It's sort of a general trend for any canon really, even things like art/literary movements. You get a brand new idea that pushes the boundaries of how people view the canon, or maybe some sort of drastic change, or even something just different from its predecessors, just some form of change, and it is going to be met with outlash from people who have gotten used to how the canon has been established, but you also get people who praise the new addition for taking a risk. Give it some time and it starts to gain acceptance as the wild "OMG HOW COULD YOU CHANGE ALL THIS" cries die down to more objective views, since with anything new, you need time for the hype to die down and the effects to sink in before you can really judge it for anything. At this point, there will inevitably be a portion of followers who hone in on the aspects of the thing that they really love, which quite often is the same revolutionary aspect that was previously bashed. Often, such movements of praise will be countered with movements of criticism simply because people like to argue. This sort of creates ebbs and flows for how much a particular idea is treated in the minds of the masses. What usually happens though is that the less impressive features fall out of public focus after all this back and forth has been exhausted, and the impressive features that were the subject of heated controversies in its prime become labeled as classics.
Now, all of that loosely corresponds to the cycle the OP had visualized, but it's an extreme generalization with no examples because when I was writing it, I had not only the Zelda series in mind, but also other old game franchises as well as the general history of both literary canon and fine art canon. The cycle becomes customized to each canon. With the Zelda canon, as far as the OP's cycle is concerned, his is incredibly generalized. SS is controversial, not hated, and MM has actually kind of fallen both out and back into the "overrated category", not just straight in. But it does give a good basic look at the general flow of opinions over time.
