Here's an excerpt from an article I have in the works. I think it should suffice.
There are two features that I believe need to be present for Zelda's combat to be at its best, and they go as following.
First, intelligent and challenging enemies. It's no fun when an enemy is dumb as all get-out and allows you a guaranteed hit. I know there are some enemies that shouldn't be much of a challenge -- Keese and Octoroks, for example -- but more advanced enemies should not be capable of being disposed of with little to no effort. Over the course of its lifetime, Zelda has both excelled and failed at this.
All the way through the N64 games, most enemies did a pretty good job of providing a decent challenge. It didn't always take a lot of hits to kill them, but they generally respected players' skills and intelligence. Once the GameCube came onto the scene, however, that element took a turn for the worst. The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess's enemies were weak and pathetic, most dealing only 1/4th a heart of damage and only requiring lazy and mindless button mashing to be defeated. Quite obviously these games' combat systems suffered from this, and it's one of the major reasons they were often so boringly easy.
Of course, a plethora of Skyward Sword's enemies broke that trend with their 1-2 heart damage ratio, increased depth, and much-improved AI, which gave them the brains to anticipate Link's attacks and potentially block or dodge them -- sometimes both. Quite a few enemies would also punish players for trying to waggle their way to success, assuring that strategy was a necessity to stay alive (or at least not take damage). This was a great redemption, and I'm really glad it happened, but that doesn't mean I don't want even more refinements in the future. Zelda's combat absolutely has to keep improving this revived pace, otherwise it will remain at a standstill and never be able to reach its fullest potential.
Second, enemies should feature multiple ways of being defeated. There should always be a "correct" solution as to how to take a foe down, but there should also be other options to provide variety so that the combat never gets stale. This should be through things like using items in unique ways according to the various enemy designs, special abilities like the Hidden Skills from Twilight Princess and the Tiger Scrolls from The Minish Cap, and (in the case of a combat system like Skyward Sword's) taking out foes in different ways with simple sword slashes alone. These things allow different people to defeat enemies according to their own playstyles, and that's something that a series like Zelda could always use plenty of. Pretty much every Zelda game has done these sorts of things relatively well, but I think Majora's Mask, The Minish Cap, Spirit Tracks, and Skyward Sword have done the best job so far (namely with their respective control schemes), and as a result, I think future games should look to them for inspiration. It's not really something that needs a massive overhaul, as we've already seen Zelda nail its combat diversity, but we need to see the series keep nailing it in the future.
