What game sequel ruined a beloved franchise or character for you?
from Novamdomum@fedia.io to games@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 09:06
https://fedia.io/m/games@lemmy.world/t/2515315
from Novamdomum@fedia.io to games@lemmy.world on 04 Aug 09:06
https://fedia.io/m/games@lemmy.world/t/2515315
You fell in love with a game and it’s characters, sunk hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours into it. It became a comforting, immensely satisfying part of your daily life. Then you heard a sequel was coming and got really hyped but when it came out it was utter rubbish…
Which game(s) was that for you?
threaded - newest
I think mass effect is a clear contender, the ending to mass effect 2 was a bit meh, and then it really hit the fan with mass effect 3 and for those who didn’t get message, they also made mass effect andromeda.
OMG - Mass Effect 3, yes.
I’d add Fable III. I got it in a “Buy 2, get 1 for $5” sale and I STILL felt ripped off.
I actually loved Fable 3, along with the rest of the series. It wasn’t as good as the other 2, but I still thought it was great.
I wasn’t part of the zeitgeist at the time. But I was surprised to find out much later that so many people hated it.
I love Fable 3. I love how the weapons will change, I like the “Sanctuary” pause menu, and the world is awesome (if a little small). I do wish they were able to make it bigger with more side quests though.
The thing that killed it for me was the timer. “xx Days Remaining”.
If I remember right, that was there for plot purposes, but had no impact on the game.
No it definitely had an impact on the game. You had to either contribute enough of your personal wealth, or choose all the evil choices as regent, otherwise most of the citizens would die at the end. If you didn’t do it right, it left the world basically devoid of NPCs. For a series that made such a big deal about choice, the end of Fable III only had one right answer.
Yeah. There are ways to absolutely break it though. Like if you just buy all the properties you can, you’ll be swimming in gold from the rent.
And then you can share extra gold between characters, so you can start the next playthrough with a “small loan” kinda thing.
My father, the king, gave me a small loan of a million gold. Now I’m gonna use my profits from Brightwood Tower to make Albion great again.
Agreed, Fable III was a brutal step back. You couldn’t even equip clothing pieces individually anymore, and the whole “you’re king now, better collect enough money in time” sucked too.
Oh gee, I couldn’t think of something to put here. But Fable 3 was definitely a flop
Honestly everything after fable 1 (yes, that includes “the lost chapters”) was kinda meh.
Fable was great, good storytelling with some twists and fun side quests. Loved the comat and the spell system and how much choice you had. End boss really felt like an end boss.
Honesty, all of this? The same for “lost chapters”.
The last boss fight was absolutely dogshit though, what a letdown. You have this huge fucking dragon and it was just such a disappointment compared to the OG jack of blades. It’s difficulty and movesets just didn’t feel right for a endboss level enemy.
Personally never played 2, although I have watched some letsplays and meh. So far as I can tell they gutted the magic system, had a decent story and some quality of life changes.
3 I did play and it would have been a decent game, if it wasn’t sold as a Fable game. Didn’t like the timer for the Big Bad, magic was boring.
Fable 2 largely was just as good as one with one added bonus… for me at least.
The cutscenes were all done in engine, with all the same rules that the game has.
So running into the final boss fight, I had run out of healing items, so I ate ALL my food and drank ALL my beer and wine before starting the final fight.
Cut scene starts. Villain starts his villiain monologue as villains do. My character proceeds to puke all over his shoes.
Hear me out.
I liked Andromeda’s concept. I liked some of the side quests and characters, with the SAM & Ryder relationship being particularly interesting to me. FemRyder’s VA was good.
The gunplay was the best of the franchise, even better than the excellent ME3MP which I dumped tons of hours into. It looked fantastic and ran well.
…But yeah, the story felt like a first draft, part 1. Which is, reportedly, exactly what it was.
The concept makes a lot of sense and was really really cool.
I saw a playthrough and I had 3-4 problems:
ME1 even had Rachni, as non-humanoid npcs, could have something like that…
(And obviously most parts of the art departments did their job well. Hilarious but not game breaking bugs were the exception to the rule. It’s 99% a direction and writing problem.)
Yeah! There was a twist with the Kett to kinda justify 2 meter humanoid aliens, but still.
It was released like a month too early; I don’t remember any bugs or art oddities in my playthrough. In fact, I thought the movement animations in particular were the best of any game I’ve played, and might still be.
Ugh, that game needs a redo, even though I know that would never happen.
I’d say part of the problem for Andromeda was that everyone else got there first in terms of colonization; the player isn’t exploring a new location, untouched by colonists, they’re going to an established settlement and exploring around that instead.
strangely enough, for all the hate Andromeda gets, I have more playtime in that game than the original trilogy combined.
Andromeda is more fun to replay. and to me the combat is hella fun. the characters are good. the loyalty missions are awesome.
the story? ehhhh. it has potential, honestly. and left us wide open for exploration.
its not the most flawless perfect game in existence, but damn its pretty good.
For me Just Cause 4 is the worst one for too many reasons to list. Also, I'm still not sure about Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but that could have a lot to do with not being ready to play a middle aged, yolked Henry lol
(Edit: Oh and Sniper Elite 6 seems like a contender too. Although SE5 was very poorly received at the beginning until they fixed the issues and then it turned into one of the most awesome games ever so who knows...)
4 was janky, and jumped the shark too many times in the story.
But damn did I have a fun time playing it. The weather guns are stupid, but they’re fun. Just like the jetpack and weather guns from the DLC for 3. We’re not playing these games for realism; at least I’m not. I wanna glide around over a base and bomb the shit out of it and watch everything explode.
