They ruined the sequel

[Captain Maxx Power]

Wow, two topics in one day? I'm on a roll.

Anywaysum, I purchased a big pack of Eidos games over Christmas because I wanted to play Arkham Asylum (awesome game incidentally, was telling people left and right I was Batman), and as part of the pack I got a whole bunch of other Eidos-related titles. One of these was Deus Ex 2.

Now I freakin' love the original Deus Ex. It's easily one of my favourite games of all time. The story, the gameplay, the environments, everything about it is sweet. And then there's Deus Ex 2, which is a pile of pap.

I really tried to give it a chance. I played it before years ago briefly after borrowing a copy from a friend, and hated it almost immediately. Still, I thought maybe with time the game might seem better once I went back to it. It isn't. Everything about this game is just horrid; the gameplay has been simplified to the point of idiocy; where you once had an involved skill system and augmentation choices, everything's now base and boring. Combat is confusing and you can't see a damn thing wherever you go. Your light biomod is a necessity throughout the game just to see what's going on. The interface is also atrocious; it's this really awful close-headed circular trash that causes me to suffer from motion sickness. I'm sat here now after playing it and I can still feel the migraine it induced sat burning away in my forehead. The dialogue is also crap; how so? Well for one thing, all of the player models look decidedly wide-eyed and inhuman, somehow looking worse than in the game that proceeded them. Also unlike most other games, in order to see the entirety of the dialogue in subtitle form (I prefer to just read dialogue rather than sitting through the voice-acting), instead of the whole lot coming up everytime you click, it "jumps" a few characters a time each time you click. It can take several clicks to get the entirety of the dialogue on-screen. Not only that but if you happen to time it so that when you click the dialogue has just finished printed the last character on the screen, you'll end up skipping past the dialogue entirely, creating several "What the hell did he just say?" moments.

Probably the absolute worst sequel to a game, especially considering how brilliant the previous game was. But anyway, what sequels to games have you found insufferable?

[Pete for President]

Any Tenchu game after Tenchu 2. Even though they had it's flaws, I loved the first two games. However, instead of moving forward in the right direction they decided to cut a new path which left us with even more flaws. Well, not just flaws, more like big mistakes imo.

And ofcourse;

Any Tony Hawk game after THPS2.

[Dreddz]

I liked Deus Ex 2 personally. While it was inferior to the original I still enjoyed the story. The only problem I had with that game was getting it to run on my PC. My computer met all the system requirements and it still ran like crap.

The first game that came into my head when I read this thread was Devil May Cry 2. The enviorments were dead. The character designs were lame. The in your face action that the original had was replaced with fights taking places miles away from the camera to the point where you could hardly see what the hell was going on. And Dante became about as interesting as a sack of potatoes. You could tell they put as little effort as they could into the game before release, and it showed. The series has never really been the same since in my opinion.

[Bolivar]

A recent example for me is Godfather II. I still enjoyed it, but it missed the mark on several factors that made the first so great. Mostly is the fact that the first one had large, sprawling boroughs of NYC with tons of shops to exploit and rackets to lock down. This one just felt like 3 small neighborhoods, with the focus on the strategy elements. It just wasn't as epic as opening up a new area, and having tons of shops for you to go around and extort.

But possibly the most disappointing aspect is something inherent to "next-gen" sequels of pre-existing IP's. The framerate just isn't as smooth. Seeing developers struggle to have that "hi-res" feel only to have the framerate suffer is really discouraging to me. I loved the shooting system in GFI, popping into cover, unloading a couple shots, switching weapons really fast and knocking out tons of guys with well placed headshots from a machine gun. It still had those elements, it just didn't feel as fast, smooth, and most importantly, satisfying.

[Slothy]

And Dante became about as interesting as a sack of potatoes.

You mean he was interesting to start with?

Anyway, as much as other people like it I'll mention RE4. I hated the game and I've stated my opinion on it enough times that I'm tired of doing it. For those who can't remember my reasoning you could probably search the forums for it easily enough. I'll just say one thing though for all those who buried their heads in the sand with regards to the control: movement is the same tank like crap as in the first five RE titles, except RE4 is an action game which makes it even more unforgiveable.

