I couldn't find any scholarly references, but in many of the informal gaming circles I frequented in my youth this was known as "The Zelda Effect" - the newest game is always the worst one, graphically and/or gameplay-wise, and the game before that (which was previously the worst) suddenly becomes the best one of the series.

As a long time fan of click and point adventure games, I can attest to this happening here. For a long time, people hated Curse of Monkey Island because it was too cartoonish, the voice acting didn't match what anybody had in their minds, and so on. Then Escape from Monkey Island came out, and suddenly the same people loved Curse of Monkey Island, while Escape from Monkey Island was clunky, ugly, poor puzzle design, not true to the series, and so on. Then Tales of Monkey Island came out, and fans of the series hated how Telltale Games had ruined the series, it didn't have the same spirit, the controls were a mess, the graphics were somehow worse than the previous generation, and so on.

And now here we are. I'm curious whether the trend will hold up and people who dislike this new style (which, tangentially, seems very similar to Broken Age[0], a fairly modern adventure game by Tim Schafer, another Monkey Island alumni) will suddenly claim Tales of Monkey Island was the pinnacle of the series.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Age