100% agree which also leads to one of the biggest disappointments in JC4 for me; re-spawning enemies... It was so satisfying to conquer bases in JC3 and you knew that was it then. That base belonged to the rebellion for good. Also they changed Rico's ethnicity and bodyshape. Here's the hero you love except he's South American now and his muscles are gone. He's meant to be an ironic cliche "Thees could be traaable". That was the whole point. It was fun. I think the thing that ticked me off the most though was that all they had to do was make a graphically updated clone of JC3 with another land to fight over and they could have spawned an endless amount of sequels. I've played through JC3 so many times and the second that Firestarter soundtrack comes on it's just so. damn. perfect 😎🍷
Came in here looking for just cause
I got 2 on my Xbox 360 as a hand me down from a family friend in maybe early 2010s cus I also got oblivion from them and remember looking up guides and Skyrim stuff popping up left and right for
Anyways I have 240 in jc3 and find it just fun. And then I have 130 hours in 4
Ngl give me a small graphic upgrade, give me the ammo economy and wingsuit of 3 as well as a new map and I’d be happy
I followed this game like crazy even pre ordering (lesson learned) some upgrade edition that was later released as dlc so yeah I was excited for this
Don’t get wrong definitely disappointed (bought into the hype so that didn’t help) but I occasionally jump back into the game and have some fun
My complaint is the story just wasn’t good. Like no one’s playing just cause for the story but something about it my casual ass didn’t like it
Renegade III: The Final Chapter.
Renegade on the ZX Spectrum was good, the sequel Target: Renegade was one of my favourite games for years, but the third game was a cynical cash grab, badly executed, barely playable.
Wow! That takes me back 😁
(Edit: Although I was more of an Android Attack cartridge on the Dragon 32 guy)
Dragon 32! A proper, Welsh machine
World of Warcraft ruined Warcraft.
Capitalism ruins franchises.
Cataclysm ruined World of Warcraft.
Pssssshhhh wow was ruined after beta was finished 🙄
MMOs and live service ruin lore. They’ll twist the existing story into knots so that players can fight or recruit every popular character from the series, even if it makes no sense. Even if they’re dead. Gotta keep those players engaged, even if it comes at the expense of the integrity of the world and writing that drew them in in the first place!
I wouldn’t go as far as ruined but Halo
4/5/Infinite all suck.4 and 5 didn’t ruin anything for me. There’s stuff I genuinely like about them that got me excited for the next game. Plenty I didn’t like about them too.
Then there’s Infinite… it feels like the DLC or post-game content to a game we never got. And the multiplayer was unplayable last I saw. It made me no longer excited for the next game.
I still do Halo game nights a couple times a year though.
4/5 made so much accumulated story baggage though.
Infinite would have been better if 4/5 and whatever requisite novels didn’t exist.
How much baggage do you have to address? Evil Cortana, Guardians, and Prometheans. The rest can be managed around.
If Infinite didn’t have to wrap up the previous games, it wouldn’t have that stink on it. But then it would have had even less substance. And the shitty open world wouldn’t have been any better.
It would have been better if they just used Cortana and the Guardians to wrap up the Promethean saga. But then they’d still have to write a decent story, which apparently they are incapable of.
It’s more that they wrote themselves into a corner with Cortana’s state/loss, all the forerunner lore being out in the open now, the weird Guardians stuff…
Infinite could have been a much more subtle expansion on the forerunners, keeping them enigmatic like the trilogy, and kept Cortana. That’s much more straightforward and “Halo”
The open world stuff wasn’t awful. I loved the marine encounters. But yeah, it felt half baked.
Watched a recent video on magic and writing and it applies for scifi too. Every time you add to the lore you now have to remember and support it forever. 4 just added so much that they clearly didn’t think through like that. Bungie dishes out lore in small bits from 1-3, and it was so exciting when you got just the small tiny bit of backstory. 4 and 5 then just dumped in on your plate in healing portions.
Yes exactly! Same with the characters.
Librarian, Didact, people they didn’t even take the time to introduce well and we were supposed to just jump on board with it. Buck was literally the only saving grace for Halo 5 in my opinion - and they introduced him in ODST
ODST was lovely. Halo needs “side stories” like that.
343 could have done something really interesting if they had started with that idea vs just trying to go right for a mainline Chief story
.
To be fair, they probably had a mandate to go for a mainline chief story. That could’ve worked.
I guess the fundamental issue was they read the novels and such but didn’t “understand” the Halo trilogy’s feel (going for operatic sci fi drama instead of the quieter feel), and quickly wrote themselves into a corner.
I have always maintained that Infinite would have made SO much more sense if it’d followed on directly from 3.
Everything after 3 is poorly written fan fiction to me. It still is one of my favorite franchises of all time, but it’s never going to be the same again. Halo Wars 2 was all right though.
Half of Halo 4 was the best story they ever put in a Halo game. The other half was embarrassingly formulaic sci-fi.
It’s okay but Halo 5 makes the whole story worthless and fighting the promethean enemies in 4 is horrible. All of them are bullet sponges and there isn’t enough ammo to kill them.
It really did.
I don’t think 5 ruined 4. By the end of 5 it’s established that this Cortana is not the same Cortana. For all intents and purposes, the old Cortana is gone.
Infinite however, gave her a sympathetic send-off which undid that.
Reach and ODST rule imo
CE, Reach, and ODST are my top 3 games in the franchise. I think i have a special appreciation for the self-contained stories.
Actually, I had REALLY hoped Infinite would use ODST as a template for their open world. Because IMO, Infinite implemented it terribly in just about every way they could.
Viconia and Sarevok had no reason to be in BG3 and by choosing to use WOTCs deplorably terrible supplemental product lore as canon Larian has now cemented those character portrayals forever, which was just pure character assassination.
Is it possible that WOTC just utterly suck? Like even playing D&D for real at a table I always thought the wizard’s stuff was kinda boring. Every time our DM did something himself it was awesome.
I don’t play D&D - in fact I don’t play any TTRPG anymore (imagine having friends) - but I’ve heard a lot of criticism about WOTC’s products, yes. A lion’s share of it is about how unhelpful the official adventures are for DMs, but I’ve also heard the writing criticised from time to time.
I’ve heard good things about Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Curse of Strahd remake though.
