Game Sequels That Disappointed You?

Dell Conagher

Dell Conagher

The engineer is engihere
A thread for game sequels that you didn't like nearly as much as the previous entries.

I'll start with mine - Pokémon X & Y. I loved every Pokémon game up until that point, and Black 2 & White 2 are some of my favorite games of all time. I was really excited for X & Y at first, but once I played them I found them to be really boring.
 
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  • Super Mario Sunshine
  • Super Mario 3D Land and World (still great on their own, but with how good the two galaxies were they were a huge step down)
  • Paper Mario Sticker Star - haven't played but I'm almost 100% sure I will like it way less than its predecessors
  • Mario and Luigi Paper Jam ditto Sticker Star albeit not to the same extent
  • LEGO Batman 2
  • Super Mario Bros. 2 (both USA and the Lost Levels)
 
As second poster in the thread I will steal the most obvious choice and say Mario Galaxay 2 before anyone else can 😈

Mario Galaxy 2 is quite literally diet Mario Galaxy... which is far from a bad thing, of course, the only problem I have with it is that it could've been so much more. The levels barely have any stars and that prevents said levels from being anything more than a glorified red carpet walk, it just really is a shame every single level is just unable to really develop. Aaaaaaaaaand that's really all I have to say on the matter lol it's still a very solid game and plays well, just a bit on the "why" side more or less. And if we're counting Paper Mario games too then it's all too obvious at this point that I fucking despise ttyd above all else and would rather step on an active chainsaw barefoot than play it again and there's no need for me to delve into that subject.

Might as well talk about something else given that it's incredibly easy to just say galaxy 2 so I'll just turn my attention to Epic Mikey 2 and I think @Fabulous King Pringles agrees with me here that it's nowhere near as immersive as the first game, that and it often feels like the entire budget went to the voice acting, the two-player system and nothing else... but at least it's not bad either, just extremely underwhelming, compared to the grandness that the first game greets you with.
 
idk theres a few successors ive played that i liked slightly less than their predecessors, but the difference is so small anyway... i like dkc2 slightly more than dkc3 but honestly think theyre ABout Equal, if not just Straight Up Equal for me and i am going to defend dkc3 forever
also liked rayman origins more than legends though it is. clunkier and with less cool neat things to do. i think i just like the higher difficulty and more charm and Haveing A Story

oh! thought up a proper answer! harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban (pc specifically)
its just kinda sad
it removes many cool things that the wonderful and amazing chamber of secerts had, and just feels rushed and padded. you have to almost 100% the game in order to BEAT IT and that requires fighting off 5 sets of monster book of monsters and 5 sets of pixie fights, which is very easy and very boring abd very tedious because you just stand around and cast spells at things flying in the air and occacinally attempting to attack you

you also have to complete all the 5 courses for buckbeak where you gotta fly through rings, which is more fun but the flight is clunky and youre like, super railroaded, and it still doesnt compare to the duels and quiddich the previous game had... oh yeah! the previous two games had some pretty cool quidditch gameplay but in prisoner of azkaban its only freatured in a singular cutscene and you dont egt to play it! here go fight off some pixies

Also at the end of the game each of the three playable characters (oh yeah theres 3 now and it doesnt really add anything) gets an extra tougher course at the end to play through! its really cool! harry's exams dont involve glacius, his signature spell in this game, much and is mostly a really sad enemy gauntlet with no music. and after you beat it you get a loading screen with an absolutely hysterical harry pic. what a way to end the game
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theres some cool things in there. monky brain highly enjoy collecting craptons of collectables at once which the game hands out so often, the controls are generally pretty nice, the shop system is neat ! but chamber of secrets is just. so much better....... oh and prettier too its more colorful (though prisoner of azkaban can look pretty too)
 
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey
Game was kinda bad. Not only did it run at half of the original games speed, but it also theoretically caused Alphadreams bankruptcy in 2019.
Also that random Bowser's Minions side mode is back, and you still have to do no effort to beat it.
 
Gonna stretch the definition of 'video game' a bit here to include a browser-based game but goddamn NationStates 2, which wasn't just disappointing to me but disappointing to literally everyone who played the original game and the creator of the original game.

OK, just so everyone knows what the Hell I'm talking about: NationStates is a browser-based government simulation game from 2002 that was created by author Max Barry to promote his then-upcoming book, Jennifer Government. The game itself is pretty simple, at the time how it worked was:
- You'd create a nation
- Up to twice a day, your nation would be faced with an issue and you'd have to choose whatever option you wanted to implement in response to the issue, which the game would then implement (and adjust your stats) when the game updated twice a day.
- You could also join the World Assembly (previously the United Nations), endorse other nations in your region (group of multiple nations you're in, new nations spawn in what the game calls 'Feeders' but you could move to any other region (or even create your own), and vote on WA proposals to decide if it would become WA law or not (and could even submit your own WA proposals if you had at least two endorsements)

And despite (or perhaps because of) the simplicity of the game, it proved to be immensely popular (for its niche, of course, not gonna pretend that government simulations are some super popular genre) with over 285,000 accounts being created in the first five months, so naturally players were excited when NationStates 2 was officially announced to be in development in 2004 by the company Jolt Online Gaming (who Max had partnered with to host the servers of the original game as opposed to him self-hosting it).

