For better or worse: Sequels

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Simple thread really, sequels that either rejuvenated a bad/mediocre game, or sequels that fucking cratered sales and peoples opinion of a would-be series. Or like a wave of good and bad sequels.

Example:
Devil May Cry 1 was really good, Devil May Cry 2 came out and it was so unbelievably bland and boring that the first one looked like a fluke and there would never be a proper sequel. DMC3 was released and was just fantastic and made sure that the series had both life and a strong legacy.

Or making a prequel despite ending on a cliffhanger(Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, at least I think R6Vegas ended on a cliffhanger).

There's been some series were the first one was terrible but for reasons unknown got surprisingly great sequels, I just can't think of any right now. Anyway, no one reads op.

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

Dead Space 3 and Mankind Divided spring to mind.

DS3 was a bloated mess. It was hugely expensive, fucking huge but equally tedious, and killed the franchise as a result. The only saving grace is how ballsy the DLC was bu having planet Earth be literally eaten and bam, smash cut to black.

Mankind...eh. Human Revolution was a superb prequel to Deus Ex despite pacing issues, but MD just scattered all over the place. No cohesive themes, no real intrigue in the plot, and even for a video game the constant X-Men style DO YOU SEE THE RACIAL ALLEGORY YET writing was too heavy handed to be believable. HR dealt with corporational oversight, the ethics and morals of progress, etc, whereas I can't really remember anything from the sequel except "predujuce bad". If I'm not mistaken this also killed the franchise, ha.

For the other side of the coin Mass Effect 2 was such a massive jump in technical and gameplay quality it was unreal. ME1 wasn't a bad game but jesus christ it was held back really badly due to its design. I played through ME2 multiple times because the combat and gameplay loop were enjoyable.

 

[verissimus]

Tempting to say Castlevania - Symphony of the Night but I feel like the series plummeted after it.

Perhaps, Metroid Prime would be a better example.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Perfect Dark. Great first game, the sequel was dreadful trend chasing with bad controls and awkward movement.

There's been some series were the first one was terrible but for reasons unknown got surprisingly great sequels, I just can't think of any right now.

Street Fighter is ur example of this. I'm told the first game was terrible. TMNT on the NES was other turd followed by a string of well received sequels.

Up for debate, but Dino Crisis was arguably one such series. The first game was a technically impressive but bland Resident Evil clone, the second game was a classic, and the third was a mess. Demons Souls, Assassins Creed, Elder Scrolls, Rise of the Robots, and MechWarrior had bad first games but great sequels, but people defend those games. I haven't played them though.

The DLC for Bioshock 2 and Dark Souls 2 could also count since they are supposedly better than the base game.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Mario 1 was decent, Jap. Mario 2 was a kaizo hack, American Mario 2 was shit, Mario 3 was great.

 

[Overcast]

Where to begin...

Sly 2 Band of Thieves was such a massive change up from the first game. The first game was kind of a typical 3D platformer with elements of stealth incoporated into the gameplay, but Sly 2 took the gameplay and incorporated it into open world maps with mission based gameplay designed around each of the playable characters' strengths and weaknesses. Each mission building up to intricate and climactic "heists" at the end of each chapter. The storytelling and character interactions were also generally improved.

Klonoa 2 didn't change too much from the first game from a gameplay standpoint, but I feel the story and characters were a general step up from the last game. Incorporating the last game's theme of forgotten dreams and mixing in allegories for depression and its various forms of coping with it.

We Love Katamari was sort of the creator's way of poking fun at the nature of sequels, the "improvements" and "new gameplay features" that come with them and how people will always find things to complain about. Ironically, the people who would take on the series after that completely missed the point and went on to make iterative sequels for several years.

Thief 2 was considered a step up from the first game by many people, but for me, it felt more like something that complimented the story and themes of the first game. Whereas the first game had more supernatural elements, the second game focused on the rise of industry and automation. Both of which threaten the world in someway and our "hero" who simply wants to steal shit for a living is forced to intervene and maintain "balance" in the world. As the Keepers wanted him to since he was invited into their fold as a child. Both games can't really exist without the other I feel.

