Submitted 2 days ago by Novamdomum@fedia.io to games@lemmy.world
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?
Evil Genius 2. I loved Evil Genius 1 as a kid. It was far from perfect and had a lot of bugs, but it was a blast. I’m fully aware there’s a lot of rose tinted goggles going on for it in my mind. But I thought the new one would fix problems and be more enjoyable. It did improve on the first in a lot of ways, but it was so so grindy.
In EG1 you could send you minions into the world to steal money and complete missions (that gave points or loot, like stealing the Eifel Tower). I’m EG2, they kept this mechanic, but anyone you send to the world map is just gone. They cannot come back. This leads to just an annoying constant flow of recruiting more minions, training them to upgrade, and them being sent to the map forever to never return. It would perhaps be slightly better if you could increase the rate you recruit minions like the first game, but instead they always come at a constant rate and there is a button to recruit more but it’s buried in a menu. So many things in this game are buried in a menu.
Another frustration, they added a feature to automatically tag enemy agents that come to your base (to be killed, captured, distracted, etc) but they’re all under different research tiers. Why require the research at all? Right clicking agents and saying “tag for capture” is just pointless busy work. Even in the original you could hold control when you did it and it would flag the whole group. Not anymore. You can only tag one at a time.
There are just so many little things like this that made the game so annoying to play. I wanted to like it. But I just couldn’t enjoy it. The new art style is worse, too. It keeps the spy fi aesthetic but it’s much more cartoonish. The game is more diverse which is nice, the original was like all men. I also liked what they did with John Steele, the main antagonist more or less. Canonically you beat him and killed him but they pass on his mantle to new agents and train them to be like him. And they’re relatively weak, but like a constant threat.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
Interestingly, I would say Sacred 2 as a huge fan of Sacred 1.
Totally fair. I would say each game in the Elder Scrolls series let me down more than the last, even though I still enjoyed each one, so I can how being a fan of the first would be such a letdown for the second.
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 . 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.
Oh man, the moment I clicked on this thread, Trails came into mind. Now, I myself haven’t played it, but my mother is close to finishing Kevin’s game, and we were speaking at the the next few games and the most recent one to be released. And man, I don’t even know if I wanna play this series anymore.
The anime tropes we saw and read about from people’s reviews are killing us, and me and my mom fucking love anime. Hell, she’s a shonen-anime lover through and through. But the way the older characters like Agate get yassified into looking like generic anime guy #1 with red hair and Zin into slightly less generic anime guy #2 kills me, these dudes should not look like college kids 😭
The shitty romance that they’re hinting between Agate and Tita is 🤢. I really wish they had kept them as a sibling dynamic, and I thought Tita’s mom was freaking out because she thought he was a pervert, not that he actually liked her…
Also found out about the adopted siblings from TS:CS that seem to like each other, which is creepier than Estelle x Joshua because this pair was raised together since they were literal toddlers unlike the original two… God Japan’s not-by-blood adopt a son to marry thing kills me. The adopt a son to marry is fine if the girl wasn’t raised with him or like, they’re 20 years old. But this, “we literally were raised like siblings” thing kills me sometimes.
But yeah the egregious fan service, flanderization, and overall lack of seriousness that we saw from some of the newer games made me be like “maybe I won’t pick this game up,” which is a shame. I’m really disappointed to hear about the anime gender tropes stuff…
Castlevania Lord of Shadow 2. Loved the first one and 2 was just bad. I wish they would have kept it as a God of War clone, with stunning visuals, game play and music
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.
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.
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.
Lords of the Realm III
1 was great, though the economy was overly complicated. 2 fixed all the issues of 1 and made combat more fun. 3 removed everything I liked and replaced it w/ a weird realtime RTS system.
I spent a ton of time on LotR II and it’s expansion. I distinctly remember finding the box for 3 a few years later and just being confused that they didn’t seem to know what was good about their game.
Had a complicated time trying to get 2 running a few years ago, I think I ended up setting up a Win95 VM specifically for it. But now it looks like they’re just on GoG and Steam. Might have to grab it there.
I replay it every couple years because it has so much nostagia for me, and it runs perfectly on Steam on Linux (and I assume GOG). They even fixed the incredibly annoying mouse issue that I dealt with for years where it wouldn’t scroll down or to the right.
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 his 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.
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 !
It never was planned as a sequel/reboot of Prey by the studio. The publisher insisted on the name in hopes of more revenue from „long time fans“.
And in the end that totally backfired. I never touched it because of that even though it is supposed to be a great game.
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 😄
I know The Division 1 flirted with seasons, but I hated TD2’s season pass crap.
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.
Gonna be controversial but Monster Hunter World for me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the game a lot at first and put 100+ hours into it. But it marked the departure from the silly, cozy, slightly under-the-radar franchise to something that’s just too big for my tastes. I feel like each entry is trying to top its predecessor in new mechanics, bigger maps and stuff and end up getting lost in the sauce.
I started playing on PSP with Freedom 2 and Freedom Unite and moved over to 3DS when the games came out for that. The games were never unpopular per se, especially in Japan where they’ve been a staple since the PSP days, but they always felt a little more niche and unknown. They felt more focused, more streamlined, tighter. All the new combat mechanics added in newer installments definitely help the fluidity of the gameplay and add a lot of fun and variety. But that’s it for new additions that I’d miss when going back to older titles. These huge open-world-esque maps just don’t cut it for me.
Rise would likely have been last MH that I could enjoy since it’s a good mix of classic MH with good QoL features added in to make the game more modern, but even that one didn’t quite catch my attention for too long.
I don’t know, I feel like Monster Hunter kinda lots its charme in chasing industry trends of open world games and more realistic graphics and physics in favour of character, silliness, and focus.
HowlsSophie@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
RouxBru@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
If you say first two, which ones do you mean?