Okay, I'm actually really liking the way this looks. Because:
1. Holy crap, dat minimap! I love how it starts out looking like, oh, here's another flat area, just like the goddamn forest in OoE, but then it completely pulls the rug out from under you when you go underground and find the ridiculous amount of twists and turns... all with a sense that it actually doesn't look exactly like what came before! It's giving me that sort of giddy feeling I get from exploring a new Metroid game.
2. It seems like aside from levers, the "Press R to swing" prompts are one time only. Now I just hope it's the same for the Titan bosses and the "Press R to grip" prompt.
3. The platforming indeed looks a lot more fun. Just climbing straight up ledges here is far quicker and less tedious than slowly inching across them, not to mention you can wall jump, and in general need to actually do a lot more jumping from place to place in general.
4. Fall damage looks way less irritating than in LoS, but still enough of a deterrent from falling that it makes the platforming look like it's going to get pretty tense. (In other words, sort of how they did it in CV64.)
5. I do believe I saw an air dash or air dodge, meaning that combating flying dudes will not only not make you want to tear your hair out (ala those damn Gremlins in LoS who would just curb stomp you if you tried an air combo), but that air combat will make platforming even more tense, like the originals. (This is mostly conjecture, but from the flying bat dudes I'm assuming this is the case.)
6. Am I the only one okay with skeletons taking more of a beating? They've been complete mega-wusses for many of the original games; it's about time they got some respect. And here it's not like they're at the same asshole level the skeleton warriors were in LoS. (At least, not yet.)
7. The enemies and even Trevor have those kind of awkward stylized neutral poses that remind me even more of the older games.
Gonna dig this game thoroughly I imagine.