I concur completely! Having only played the original LoZ, I have nothing else to compare it to, but what a blast! The "leveling up" challenge was open to your own creativity, i.e, one could find their own areas to build up points to get to the next level. The puzzles in the palaces were quite challenging as well.

I'm in the process of playing all the games (available on a GameCube), and I've just started OoT. So far, it is a lot of fun, but clearly not as hard as AoL