Is there some subjective way in which Zelda is harder than Mario I may not actually understand what you're asking, but the obvious answers are objectives, and

Is there some subjective way in which Zelda is harder than Mario I may not actually understand what you're asking, but the obvious answers are objectives, and time limits. In the classic Mario games there was a clear goal for every level, and you had a time limit to make it there. So you could hypothetically try every possible combination of buttons within the time limit to see which ones succeed. Zelda has no time limit, and the goals must be discovered.