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Underappreciated sequels in a game franchise

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
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Zelda II
- General consensus: Too different. Obnoxiously hard
- Never knew people didn't really like this game till the internet
- Much harder than the first Zelda game too
- The basic RPG elements and side scrolling action I thought were a good change
- Thought it was much better than the original game

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World at War
- General consensus: Yet another WWII game. Modern setting was the big thing
- WWII games were fizzling out and COD4 came out the year before. WAW is possibly the lowest selling COD game aside from probably COD 1-3
- Similar gameplay to COD4, but maps a touch bigger, some maps had tanks
- Gory kills and swearing
- Probably the darkest and grittiest COD game
- Zombie Mode introduced
- Loved it, but years after launch rampant mod cheating happened and Activision never bothered fixing it as they moved on to new COD games

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Fallout 4
- General consensus: F3 rehash
- I liked the town building you can do across the map
- Mech suit domination
- Mods on console
- Seemed like more choices for NPCs to tag along. I had that ghouly Valentine guy join me
- I probably only cleared 30% of the map, so I didn't beat the game. I gave up due to loading times as playing Bethesda games on console will make your hair turn grey waiting
 
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Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
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Middle-earth: Shadow of War
- Launched with microtransactions, which were later patched out
- Is to Shadow of Mordor as Portal 2 is to Portal, or as Assassin's Creed 2 is to Assassin's Creed
- I'm stealing your post format lmao
- Endless fun that I always yearn to return to, if only there were more fresh content to play

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Assassin's Creed Unity
- Launched extremely buggy, was later patched to be one of the series' most polished entries
- Heavily customizable character with a large suite of weapons and tools, perhaps the largest in the series
- Parkour revamp makes travel smoother than ever before, the new "parkour down" button feels great
- Building interiors allow for new parkour routes and increase immersion

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Far Cry Primal
- Takes the guns away from Skyrim With Guns, meaning Todd Howard has won again
- The patched in Survivor Mode is sick, it disables the minimap and unimmersive perks, ups the difficulty and adds a stamina meter
- The prehistoric characters don't look like modern humans, and speak a constructed language for maximum immersion. Blew me away that Ubisoft would put that much effort in.
- Puts Far Cry 4's topography into a good game

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Dead Space 3
- Deviates from horror to co-op action adventure
- The sickest co-op action adventure ever, the customizable weapons make this one of the best third-person shooters
- Isaac and John each have a separate set of experiences during the co-op campaign
- An in-depth expansion of one of gaming's best fictional worlds
 

German Hops

GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
Suikoden IV:

-The black sheep of the series; it ended rather abruptly at a weird point in the story.

-Yet, I loved every minute of it. The maritime atmosphere and ship battles were a unique and refreshing change from the previous three Suikoden's.

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Kuranghi

Member
Max Payne 3

-wasn't made my rockstar so maligned writing wise
-intro cutscenes are often unskippable for a long portion of the scene so on replay it slows things down a bit much.
-uses stylised cutscene effects that some didn't like
-mostly abandoned noir/conspiracy theory stuff for something a tiny bit more grounded/local
-amazing animation and ragdoll system that tracks your limbs properly so you constantly create movie quality cinematography
-the gameplay feels like the action scenes of a John Woo Hong Kong Heroic bloodshed film, but with the story of a Michael Mann film, perfect mix imo.
-one of if not the best 3rd person shooter of all time in terms of the whole package: graphics, animation, music, voice acting, cutscene direction, style and pacing.
-one of the most brilliant ending levels of any game
-"boss" battles are actually really fun, they can appear really dev-mind-readery but thats the HKBO influence again, its similar to James Bond if you haven't seen the HKBO genre, everything is always set up for him to do the coolest but not necessarily most obvious thing in a given situation. Usually though its a very physical thing thats congruent with the world/environment. Example being shooting the <spoiler> to make it hit the police station "scarface" baddie.
-finding all the evidence to hear the extra dialogue or in many case whole new interactions/cutscenes was a great way to add replayability and the golden gun parts was a really fun incentive to explore as well after I had all the evidence and led to me beating the game 10+ times, even the slight upgrade to each gun did help quite a bit and fullfilling the (literal) "grinds" gave you a bit of direction/challenged you (only use certain guns so I can get the grinds faster) to mix it up.

What a fucking great game!

