What game sequel ruined a beloved franchise or character for you?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Apex Legends ruined the possibility of getting a Titanfall3
I know The Division 1 flirted with seasons, but I hated TD2's season pass crap.
KSP2.
Surprised this didn't come up sooner to be honest.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
World of Warcraft ruined Warcraft.
Capitalism ruins franchises.
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!
Cataclysm ruined World of Warcraft.
Pssssshhhh wow was ruined after beta was finished 🙄
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
I see op choose the circle jerk today. Excellent choice, Excellent pallet 🤣.
Palate?
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.
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.
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:
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 😎🍷
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
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 😄
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.