I sometimes think I'm the only one in the position of earnestly loving every 3D Zelda since OoT, even if some of them (maybe all of them) lack something that I admired about its siblings. But the 'cycle' and the infighting are unavoidable consequences of a series that has a few well-defined reference points for what is idealized in the community history (specifically, LttP and OoT) alongside an impulse to do something a little different and new in every game.
A 10 for Skyward Sword holds up in its own way when you realize that six years later, it's still the only game inextricably designed around motion controlsi.e. you can't really have a standard-control SS because that undermines concepts fundamental to every corner of the gamethat stands tall as a full and complete adventure. To this day, it has no competition in its category. And even if games like Arms and the superior sensitivity of the Joy-Con herald a Super Nintendo era for motion controls, I don't see Nintendo gambling on an SS-like project themselves with any of their core properties, except for the HD/Joy-Con remaster we all expect. (A potential SS HD could very well be a more robust Joy-Con showcase than any other game in the same way that Wind Waker HD was arguably the finest outing for the Wii U GamePad.)
In any case, it does seem like BotW has the potential to be a unifying series landmark, because no matter what kind of baggage players are bringing in with them, regardless of their ideal vision of what Zelda ought to be, it looks as though BotW will do something for them. The pre-release hype would have us believe that it's the spiritual sequel to every game in some small way. Even Majora's Mask. Maybe even Zelda II, though I haven't heard anybody say so just yet. I'm here for Wind Waker 2, myself.
Nevertheless, I think people are right to exercise caution. Trust in the enthusiast media is as low as it has ever been, much of it owing to the chasm between the playing habits of dedicated fans (of any series) and reviewers who are jacks of all trades and masters of none, and are perhaps structurally incapable of speaking to advanced or late-game issues that may arise. Sometimes this leads to scores that overshoot, other times to scores that undershoot. But it's useful to remind ourselves that past the 20-hour horizon where reviewers playing in a rush are already forming their impressions into quips and decimal points, regardless of how much lies ahead of them, anything can happen. We don't know, for instance, if the wonder of BotW is trivialized by fast travel (the way the Skells of Xenoblade X or flying mounts of WoW shrank their respective worlds) or if its itemization system flattens the late-game progression into a plateau. We don't know if there will be something relatively tame but controversial anyway like TWW's Triforce hunt. We just don't know.
Mostly if the story and companions are good, and what they think about the combat overall.
