Game series' that went downhill - What are some series' you think fell from grace?

Star Ocean, first two games were great than third one started to drop the ball. Soul Blade/ Caliber after the third game. Mortal Kombat before XI came out and redeemed the series. Dungeon Siege, third game all but killed the series.
 
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Halo. 343 managed to do what few other game developers can do: Take a console selling franchise that is extremely popular and turn it into a has-been, to the point where people started cracking jokes about it on the official Xbox pages.

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CIA Nigger said:
Halo. 343 managed to do what few other game developers can do: Take a console selling franchise that is extremely popular and turn it into a has-been, to the point where people started cracking jokes about it on the official Xbox pages.

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Holy shit. That might be the most wicked burn I've ever seen.
 
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Pretty much all of them except Mario, Zelda, and GTA. After the third or fourth game, most series either descend into uninspired formalism (Ubisoft open-world games) or bizarre experiments that have virtually nothing to do with what made the original game(s) enjoyable (Resident Evil)... or both (Sonic, Mega Man).
 
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Are we going to take this thread to it's logical conclusion and say "all series have gone downhill because of rosy retrospective bias" ?

Even taking in factors such as shitty economy and an industry that never cared and no longer cares that everyone knows they don't care, it has always been this way.

Why do you think you still play retro games? Nostalgia
 
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Saints Row, all the way. Just... god, was 4 a mess. If you ask me, it's been going downhill since 2. Though we haven't a title in ages, let alone a good one, I hear a new game's been in development since THQ Nordic bought Volition. Here's hoping it's good.
 
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AnOminous said:
Duke Nukem obviously, although it was more that a single long-awaited catastrophic flop killed the series outright.
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Didn't help the last game had to be remade during it's production run because every company wanted to use a different engine.


By the way...Has Ultima been mentioned yet?
 
Postal Dude said:
Saints Row, all the way. Just... god, was 4 a mess. If you ask me, it's been going downhill since 2. Though we haven't a title in ages, let alone a good one, I hear a new game's been in development since THQ Nordic bought Volition. Here's hoping it's good.
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4 was actually a big improvement over 3 imo. If you're going to throw every defining element of your series out the window except for a few token characters and settings, at least replace them with something interesting. I had a lot of fun with 4's ridiculous super powers. On the other hand, I barely remember anything about 3 except Burt Reynolds' cameo and the fart-in-a-jar grenade.
 
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MrTroll said:
4 was actually a big improvement over 3 imo. If you're going to throw every defining element of your series out the window except for a few token characters and settings, at least replace them with something interesting. I had a lot of fun with 4's ridiculous super powers. On the other hand, I barely remember anything about 3 except Burt Reynolds' cameo and the fart-in-a-jar grenade.
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I don't get the hate for Saints Row 4 either. It wasn't as good as 2 but it was a huge improvement over the boring shit show that was SR3.
 
I'll throw in Railroad Tycoon.
The 3rd game was considered pinnacle of the series.
The next and recent entry was seen by many as watered down.
That entry came out in 2006 and newer similar games have not come anywhere near the depth and quality of 3.
 
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