Good Games With Shitty Sequels - How did they mess it up so bad?

[The Fair Lady]

Prototype, Tomb Raider Legend and The Evil Within. The first two have especially bad sequels. TEW 2 was more mediocre than outright shit, but it was still a massive, boring downgrade that had barely any horror. Still baffles me how it got such positive reviews.

 

[Gypsy Corner]

I loved Wolfenstien the New Order, it was nice to play a game that had fun gameplay and and nice story. Then I played wolfenstein the new colossus which while the gameplay was fun, I stopped playing because a ton of the new characters they added were just products of DEI and unlikeable. It really felt like the there were two writers who hated each other and well judging by wolfenstein young blood the bad writer won.

 

[The Connected Nose]

Blood is probably my favorite shooter ever made, the perfect Build Engine boomshoot with action gore and comedy. Blood II is possibly the worst shooter ever made, janky, lacking in all the personality of the first, terrible combat and level design, nonexistent troll of a soundtrack.

Blood was my introduction to Type-O Negative. Love You To Death is still one of my favorite songs.

This but Portal instead, the game spent most of its runtime making awful Reddit tier jokes and teaching you the same mechanics of Portal 1 all over again. Such a bore of a game

I rather enjoyed it, but that's just me. Portal Stories: Mel, Portal: Reloaded, and Portal: Revolution are all pretty good, but not official sequels.

Dead Space 3.

After thoroughly enjoying the first game, and loving that the second improved on a lot of the areas where the first fell short, 3 made me want to punch the screen with how shitty it was.

 

[Meth Dick]

I loved Wolfenstien the New Order, it was nice to play a game that had fun gameplay and and nice story. Then I played wolfenstein the new colossus which while the gameplay was fun, I stopped playing because a ton of the new characters they added were just products of DEI and unlikeable. It really felt like the there were two writers who hated each other and well judging by wolfenstein young blood the bad writer won.

You WILL love Debra Wilson and you WILL love her in every single game franchise you play!

Spoiler

 

[NerdShamer]

Homeworld 3 is what happens when DEI invades your favorite sci-fi RTS series

 

[Colloid]

The original NES Legend of Zelda. They started with a timeless classic that felt like a natural step up from Atari's Adventure which would go on to pioneer one of the biggest franchises around. Said classic was followed by a sequel, Zelda 2, that had no clue what the fuck it was doing. Featuring an RPG system that just railroaded you into specific stats per level, a platforming system with a notoriously fickle difficulty curve due instant death pits and knockback, and puzzles way more vague than the first game's to the point where a Nintendo Power subscription felt almost essential to finish it.

Say what you will about how Zelda 2 needed to walk so ALtP could run, but that game is hot garbage compared to the titles it's in between.

 

[frozen_runner]

The original NES Legend of Zelda. They started with a timeless classic that felt like a natural step up from Atari's Adventure which would go on to pioneer one of the biggest franchises around. Said classic was followed by a sequel, Zelda 2, that had no clue what the fuck it was doing. Featuring an RPG system that just railroaded you into specific stats per level, a platforming system with a notoriously fickle difficulty curve due instant death pits and knockback, and puzzles way more vague than the first game's to the point where a Nintendo Power subscription felt almost essential to finish it.

Say what you will about how Zelda 2 needed to walk so ALtP could run, but that game is hot garbage compared to the titles it's in between.

Even Miyamoto agrees. It's his most disappointing creation.

Blood is probably my favorite shooter ever made, the perfect Build Engine boomshoot with action gore and comedy. Blood II is possibly the worst shooter ever made, janky, lacking in all the personality of the first, terrible combat and level design, nonexistent troll of a soundtrack.

Oh God. I read your post and instantly my mind was flooded with the cursed audio loop from the generic enemies. "YOU WILL DIE A SLOW, SLOW DEATH!"

 

[Metallic Blood]

I'm not sure if this counts as a real sequel per say, but Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is really bad compared to its PS1 predecessor.

I actually like the reverse isekai story going on, even if it's not as strong as the political driven "game of thrones"-esque of the first game. But everything else just sucks.

Gameplay is very boring and surprisingly more easy to break than the original,

the OST is ear-grating, I know it was on the GBA, but many wonderful games had amazing OSTs on there, why this one sucks:

Spoiler: For comparasion with the PS1 version

Random battle theme for FFTA:

vs
Random battle theme for FFT:

Story battle in FFTA:

vs
Story battle in FFT:

And all the optional missions and viable items are locked behind RNG, so if you failed a mission and want to retry it or you're making one of your main squad a Thief but didn't get the "Steal Weapon" dagger yet, then tough luck buddy, you gonna hope that the next 10 hours will be merciful upon your soul.

Oh did I also mention that some missions can become straight out impossible because of the law system? I sure love forgetting to manually check the current laws and entering a battle in "Don't harm any animals" day.

Even after all said and done, I think FFTA is a fine game, since I did have some genuine fun with it. But even then, the game is absolutely awful compared to the original.

