So I'm not the only one who loved Zelda 2 over the first one for being a sidescroller?
Definitely NOT.
Zelda 2, in my opinion, did a lot of things well. The magic system was nice, the fighting system was actually quite interesting (for an 8-bit game of the time, certainly), and I also liked it was probably the most single challenging game in the series, before "Master Quest" (if it counts).
Too bad that it got a lot of flak because, it wasn't "Zelda" according to so many others' opinions.
That's why, to this day, I REALLY wish that perhaps Zelda 2 was another game, and a not necessarily a Zelda game. Chances are, we probably would have seen more games of its like come from the House of Nintendo, if fanboys were able to accept it as something different and viable unto itself.
I mean, if the game that would become "Zelda 2" was say, a sequel to Nazo no Murasamejo (starring Takamaru) or even StarTropics instead, Takamaru or Mike probably would have benefited from having such a game. More so than Link, to say the least.