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?
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.
- Fallout 1 - exceptional world-building, fantastic game, great character writing, superbly replayable RPG. Your build is instrumental to what you can do; decisions affect the world. Held together by jank and bugs, alas, but generally superb.
- Fallout 2 - fixes most of the jank and bugs and has a much bigger and deeper world, but not quite as well-integrated a story. Worthy sequel, though.
- Fallout 3 - “Oblivion with guns”, but has a pretty decent story, lots of interesting side quests. Seems like Bethesda misunderstood the point of the setting a bit, but very promising. Has some RPG replayability - different builds and different choices change what’s available in the world.
- Fallout New Vegas - best game in the whole series. Good plot, great sidequests, great characters, reactive world. Actually makes it seem like the Creation engine can be used for ‘proper’ RPGs - everything by Bethesda tended to be a mile wide and an inch deep up till then. Obsidian actually understand the setting, which is not surprising since they had a lot of original Black Isle devs in their team. Held together by jank and bugs, which I’m going to pretend was a callback to Fallout 1.
- Fallout 4 - just what the fuck. Plot that you can barely believe is as stupid as it is. One-note, irritating characters. Dreadful writing. Gives up being an RPG in favour of crafting and base-building. “Talking” interface which was the butt of jokes at the time and an insult to the history of the series. Barely any decision is of consequence, you could save near the “final decision” point, see all the endings, and miss nothing of consequence. All of Bethesda’s worst habits, given free rein.
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.
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.
Halo 5 makes the whole story worthless
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pretty much. Although I’ve only read the Evolutions collection and Contact Harvest. I really want to read Ghosts of Onyx.
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.
Apex Legends ruined the possibility of getting a Titanfall3
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
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.
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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
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…
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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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.
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.
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!
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.