I'll toss in Mario Kart Double Dash and Wii as well. Mario Kart 64 was a step back from the original in the number of tracks and whatnot, but it was still fun. DD featured piss poor tracks that were almost totally linear save the occasional shortcut that usually took as long as not taking them, horrible new items, the second worst rubber band AI I've ever seen (far worse than it's predecessors), not to mention the loss of defensive abilities like holding items behind you or being able to even look behind your kart. Wii was pretty much more of the same except it had the worst rubber band AI ever (I'd really like to see someone explain how you can get the boost off the line and still get passed in under two seconds of the race starting on 50cc), and the stupid gimmick that was motion control steering. Sure it was optional, but given they pack a stupid plastic wheel with the game and that it's the Wii, they really want you to use it. It'd be nice if Nintendo would figure out that motion control for something like steering is useless without the kind of feedback an actual steering wheel gives you.

[Crop]

Wow, two topics in one day? I'm on a roll.

Anywaysum, I purchased a big pack of Eidos games over Christmas because I wanted to play Arkham Asylum (awesome game incidentally, was telling people left and right I was Batman), and as part of the pack I got a whole bunch of other Eidos-related titles. One of these was Deus Ex 2.

Now I freakin' love the original Deus Ex. It's easily one of my favourite games of all time. The story, the gameplay, the environments, everything about it is sweet. And then there's Deus Ex 2, which is a pile of pap.

I really tried to give it a chance. I played it before years ago briefly after borrowing a copy from a friend, and hated it almost immediately. Still, I thought maybe with time the game might seem better once I went back to it. It isn't. Everything about this game is just horrid; the gameplay has been simplified to the point of idiocy; where you once had an involved skill system and augmentation choices, everything's now base and boring. Combat is confusing and you can't see a damn thing wherever you go. Your light biomod is a necessity throughout the game just to see what's going on. The interface is also atrocious; it's this really awful close-headed circular trash that causes me to suffer from motion sickness. I'm sat here now after playing it and I can still feel the migraine it induced sat burning away in my forehead. The dialogue is also crap; how so? Well for one thing, all of the player models look decidedly wide-eyed and inhuman, somehow looking worse than in the game that proceeded them. Also unlike most other games, in order to see the entirety of the dialogue in subtitle form (I prefer to just read dialogue rather than sitting through the voice-acting), instead of the whole lot coming up everytime you click, it "jumps" a few characters a time each time you click. It can take several clicks to get the entirety of the dialogue on-screen. Not only that but if you happen to time it so that when you click the dialogue has just finished printed the last character on the screen, you'll end up skipping past the dialogue entirely, creating several "What the hell did he just say?" moments.

Probably the absolute worst sequel to a game, especially considering how brilliant the previous game was. But anyway, what sequels to games have you found insufferable?

This.

It's the single worst butchery of a great game ever. I enjoyed the first one so much, and still sometimes play through it today. The sequel....ugh I just try to forget about it.

I can only hope that Deus Ex 3 is better. I'm actually quite fond of the prequel setting.

[Shoeberto]

I really enjoyed Xenosaga Episode I, but when I finally got around to borrowing Episode II from a friend, I just could not get into it. It was just so boring. I gave up on it after a few hours.

[Wolf Kanno]

Well, I'll ignore the obvious ones mentioned already (DMC2/Xenosaga Episode II) and go with a few FF ones. The main two are Crisis Core and Revenant Wings.

Crisis Core has a plot that feels like uninspired fan-fiction that basically copies and pastes the main Shin-Ra shenanigans of FFVII and introduces my vote for the worst villain in the series. Genesis doesn't even feel like a villain, just a poorly written-in cast off who the game spends a majority of its time trying to pass them off as cool and sympathetic and instead he comes off pretentious, bland, and genuinely unbelievable unless you like Gackt's looks (well he is pretty). Made worse by them tampering with some of the most iconic moments in the VII mythos just so they can post a picture of him there to tell the fans "he was there! so he's like totally a part of the VII mythos!" but instead it pretty much destroyed my faith in the companies abilites to handle their own IPs...

Combo this with a bland action game combat system (seriously, you guys just made KHII and you gave me something that makes KHI's battle system and camera seem like the epitome of action games) combined with a Normal Mode that has the bare requirements of needing to breath in order to beat it. Mission Modes that are horribly repetitive and lose their luster after you finish the first hundred of the 300 samey missions. The story mode actually utilizes a few simple but fun mini-games, the mission modes ignore them and stick to "explore the small dungeon, fight the nearly impossible to avoid 'random' encounters and find the treasure chest" formula. Hard Mode might as well be renamed "Zack must die mode" cause the only way to get through hard mode is to complete almost everything in Normal mode. They jacked up the stats of all the monsters and bosses to the point where you need the Break HP limit Gear and fully HP+++ effects on your materia to survive a blow, now the broken dodge roll move still allows you to dodge most of the things enemies throw at you but this is SE so we have to do something cinematic so every boss creature has an unblockable/non-dodge-able cinematic attack that will basically make trying to dodge roll your way through hard mode impossible so your back to playing mundane and tedious Normal Mode...

