For me it’s Diablo II. Granted I’ve played my fair share of D2 since launch, and also recently on a private server with a comrade from hexbear, but I still feel like years later the game didn’t grab me as much as D1 did.
Granted I don’t hate D2, but for a game that I keep coming back to, D1 takes the prize.
Granted, I haven’t played it myself yet, but Mega Man Star Force 2 is that for a lot of fans of that series. The first game already got a lukewarm reception because of how it was simultaneously “just more Battle Network” and “not simply more Battle Network”, but it has a very heartfelt story and some people are turning around on it when they can judge it on its own merits instead of constant comparisons to Battle Network, which has better gameplay. It still sold a decent number of copies.
The second game basically killed whatever momentum the series had by then. The story got dumbed down significantly which made it feel even more like Battle Network (although it still has its moments), the space theme was lost to “lost civilisations” shenanigans that many fans weren’t interested in, the gameplay changes were meh and you frequently had to navigate through a maze-like “Sky Wave” with a too high encounter rate. Sales numbers were well below expectations.
The third game has the best gameplay by far and a story close to or as good as the first game, but the damage was already done. It sold the least of the three games. But at least the series ended on a high note with very few loose ends.
Lords of the Realm 3. I have no idea what they were thinking making everything real-time. Custom games were still fun for pitched battles, but the city management portion was yucky. They even had cool mechanics going on like different lords to put in charge of counties giving different abilities.
Heroes of Might and Magic VI. Five was one of the series’ best entries. I couldn’t even get VI to load without crashing. My fault for buying Ubisoft.
Call of Duty was a breath of fresh air when it came out in 2003. CoD2 improved the campaign, but had some mid multi-player. CoD4 was a decent “not Counterstrike.” Everything has been downhill since. Moving from WWII to present day was also a mistake and I blame CoD for white supremacists taking over online spaces. At least in Battlefield, people used to get banned for slurs. By CoD4, servers weren’t even bothering anymore.
Speaking of Battlefield, 1942 was GOAT. Vietnam was okay, but felt more like a mod (chasing America out of Hue was based, tho). Battlefield 2 limited how many bots you could play with…which defeated one of the main reasons to play. It’s all been downhill from there and they jumped on the “Modem Wehrmacht Warfare” train after CoD started getting that DoD fed money.
There’s more, but these were my main focuses of hate.
Might be a hot take, but Mass Effect 2.
I love Mass effect, despite its flaws, but Mass Effect 2 was the game that derailed the series and basically forced Mass Effect 3 to have an unsatisfactory ending. So many concepts from Mass Effect 1 like the cipher, visions, Virgil, the Thorian were completely abandoned in favor of one giant video game length side mission. Sure the suicide mission was kind of cool, but at the end of Mass Effect 2 we learned almost nothing about the reapers from the last game.
But Cerberus is by far the worst mistake. From Shepard’s POV, they literally witnessed Cerberus do grotesque, inhumane experiments throughout ME1 only a month before game start but the writers forced us to join these space Nazis. Cerberus is comically evil and is constantly doing cartoon villain experiments. Also, the space Nazis somehow have it in their hearts to spend billions of credits so that Shepard can save humanity.
The main writer of ME dropped off during the writing of ME2 and they abandoned a lot of his ideas.
I loved the ME trilogy, but after ME1 it really wasn’t about the themes and ideas, just the characters.
Also looking back they’re some of the most lib propaganda games ever like jeez
For me, every single armored core game after last raven. Like there is just a lot lost when the series becomes designed around a regular twin stick control setup over the “bad” control scheme that the game was designed around before 4/FA.
Like it just feels much more rewarding to play and beat, and every time I play 4/FA or 6, I almost always want to go back and play 3 and Silent Line again.
I haven’t played formula front, and I don’t remember when that released.
FEAR 1 and Wolfenstein TNO were some of my favorite games of all time so it’s only natural their sequels fell short.
In FEAR 2’s case, while it’s a rock solid shooter in its own right, it’s so obvious just how much it was trying to fit in the mold of the “gritty modern military shooter” that was predominant at the time (especially MW2). Stripping the tactical shooter elements like leaning still irks me.
For Wolfenstein 2, they tried to shake up the gameplay formula of TNO/TOB but the end result was something I was never quite satisfied with. To list some issues, Stealth went from being hilariously too easy to being a convoluted mechanic that I rarely ever used after the first engagement. Them splitting the Assault Rifle of the first game into the SMG and StG took away the entire point of the AR being a reliable weapon that was competent in most situations and replaced it with a useless peashooter (on higher difficulties) and cheesable death cannon respectively.
