If You Could Change Things In Games...

[Koh]

I didn't want the handicaps removed completely anyway, just debuffed.

Hearts can always restore just one, but the fairies would restore three. Potions would restore just three instead of being a free full restore kit every time. Fairies when used for revival only revive Link with one heart. All these changes would retain their usefulness and encourage getting them, but discourage tanking and blindly going gungho.

Instead of holding the player's hand the whole time and essentially (or literally in some cases) beating the game for them, what should be happening is "second chances" for the group that needs that helping hand. I'm against bullshit game design, but I'm also against game design that doesn't grow with the player. The difficulty is supposed to start off at whatever level, and steadily increase. Not be easy, or the same, all the way through, nor be completely sporadic. At the beginning of the game, you're learning whatever mechanics, and as you progress through the game, you should be expected to apply all of your knowledge and accumulated skill with those mechanics up to that point. This is where games that throw new mechanics at you, but never work to expand on them fall short and get dumped into the shallow game category, like Evoland or Undertale.