Everyone goes on about the story of Max Payne 1 being so cool/great but have you actually analyzed it recently? Its kinda amateurish to be honest, the plot devices are incredibly obvious and repetitive, I think the genre can be much better than it is. Max Payne 3 to me is very very much like the films it tries to homage, so I'd say its much more successful in what it set out to pastiche/homage.
 
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WoJ

Member
Suikoden IV:

-The black sheep of the series; it ended rather abruptly at a weird point in the story.

-Yet, I loved every minute of it. The maritime atmosphere and ship battles were a unique and refreshing change from the previous three Suikoden's.

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I agree with this. Suikoden IV gets shit on a lot, but I found it to be charming. It's weaker than the other entries in the series, but this game still managed to be enjoyable.


I'd add Mass Effect Andromeda to the list. It's no doubt a flawed game with problems, but nearly as bad as people make them out to be. I enjoyed most of the characters in the game, found the lore interesting, and believe that a sequel could have built on what was laid out in Andromeda. Plus Vetra and Drack are two of my favorite characters in the series. I'll go to my grave to defend those two.
 

Kuranghi

Member

BEST! I loved the wobbly physics of the main car in this game, only game that comes close to giving you the experience of that car chase from Bullitt:




Turbo boost jumping off of car haulers for no reason whatsoever during a race or chase just for fun, what a pleasure to play. I also love the missions where you just keep taking control of different cars and blocking other cars from ramming an ambulance or other VIP vehicle, such good variety in what you did and genuinely funny/engaging dialogue to prop up more trad mission objectives when it was more rote.

The end boss actually has new surprising gameplay and breaks the glass ceiling the rest of the game had set up to that point. Hard to say more without spoiling it but it was great imo.
 
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Astral Dog

Member
Prequel, but RE Zero is a gem, main problem is it was released after REmake and everybody was tired of the old formula but looking back(after lots of action REs of varying qualities) its a nice old school horror game.

Some Donkey Kong games (DKC3,Tropical Freeze,64)need more love!
 
COD Infinite Warefare



If there was ever an example of what a mob of haters would do if they think its cool to hate and pile on that dislike ratio, this was the title. Maybe the most disliked video on YT?

- Infinite Warefare was THE longest campaign ever in the franchise. It had side missions, chosing load out before you start a level.
- I would argue, Infinite Warefare is a way better campaign than Modern Warefare was.
- If you played COD titles like I have from the very start, i had no problem going further into the future, it was natural progression for the series and Infinite Warefare deserved a trilogy like MW had.
- The dislikes didn't come from the actual game, it was just the fact that people were pissed off for some reason it doubled down on futuristic setting while Battlefield went back to WW1 and was a clear winner for people wanting "boots on the ground".
- Years later Battlefield 5 came out and nobody gave a shit anymore, just the same for COD WW2...people are sick and tired of WW2 shooters yet when the developers wanted to branch out and make something new and not Modern Warefare 17....gamers still shit on it. I feel bad, developers should never listen to wild fanbase.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
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Of the Team Silent games, it IS my least favorite, but I still love and enjoy it for what it is. I think a lot of people threw unnecessary hate in its direction. Sure, it wasn't originally planned to be a Silent Hill title, but the changes made to it were fitting for the franchise IMO. The end result was still something worth experiencing.
 

Codes 208

Member
gears of war 2.

the net-coding for multiplayer was absolute trash but it had my favorite campaign, it popularized horde/survival modes, and private matches with friends was amazing. But it’s often overlooked by the original or gears 3 (which arguably has the better multiplayer)

also a quick hot-take: infinite warfare and WaW aren’t sequels. They’re CoD games but they’re the first in their established lores (waw for example is the prequel to blops 1 and 2 and IW just...never got a sequel)
 

GreyHorace

Member
Assassin's Creed 3

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It's a step down from the Ezio trilogy to be sure. It has bugs aplenty and the gameplay was rough and unpolished. Despite all that, I thought it had the best story of the series and was quite uncompromising in it's depiction of Revolutionary America. It also showed the war between the Assassins and Templars as not being black and white as previously depicted in past games.
 

Matt_Fox

Member
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The Beatles: Rock Band (2009).

The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises were SO OVEREXPOSED by the end of the noughties, if you were gaming during those days, you'll remember how many of these titles got pumped out.

But in 2009 there was a real gem. This game was just a thing of beauty, imho the best of the rhythm action titles. Anyone played it?
 

Enjay

Banned
Dead Rising 2 was a great sequel. 3 I never played and 4 was so horrible it most likely killed the franchise.
 

