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

Shadow Hearts. Good lord, Shadow Hearts. I essentially played the series backwards--first 3 (more of a dumb spinoff than anything), then 2 (had a good mix of humor and seriousness), then the first one (holy fuck it got dark and creepy a lot). The further back I went, the better it got, pretty much...though 2 is still my favorite because I don't know why.
 
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Do the spongebob games count? Battle for Bikini bottom and the movie game were surprisingly good thanks to heavy iron studies love for the series but with THQ's shut down and EA taking it over, it's just become another series for Evil Avarice to tard cum for cash like a prized heifer
 
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Dank Lord said:
Who can forget Dawn of War 3? Their attempt to turn it into a competitive eSport was a total disaster because strategy fans were turned off by the simplified gameplay and emphasis on micromanaging hero units while the DOTA and LoL fans were already playing those games.

Relic stopped supporting it within a year because more people were playing the nearly fifteen year old original than the brand new one.
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Ninja'd me.

DoW I & II were both fun games albeit they were very different in scale. It's understandable that some didn't like DoW II due to the differences from DoW I. However, DoW II was still a good game and felt like 40k. DoW III did not feel like 40k and it was a mediocre game... It was a big disappointment and the worst bit is that they're making AoE IV. :(
 
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Alpha Loves You said:
The telltale games as a series. What started as a fun and expensive run on popular series just became a burnt out husk of a series and pumps out glitchy messes once or twice a year. Remember, your choices mean nothing.
@NARPASSWORD shadows of valentia was awesome though
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The Thing about Telltale Games is, they're all pretty much the same game. Play one, you've played them all. It was fun the first few times, but...you really find yourself wanting something to break the monotony of "playing" a soap opera set in whatever media franchise it's based in.
 
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The Shadow said:
The Thing about Telltale Games is, they're all pretty much the same game. Play one, you've played them all. It was fun the first few times, but...you really find yourself wanting something to break the monotony of "playing" a soap opera set in whatever media franchise it's based in.
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From what I've heard the new Batman one's good, because they're actually starting to learn how to make choices matter (yes, the A-plot resolves itself roughly one way, but you do get a nice parcel of branching B-plots).
 
Piss Clam said:
Gothic Series.
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I don't know about that one, I was thinking about it but ArcaniA was good, but the DLC for it was rather meh and after that nothing became of the series. Could be because two companies own the rights to the game.
 
Anything from Square after the merger. Kingdom Hearts was good, but the series afterward of Kingdom Hearts 365/2 Leap year re:coded Chains of Memories on every platform ever made sucked. Parasite Eve 3 was an abortion. The Final Fantasy sequels/prequels have been terrible (although I heard the FFXIII ones aren’t too bad). FFXV was ok but you had to watch an anime and a movie to get the whole story.
 
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Resident Evil is probably the example that stands out the most in my mind, at least in terms of series that are still active.

I love the classic RE trilogy for PS1 as well as Code Veronica (Hell, RE4 was decent although not as good as the original trilogy) but everything from RE5 onward has sucked with the possible exception of the two Revelations games, which were okay at best.

Resident Evil 7 was supposed to bring the series back to its horror roots, but ended up being a shitty FPS game with mutant rednecks that had barely any connections to the rest of the series up until the very last cutscene.

Saints Row dropped the ball with Gat Out of Hell and that shitty Agents of Mayhem spin-off, though Saints Row IV was not as great as the second or third games.

Grand Theft Auto took a turn for the worse with GTA IV (the story was good in IV, but the gameplay sucked and there was practically nothing fun to do outside of the main story missions), but GTA V brought the series back up to code.

Mortal Kombat tanked hard once it left the arcades, although MK9 was decent and I've heard Mortal Kombat X is good too, but I have not played it yet.

In terms of dead franchises, there's Army Men and Empire Earth. I loved the early games for both of them, but the later sequels (particularly Sarge's War and Empire Earth III) tanked so hard they essentially killed the franchises.
 
