Yeah, going back. Goldeneye was an awesome game. The design was smart and focused on stealth and less on twitch aiming and gun fights.
It took the weakness of console controllers of difficulty aiming and made that part of the game...by really needing to know how to stop and aim. Something that later has been incorporated into all the more realistic shooters.
I will not say that Goldeneye had a difficult learning curve or was relatively hard per say. Was the game hard? Yes, 007 mode was intense, but the easier modes weren't hard at all. The game also pretty much taught you the very first level how to play the game...now yes, if you started playing the game from the start on 007 mode, then the learning and difficulty level were quite difficult.
In the end, I think the game was great, but had some issues that keep it holding up in today's market. When I compare Goldeneye to Perfect Dark, I think that PD had the better and probably the best FPS multiplayer on a console system at the time...but Goldeneyes levels were more interesting and fun. I think Perfect Dark had some great levels...but they also had many levels that were overly complicated to figure out what to do...and just not fun. Goldeneye this was not the case at all. Most if not all of the levels were well crafted and easy to interpret your objectives.