Trumpets

Member
Zenoclash 2 played a lot better than the first game, was more open, looked much better (it used Unreal engine instead of Valves Source engine) and took the plot in interesting directions that tied it to the real world.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Assassin's Creed 3

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It's a step down from the Ezio trilogy to be sure. It has bugs aplenty and the gameplay was rough and unpolished. Despite all that, I thought it had the best story of the series and was quite uncompromising in it's depiction of Revolutionary America. It also showed the war between the Assassins and Templars as not being black and white as previously depicted in past games.

My favourite after the AC2 and Brotherhood. Black flag was great too but I loved AC3. The combat was the best, the ability to climb mountains, tree’s and such for the first time was awesome too. It only lacked assassin missions.
 

Kuranghi

Member
COD Infinite Warefare



If there was ever an example of what a mob of haters would do if they think its cool to hate and pile on that dislike ratio, this was the title. Maybe the most disliked video on YT?

- Infinite Warefare was THE longest campaign ever in the franchise. It had side missions, chosing load out before you start a level.
- I would argue, Infinite Warefare is a way better campaign than Modern Warefare was.
- If you played COD titles like I have from the very start, i had no problem going further into the future, it was natural progression for the series and Infinite Warefare deserved a trilogy like MW had.
- The dislikes didn't come from the actual game, it was just the fact that people were pissed off for some reason it doubled down on futuristic setting while Battlefield went back to WW1 and was a clear winner for people wanting "boots on the ground".
- Years later Battlefield 5 came out and nobody gave a shit anymore, just the same for COD WW2...people are sick and tired of WW2 shooters yet when the developers wanted to branch out and make something new and not Modern Warefare 17....gamers still shit on it. I feel bad, developers should never listen to wild fanbase.


I'm really excited to try this ever since I saw some of the missions in the last few months, it looked really epic, the one with the "skydiving" intro. If EZA thinks it looks cool then you've made a great CoD game imo ha:




I'm not sure if I should wait for PS5 patch/rerelease that may never come or just play on PC asap.
 
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Zelda II
- General consensus: Too different. Obnoxiously hard
- Never knew people didn't really like this game till the internet
- Much harder than the first Zelda game too
- The basic RPG elements and side scrolling action I thought were a good change
- Thought it was much better than the original game

maxresdefault.jpg

World at War
- General consensus: Yet another WWII game. Modern setting was the big thing
- WWII games were fizzling out and COD4 came out the year before. WAW is possibly the lowest selling COD game aside from probably COD 1-3
- Similar gameplay to COD4, but maps a touch bigger, some maps had tanks
- Gory kills and swearing
- Probably the darkest and grittiest COD game
- Zombie Mode introduced
- Loved it, but years after launch rampant mod cheating happened and Activision never bothered fixing it as they moved on to new COD games

maxresdefault.jpg

Fallout 4
- General consensus: F3 rehash
- I liked the town building you can do across the map
- Mech suit domination
- Mods on console
- Seemed like more choices for NPCs to tag along. I had that ghouly Valentine guy join me
- I probably only cleared 30% of the map, so I didn't beat the game. I gave up due to loading times as playing Bethesda games on console will make your hair turn grey waiting
Maybe... Dino Crisis 2

Way too many people underestimate it bc of its different nature from the first one, a pure and great survival horror, dunno how the original reception was back in the day, I was a kid, but today I read many people who didn't like it due to it being action

The truth is, dc 1-2 are totally different games, each one of them a masterpiece in its genre

A masterpiece of a survival horror, AND a masterpiece in the action games field


And Mario Sunshine: too many people were disappointed after Mario 64, expecting another wide array of different worlds, and not a monothematic game about a tropical setting
The truth is, SMS is 1000% more fun than Mario 64 in my opinion, and way more memorable and unique
 
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Chessmate

Banned
Horizon Forbidden West.

Sure, the gameplay loop got old fast and story and characters were generic af. But the graphics were stellar and while it was a tedious grind, it was fun for the first couple of hours.
 
Assassin's Creed 3

ac3_naked_boxshot_mobile_169405.jpg


It's a step down from the Ezio trilogy to be sure. It has bugs aplenty and the gameplay was rough and unpolished. Despite all that, I thought it had the best story of the series and was quite uncompromising in it's depiction of Revolutionary America. It also showed the war between the Assassins and Templars as not being black and white as previously depicted in past games.

