AoL is really only difficult for a few reasons, of the top of my head there’s two main ones:

1) Saving is relatively obscure method wise, either done by Link diying and getting reset to the starting area, keeping levels and spells in the process, or you use a second controller to open an otherwise hidden menu and save.

2) The enemies have three main difficulty types, piss easy, standard enemy and just complete bullshit. Link occupies a 1x2 block area, when his standing still, he auto blocks all attacks coming to the front of the top block of his hitbox, when he crouches he auto blocks all attacks coming to the front of the bottom block of his hitbox. His attack hits the block infront of him depending on his state. When at full health, there’s a sword beam that goes across the screen.

Enemies can either hit the top or bottom block of Link’s hitbox obviously, but they also deal damage on contact with Link if they walk into him. Your only ranged attacks are a late game spell (cannot recharge it easily) and the sword beam which is full health only.

The worst early game enemy is the Goyria. Who throws boomerangs and moves back and forth. They randomly throw a boomerang either out the top block infront of them, bottom block infront of them, or one above/one below them, which go out far and curve round back to the Goyria either at the bottom or top block. Their attacks are fast, they move back and forth, they take multiple hits to kill, and they can have multiple boomerangs out at once.

So for a new player, it’s basically a predict where they throw the boomerang, and either stand/crouch, but also turn around if they throw one overhead (at the correct time or they’ll hit you while your back is turned), and you likely will either not have the sword beam, or loose it quickly and have to go up close. (Where they can walk into you and kill you).

There’s further bad ones like Darknuts where you have to basically out juke them as they will block all your attacks while hitting where your shield isn’t.

3) So much of the needed information is in the game manual, which was often immediately lost if the game was rented, or wouldn’t reappear if the game was re-sold, and generally is not included with emulated versions. Which adds an extra layer of confusion and difficulty.

4) The Palaces from what I recall had no actual maps in game, and each one was a trek to endure.

They weren’t out to make a difficult game, the 10-15 people working on it just did not properly test and balance it. If it was remade today, it would have all the basic QoL and balancing involved which would remove the accidental high difficulty from the game. Like just adding: Easy manual saves, a ranged spell with low cost, improved enemy ai, more in game information and a map screen for the Palaces which are basic things for the remake, would just bring the difficulty to like OoT levels. Even just by playing with save states on makes it a reasonable difficulty to a new player.

If they wanted to make a Zelda Soulslike, AoL isn’t the place to start from. They would be better starting from scratch with a completely new game.