I haven't done games before, but lately I've had the urge to do the same. How badass would a Zelda clone be to make? Sadly I have no time to invest.

The last two DS Zeldas were basically begging to be cloned by someone with even an iota of common sense - they had fun dungeon/town sections spoiled by incredibly tedious overworlds that basically ruin the games (especially in the train one, I have no idea what they were thinking). Literally all you'd need to do to fix it is to yank out the boat/train sections and chuck in an overworld.

I started on one for iOS a while back but got bogged down with A) trying to roguelike it up B) models/animation, which I can't make nor afford to commission.

You should restart, it's an underexploited niche. The Zenonia games on the iOS have been wildly successful despite their formulaic predictability and underwhelming exploitation of the device's capabilities, simply because they're the only thing available in an overhead-view adventure semi-rpg.

Wouldn't be too terribly difficult. I'd make one and keep it simple. Was thinking of doing it on Android possibly.