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?
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.
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.
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
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.
A future prediction as I won’t be buying it - Subnautica 2.
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.
I know The Division 1 flirted with seasons, but I hated TD2’s season pass crap.
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!
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.
There is a remake of MoM that plays quite nice :-)
Moo2 was so fucking good.
I’ve tried many many 4x space games, but none have ever matched the joy that one brought.
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 wouldn’t go as far as ruined but Halo
4/5/Infinite all suck.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.
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.
Halo 5 makes the whole story worthless
It really did.
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.
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.
I have always maintained that Infinite would have made SO much more sense if it’d followed on directly from 3.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
- everyone seems to be better at colonizing on their own, separate from the home base, whose literal only purpose is to colonize.
- (mechanically the whole colonization thing is trivialized by mary sue story progression and deus ex machina devices)
- all the new aliens are once again roughly 2m tall humanoids
- the ending felt… very “we need setpieces” and “absolutely make it a parade of every minor character we talked to”
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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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.
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 !
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.
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.
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.
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.
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I see op choose the circle jerk today. Excellent choice, Excellent pallet 🤣.
Palate?
A pallet of answers if you will
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.
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?
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
