was there hate for it? other than the extended hunt at the end of the game, it was awesome*
and yeah, the game looks crazy in Dolphin. Even without getting rendered at a higher resolution and using the widescreen hack, the gamecube game still looks great today. I don't know why other companies, or even Nintendo on the Wii, haven't copied the technique. Closest was Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm minus the terrible aliasing.
*I should mention that I don't think any Nintendo or Capcom Zelda game isn't awesome. Only the two DS games managed to suck enough that I would admit a Zelda game wasn't good. Though I can go into detail about things like how WW combat was too easy even for 3D Zelda standards and things like that.