I genuinely don't think people have ever played the first zelda or link to the past if they think this isn't zelda, if anything this game is the closest to miyamotos vision of the franchise anyway, not saying its better or not but you have to remember how ocarina of time was seen as a great departure for the series, that was generally seen as "go as you please!" franchise and ocarina took the story/linear aspects really really far.
now if your talking about dungeon aspect, i could agree that they could have used more art styles and different settings. Though they were all technically different, i think the lake of art styles there hurt them a bit, they were still fun though in my opinion. Also I would have made the shrines wayyy larger and complex, and if that meant making less of them than so be it, would have preferred 80 shrines if they were all longer and complex. But even then thats a preference aspect, zelda being more of an adventure of exploring has always been the goal for them.