Creating a d&d campaign is difficult, and publishing it in a way that communicates what needs to be known is tricky. It’s almost the opposite of a novel. In a novel you need to save twists and turns until the end. In a d&d campaign the DM needs to know them all from the start. But you also don’t want to overwhelm someone with too much information. But you don’t want someone who is following the module closely instead of using it as inspiration to “write” themselves into a corner because they didn’t know something would happen in a specific way later.
The main published modules for 5e are all a little different in how they present everything. Some may be better than others for certain DMs and certain groups.
I adore BG3 but yeah. Viconia in particular felt like a big middle finger to fans of the original games. If they wanted to bring back an OG character to be irredeemably evil, Edwin is right there!
Well, canonically Edwin gets punked by Elminster and lives out his days as a bar wench. And since they decided from the get-go to set BG3 a hundred years after the originals he’d be long dead, along with any other human NPC from the older games. Which, the fact that they started from the point of “let’s set it 100 years later” tells you enough of how much they wanted to deal with the older games. Viconia is not the only thing in BG3 that gives vibes of disdain at worst and disinterest at best for the originals. Flail of Ages is a useless trash weapon randomly sold by a vendor, for fucks sake!
I wonder how many at Larian even played BG1&2. I get such a Wiki-research vibe from a lot of the callbacks.
Dragon Age 2 ruined Dragon Age for me.
Mass Effect 3’s ending soured me to anything EA until Titanfall 2 was less than $20.
I’m sure I’m forgetting a few more ones but those two stand out the most.
The asset recycling in DA2 was absolute madness. I really tried to like DA:I and finished it once but it was painful at times. Has nothing on common with Dragon Age but its name.
I don’t think it would be possible for a bad sequel to ruin a game I liked.
Metroid Other M has not ruined previous Metroids for me (its terrible Adam Malkovich depiction doesn’t even register when I’m playing Fusion, since the character has barely any continuity between the two).
Okamiden did not ruin Okami, it just sucked on its own and what little story it tried to change I disregard. I’d replay Okami today in a heartbeat.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 took a direction I hated, both in style and gameplay, and it made me want to replay XC1. I did. It’s still awesome, though XC3 became my favourite.
And complete opposite of the topic : Baten Kaitos was not bad, but kind of a silly popcorn game to me. Baten Kaitos Origins did not ruin this game : it was so great and flipped the interpretation of the first game so well it made BK better.
You're right that it's hard for a sequel to retroactively ruin a singleplayer game, but they can easily ruin a multiplayer game by killing the original's playerbase.
There are also plenty of cases where the sequel may not ruin the original, but does ruin any future the series could've had. Debatable whether that quite fits OP's question, but it seems to be what most of the replies have talked about.
Well, I did say a sequel would probably not ruin a game I liked… And admittedly, yeah, this involves very few competitive multiplayer games.
The part about a beloved franchise or character didn’t really evoke that kind of ruining to me. But I get that point of view.
Probably unpopular opinion but Prey is clearly on that list ! Not because the new game was bad, but they just took everything that was interesting and original in the first game, throw it away and just made it another doom-like game :/…
The original Prey wasn’t a GOTY or whatever, it just felt different and something new and original… Something I liked and they just made a total reboot with nothing in common on what made prey original/interesting !
What aspects of the newer Prey make it more like Doom than the older Prey? To me, that’s kinda like saying, “System Shock was just Wolfenstein 3D 🎶 in space 🎶”
I know the atmospheric design is doom like (aliens, weapons, paltforms…etc.) but gameplay mechanics were totally inovative and original (wall walking, portals, spirit walk) and chracter focus was also cool (native american).
I’m not saying Prey 2016 is a Bad game, I just found it sad that they totally changed the franchise spirit 😄
I don’t deny that Old Prey was an innovative game. But stating that everything that wasn’t Doom was stripped out while implying that nothing else was added in feels a bit disingenuous.
I thought the original Prey was boring as hell. It’s not like it didn’t have any interesting features, but the lack of penalty for dying meant that failure is impossible.
Prey isn’t really a franchise at all, just two completely unrelated games with the same name.
The newer one was supposed to be a sequel when it was being made by the original devs, but in the end it’s a completely separate game with no connection to the first.
It never was planned as a sequel/reboot of Prey by the studio. The publisher insisted on the name in hopes of more revenue from „long time fans“.
And in the end that totally backfired. I never touched it because of that even though it is supposed to be a great game.
Best ImmSim in my book. Not a Prey sequel tho.
I could not get into Dawn of War 2 and 3 despite pouring thousands of hours into DoW1 and it’s expansions. Why do makers of classic RTS games (looking at you EA) have to f*** with the formula?
You like base building and big armies? Well, too bad!
Was the same for me too. I remember getting DoW2 and being so disappointed. Then 3 came along… I’ve given up them making a decent game again.
Even that DoW remaster isn’t looking good. I’m holding out until I see the reviews but if they’re only going with AI upscaled textures for £30 then no thanks.
At least 2 was a fun game still. Not an RTS, but at least fun.
I’m glad I didn’t get 3 though…
Halo 4, kinda suck tbh. This is coming from someone who play the MMC so i basically marathon it and is able to compare it back to back, and it peaked at Reach. The gun play is wonky and no dual wield, Covenant somehow become the bad guy again after the event in 3, and none of the one that help human defeat Gravemind came back as an ally.
But it doesn’t ruin the franchise for me though, to me canonically there’s only 5 Halo game. The rest is fan fic.
It’s explained in the game that the Covenant faction you fight is a splinter faction. There’s more details in the books, I didn’t have problems when I played it.
Glad you don’t have any problem with it. I do though.
Right, the books that also seem to constantly have continuity errors with the games. :P
Reading the books has actually taught me to not take Halo’s plot so seriously and instead just try to enjoy whichever piece of the story I’m currently engrossed in.
Pretty much. Although I’ve only read the Evolutions collection and Contact Harvest. I really want to read Ghosts of Onyx.