Last Order looked awesome and gave me some high hopes for Crisis Core, bad gameplay and an even worse storyline that in my eyes spits on the good name of the original just makes this one of the worst titles to come out of SE this past decade (I have yet to touch DoC though...)

FFXII:RW is probably the second worst title out of SE in the last decade. I don't even play RTS games much and I can tell its pretty bad. Still, I know SE doesn't do this kind of thing so I've been pretty lax about it. Yet even with that, its hard to ignore how one-sided and terrible some of the mechanics are being used.

Example:I tried to fight a boss character in an epic battle but because she gets the ability to randomly spawn minions at her beck and leisure and she is horribly overpowered (the Espers and Summons are jokes compared to her) made the battle frustrating to beat, until I threw all my resources into building and unlimited army of flying enemies (her weakness) and sent them her way while my party sat back on the opposite side of the screen next to a summoning circle to keep the minions coming. Her minions usually ignore my units to attack my character leaders and we are more than capable of dealing with them when I don't have the bloody winged angel of death backing them up so I literally cleared the mission in about ten minutes, what bothers me is that you can do this strategy in almost every boss mission and the other missions are not nearly as tough, not to mention it doesn't take much to "grind your way to victory" for some of the medium level missions. It just seems like SE was not talking to the right people when they decided to get their crash course in RTS design.

Beyond bad game mechanics though, the plot and characterization of the characters are awful. Everyone feels like some weird caricature of their former selves with many of my fave characters joining your party and then becoming bland mutes in the background of the story. The introduction of Filo and Kytes as major characters is also exasperating as they are both annoying and are obviously inept to adventuring but your party keeps them anyway (to be fair, Kytes is a great unit but god is he annoying) and characters like Ashe and Basch get one token scene and then drift into the background like they were NPCs. I know unlockable hidden characters that got more screen time than these two. Even Balthier who is a major factor of the plot for the first half while he strings along Vaan and company only to finally join the party and drop out of the plot to become another supporting role. I won't even get started on B'Gamman

Not to mention the plot has too many similarities to previous efforts by its director/writer. (SPOILER)The Yarhi are mysthical spirits that can effect the real world and are imprisoned by an evil force (worshiped in the real world as a god and is the sacred religion the Aegyl follow without question) that prevents them from staying in their own world so they use an incarnation of a dead person to tell the real world what going on and to free them... Am I the only person who doesn't feel this sounds a little too close to the basic premise of FFX? Not to mention the pseudo main villain has a few similarities to Shuyin from X-2. There is is some original stuff but a alot of the plot feels like rehashed work and its obvious its director and writer never bothered to try and get a real feel for XII's characters or stay within some form of canon.

RW is proof you shouldn't hand creative control over a sequel to people who were not even involved with the original IP, CC is proof you shouldn't bother waiting to make sequels to crap 10 years after the fact when your mental framework has changed so much. You can't just pretend you can approach the story the same way you did years ago nor should you feel just because you did write it then means your aged writing style is appropriate for it now. Seriously SE, stop making sequels with FF in the title.

[Vermachtnis]

Honestly, sometimes I feel like the only person who liked Xenosaga Episode II. Apart from the design changes.

Anyway, I'm going with Devil May Cry 2. It just wasn't as much fun as the first one and like Dreddz said, Dante became a mute. Well he had a view lines, but not enough for a main character and they weren't as cocky.

[Skyblade]

For me, Crisis Core was an absolutely terrible game, with a couple awesome points that made the game as a whole worse, by setting a standard for what it could have been. The old characters were awesome. Zack and Aerith's relationship was excellently portrayed, getting to see Sephiroth as a real person before he goes all psycho and tries to destroy the world was wonderful... The new characters, however, sucked, terribly. They did nothing to enhance the plot, they butchered the continuity, and they were generally unlikeable as characters. The worst offender of all was of course the main villain, Genesis. When your main villain admits that his a wannabe of the true badass-villain of the series, you know you have casting problems.

