This game is the GOAT of all time. It has insanely immersive world-building and for that alone it's worth playing.
By immersive worldbuilding I REALLY mean it. This can't even be compared to the Skyrim slop that's praised by journos. It came out 20 years before open worlds started becoming popular and yet it has a better world than any of the slop released in the last 2 decades.
I'd consider this game to be more of a virtual world than a game, to be honest. If you play this looking for a game then you'll be dissapointed, but if you're looking for an immersive world you will worship this game until you die.
The secret of this game's based-tier world building is that unlike modern open worlds, which focus on the activities in the world, this game focuses on the world itself, the activities being a natural result of the simulation or the world-building (in the case of quests).
Anyone telling you this game sucks has skill issue and anyone telling you it's the "black sheep" of the series is also wrong. This is the one of the greatest ARPGs and it sold well and was praised when it released.
The combat alone makes this game worth playing. It also has dungeons that are actually dungeons, unlike the post Link's Awakening zeldas.
The more linear overworld also gives this game more of an adventurous feel. You're always exploring new locations until the end game (and these locations are pretty dangerous, unlike the overworlds of the games released after this one)
It still unfortunately has some flaws, such as the way extra lives work and how the progression is sometimes pretty cryptic, but it's worth playing.
This game is absolute slop. It may be artistically good, but it's so boring it makes my brain rot.
Insanely lame, slow and repetitive combat that's a slopification of SMT combat,
Bloated, useless dialogue that doesn't do crap but waste your time,
The story is wildly inconsistent in quality,
Even if you rush through the boring and bloated parts it still wastes a ton of your time (the loading screen literally says "Take Your Time", the devs know what they're doing).
It does have interesting stuff artistically and story-wise (tons of mythological references that make sense, for example), despite it being a trash game.