I never really worried to much about continuity errors. The worse is Halsey being in two different places during the events of Fall of Reach book and the game Reach. The Forerunner books actually smoothed that stuff out by explaining when huge amounts of materials pass though Slipspace or go far too fast through Slipspace(remember that crystal?), temporal errors build up and you get a timeline split. Unlike most scifi timeline splits though, in Halo, the lines can reconverge and Reconcile without most people realizing it happen. Halo 5 made a little nod to that with Halsey’s “Casual Reconciliation” line. Somewhere in the Halo universe, some bookkeep is pulling their hair out trying to figure out how Halsey departed Reach twice.
4 felt like such a cash grab to me. No deep lore or story telling like with 1 through reach. Exposition was just spoon fed to us rather than a great mystery. Still, I plugged through, hoping maybe it’d turn around.
Then 5 came out and I gave up all hope on the franchise. Spent more time playing as Locke than we did Chief, story was more compelling than 4 but the storytelling and pacing were clunky, and it was completely disconnected from 4.
Infinite just got worse. “We lost, chief” (but we have no frame of reference, we have no idea what that means , we don’t know how the rest of the world has been affected, and then we’re put against some no name character when we really just want to know what the hell is happening off world)
The only good thing about Infinite was its return to the classic art style. After whatever the art team was doing in 4 and 5, I am glad at least the art team finally got a clue.
Agreed. It could have been such an interesting concept if it was literally any other place. Zeta halo could have been so cool, but it felt so detached from the universe
Two of my favourite games of all time are Diablo 2 and Guild Wars.
Both of these games I was insanely hyped for the following games in the series and got them both on their respective releases days. Both were utterly disappointing crap when compared to their previous games and both probably contributed heavily to how I will now no longer get hyped for any game let alone buy one in their first year or two of release.
I was soooooo excited for Diablo 3. I even loved it when it came out, as horrible difficult and grindy as it was. I would have kept loving it if they just expanded on that… but nope, they took out trading and economy, the things that made item drops feel exciting for me. Without any sense of value, loot was just… boring.
I didn’t touch Diablo 4 and it sounds like I made the correct decision.
The remaster of Diablo 2 was excellent.
I didn’t, I remember falling asleep playing it not long after release which didn’t bode well, I wanted to like it but couldn’t. I “enjoyed” it for a while many years later as a co-op experience on a console (I forget which one) whilst getting stoned but it was more scratching an itch for that genre and playing with friends locally that really won it over in that instance rather than the game itself.
Likewise with 4, I didn’t even give it the time of day tbh, I still haven’t really seen much about it.
I’d have liked to play the remaster but I refuse to give those assholes any money and the main draw for me was multiplayer as a kid. I played the SP briefly on a pirate version but it was always about the MP for me.
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of Guild Wars 2. It was not a true sequel to Guild Wars 1 but it’s a decent game in its own right. I can see that if you’re playing a great city builder game and they announced a sequel, you would be thrown if that sequel was a 4x instead. But in this analogy, it’s a damn good 4x and maybe even the best amongst its contemporaries. Plus the original game is still there in all of its charm and originality, they’ve kept the servers running this long and seem to plan on keeping on doing so until no one is playing.
But the question wasn’t give a fair assessment of a sequel to a game you like.
I realise that it isn’t objectively a bad game or anything like that and a lot of people still play it until this day and I for sure appreciate them keeping the servers up for the old game so I can still go back to play it should I choose. But the question was what sequel to a game I loved ruined it for me and anyone who played both can see they are blatantly not the same game at all.
GW2 was a complete departure from how the first game worked to a more generic MMO style, I’m sure it is a great game in its own right but for me personally, when compared to the amazing first game, it just doesnt hold a candle.
.
Sticker Star kind of ruined Paper Mario for me. Super Paper Mario had already gone quite weird, but in a good way - the combat was completely different but it still felt like the original and TTYD in terms of the levelling, exploration, and plot.
Sticker Star, Colour Splash, and Origami King are very linear in comparison, their lack of experience makes battles largely pointless, and the obsession with giant household objects and nameless toad NPCs is getting tedious.
The latest three games were all still enjoyable, but they’re really nothing on the first three.
Absolutely correct. Modern Paper Mario is more about the spectacle of the story, rather than the way it’s mechanically explored. They peaked with TTYD, had a weird one with Super, and the rest have been “use this gimmick in VERY SPECIFIC WAYS to explore OUR story how WE want you to.”
This isn’t to say modern Paper Mario games are bad, just that it’s blatantly obvious they threw out mechanical complexity and deeper narrative tones in favor of “watch this big thing explode, ooh pretty colors :DDD!!!” Sticker Star is definitely the worst of them though.
I really hope we get another Paper Mario game that FEELS like a true Paper Mario RPG. TTYD Remastered is incredible, and I think that by making it, Nintendo acknowledged that fans just… really don’t care for modern Paper Mario as it is.
Bug Fables has that TTYD taste to it
The saddest thing about Sticker Star is that I actually think the game had very interesting ideas with its resource management-based combat, but falls apart because the player is actively disincentivized to spend those resources. There is no reward for combat, so the optimal play is to run from every encounter. And bosses have nothing going on either, just use the correct item and ypu win. So you never actually engage with the mechanics at all!
And the fix would've been so simple: EXP. Y'know, the thing RPGs normally give you as a reward for combat?
Not necessarily beloved, but I hated the tone and genre shift between Jak and Daxter and Jak 2. I hated the driving sections so much, that that’s where I put the game down. Looking back, I guess they wanted to make a different game, but had to make a sequel?
I played the series in reverse order so I love Jak 2 and 3. TPL is okay, but I do actually like the action-y gameplay of the sequels.
I see op choose the circle jerk today. Excellent choice, Excellent pallet 🤣.
Palate?
A pallet of answers if you will
Fallout 76?
I played it with coop mates (via game pass IIRC), all EGS fans since Oblivion, well after 76 was released and patched up, and it was just… boring. And grindy. Yet kept trying to upsell us stuff. I kinda get how some like the game with those BGS environments, but that was still a shock to me.