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Damn near every series I've enjoyed:

Twisted Metal: Started as a fun little PS1 game with mediocre text scroll cutscenes (not that it mattered when the game was good), ended as an unpolished game with only 3 characters, bad controls, and in place of Minion we got 10 Juggernaut variants (but them life action cutscenes dood!).

Need For Speed: Fun racing blended with escapism, now its a generic open-world cash grab.

Gran Turismo: A semi-realistic racing game with a good career mode, now its just a multiplayer-focused game with no real single player content (its on par with Overwatch). GT6 made cars super expensive and demanded that you pay real money for extra credits.

Forza: The first 2 games were good (even if the second game punished used copies), 3 introduced the VIP system (you'd pay $20 for exclusive on disc DLC), 4 removed Porsches just to sell them as DLC as $20, 5 removed ALOT of cars just to make them DLC, 6 introduced Loot Crates.

Ridge Racer: A fun arcade racer that became a "me too" NFS/Burnout clone.

Flatout: The first two games were great, the sequels are bad enough to where one of them (3 I think) held the title for being the very worst game on Steam. Wreckfest, what was supposed to be the real Flatout sequel, was crowd funded but after so many years of being stuck in beta its never been finished, and probably never will be.

(I'm probably forgetting other racers but I dont want this post to be too long!)

Robot Arena: A glitchy Robot Wars-style game that was still fun and had its own competitive scene, RA2 was good stuff for its time. The more recent Unity made RA3 is just trash.

Star Wars Battlefront: They removed the space combat!!!! And heroes, which you earned by just playing the game previously, now require real money.

Ace Combat: AC1: "Pick your plane and blow every other plane up!" AC5: "We havea a story to tell, lets all talk non stop while you get into dogfights!", later Xbox 360-onward games: "Press X to dogfight".

Starcraft: The Campaign content got much better with WoL, but the unit design (stats/balance/etc) and the story both got stupid. In place of the cheap practical Golliath mech you got the much more expensive, slower, less practical Thor, which dies to broodlings.

Command and Conquer: Warcraft: Generals began the downhill trend (I'll never get the love for this game), CnC 3 was okay-ish but the balance was a mess (flame tanks kill mechs, infantry kill tier 3 mechs). RA3 made units too specialized along with a nasty DRM system.

Warcraft: WoW, nothing more needs to be said.
 
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John Titor said:
What's the verdict on Assassin's Creed? I got the impression from Unity that Ubisoft's "one game per year" strategy did not worked as planned.
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Ubisoft made a very stupid decision to release two games in a single year, which resulted in Unity turning up completely unfinished (until about a year’s worth of updates later). They saw a huge sales slump with Syndicate (which is a decent game btw) afterwards due to both Unity’s failure and the weird in-your-face-but-still-somehow-half-assed sjw pandering that turned people off to it. The AC movie was their substitute for an actual game release in 2016. Origins was AC’s attempt to dust themselves off and start over and it mostly turned out okay, at least in comparison to Syndicate and Unity. It looks like they’ve learned from their mistakes but I guess time will tell.

Anyway, I’ve been on a Dead Rising kick and that series nosedived fast. 1 was great. 2 “fixed” some of the first game’s issues which led to it being less challenging or memorable but was still a really good game. Off the Record is the point where I realized Blue Castle had no confidence in either their own ideas or the series basic gameplay concepts. Never played 3 but from what I’ve been told it’s not very good. I plan on trying 4 out once I’m done with 2 again but from what I’ve heard from anybody who has ever enjoyed the previous games, it shouldn’t even be called Dead Rising at this point.
 
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Ape Escape. The first three are excellent but they started releasing a bunch of dumb spinoffs that weren't nearly as fun as the base games. The last one ever made was an awful PS Move game. Also because Sony only cares about cinematic games now, the series is pretty much dead.
 
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As much as i'm totally ok with 3rd Birthay , Parasite Eve.

Fable of course too.

Croc 2 was worse than Croc.

Spyro.
 
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