I'll go to bat any day for this game. To this day, I still think it is the best Assassin's Creed game. (Warning: Long Post)

+ Best story in the franchise so far. GreyHorace GreyHorace sort of explained why: Good look into the Revolution era America; best expansion and best "in-depth" look into the philosophies of Assassins and Templars.
+ Best protagonist. People hate Connor, but given the dude's situation, I think he handled it great.
+ Best antagonist: Haytham Conway.
+ Best gameplay: fluid parkour and great combat. Seriously, Connor's tomahawk is god-like and feels incredibly good to use. But unlike Ezio who could take down a whole army of Roman soldiers single-handedly, this game's "wanted" system and them throwing increasingly difficult enemies at you meant that you couldn't always abuse the powerful tomahawk.
+ Best humanity: The Homestead missions. Play them now.
+ By far the best "modern" story -- we all know how deep of a dive the modern portion of the story took after this game.
+ Best open world: New York. Boston. The "frontier"/wilderness. Oh and remember, this is where Naval battles began; not as 100% polished as in AC4 but they're pretty damn good and fun here.

This game gets a lot of hate because some of the initial bugs (many of which have been since addressed), the tailing/eavesdrop missions, and Connor not being an appealing protagonist to some people. I honestly think the mission layout complaints are overblown, and Connor is just misunderstood.

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The Beatles: Rock Band (2009).

The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises were SO OVEREXPOSED by the end of the noughties, if you were gaming during those days, you'll remember how many of these titles got pumped out.

But in 2009 there was a real gem. This game was just a thing of beauty, imho the best of the rhythm action titles. Anyone played it?

During those years, I played A LOT of Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and to this day The Beatles one remains my favorite. Of course I'm biased given that the Beatles are one of my favorite musical acts ever, but this game was really well done, the setlist was amazing. (A second close was the Metallica one though, that one was pretty awesome too.)
 

01011001

Banned
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Catalyst is better than the original game in almost every way... people got really hung up on the fact that it has an open world as its hub between missions... the Missions themselves were pretty much structured the same as the first game, and there was really fun stuff to do in the open world (at least for the time the servers were still online) where you could hide markers for other players to find, it was always fun to find new werid placed to parcour up to and see if other players can get there and find your marker, and also trying to get other player's markers.

also you could make your own time trials that other players could play... sad that they took it offline :/

better controls, more movement options, amazing artstyle, damn good graphics for the time and still 60fps on console!

EDIT: This game needs a fucking Raytracing patch or mod! would look unbelievable!
 
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intbal

Member
Deus Ex: Invisible War

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The established fan base (including me) gave this game a lot of shit at the time because of its simplification of the interface and microscopic levels. Many just ignored it. But the world building remains. The story is true to Deus Ex. The gameplay still gives you most of the freedom of the original (and WAY more than modern games, including the Squenix frauds that use the name). The music is ethereal in the best way. The graphics are... tolerable (but a great dynamic lighting system for the day).
Give it another try if you turned your nose up the first time.
 

AmuroChan

Member
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It's not the Chrono Trigger 2 that people wanted, but I absolutely loved the game. I found the story really engaging, the leveling system is unique, and I liked the giant cast of playable characters. It also has one of the best video game soundtracks ever IMO.
 

brian0057

Banned
iu


Public opinion on the game (especially Version 1 for P(C)S360) is that the game was broken, it removed the gradient stealth and sound meters, and that the JBA infiltration segments are boring.

In my opinion, this is one of the best games in the series, just behind Pandora Tomorrow and the almighty Chaos Theory.
In fact, the tanker mission is the only one where you're required to interact with the enemy, thus making the game more stealth focused than its impressive older brothers.

The choices between doing missions for both the JBA and the NSA were tense and, if you were good enough, could maintain high levels of trust for both organizations simultaniously.

Although I agree that the XGCN2 version is my favorite of the two, both entries are superb in their own way and I love them.

And it's also the last good Splinter Cell game we ever got.
(Fuck those pieces of shit Conviction and Blacklist).
 

Astral Dog

Member
Came here to see DKC3 and not disappointed, but I didn't expect Tropical Freeze to need more love than it already got.
tbh only because the Wii U release was so despised! everybody was hating on Retro for wanting to make a sequel to Returns., i also think besides the soundtrack Returns is as good as TF design wise

Donkey Country 3 is awesome , never enjoyed dkc2 cheap difficulty and levels despite having the best soundtrack and cool atmosphere. But DKC3 looks amazing as well đź‘Ś
 
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