Starfield did nothing either. I watched YT story videos/tried the intro out of a friend’s Steam library instead of buying and felt like I was looking at a AI slop Skyrim mod, both technically and in terms of writing. Again, I’m a hardcore fan going way back, warts, glitches and all.
It’s remarkable the studio has fallen so far, without basically changing anything, yet still has such a loyal following. How is that even possible?
Think you could take it back a step there.
Not going to be spending money with Bethesda again unless the reviews turn up exceptional. After F4, I was expecting nothing from 76, and was not surprised. Was expecting nothing from Starfield, and was not surprised. Am expecting Elder Scrolls 5 to be a bag of shite as well - am whatever the complete opposite of ‘hyped’ is for it.
I think the rose tinted glasses effect is strong. Fallout 4 wasn’t that bad and had some neat characters and sidequests. I played heavily modded NV too, and while great, has plenty of missed beats and slow quests.
Also, making a (mostly) top down, tight text game is very different than producing a voice acted, sprawling 3D world. It’s like trying to compare the writing quality of a novel vs a 2 part blockbuster movie.
Not that I disagree with the decline, but I think that’s putting it too strong and ignoring huge differences.
For me the technical and artistic of aspects are factors too. Starfield would’ve been unreal if it came out in 2012… but look at its contemporaries. CP2077? KCD2? Even ME Andromeda utterly trounces it in artistic creativity, animation quality, graphics, scripting, performance, HDR quality, combat, even some voice acting; I could go on and on. And it’s basically the same premise.
Yet Starfield feels like modded Skyrim, looks only superficially better, and runs at like a tenth the speed.
One thing that really threw me off FO4 was the voiced main character. They had to simplify the dialogue options significantly, and I just don’t need my character to have a voice, my imagination can sort that out just fine. That way I can make up my own mind about how my character sounds in my head, have more detailed dialogue options (like FO:NV), and not have a locked in boring voice with boring dialogue options. Lots of cool additions in FO4, but it just seemed so shallow, I stopped playing quite early.
Prince of Persia. First two were good, though a glitch toward the end of the second one kept me from finishing it.
The third one was an abomination. Completely different tone and vibe, completely different Prince. DNF.
If you say first two, which ones do you mean?
Sorry, Sands of Time and Warrior Within. Forgot that the franchise started before the PS2 era. Didn’t know it went back to the 80s!
Puyo Puyo Tetris. I put out a lengthy video essay about how this game is directly responsible for everything wrong with the series today, and a followup.
TL;DR: Outsold every main series game, and by an order of magnitude. Succeeded in spite of Puyo Puyo rather than because of it, did a terrible job making new players actually want to play Puyo Puyo and just led them to bounce off it and play the other game instead. But even in spite of how much I initially disliked it as a game, I thought its success could lead to bigger and better things for the series, perhaps we could finally get a main series game localized next. Never happened, instead Sega rehashed this crossover four times. Main series is dead, never coming back.
I have never seen such strong opinion about Puyo puyo WTH?
I'm passionate about my favorite game. I'm sure you have games you're passionate about, right?
Fair and valid point Sir tho you have to admit Puyo Puyo hardcore fans are a rarity.
Well, we'll remain rare as long as Sega does such a terrible job marketing this series...
Sacred 3. It was a soulless cash grab that had nothing to do with the previous game, which is one of my absolute favourite ARPG’s.
Interestingly, I would say Sacred 2 as a huge fan of Sacred 1.
Totally fair. I would say each game in the Elder Scrolls series let me down more than the last, even though I still enjoyed each one, so I can how being a fan of the first would be such a letdown for the second.
Interesting. What’s your favorite Elder Scrolls? Daggerfall was my first but Morrowind is my favorite.
Honestly, its gotta be Oblivion. Its really close between it and Morrowind, but I strongly disliked the way you have to get information in Morrowind for the story. I dont mind the reading at all, it’s the fact that you have to ask every n’wah about every detail to get any info that, while realistic, I ultimately just found to be too tedious.
With you saying “each game let me down more than the last” I didn’t expect you to say your favorite was the second most recent game.
Haha, yeah. I dont think its the best, that opinion lay with Daggerfall. But rose tinted glasses dont care about that, just what you remember feeling when you played it through the first time.
Torchlight 3 and Infinite. I was a fan of Torchlight before there was Torchlight. I played Fate to death in college. I played Mythos during the beta. I probably put more hours into Torchlight and Torchlight 2 than I did into Diablo and Diablo 2 (and I put a lot of time into Diablo).
I actually had hope for Torchlight Frontiers. I thought it seemed like it could be what Mythos was trying to be - finally an online Torchlight game.
But then they forgot about all of that and essentially released “Torchlight 2 Mobile” but on PC.
It was not rubbish, but what Xrd did to my main character, Zato, irreparably damaged my relationship with any future Guilty Gear game, and Strive just finished off whatever hope I had left.
And to be clear: I'm not talking about power level here—fuck that. I'm only talking about how much fun I had with the character, and still do in Guilty Gear Plus R.
Beloved is a REALLY strong word.
But, Mortal Kombat 11. I had always enjoyed the MK games (it helped that my sister owned the N64 so I only played maybe a grand total of two hours of the wannabe Tekken ones…). And the timeloop reboot had reinvigorated the series and I was a much more accomplished fighting game player and actually understood how to push through projectile spam.
Then they randomly recast Sonya Blade with (sandy hook truther and terf) rhonda rousey and it was just… ugh. Even ignoring she is a hateful and evil shitbag… she is just a REALLY bad actress. Could never bring myself to grab 11 and by the time “1” came out I had also realized that I actively disliked the x-ray attacks and finishers since they were just boringly gorey time sinks.
And honorable mention to Splinter Cell Double Agent. But apparently the OG xbox/wii u (?) version of that was actually good and it was just 360/PC that was a steaming pile of shit. And Conviction was a very different game but also I still think about the aftermath of the EMP every so often.
KSP2.
Surprised this didn't come up sooner to be honest.
I'm going to say The Last of Us 2. I loved the first one so much, and then 2 was not what I wanted or was expecting, which completely killed any love I had for it and any desire for a larger franchise.
