Submitted 1 month ago by Novamdomum@fedia.io to games@lemmy.world
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, all EGS fans since Oblivion well after it 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, but that was a shock to me.
Starfield did nothing either. I watched YT story videos/tried 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. I just don’t get it.
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.
Also, making a (mostly) top down text game is very different than producing a voice acted 3D world. It’s like trying to compare the writing quality of a novel vs a blockbuster movie.
Not that I disagree with the decline, but I think that’s putting it too strong.
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.
KSP.
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.
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 bad first draft. 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. It’s 99% a direction and writing problem.)
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.
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 there. 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.
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.
Apex Legends ruined the possibility of getting a Titanfall3
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.
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.
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.
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.
Glad you don’t have any problem with it. I do though.
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.
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 soo much accumulated story baggage though.
Infinite would have been better if 4/5 and whatever requisite novels didn’t exist.
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.
Additionally there is absolutely no way Jim Raynor as of the end of Brood War would ever ally with Kerrigan 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.
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.
Diablo 4
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.
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,are 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I see op choose the circle jerk today. Excellent choice, Excellent pallet 🤣.
Palate?
A pallet of answers if you will
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?
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.
You like base building and big armies? Well, too bad!
At least 2 was a fun game still. Not an RTS, but at least fun.
I’m glad I didn’t get 3 though…
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.
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. I’m 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 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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is going to show my age but Master of Orion 3.
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 . 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.
Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
World of Warcraft ruined Warcraft.
Capitalism ruins franchises.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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 world that drew them in in the first place!
callouscomic@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Cataclysmic ruined World of Warcraft.
CallMeAnAI@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Pssssshhhh wow was ruined after beta was finished 🙄