NationStates 2 was supposed to keep the simplicity of the original game but expand on it by having:
-Your nation's population being more than just a number that grew every day your nation was active, it could actually be affected by stuff
- A war feature
- A trading feature

Eventually, NS2 began inviting players from NS to a closed beta test in August 2008 before the game eventually went into a public beta in November 2008, where players discovered that:
The game was unfinished. That can really summarize up the disappointment right there, but I guess I'll explain further since I've already written all this. Those three features I mentioned just about? Let's go over them and how they were implemented in NationStates 2, shall we?

Your nation's population being more than just a number?
- It was implemented, poorly, the game still used the same issue system as the original game, but there was nothing coded for you to get issues when your nation was facing a crisis or whatever. (Like say you were facing food shortages/an impending famine, a logical thing would be that the game would give you the issue about solving the food crisis, but nope, you might get an issue about public transport or whatever while your people starved)

The war feature?
That was also implemented, but again completely poorly. It was just 1v1 (so no alliance vs alliance wars), newer nations were basically guaranteed to win (since the wars involved you losing population and, if you were a new nation, you couldn't lose population below whatever the starting population was), and your reward for winning? Other than a population increase, you got to answer your opponents next issue for them!!!

Trading?
As far as I know, that shit was never implemented into the game. They talked about it a lot, but I can't find any evidence that it existed.

And then you get to features they removed. Regions? Gone, instead you were part of 'continents' on different worlds, but you couldn't move between continents or worlds, so any regional groups you were part of for months, if not years (considering how old NS was at that point). Gone, who cares about already existing player groups, right? The World Assembly? Also gone. Being able to upload a custom pic to use as your flag? Gone as well, well unless you paid up $5/month for their 'Ambassador status' (yes, you had to pay actual goddamn money to upload a jpeg; you also had to be an Ambassador to customize your nation's title [like the 'United States' in the United States of America], a feature that was also free and implemented into the original game)

So yeah, as someone who was (and still is) an avid player of NationStates (even if I'd only had an account for a few months before I first played NS2), you can probably see why I (and so many others) were amazingly disappointed with the game's ill-fated sequel and it's no wonder why it shut down in July 2009 and the original game is still going strong.

Oh and in case your curious, the original creator (Max Barry) was disappointed with NS2 because:
- Jolt used nearly none of his design documents for the sequel and just implemented features their way
- They launched the game into public beta without him signing off on it
- He was never paid any of the money that Jolt owed him from their monetization practices
- They tried to pressure him to shut down the original NationStates and redirect people to NS2
- They continued to use and profit off of the NationStates name and concept for months after NS ended their partnership and hosting arrangement with them)
 
ive never even really heard of either of these games but tihs is a really interesting read
Duchess said:
Being able to upload a custom pic to use as your flag? Gone as well, well unless you paid up $5/month for their 'Ambassador status' (yes, you had to pay actual goddamn money to upload a jpeg; you also had to be an Ambassador to customize your nation's title [like the 'United States' in the United States of America], a feature that was also free and implemented into the original game)
Click to expand...
that just sounds ridiculous... you dont just paywall features that were already available for free!!! i am thinking of uh, fer.al (its currently in early access for context), which last month implemented a paywall on Basic Customization Features (decals & size sliders) for new players which the whole community was, rightfully so, mad about. theyre now looking to revert it thank gosh. but thats unrelated to the topic of teh thread
 
Koops summed it up pretty much. I don't like Super Mario Galaxy 2. I thought what it did wasn't enough to differentiate itself from the original game and it heavily relies on the first one. Some of its new content doesn't really justify its existence as a 60 dollar game which felt more like an expansion pack than it did a separate stand alone release.
 
The Last Of Us Part II pissed me off in every way. I don't care how pretty it looks or how polished the controls are. It is one of the worst PS4 titles I've played.

It completely negates everything the first game was about. It was about how even though the world you live in may no longer be what it once was, there will always be some positivity hidden underneath all of this burden. In the sequel, it says "FUCK ALL THAT! The world is shit! And humanity is shit too! Circle of life, motherfuckers!"

It tries to take the characters we recognize from the first game and make their lives miserable, while trying desperately for us to like this new group of people when they're all terrible! I don't care how tragic Abby's backstory is, I don't care about Owen's struggles, and Mel is a fucking dumbass for going out to war with an unborn child! It's Battlefield V syndrome this game is suffering from!