The Final Fantasy games are sort of unique in that despite being numbered, each game sorta does its own thing so any "improvements" made throughout the series are more so technical rather than taking what was good about the last game and refining it.

Disgaea 1 still has the best story and characters despite having being the roughest out of all the games to play. (Haven't played the remake though). Although it took until 5 for the series to really make something that is the closest to perfect gameplay wise for me. Every game before that experimented with different things which were mostly hit and miss. I just wonder what 6 will bring to the table. Gonna be hard to top 5 for me.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

Assassin's Creed felt like it had the core of a decent game weighed down with bad design ideas, all of which were vastly improved on in II and Revelations. Or Street Fighter 2, undoubtably one of the most influential games ever made whilst the original is pretty much forgotten.

Wipeout was a technically impressive game, but quite frustrating to play as you'd come to a virtual halt at the slightest contact with the track. Wipeout 2097 on the other hand was fantastic and still plays well today. Same for Destruction Derby.

Or for one that shit the bed, FEAR 3. Because nothing says horror like a co-op corridor shooter.

 

[RA-5C Vigilante]

The first two Postals are like night and day

Postal 1 is about a psychopath that snaps and goes around killing people to move level to level while discordant screaming and disturbing music plays over freaky graphics with the ramblings of a mad man who literally stops the killing once he gets to an elementary school and has a breakdown.

Postal 2 is a game where you have to finish chores. You fight terrorists, the ATF, book burners, rednecks, postal workers and more, pissing in the mouths of everyone unfortunate enough to get in your way. Oh and you don't have to kill anyone. But I wouldn't recommend it because it isn't fun.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Streets of Rage 1:

Streets of Rage 2: HOLY FUCK! The graphics are better, the music is sex for my ears, and the impact/connection you make with your fists to the enemy is better than the 1st game!!!

Streets of Rage 3: Uh, wtf localization changes, the punches sound like popping bubble wrap and the music is a mixed bag of techno.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

resident evil four. on the positive side, it was one of the best games ever made and sold like crazy. so much so they broke their deal with nintendo to sell it on the ps2 and one of the creators (or was it the lead creator) threaten to kill himself with a chainsaw beacuse of the butthurt (never did it though. pussy).

on the negative side, the series got a identity crisis and tried to copy RE4 successes with RE5 and 6 which totally flopped and almost killed the series. hard to think that now after seeing the success of the RE2 remake and lesser extend, RE3 remake.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Call of Juarez was largely a meh game,
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood was awesome
Call of Juarez: The Cartel was meh and wasn't even set in ye olde west. It was thought this was the death of the franchise
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was awesome, despite not being storywise related to the others. Could this revive the franchise?

7 years later: * crickets *

 

[Jason Wynn]

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was ok. It was cool when I was 12, but doesn't really hold up now.

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil was so much better than the first game. The graphics, enemy AI, weapons, level design, everything was improved on.

Turok 3: Only rented it once. I remember it being ok, but it seemed to try emulating Half Life too much for it's own good.

Turok Rage Wars. Boring Unreal clone with very limited roster and levels. Pass

Turok: The 360 game. Oh man...what did they do to you?

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

Dead Space 3 and Mankind Divided spring to mind.

DS3 was a bloated mess. It was hugely expensive, fucking huge but equally tedious, and killed the franchise as a result. The only saving grace is how ballsy the DLC was bu having planet Earth be literally eaten and bam, smash cut to black.

Mankind...eh. Human Revolution was a superb prequel to Deus Ex despite pacing issues, but MD just scattered all over the place. No cohesive themes, no real intrigue in the plot, and even for a video game the constant X-Men style DO YOU SEE THE RACIAL ALLEGORY YET writing was too heavy handed to be believable. HR dealt with corporational oversight, the ethics and morals of progress, etc, whereas I can't really remember anything from the sequel except "predujuce bad". If I'm not mistaken this also killed the franchise, ha.

For the other side of the coin Mass Effect 2 was such a massive jump in technical and gameplay quality it was unreal. ME1 wasn't a bad game but jesus christ it was held back really badly due to its design. I played through ME2 multiple times because the combat and gameplay loop were enjoyable.