I was hoping for an anthology series where each game focused on a different group of people in the same universe. I loved Joel and Ellie, but I wanted their story to be over and to get a look at how other people had dealt with things.
Final Fantasy Remake Part 1
They changed the story and introduced Whispers to the game, something about Fate trying to drive the story the way its supposed to be. Then they made Sephiroth the final boss of what is now known to be a trilogy (bcz money)…
My absolute favorite game got ruined bcz they decided they needed to “shake the game up”. And now part 2 “Rebirth” is some multiverse bullshit.
I hate everything about this corporate BS they turned the remake into. But, I have to live with it bcz its not my game.
Best I could do is buy rebirth used from game stop so Square Enix didnt get any of my money.
Instead, I play the original from time to time, and I have to try to block out the remake changes they have made.
The franchise was so successful, that Square Enix made idiotic spinoffs and added characters to iconic scenes who weren’t there. They’ve just completely ruined the original game with how much they’ve milked the franchise. Its tragic to me, and not many people care that much.
I really wanted a remake that made the changes that were necessary to play to a modern audience, clear up the confusing story points more fleshed out so they were direct, and maybe changed up a boss or two. Basically I wanted the same thing they did with Resident Evil 4 remake, but instead we got a garbage trilogy.
Funny, I said the same thing on Reddit around the time it was released and was fucking crucified for it, lol. I called it a shallow button-masher with FFVII aesthetics and bad fanfiction for a story. I didn’t get any coherent rebuttal besides people malding over turn-based combat and how rewriting iconic scenes and plot points is good because reasons.
Yeah, depending on where you say this people will absolutely rail you for it. I dont understand why people are accepting of this crap.
imagine having never played the original (me, unfortunately, at the time). Then, what are the whispers all about?
I mean, its not a terrible game. I just really wish they would have stuck to the original story. If you havent played the original, thats probably a good thing when playing the remake bcz then you don’t have a comparison.
Resident Evil 2 Remake left me very disappointed. The moment-to-moment gameplay is good, great even! But the complete lack of soundtrack (despite the original game having a lot of iconic tracks), two thirds of the story being cut, and the characters just acting as imbeciles for half the screentime was upsetting. Worst offender was Leon leaving a man to die inside his cell because “I have to speak with the chief first”. Like, what? You don’t even know if the chief is alive, and even if he was, you don’t know where he is, and you don’t have the certainty that you can get back in one piece to free the poor guy from jail. You really want to leave him like that at the mercy of whatever monster lurks inside?
Don’t get me started on 3 Remake.
couldnt even finish 3, 2 was alright, 4 was obviously the best out of the remakes.
I loved Battlefield.
For me it started to go downhill with BF1, although it was still a good game, it already started trying to be a movie and not the „put C4 onto jeep, plop into jeep, drive jeep to enemy, plop out if jeep, boom“ kinda jamboree that I loved. Now it was all about getting spammed with immersive animations that just broke the flow for me. At least hardcore servers were still very enjoyable for me.
Then BFV came around and with it more animation spam on top of absolute terrible visual clarity where you had to stand still for a couple seconds and scan a room to really be sure no one‘s lying on their back in a corner (obviously you‘re long dead by then). Oftentimes I got shot by a camper and even in the killcam I couldn‘t even see the guy. As if that‘s not enough, they introduced clown skins that made you wonder if that person‘s on your side or not. Now it’s not x uniform soldiers against x uniform soldiers anymore, there‘s superheroes and supervillains running around. I hardly even played this one.
Then BF2042 came and it‘s just Apex Legends hamfisted into a BF frame as far as I‘m concerned. I didn‘t even get this until they trashed it for 2 bucks and played for like 2 hours since.
BF3 was peak, BF4 was good, BF1 was alright, then a whole lotta disappointment. I‘ll never forget the 24/7 Back to Karkand Rush server in BF3, community servers rock. Good times, sad greed made it go to shit.
BF3 was certainly really good but maybe I can show my age by saying 1942 and Vietnam were at the very least the start of the plateau, if not the real peak.
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I enjoyed the DC mod more which might be the reason why BF3 was my peak 🤔 Did you maybe like BFV then?
I did play a bunch of BFV but I wouldn’t say I liked it more than 1942. My time spent on BFV was mostly mucking about with friends which was probably the ideal way to play that one.
Prototype 2. I loved the main character of the first one and the idea that even a monster was not as evil as human corporations. The jump to him being a main villain in 2 was too abrupt, there needed to be more story reasons to justify the change, or they shouldn’t have made him a villain at all.
Apex Legends ruined the possibility of getting a Titanfall3
Metro Exodus. Opening up the map was a mistake. The linear levels were fine, that gives you tight pacing and you always know what’s next. The confined underground spaces were part of the soul of that series. I only played maybe 8 hours of Exodus and can’t be bothered to play more.
it gets pretty good as you go, but i see your point. the first two games followed the books almost perfectly as well.
I know The Division 1 flirted with seasons, but I hated TD2’s season pass crap.
StarCraft and Brood War were amazing, but the writing quality took a nosedive in the sequel. StarCraft 2 felt like poorly written fanfiction that didn’t understand the existing characters or their motivations at all.
Completely agree. The whole tone and setting changed. SC:BW went for gritty realism. Obviously, there’s a suspension of disbelief when you’ve got psionic aliens, but it felt like three scrappy factions barely surviving in the endless dark of space.
SC2 went full Warcraft. Ancient gods, portals to other worlds, all the same kitschy fantasy elements that are fine in the campy context of WC but really clashed with the established character of the SC universe. I get that they wanted to raise the stakes in the sequel, but I really disagreed with how they went about it.
And Kerrigan should have stayed evil. That’s my “Han shot first” of the franchise.
Agreed 100%, how Kerrigan was handled was the worst of StarCraft 2’s many sins against prior characterization. They spent an entire expansion setting her up as an irredeemable monster and the new big bad of the setting alongside Mengsk and whatever Duran was up to, only to undo it all because NuBlizzard wanted their waifu.
