You know, I realised today what I love about Zelda games but it doesn't feel like it's featured enough since Majoras Mask, it's the puzzles associated with quest items. I remember what a total thrill I got the first time in Ocarina when I realised you could use the rooster to wake up Malon's father, and then things like figuring out how to hatch the blue egg, stuff like that. That's why Majora's Mask is one of my favourite Zelda games because it was absolutely jampacked with stuff like that. You'd do so many quests in order to get masks and then with a lot of the masks, there was almost a puzzle element itself in actually figuring out how and when to use them. It just added this really exciting element of freedom where you felt like in any area you could potentially stumble upon a secret way to alter the environment, whether it's playing the song of storms to some frogs or or using a dance mask to dance with some freaky gypsy ladies.
That always gave Zelda games a huge sense of freedom which was invaluable considering at their core, they are fairly linear games. I think that's what I missed most from Twilight Princess, which was an otherwise great game, and it's still what I wish Skyward Sword and Windwaker did more, even though they still do it. In Skyward Sword, since you only really get the one overworld hub, it seems like such a waste that there aren't more places like the pumkin tavern on various floating islands. They could have put in so many more things and places like that.