responsible for combat, IIRC).
Perhaps, for many players, Zelda has the same appeal as a mini-game collection like a Mario Pary game or WarioWare from the same company, but where the mini-games are larger are more integrated (though poorly so and with many contradictions, as I have laboriously explained). This would make sense, and would put the primary measure of a Zelda game's quality "for what they are" "the pacing" to use a cliche.
Lastly, I would be remiss not to compare Tezuka's final Zeldas with Eiji Aonuma's 3D successors. Briefly, navigation and trigger puzzles, and even forced car key searches literally gained a third dimension, and it made them more interesting. This is to say nothing of NPC interaction chains and multi-modal puzzles in Majora's Mask, which are far more interesting than in previous entries, despite being less a product of, or otherwise affected by, the move to 3D. On the other hand, actually playing the games became less a part of the experience, as both games were very much so victims of the trend of interspersing times where the game actually accepts player input with lengthy unskippable, non-interactive, in-engine cinema, a trend which plagued and continues to plague many other games from that time onward. The 3D combat, when considering the challenge posed by individual enemies and their behaviors, is no worse than the combat in the 2D games, perhaps better, but fighting groups of enemies is more rare (due to technical constraints, I suppose), and the combinations less numerous, and how they interact with the environments less interesting. In non gameplay aspects, both Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time, IMO, have absolutely charming art, characters and worlds which compare favorably to Zelda 4, let alone Zelda 3.
In summary, Zelda 3 and 4 are good for what they are but what they are, just like other games in the genre their predecessors and they themselves helped establish, is ultimately a synthesis of competing designs with no resolution to the resulting contradictions. However, if you like one part of the game, you are able to ignore some other to a greater or lesser extent by focusing your play on the former. Both games are paced well, which might be the best way to judge Zelda games for what they are, all things considered, outside of looking at their individual parts, which will never be as good as other games dedicated solely to those individual parts. In this light, Zelda 1 and 2 are more brisk in their pacing than Zelda 3 (spatially) and 4 (dialog), which in turn are themselves more brisk than the N64 games. Zelda 3 is also notably the first Zelda which ditches the "crowd solving" oriented puzzle design inherited from Druaga, to better fit strictly solo play for the initial clear. For subsequent clears, the search aspect disappears altogether, giving Zelda 1, or at least my recollection of Zelda 1, an edge over Zeldas 3 and 4 due to its brisker pace and more compact, dangerous world. That said, depending on how charming you find Zelda 4's art and characters, you may forgive the time it takes to present these to you, even on subsequent serious playthroughs, especially if using QoL hacks, putting it more on par with Zelda 1.