And there is no way Jim Raynor as of the end of Brood War would ever ally with Kerrigan again after her betrayal, yet he goes from having sworn to get revenge for Fenix’s death to helping Kerrigan “redeem” herself with little more than a mention of past grievances.
Maybe Jim was just in a really good mood after all his hair spontaneously grew back. /s
Diablo 4
The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero.
In a lot of respects it’s a good game, its fans even love it as a part of this big ongoing series. But it repeated a few tropes and trends that really started to get to me; wherein so many villains are introduced in a Dragonball style of escalating power rather than character definition.
The first two games introduced one supremely powerful hero, but invented mature and elaborate reasons as to why he couldn’t save the world alone - why evil or influential forces need cooperation of everyone to defeat, not a single showy swordsman. Then, later games try to impress you by showing villains that could easily beat this hero; without character definition to make such claims worth it.
They also really sold into the anime gender tropes - where every woman makes shy/teasing comments about the male lead, most girls are lesbian only for the sake of sexual harassment rather than true connection, etc.
Oh man, the moment I clicked on this thread, Trails came into mind. Now, I myself haven’t played it, but my mother is close to finishing Kevin’s game, and we were peeking at the the next few games and the most recent one to be released. And man, I don’t even know if I wanna play this series anymore.
The anime tropes we saw and read about from people’s reviews are killing us, and me and my mom fucking love anime. Hell, she’s a shonen-anime lover through and through. But the way the older characters like Agate get yassified into looking like generic anime guy #1 with red hair and Zin into slightly less generic anime guy #2 kills me, these dudes should not look like college kids 😭
The shitty romance that they’re hinting between Agate and Tita is 🤢. I really wish they had kept them as a sibling dynamic, and I thought Tita’s mom was freaking out because she thought he was a pervert, not that he actually liked her…
Also found out about the adopted siblings from TS:CS that seem to like each other, which is creepier than Estelle x Joshua because this pair was raised together since they were literal toddlers unlike the original two… God Japan’s not-by-blood adopt a son to marry thing kills me. The adopt a son to marry is fine if the girl wasn’t raised with him or like, they’re 20 years old. But this, “we literally were raised like siblings” thing kills me sometimes.
But yeah the egregious fan service, flanderization, and overall lack of seriousness that we saw from some of the newer games made me be like “maybe I won’t pick this game up,” which is a shame. I’m really disappointed to hear about the anime gender tropes stuff…
Any Splinter Cell after Chaos Theory
Also,
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
followed by Assassin’s Creed: Unity
followed by Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
I liked Double Agent for trying something different, but Conviction and everything after was utter trash.
I really liked blacklist, it’s a shame the pc port is completely fucked into oblivion…I lost my PS3 disk in a move a few years ago and never found it again. I really need to get a new copy.
For me, it was Skyrim. It was one of the first games I bought with my own money and certainly the first where I followed the news before the release. I did not know that Todd Howard was a notorious liar and that ruined the game for me. Like, the game itself was probably fine. It was an upgrade in some ways and a downgrade in various other ways. But having been promised that it would be so much better than Oblivion and Morrowind, when it was simply not, that just robbed me of the fun I could have had with it.
Nothing beats Morrowind. I will die on this hill.
Gonna be controversial but Monster Hunter World for me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the game a lot at first and put 100+ hours into it. But it marked the departure from the silly, cozy, slightly under-the-radar franchise to something that’s just too big for my tastes. I feel like each entry is trying to top its predecessor in new mechanics, bigger maps and stuff and end up getting lost in the sauce.
I started playing on PSP with Freedom 2 and Freedom Unite and moved over to 3DS when the games came out for that. The games were never unpopular per se, especially in Japan where they’ve been a staple since the PSP days, but they always felt a little more niche and unknown. They felt more focused, more streamlined, tighter. All the new combat mechanics added in newer installments definitely help the fluidity of the gameplay and add a lot of fun and variety. But that’s it for new additions that I’d miss when going back to older titles. These huge open-world-esque maps just don’t cut it for me.
Rise would likely have been last MH that I could enjoy since it’s a good mix of classic MH with good QoL features added in to make the game more modern, but even that one didn’t quite catch my attention for too long.
I don’t know, I feel like Monster Hunter kinda lots its charme in chasing industry trends of open world games and more realistic graphics and physics in favour of character, silliness, and focus.
Oblivion.
Daggerfall was awesome and Morrowind blew me away. Going into Oblivion I had the highest hopes. Bought the Collectors Edition, took the day off…and biggest disappointment from a game ever. Granted I like Skyrim. Not as much as Daggerfall or Morrowind, but far more than Oblivion. So I guess it didn’t kill the franchise for me.
Bonus popular game that actually killed the franchise for me: GTA4. I loved the Trilogy, but I could not stand IV. All the main characters annoyed the piss out of me, the driving and gun play weren’t nearly as fun…I tried to play it but got burned out around 1/3rd of the way in. Tried to play GTA5 a few years ago and I felt burned out after 40 minutes.
Man, GTA IV is my favorite, and GTA V is my least favorite, and largely for the same reason: the main characters.
In IV, I really liked Niko and wanted him to succeed. I really didn’t like Roman, but I could relate since everyone has that annoying cousin. I just really wanted Niko to succeed at having a second chance in LC.
In V, I hated Michael, Trevor felt shallow (more backstory could’ve helped), and Franklin was a disappointment (what happened to his dream of owning a business?). Maybe they’re fleshed out more in GTA Online, but I never played it. Honestly, I was fine with them all dying since they all seemed like a waste of space, yet I had to play as them. Franklin was the least disappointing, but I really wanted him to have some interesting side content instead of an attempt of a story w/ his friend that ultimately went nowhere.
GTA SA is mu favorite because CJ’s arc is just so good.
Lords of the Realm III
1 was great, though the economy was overly complicated. 2 fixed all the issues of 1 and made combat more fun. 3 removed everything I liked and replaced it w/ a weird realtime RTS system.