This game made me feel depressed and empty as soon as I finished it! And if you get metaphorical on me and say "That's the point of the game.", how the fuck does it make the game any fun to play?! How does it make it have any sort of replay value?! I don't mind depressing games like Ghost of Tsushima, Metal Gear Solid IV and Conker's Bad Fur Day (It's depressing if you replay it after beating it), but there has to be some sort of balance, have some light moments. There's nothing about this game that feels light in anyway! And if you dare tell me Abby had some light moments, I don't give a shit about Abby! What about the characters we came back for after 7 years?! They don't seem to catch a break! That's what this whole game is! Just a slow burn towards seeing our favorite characters turn to shit!
 
I think Super Mario Galaxy 2 counts in that. Though it's actually not because it's "more of the same"; in reality, I think it's because Super Mario Galaxy 2 is missing something intrinsic that the first game had.


This is a good video that talks about what I'm referring to.
 
People said Galaxy 2 lacked the same memorable atmosphere the first had (pun not unintended) (just compare the boxarts for starters) and that is such a really good description of how I felt regarding Galaxy 2's lacking feel to it.
 
Galaxy 2 just felt too light in tone in every aspect compared to Galaxy 1.
 
Yeah I remember they showed off in a trailer Mario riding Fluzzard in a lush jungle, and people and I were hoping to explore alien jungle, and some thought it would be like Hoot carrying Mario.

Turns out the whole thing was just a one-off gimmick level.
 
So this one is a bit unusual, first because I would consider the "sequel" to be a very good game still, and also because I played it long before I played the first game. But it's always weird when you play the previous installment to a game and find out it didn't have the problems you hated about the sequel.

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Back in 2003, Weird Games-maker extraordinaire Genki released Phantom Crash for the OG xbox. It's a mech combat game where you assemble a mech and fight in free-for-all arena battles until you kill the "boss" of the stage. You can customize your mech by buying different weapons, equiping a chip that handles your targeting, cloaking/shield and protection functions, and body parts from different manufacturers. You can lower or increase the part's weight, which affects weapon behaviour and your mech's health and movement speed.

It's also a very unique game stylistically, The soundtrack is mostly made up of obscure indie acts from all over the world and unlike the typical cyberpunk and military premises common to the genre, the story is that you're in a delinquent partaking in underground area matches. There really isn't much of a overaching plot, but more like a series of vignettes about life as a teenage outcast. It's a wonderful, wonderful little game and I encourage anyone who has access to an OG Xbox to at least try it.

It doesn't appear to have been a notable success but someone in Genki wanted to try the idea again, so they did with SLAI: Steel Lancer Arena International for the PS2. It's a fairly iterative sequel. It takes place a few years after the events of the original game, involving none of the original characters in its mail storyline, and adding online multiplayer (now discontinued) and more weapons, mechas and areas as you'd expect.

It does make a few improvements over the OG game but they're mostly incidental to the design. The PS2 controller is a more natural fit for the control scheme than either of the og Xbox's controllers. And while the first game was released internationally by a no-name Korean company, leading to a literal and stilted english translation (they even left in a weapon description entirely untranslated lmao), this one was published by Konami so the English writing is of much higher standards.

But man, the economy. They fucked it so bad.


-In the OG Phantom Crash, you had 3 venues with daytime and nightime variants. You'd just go the menu, pick which area you wanted, maybe skip to the next day wheter or not you needed to do the day or night challenge, and that was it. SLAI changes this so that competitions are all over the world. You can only do the bouts for whichever regional hub you're currently in so if you've done NEw York's Rank D challenges and you want to do Cairo's next, well you gotta take a plane to Egypt which costs money and skips an ingame day. They did use this to add some subtleties like how manufacturer shops have more products when you're in their country and giving the different hubs different graphics but the added tedium just wasn't worth it.

-The chips. In both games, animal chips are a very important element of the game. You can equip a "dumb" ai and go in battle without them but chips handle your weapon controls, targetting speed, firepower and so on. By leveling them up, you'll improve all that and also increase your chances of doing critical hits or deploying a random shield that negates damage.

In Phantom Crash, you just upgraded your chips by trading money for level-ups, but SLAI makes it instead so that your chip's various attributes level up after each fight, ostensibly depending on what you did. This could be more interesting in theory, but in practice the growth rates are really, really slow. You'll need to grind if you don't want to tear your hairs out while progessing through the area ladder.

More terrible though, is the not-good, bad, terrible, evil mechanic of chip degradation. Every time you get hit, your chip loses a proportion of its health. You can repair it, but eventually its total HP will become too low and you will have to pay to transfer it to a new chip. This is ludicrously expensive.

-Making the above far worse is that they've massively reduced payouts. Destroying enemies and blowing up background objects gives far less money. They added a money multiplier that increases as you chain killer within a time limit but you have to get a really high number of kills to make up for the reduction in everything else.

It seems there's a recurring theme was trying to make the game more "realistic" but like, this isn't Armored Core. This is still a resolutly goofy and fairly simple mech shooter, so all you're doing is making it more tedious.
 
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