Full disclosure: I am biased. I believe that SF Assault was the proper direction the series should've gone in even with all its quirks and clunkiness. The practical thing to have done was to fine tune and polish it's various ideas not get rid of everything.
StarFox is similar to the Sonic series in the idea that the series has become afraid of and is running from itself. It has gotten to the point where it repeats it's own iconography and memes in attempts to appease longtime critics and play it safe (+)
It is never a good idea to ignore huge parts of your own franchise just because of it's reception, because even the controversial stuff can hold decent ideas. Avoiding your franchise can lead to it devolving into self-referential loop(+)