 

[Dysnomia]

The original NES Legend of Zelda. They started with a timeless classic that felt like a natural step up from Atari's Adventure which would go on to pioneer one of the biggest franchises around. Said classic was followed by a sequel, Zelda 2, that had no clue what the fuck it was doing. Featuring an RPG system that just railroaded you into specific stats per level, a platforming system with a notoriously fickle difficulty curve due instant death pits and knockback, and puzzles way more vague than the first game's to the point where a Nintendo Power subscription felt almost essential to finish it.

Say what you will about how Zelda 2 needed to walk so ALtP could run, but that game is hot garbage compared to the titles it's in between.

Zelda 2 was my first Zelda and I was used to side scrollers. So a few years later when I played the first game it felt weird and awkward to me. I mean it's a great game. But to me at least, the first Zelda seemed a bit less fun. Maybe it's because I played the sequel first.

It took me a long time to beat Zelda 2 though. Many many years of going back to it here and there. But it's actually not that hard at all. Just frustrating. Maybe too much. It throws so many annoying maps at you just to get to the next palace or town. But it had some varied gameplay. Which at the time seemed fascinating. Just like with Deadly Towers and Friday the 13th it had variety that was held back by flaws.

 

[Colloid]

It took me a long time to beat Zelda 2 though. Many many years of going back to it here and there. But it's actually not that hard at all. Just frustrating. Maybe too much. It throws so many annoying maps at you just to get to the next palace or town. But it had some varied gameplay. Which at the time seemed fascinating. Just like with Deadly Towers and Friday the 13th it had variety that was held back by flaws.

It's not bad because its hard, it's bad because its inconsistently hard. Having your enjoyment stop dead in its tracks because you have to find some random asshole's hidden hut in a giant swamp or hammer a random square of trees to find a hidden town with no real hint other than, "Its out there somewhere" is just objectively bad design and far worse than anything 1 puts you through. To say nothing of the occasional bottomless pits making your health suddenly not matter anymore in certain rooms.

 

[EmperorAardvark]

Mass Effect, one of the greatest video game trilogies ever made, was brutalized in 2017 with the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda. It just sucks ass. It looks like shit, it was lame and completely nuked the franchise, as new BioWare seems to do a good job at in general.
I'll link below the classic Crowbcat video, where he can show in 20 minutes what it would take me to say in paragraphs -- the footage speaks for itself.

Spoiler: Video Link

https://youtu.be/7KWkao73HuU?si=Kk4uov1Y2OBk18Zi

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Mario Galaxy

Funny thing about Galaxy is that it's the only 3D Mario game that I can't get into.

I love 64, I can tolerate Sunshine, and I absolutely adore Odyssey, but Galaxy i treat as the black sheep of the family, and it basically stems from the controls.

I get the Wii was all about waggling and shit, but in (almost) all games that require tight controls and precise movement they at least game you the option to either use a pro-controller or play with the wii remote sideways to bypass the whole motion gimmic. Having that whole nunchuck setup just felt off to me... literally, it felt weird and strange in my hands, made worse by the fact that you had to waggle to collect star bits. Why can't i just do that shit normally with a regular control?

Although i have a feeling that shit is moot in the Switch version, including handheld mode.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Funny thing about Galaxy is that it's the only 3D Mario game that I can't get into.

I love 64, I can tolerate Sunshine, and I absolutely adore Odyssey, but Galaxy i treat as the black sheep of the family, and it basically stems from the controls.

I get the Wii was all about waggling and shit, but in (almost) all games that require tight controls and precise movement they at least game you the option to either use a pro-controller or play with the wii remote sideways to bypass the whole motion gimmic. Having that whole nunchuck setup just felt off to me... literally, it felt weird and strange in my hands, made worse by the fact that you had to waggle to collect star bits. Why can't i just do that shit normally with a regular control?

Although i have a feeling that shit is moot in the Switch version, including handheld mode.

Galaxy 2 has much worse motion controls. I couldn’t stand it at all.

Galaxy 1 is better on the switch, as you can use buttons and the touch screen, but not much better.

 

[Soi Woh Jak]

Hear me out
Dead rising 2. I loved 1 for how arcadey it was with its time based execution, leveling system and world interactions. 2 shifted the focus from completing missions and rescuing survivors to killing zombies en masse. It's a fundamental shift in gameplay which is at odds with the original, people liked it but it wasn't more of the original. At the lower levels you have to grind zombies using the shitty combo weapons to level up and the timer has been made a lot more lax. A lot of the detail and challenge of the original is gone, no more heating pans, no more xp from side activities (shooting plates, riding the rollercoaster), no more game physics, a lot of the items are nerfed to force you to use combo weapons, the smoothie and magazine system becomes basically unnecessary and much more. No I don't care if it's colorful and cool, it sucks.

Borderlands 3. I liked 2 the last time I played it over 7 years ago even if Anthony Burch. 3 is just doodoo.

People already mentioned blood, I fully agree. Completely butchered.

