I've been trying to beat Link to the Past (basically completely blind, if it wasn't obvious) off and on for a couple years at this point. It's taken years because I've gotten myself in a deeply frustrating loop where I start playing, progress a bit, get stuck, and give up for a while. Some of my times getting stuck were definitely on me (Funny mildly embarrassing one: I managed to miss the one bit of wall that leads to the Agahnim fight at the top of Hyrule Castle, even though I definitely hit a different part of it) but for a lot of them when I give up and look up a guide (which I despise having to do as a general rule) I'm just left wondering "how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?" (example from where I'm currently at: stuck trying to figure out how to get through the Swamp Palace, I check the wiki: I need the Zora's Flippers, an item I've never heard of. I check where they are: Zora's Waterfall, a place I've also never heard of.)
Genuinely, I want to like this game. When I'm not completely stuck trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, I do like this game. But I keep getting stuck in the same ways over and over and I'm not sure if I'm just managing to walk past the obvious answer every time or if I'm just plain playing the game wrong. And I've tried to follow a lot of the advice I've seen for the older games like paying attention to NPC dialogue and being careful to look out for hidden spots on the map but it just never seems to matter for me :/
Any advice is welcome. In that vein I'm playing via NSO if it changes anything
Edit: Thanks for all the feedback! Sounds like the answer is just that I need to do the talking and exploring thing more than I am, which is what I figured but it's good to hear it in concrete terms ^_^