[Coda]

I've come to like the weapon durability, even if it is Hylian Convenient. It's actually a very significant point of game balance. If weapons didn't break, you could sneak into Hyrule Castle early in the game, pick up the Royal Guard's Shield and a couple of late-game weapons, and be set for the whole game. But instead, that only gives you a short-term benefit, making you have to either try to complete the game right then and there (good for speedrunning) or you have to save it for the harder fights lest you break it using it to mow down trash.

The alternative would have been to gate the better gear behind artificial checkpoints, but that would have made the game too linear.

And I rather like the stamina system, too. It lets you do interesting things that the developers would have simply had to deny you entirely if it wasn't there. Teleporting and mounts are there for overland travel; stamina is there to keep you from spamming charge attacks and bypassing stuff by climbing mountains before you're supposed to be able to. (And putting charge attacks on a cooldown is just a different kind of stamina.) And as stamina systems go, this one is quite generous; it recharges quickly, you can raise your maximum fairly easily, you can restore it and augment it with food that's available early on (Staminella is very common), and you can push yourself past your limits for an additional boost right at the end.

Yes, the two systems are RESTRICTIVE, but they're MEANT to be. The game wouldn't be nearly as good without them. They're an essential part of the game's polish.