Smash 4 Zelda is quite interesting in the sense that she's a somewhat 'exaggerated' version of how she was in Brawl. Her ground game got better, her air game got worse, and she's more defense-oriented than ever before. Her recovery going from horse **** to actually decent was a nice surprise though.
I'm starting to like Phantom Slash a bit more as time goes by. Its usefulness is still extremely dependent on which character you happen to be fighting, but there are several matches where it's actually pretty helpful, either because it can screw with characters with lacklustre recoveries (the Marios, Little Mac etc.), or because it can cut through relentless approaches and/or weak projectiles (Diddy Kong, Peach etc.) Admittedly in the latter case it's more a case of 'making uphill battles a tad more bearable' rather than swinging them in Zelda's favour. She may not (necessarily) be bottom 5, but she's definitely bottom 10.