Huh. I found RW unplayable for almost the exact opposite reason, Wolf. The fights were too easy up to a point, then they became largely unbeatable. There were several bosses which I found it utterly impossible to go up against, because there was no way to direct tactics. The insanely poor controls (which once again reinforce why you NEVER EVER EVER put an RTS on any system which lacks a mouse/keyboard) pretty much eliminated all tactics except sending all your units en masse. And that tactic lost effectiveness when bosses gained the ability to, quite literally, cast a single spell that eliminates every Rank I and II summon creature within a particular radius, no matter how many extra levels you give them (your leaders and your single Rank III esper might survive, but using just them is insanely difficult). It took so long to build up an attack force, and all you can do is watch it get obliterated after dealing maybe 2 hits. So, yeah, after a while I quit the battle, set the game down, and never went back to it.

[Madame Adequate]

Empire Earth 2 was a good deal worse than EE. However, it was still playable and stuff. EE3 was another matter entirely, dear god.

[Captain Maxx Power]

Beyond bad game mechanics though, the plot and characterization of the characters are awful. Everyone feels like some weird caricature of their former selves with many of my fave characters joining your party and then becoming bland mutes in the background of the story. The introduction of Filo and Kytes as major characters is also exasperating as they are both annoying and are obviously inept to adventuring but your party keeps them anyway (to be fair, Kytes is a great unit but god is he annoying) and characters like Ashe and Basch get one token scene and then drift into the background like they were NPCs. I know unlockable hidden characters that got more screen time than these two. Even Balthier who is a major factor of the plot for the first half while he strings along Vaan and company only to finally join the party and drop out of the plot to become another supporting role. I won't even get started on B'Gamman

And this differs from FF12 how so? So far as I can tell both games pull exactly the same rubbish characterisation.

*checks watch* Damn, no where near my last record of going without bashing FF12; only a month and two weeks. Well whatever, it's a sequel in a franchise, I'm calling it relevant.

[Mercen-X]

I own Arc: Twilight of the Spirits. That's because I appreciated the play mechanics when I rented it from Hollywood video. I was very disappointed by the sequel, however. At first, I thought the critics may've been exaggerating until I tried it myself.

[Rase]

DD featured piss poor tracks that were almost totally linear save the occasional shortcut that usually took as long as not taking them, horrible new items, the second worst rubber band AI I've ever seen (far worse than it's predecessors), not to mention the loss of defensive abilities like holding items behind you or being able to even look behind your kart.

Any Metal Slug after 3 makes me sad. Also, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (it's even in the name!) and Advance Wars: Dual Strike were much worse then their immediate predecessors for me.

[Iceglow]

Ok, surprised it hasn't made it on here yet but I can name 2 game series absoloutely killed by their sequels, in fact they haven't ever been heard of again and ofcourse, anyone who claims a game series is done with has never played FFVII or seen the plethora of crap titles to follow it on it's name 10 years down the line.

Grandia was a charming if deeply flawed ps1 rpg, it didn't have the best storyline and the graphics whilst all polygon rendered were let's face it horrible even at the time. However it was a very enjoyable game to play it flowed with just enough speed and story at once to keep the player going through it's 2cd arc. Grandia 2 and subsequently Grandia 3 were amazingly horrible. I played 2 for all of 10 mins on the ps2 and whilst the graphics were a huge improvement from the first, they were still sub-par with similar titles out there and face it the voice acting...I wanted to go stab the voice actors in the face it's storyline also sucked hard. I never touched 3 with a 25ft bargepole.

And for the second entry on the list: Jade Cocoon, the first was if repetitive and complex a brilliant game. I remember now enjoying myself with the demo when it was first released for hours combining all kinds of creations. Jade Cocoon 2 was a complete pile of crap, gone was the human vs monster combat, if your monsters died you died...pussy character learn to fight with a knife like your predecessor! Secondly, oh dear god, the voice acting....I won't even finish the sentence just watch some on youtube if you don't believe how bad it was. Thirdly, Ka-hu yeah Ka-hu thats the name of the character, I believe it's written on screen Kahu but it's pronounced Ka-hu dear god, thats so bad a name for a protagonist I already feel the loss of faith. Fourthly, there was little to no storyline in this one. I could go on but face facts, too much digimon/pokemon not enough jade cocoon in the sequel.