It's just as I remember it. Finding Bagu's house in the woods to give his letter to the river man. Waking up the sleeping bat in the house. Getting the water from the fountain to give to the lady so I can get the Fire spell. " I AM ERROR." It's all right at the tip of my memory.
As the Angry Video Game Nerd noted in his review of this game, the difficulty curve spikes REALLY early in the game. After the relatively simple first temple, the game throws you to the wolves and says "F&*K YOU!"
In fact, I think the hardest temple in the game is the second one. You don't have the LIFE spell yet. Your life, magic and sword skills are dramatically underpowered compared to the strength of your enemies. Every other Temple I beat without using a continue, but for the second temple, I had to continue probably five or six times. Directly after that, you have to get through Death Mountain, by far the most difficult section of the game. This is a maze of caves and the enemies in these caves aren't effing around. They will ruin you until you level up a bit. So really, the game almost requires you to grind right after the first level in the game. That's insane. Even the first Final Fantasy didn't force you to grind so early in the game.
After that, the game eases up a little bit and the difficulty becomes more cerebral. Your goals and puzzles become more abstract. Finding your next objective and making your way to each temple becomes a little more difficult to figure out. Not to say that the physical challenge isn't still present, but it becomes a lot easier once you level up. In fact, there are times when the challenge from enemies is pitch perfect. Because the combat is much deeper in this game than in any other Zelda title, it takes a bit of practice to get good at stabbing and blocking with the right timing, and when you're surrounded by enemies and manage to block three projectiles from both directions at both a high and low level AND take out four enemies in a matter of seconds, you feel like a god.
I'm loving this (potentially) final playthrough of Zelda II. It is a fantastic game that is drastically underrated. I recommend you give it another shot without viewing it through the "Zelda lens". Take it on it's own merits. You'll love it.