Controversially, StarCraft II. I hate it cause it's 25 gb, no map editor, skirmish sucks.

Also controversially AoE3. It's mid compared to previous games, not entirely terrible but it's so mediocre that it's forgotten.

Civ VI is also not a bad game but they certainly whored it out compared to previous games.

CSGO and CSGO2, F2P is just cancer whichever game it's attached to. CSGO is one of the only games I have ever purchased not pirated and I never want to go back to it, that's how gay it has become. I'm comfortable playing source with bots.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

and the Knuckles and Rouge levels are made so much worse by the fact the radar only detects one chaos emerald at a time.

That pissed me off as well, more-so because Knuckles is my all time favorite character and he got fucking gimped in that game.

At least with Adventure 1 it made some sense. Chaos breaks out of the master emerald, and now knuckles has to find the pieces to restore it, especially now that his island came crashing down from the sky because of it getting damaged. O.K. fine, it continues the logic that started with Sonic3K, not too happy that Knuckles' levels aren't like Sonic/Tails like they were in the 2D games but I'll put up with it.

But with Adventure 2 it's the same thing again and it makes less sense. Oh, the master emerald broke..... again. But we're nowhere near Angel Island, so why is this even a thing again? Also why is it smaller now? It just comes off like they had no idea what to do with these characters (I know the behind-the-scenes is that some of these characters weren't even supposed to be in this game at all).

All I wanted was for all the characters to control similarly to Sonic in 3D, and all I got was Knuckles/Rouge "digs a hole" and Tails "pew-pew" adventures. At least eggman shooting shit in his machine makes sense.

 

[jje100010001]

If you're implying Cities Skylines 1 was a good game I would make a dozen sock accounts just to give you the number of Disagrees you deserve.

It was totally flawed, but it filled in a city-builder-shaped hole that people felt after the Simcity franchise failed.

More importantly, it served well as a city-builder platform, given the modability of the game, its charm, and its baseline-level of polish (not total jank). Hate the default building sets? Mod that away. Hate the gameplay and progression? Mod that away. Hate Chirpy and the donut van? Mod that away. Hate the piss-yellow filter? Mod that away.

That's why people stuck to that game, and I would argue it shares a some similarities to the KSP franchise in that regard (though KSP 1 was decent out of the box), including the failure of their respective sequels.

Any of these games that drag on for a long time are doomed to this. Cities Skylines 2 and Payday 3 from the OP, Sims 4, Kerbal Space Programme, Paradox games. The previous games survive for so long with DLC and modding support, that any sequel game cannot help but have less content at launch and flop - especially since with these things, meagre graphical improvements and a migrating online scene aren't really factors.

Liek why would I buy a hypothetical Stellaris 2, when Stellaris currently has near infinite replayability for a sperg like me that already enjoys it?

I think in this case, sequels almost need to push towards an entirely different direction than their prequels to set their features apart. They would need to be more revolutionary than evolutionary, though it does bring on the risks as well.

For example Sims 5 could be a second attempt at Sims 3's world simulation, taking advantage of better coding and advances in hardware to make it actually work. Or it could be tacking towards a game with a Second Life-like online commons and modding marketplace (getting EA that sweet, sweet modding money).

 

[Town Drunk]

I know the tomb raider reboot isn't popular, as it's basically Uncharted with Lara Croft. I found the first two to be fun. The first one discovering that magic is real, the second one her not expecting others to understand what she had experienced. 6/10

Third one, I can't tell you anything about it, because it was so forgettable despite having played and beat it.

 

[Xavier Renegade Angel]

Final fantasy 7 on ps1 has such shit sequels aka remake and stillbirth

 

[Vining]

Darkest Dungeon 1 was fucking perfect, I don't care what anyone says.

But the second game, with its dogshit overly complicated "token" battle system, the scrapping of Afflictions & Virtues in favor of a generic relationship system, relegating my boy BH into a gimmick class that can only be used for one area, turning each run into a multi-hour "we have Slay the Spire at home" slog, locking Crusader behind DLC, forcing you to go through retarded scripted battles just to unlock each character's kit, not letting you use multiple of the same class, somehow making each hero feel less individualistic, reducing Antiquarian to a miniboss, retconning a lot of characters' backstories to be fucking retarded, having boring uninspired narration that doesn't hold a candle to Wayne June's work in DD1, going from a cool Mike Mignola-inspired artstyle to weird 3D slop... I could go on, but basically, Darkest Dungeon 2 is dogshit and Red Hook can go fuck themselves.

Not to mention that the first game can be modded to be more fun.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

I know the tomb raider reboot isn't popular, as it's basically Uncharted with Lara Croft. I found the first two to be fun.

I really enjoyed the 1st iteration of the Tomb Raider reboot even if it was a murder-a-thon with only a few very short & shitty tombs sprinkled in.

It was fun headshotting everyone with your bow even if automatic weapons were freely available.

Pretty sure I 100% it other than the multiplayer achievements.

I bought the sequel shortly after release, got bored about 1/4 of the way through and never played it again.