I just finished the game, and I loved it! For me it was better than Twilight Princess. While I also loved TP, I found that its artistic style tried to balance gritty realism with goofy Zelda characters, resulting in some really ugly designs for minor characters. It's world was just not a lot of fun, unlike OoT which balanced fun and seriousness pretty well. And TP didn't offer any new memorable or interesting supporting characters aside from Zant and Midna.
The first, like 15%, of TP is also brutal. I found it very dull and hard to get into, especially because of how awful it was to play as a wolf. I like how many things SS added to gameplay, and its definitely going to be hard to play a Zelda game that doesn't have those controls.
I feel like some of the criticisms of Skyward Sword are a little unfair. It does have a number of mini-games and side-quests and characters to interact with. There's fun island, the bug catching game, the bamboo cutting came, and the arrow game. The gratuity crystal side-quest was a fun way to get us to engage with different characters, and the goddess cubes give exploration a purpose, along with upgrading your equipment.
The characters and the story were really strong. Zelda and Link had an actual relationship, with Zelda filling an interesting and important role. Ghirahim was a fantastic villain, because he was both very entertaining and intimidating. And the story had some plot twists that I felt like I should have seen coming before hand, but i didn't lol.
I also really liked Impa, and other random things like the exploring Goron. The Kikwi and the robots were awesome, too. They are actually endearing and fun. Hated the Mogma though.
