It's a completely different game - like practically a reboot.
There are tons of puzzles, tons of fighting and tons of exploration; so you can play however you feel like really. As I understand it, you can pretty much go straight to the final setpiece and complete the game in 90 mins if you want (you'll probably die unless you are brilliant - in terms of combat, this is probably the hardest Zelda ever made).
The gameplay system allows you to do crazy things if you are skilled enough or like to experiment:- I killed a camp of enemies using lightning yesterday. Literally lightning from the sky created by the games dynamic weather system. It wasn't a special move or magic, the game just let me do it with a little lateral thinking.
Another time, I started a wild fire, fanned the flames into an enemy camp which chased them out of their shelter - the updraft from the flames lasted just long enough for me to para-sail over them and kill the ring leader with a slow motion arrow in the head.
Game is insanely good and thoroughly deserves it's massive metacritic.
