Actually, I did, but in the shoutbox. I feel that it improved on OoT in many ways. There was a lot of character development compared to the complete lack of it in OoT, with characters such as Colin growing throughout the story.
One of the assertions made frequently about Twilight Princess (I am not attributing this to you, necessarily) is that it is a proper "upgrade" to Ocarina, as though it is somehow a better version of the same game. But a cursory runthrough of every aspect makes it immediately obvious that, however much it may be trying to "tap into" Ocarina's success, it is a wholly different game with a wholly individual identity. Its characters are developed differently. For example, almost all of the children (including Colin) are dropped off after the first three dungeons and hardly play a role again; Ocarina has the advantage of implementing Time Travel, which improves the level of immersion. All characters are revisited, and fixing their problems, mandatory or not (it often isn't), becomes a great driving force behind the game. Majora's Mask has a similar advantage.
The Wind Waker did not have this advantage, but oddly managed to pull off its character development beautifully. Consider the beggar girl--a minor character. There was a ripple effect from the "main quest" events to her own narrative; the story of your sister tied in directly with her own, and in turn, two families were affected. When you finally do interact with her in (I think) an optional sidequest, you're given a piece of the overall story. Her own story feels complete, and because it fit in well with the main quest, it never felt arbitrary. Ocarina managed to do this, with the added advantage of time travel, though admittedly not as well as The Wind Waker or Majora's Mask. I do like its characters more than MM's, mainly because I feel MM's were too cynical and often too bizarre (Anju and Kafei being the obvious exception); but The Wind Waker is a perfect example of the sort of character development TP should have had.
Instead, what we get are a bunch of empty characters that you are forced into helping because the main plot drives you to it, but whose stories drop off and become irrelevant. That
some become irrelevant isn't so much of a problem (arguably, Malon and Talon are somewhat irrelevant by the end of OoT, but at least their story stretches throughout) as the fact that this happens to
most of the characters. Including Zelda, and if you've played the game you know exactly why.
We are left with Midna and Link. I never liked Midna. There was an obvious design decision to invest the entire plot in her character though. A puzzling decision, as Zelda games have since Zelda 2 boasted an ensemble cast that did not focus on any one character, but constructed a rich world. Regardless, through her, we are compelled to care about the Twilight Realm, the real affected world and the world which we also never see (another bad design decision); we are expected to consider the gravity of her story as the layers are peeled away. JRPG's often manage this "layered" thing well (see Final Fantasy VI or Tales of Symphonia), but they do it by giving us a quality plot, THEN turning everything on its head and giving us a twist. The exposition regarding Midna was more along these lines: "We will keep you in the dark about the
main plot of this game while giving you a revolving door of characters who will
barely recur or matter in the long run and a linear story. Have fun trying to figure it all out."
Link himself, believe it or not, is often developed quite well in Zelda games since Ocarina
at least. He undertakes a hero's journey, undergoes some serious changes of character, and makes pivotal decisions leading up to the showdown. After the Hero of Winds, this new Link in Twilight Princess, who had virtually no will of his own but simply took orders from the badly-developed Midna and some barely-explained explorers' guild, didn't have room to develop. You weren't on his journey anyway; you were on Midna's. That's new, and it's not welcome.
The story itself was also a lot deeper, and obviously the graphics were too, though I don't consider that a major factor. There was also a lot more variety in gameplay, and the new functions available with the wii controller made things like the crossbow a joy to aim. These are a few of the many places in which TP improves on OoT.
First, the good: I like the controls in Twilight Princess. No complaints. Better than Ocarina.
Also, of all the Zelda games, it has my favorite overworld music, and I like the Fire Dungeon, the ball and chain, and the size of the bosses.
Twilight Princess has a more complex, but badly-established storyline. Ocarina has a very simple but layered storyline (consider the Sheikah plotline). One of the advantages of the Zelda franchise, I think, was that they've traditionally managed some atmosphere. I don't begrudge stories for being simple.
The Hobbit is a simple children's story, but it's riveting.
Star Wars (frankly, the whole original trilogy) is based almost completely on borrowed material and is also extremely simple. Both work beautifully. I put Ocarina in the same class as Star Wars, meaning that it manages a classic, timeless sort of storyline with minimal fluff and with maximum player immersion.
Partly due to what I thought was an abhorrent graphical
style, Twilight Princess seemed to me to lack atmosphere. Where every previous Zelda game since A Link to the Past has boasted bright graphics, textured sound and music, and at least some non-linear exploration, Twilight Princess gave us a uniformly brown, depressing atmosphere that did not really change from dungeon to dungeon. How you "feel" playing a game is relatively subjective, but I "felt" that Twilight Princess lacked atmosphere and heart almost entirely--it was monotonous, dull, and a chore to plod through. Contrast this with Ocarina, which went from bright to dark and back repeatedly, but maintained a strong and heavily populated storyline. By far, Ocarina's was superior.
As for the gameplay, I think I can be brief here. The game lasts 80 hours. I thoroughly explored the entire field between dungeons and discovered that it was a whole lot of nothing. While the same case could be made against The Wind Waker, at least its many islands held secrets and provided incentive to sail around between dungeons. Conversely, mini-dungeons, as good as they occasionally were in Twilight Princess, were sparse. Compare the desert in Twilight Princess to Ocarina's--there is virtually nothing to do. Improvements to such areas as Lake Hylia just aren't that significant. Rewards for long and tedious quests (an armor that eats rupees? Are you kidding me?) are awful. The main quest is strictly linear, as opposed to virtually every other Zelda game.
So what we have in the end is just more of nothing. And sidequests? Contrary to the passable Gold Skulltula quest, in which you were given enemies that were simple to collect in principle but sometimes hard to reach (so you'd need to come back with a better item), the Poes were tedious to collect, and the rewards for them and the bugs were, once again, sparse and uninspiring. I had virtually no incentive to do any of the sidequests.
I'm not claiming that nostalgia is the only reason that people like OoT, but I'm claiming that it is a reason. This position is one that you've clearly been disagreeing with me on the entire time, so I'm pretty certain I haven't been misrepresenting it.
Nostalgia might play a role in making Ocarina my favorite game, but I'm nostalgic about it because it was amazing. Remember, I had reason to be even more nostalgic about Sonic 2, Super Mario Bros., and any number of other games when Ocarina came out...it was good enough to knock them all out of the ballpark. I'm nostalgic about a lot of games, but they're not all my "greatest game of all time," and there are some games (such as Shenmue II, Phantasy Star, Morrowind, etc.) which I've played in the last 5 years and still love almost as much. That's why I think the argument is absurd.
Also, consider this: I love The Wind Waker and The Minish Cap, the latter of which I actually played after Twilight Princess. If nostalgia accounts for Ocarina being my favorite game, it can't account for my distaste for Twilight Princess. Hell, I'll even give another example--Okami. I think that game's everything Twilight Princess should have been, every step the Zelda franchise needs to take, and though I don't like it as much as Ocarina, I still love it. So how can the nostalgia argument have any relevance at all to liking Ocarina better than Twilight Princess? It can't, not when I so intensely dislike Twilight Princess, even assuming that nostalgia is the
only factor (and you now have said it is not).
Any of these factors alone would not have been enough to make Twilight Princess an unpleasant game for me. Together, I think they made for a terrible experience, when compared to other Zelda games. On the opposite side you have Ocarina, which I believe is brilliant in the sum of its parts, even if it does not boast as much area or as many hours as Twilight Princess.