EHHHH ME2 is a case of two step forward one step back. The combat was far more polished than 1 but at the cost of RPG elements

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

EHHHH ME2 is a case of two step forward one step back. The combat was far more polished than 1 but at the cost of RPG elements

And the overall narrative was weak as hell. The individual stories are awesome, and there's a good reason why everyone remembers the cast, but in the end you ultimately don't accomplish much and the story barely progresses beyond the first one (and in some cases, like the Council's opinion on the Reapers, regresses).

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Streets of Rage 1:

Streets of Rage 2: HOLY FUCK! The graphics are better, the music is sex for my ears, and the impact/connection you make with your fists to the enemy is better than the 1st game!!!

Streets of Rage 3: Uh, wtf localization changes, the punches sound like popping bubble wrap and the music is a mixed bag of techno.

Really funny to play as a buff old man in the third one. It has that going for it.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

And the overall narrative was weak as hell. The individual stories are awesome, and there's a good reason why everyone remembers the cast, but in the end you ultimately don't accomplish much and the story barely progresses beyond the first one (and in some cases, like the Council's opinion on the Reapers, regresses).

There are good parts to the narrative (the illlusive man and the derelict reaper) but I agree the main storyline felt very spread out and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The narrative also suffers from a pretty ho hum antagonist. Harbinger/The Collector General is a gloriously hammy character but lacks a lot of the menace and mystique than sovereign. Sovereign in his one conversation with the player in ME1 is far more intimidating than all of Harbinger's scenes in 2. I do like how he's a bit more hands on hijacking his minions to deal with you personally but other than that he's pretty meh. The narrative also suffers from the lack of a good secondary antagonist like Saren. I mean theres the collector general but for 99% of the game hes just a body for harbinger and the Illusive Man is more of a wild card than an antagonist. (I would also include 3 but Sovereign isnt even in the game for that long).

 

[GethN7]

For some strange reason, every time the the guys who make Super Robot Wars make a crossover series with a third numbered sequel in a sequential series of games (barring SRW 3, SRW 1 was unrelated to SRW 2), they tend to suck ass.

The second one always tends to be good or at least better than the prior game, like Alpha 2 and Z2 (Parts 1 and 2 since it was split into two games due to PSP limitations)

Third for the Alpha and Z series sucked ass, each for different reasons

Alpha 3: A beautifully crafted plot that had been laying a wonderful foundation for things hinted since the very first game was utterly fucked up because in a world where the Universal Century/After Colony Gundam series were firmly established as the world setting, they shoved in Gundam SEED and forced a retread of it's whole plot even though the threat scale of that series is laughable compared to the galaxy level threats you are otherwise dealing with, and the sheer amount of retcons and outright canon rape of things the world setting established since the very first Alpha are so bad it fucks up the whole story until the SEED BS finally concludes, and by then, while the gameplay is still good, you are still pissed at how terrible the plot was tortured just to cram in SEED.


Z3 (Both Parts 1 and 2): The first half didn't do anything too bad in regards to the crossover, save dropping a bunch of series into a black hole (but there is a story reason for this, so this gets a pass), and the plot is generally consistent with what came before. The bad part of Part 1 is that this was on the Playstation 3 and they are still using the PSP assets horribly upscaled for many series and the same low res interface, which made the whole game look cheap as hell and it had all sorts of jank animation.

Part 2 is where the story shits the bed HARD to the point of breaking floorboards. Unicorn Gundam got a great debut in the last game, but the conclusion was a wet fart in Part 2. All sorts of cool buildup for all the Gainax series like Evangelion Rebuild and Gunbuster is thrown out the window. The Gargantua series takes up a huge chunk of the plot despite being boring as hell and basically filler. The original villains basically get to do their thing completely unopposed until the game basically makes them cross paths with you so you can deal with them with no story lead-up. Villains like the Anti-Spirals from Gurren Lagann basically become unimportant despite being hinted as major threats since Z2, and the finale still leaves a shit ton of unanswered questions.