On the contrary in TP:
I kept missing the "finishers" because yeah, wrong angle and you don't actually home in properly.
Jump attack has a long reach but is also sensitive to sideways positioning.
Enemies keep falling after jumps or 3-hits but don't die and you end up just waiting until you finally get the land-finisher.
The AI of enemies, particularly darknuts doesn't work if they're in the same room. They have a static behavior.
If you perform the Ending Blow from a weird angle, then yes, you'll miss and Link will get stuck in the ground leaving himself open to attacks. Yes, that's your punishment for messing up and the game expects you to execute the move properly. It's not like Wind Waker were it hands you these kind of things. There's actually a margin for error. I'm not sure what you mean by the Jump attack. Yes, it doesn't have great horizontal coverage. That's the point of the move. There are many other moves that let you cover more ground like the spin attack, horizontal slashes and even the Jump
Strike, which causes a shockwave. Again, I feel like this is a case of you not really using the Hidden Skills. Try a Mortal Draw on an enemy and see if they get up the same way from you doing three regular sword swings, for example.
I don't know what you mean by the AI. Darknuts work fine when together. They're really challenging because they all attack you at once so you have to carefully plan when the strike, even attempt to isolate them, unlike WW, which again, will hold your hand and tell exactly when it's the time to press the A button and get guaranteed damage. There's no strategy or defensiveness at play. Those multi Darknut encounters were far more fun in TP than in WW which were total snooze fests.
Rolling around enemies and really most of the "advanced" moves was created by taking the context-sensitive actions from WW (yes, it's the same engine, that's on record) and putting them in the hands of the player rather than being contextual reaction mechanics. As I said, I think it hurts the dynamics of swordplay when it's obviously trying to do the opposite. The only time "Helm splitter" makes sense in WW is when there are armored guys with helms of which there is one type of enemy, and all your context-reactions to their attacks involves rolling around or jumping over to knock off pieces of their armor. I think on paper it sounds better to be given the choice to roll and helm-split manually but the execution in TP is that you end up spamming the rolls and helm-splitting can turn into an almost mindless and easy victory.
The whole idea of the context-sensitive combat was that it makes you go defensive. If you want to beat a Darknut you have to counter it, unless you use other tools than the sword. You open yourself to take a hit when you want to counter. If you miss the "!" cue you get smacked, and enemies like Darknuts and Moblins actually hit hard.
Only two of the Hidden Skills are from Wind Waker: Back Slice and Helm Splitter. The remaining 5 are not. I think removing them from those context-sensitive moments actually makes them better. So Link is capable of rolling around an enemy and slashing their back. That's awesome! What do you mean he only does it if the enemy has some very obvious strings holding its armor together on its back? Link can also leap high into the air and slash an enemies head? Incredible! Why would he only do that when the enemy has a helmet? It would hurt a lot either way, right? The context sensitivity doesn't make sense when it seems logical that Link should be able to do that move on most enemies. It only feels limiting.
And you know, what? Some of the Hidden Skills are context sensitive! You can't use Ending Blow without the context of you knocking your enemy down. Helm Splitter can't be used without the context of you stunning them with a Shield Bash. In both cases, there is a context sensitive moment that is created by the player. That is unlike Wind Waker where the context is created by the game. In Wind Waker, you strafe until the game says to press A. The player doesn't earn the parry. They don't even need to watch the enemies movements to find an opening. Just wait for the flashing button to appear on screen.
That's the thing. The Hidden Skills do have compatibility with the enemy design in Twilight Princess. The difference is the game doesn't need to go "ENEMY HAS HELMET PRESS A NOW TO DO HELMET BREAKING ATTACK." It's more fluid. Unlike Wind Waker, TP's moves aren't square blocks for square holes, they aren't just simple keys for locks. You're free to use it on any enemy that is susceptible to it, whether their wearing a helmet or not, whether the game is telling you Press A to Awesome or not. It's up to you to experiment with those skills and see how they work on different enemies and that's the fun of it that makes the combat far more dynamic than WW's even if both games are still very easy for the seasoned Zelda player. (I think we tend to forget in these discussions about game difficulty that many people who aren't used to Zelda or 3D action don't always find these games as easy as people like us who have been playing them for years. I realized this after watching a friend play through TP.) Personally, the difficulty of a game is far less important to me than a game making me feel engaged and making me proactive. Waiting for the game to tell me when I can parry is neither of those things. It's the antithesis of it really. That's why the combat in WW is much weaker than TP.
PPS: Say what you will about the grid-layout and its lack of density, but at least it wasn't completely empty like Hyrule Field in TP. There's actually minigames, treasures, secret bosses, and aesthetically there's always a BotW-like anticipation when you see an island from afar and close in to see its peculiar and unique shape. The world felt genuinely mysterious at first and sometimes I thought it paid off.
Twilight Princess's world isn't empty though. There are minigames, treasures, hidden caves, minidungeons, collectibles, minipuzzles. Sure there aren't secret bosses but WW only had the few basic squids which weren't even interesting to fight cause you were on the boring ass boat. And the thing is, TP's focus is not on open exploration in the way that WW tries to be. The exploration in TP is a supplement to the main adventure and yet its overworld is more streamlined and interesting to explore. There was no BotW-like anticipation for the islands in Wind Waker because you knew that for every grid on the map, there would be one small little island with a little thing to do on it. It was never a surprise; it was predictable and often disappointing. It was just a bunch of downtime as you went from grid to grid. At least TP gets to the point with its overworld and its points of interest are more close together and frequent that you're more actively engaged as you travel. WW literally lets you put the controller down as you sail. I've gone from Outset to Windfall without touching the controller.
