It was a good game, significantly better than aLttP and the older titles, but it didn't quite live up to PH and ST. By leaping through a few hoops (mostly with item renting) they were able to implement a non-linear dungeon structure. Did it add anything? ...Not really. But we did have to deal with the item renting, and because you were essentially limited to one single item per dungeon, the puzzles were very predictable. Before you even really examine the puzzle, you know the answer is either "use dungeon item" or "wall merge".
That said, they really did put a lot of effort into these puzzles to try and overcome their limitations and I appreciate that. It's one of two factors that puts ALBW higher than the early precessors for me, which honestly lacked puzzles. In addition, I really liked the addition of a regenerating cooldown meter. It was much less limiting than the magic meter, made resource management easy, and gave me more incentive to actually use the items in combat, which in turn made the combat a lot more engaging than the button mashing that aLttP was. I'm glad to see something like this is returning in BOTW as well....if only the rest of the equipment didn't degrade. <.<
Personally, I feel the game would have been a LOT better if:
1) They made it linear. This would have allowed us to continue finding items in dungeons (which is half of what makes a dungeon fun), increase difficulty in puzzles and combat in later dungeons, and would allow them to build on puzzles and give the developers more wiggle room on what puzzles they can make, as well as the options players have, making puzzles less predictable.
2) I would have prefered if they kept the stylus gameplay. Simply put, it was more fluid. For example, in PH and ST, I can aim an arrow in literally any dirrection I want whereas in ALBW, I am limited to 8 directions. I'm sure they will have overcome this technical limitation by the next game, so I'm fine with traditional controls in the future, but in this particular case I would have prefered stylus controls.