I spent a ton of time on LotR II and it’s expansion. I distinctly remember finding the box for 3 a few years later and just being confused that they didn’t seem to know what was good about their game.
Had a complicated time trying to get 2 running a few years ago, I think I ended up setting up a Win95 VM specifically for it. But now it looks like they’re just on GoG and Steam. Might have to grab it there.
I replay it every couple years because it has so much nostagia for me, and it runs perfectly on Steam on Linux (and I assume GOG). They even fixed the incredibly annoying mouse issue that I dealt with for years where it wouldn’t scroll down or to the right.
This is going to show my age but Master of Orion 3.
Why? I loved moo3. Not as good as moo2. But still good.
Either way, Master of Magic was the GOAT!
There is a remake of MoM that plays quite nice :-)
I think you are alone. Most people were disappointed. There were too many thing that were set to automatic. It was kind of hard to even play the game. More like just watching.
Moo2 was so fucking good.
I’ve tried many many 4x space games, but none have ever matched the joy that one brought.
Mass Effect Andromeda. I feel like I’m the only person on the internet who liked the ending of ME3 but holy shit Andromeda was fucking awful.
Mass effect had this weird metamorphosis across the series where the character writing and gameplay improved noticeably between each game in the series while the story and mechanics took big steps back. Andromeda had some of the best movement/power sets in the series, not to mention your own build-a-gun workshop, while absolutely failing at everything else it tried to do. “My face is tired” indeed random not-the-citadel lady.
Hal0 4 and Below Zero come to mind. Facebook buying beatsaber and ruining it with their filthy little hands, too. It took a huge nosedive in quality.
Castlevania Lord of Shadow 2. Loved the first one and 2 was just bad. I wish they would have kept it as a God of War clone, with stunning visuals, game play and music
I was a Siren main in Borderlands.
Every new game in the franchise made me hate Lilith more. I think I may have cheered at the end of BL3.
Why? Lilith was the best siren gameplay in the series. Yeah, ol Randy fucked her up real good with their dogshit writing, but her character never really changed. I’ve never been able to seriously pick up another siren character because nothing compares to phasewalk.
Dragon age 2, Mass effect 3
ME3 is particularly bad cause most of the game is exactly as it should have been, and then the ending is pure unadulterated trash.
Evil Genius 2. I loved Evil Genius 1 as a kid. It was far from perfect and had a lot of bugs, but it was a blast. I’m fully aware there’s a lot of rose tinted goggles going on for it in my mind. But I thought the new one would fix problems and be more enjoyable. It did improve on the first in a lot of ways, but it was so so grindy.
In EG1 you could send you minions into the world to steal money and complete missions (that gave points or loot, like stealing the Eifel Tower). I’m EG2, they kept this mechanic, but anyone you send to the world map is just gone. They cannot come back. This leads to just an annoying constant flow of recruiting more minions, training them to upgrade, and them being sent to the map forever to never return. It would perhaps be slightly better if you could increase the rate you recruit minions like the first game, but instead they always come at a constant rate and there is a button to recruit more but it’s buried in a menu. So many things in this game are buried in a menu.
Another frustration, they added a feature to automatically tag enemy agents that come to your base (to be killed, captured, distracted, etc) but they’re all under different research tiers. Why require the research at all? Right clicking agents and saying “tag for capture” is just pointless busy work. Even in the original you could hold control when you did it and it would flag the whole group. Not anymore. You can only tag one at a time.
There are just so many little things like this that made the game so annoying to play. I wanted to like it. But I just couldn’t enjoy it. The new art style is worse, too. It keeps the spy fi aesthetic but it’s much more cartoonish. The game is more diverse which is nice, the original was like all men. I also liked what they did with John Steele, the main antagonist more or less. Canonically you beat him and killed him but they pass on his mantle to new agents and train them to be like him. And they’re relatively weak, but like a constant threat.
Also surprised this one didn't come up sooner.
It was one of the few times I really got hyped about a game as an adult.
My first experience with this was Last of Us. I wasn’t expecting good things for part 2 after hearing things about hostile takeovers but killing off the main guy just ruined it for me.
Don’t play many sequel games, so it’s hard to say.
Destiny. Played the heck out of 1, and 2 is just… Annoying. I still play, but I actively disuade people from picking it up.
It went from a mechanically fun game with garbage storytelling but amazing lore, to mechanically complex and hyper specialzed, still mostly garbage storytelling, and lore that is trying to constantly one up itself or nonexistent. The seasonal model was a mistake and it’s grindy for the sake of money. It really took a terrible turn down sitcom alley of having the seasonal content need stakes, but also not really change anything drastic. So it just feels like tasks for the sake of tasks… Which it is. A neverending treadmill where grinding has only very short lived rewards.
Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel are two of my favorite games which I’m almost always down to replay.
Borderlands 3 has solid enough gameplay, but absolutely shit all over the storyline and characters.
FF Cotw why in the everliving fuck put that idiot in the game. Sure you can make millions by putting CR7 in the game same as you can make 10 grand by sucking dicks for a 20 in an alleyway. I can’t believe how many shit decisions they make and still have enough money to burn on it.
Loved MK 1 then 2 blew my mind 3 was good 4 blew my mind again. Then until 9 I didn’t touch anything too goofy I haven’t been able to play the single player much (of DA Deception and Armageddon) but didn’t click anyway. MK9 was goated. Then MKX didn’t liked it at all (cant handle a game with such bad animations). Loved 11 and now MK1 is like meh.
Wasn’t a sequel but I used to love League until Yone and the healing meta. Sylas saved it for a while; like I love gimmick chars and a rebel to boost, sign me TF in. But all in all the BS balance the toxicity the lack of respect for my time, it was too much. Switched to WF and couldn’t believe how chill it was.
Might & Magic IX.
I love Might & Magic VI - VIII but IX killed the franchise for me. Wrong vibe, terrible bugs. I tried X when it came out, but it is also a different game.
A future prediction as I won’t be buying it - Subnautica 2.