Successful sequels that were still overshadowed

[dsparil]

Nintendo only releases sales data for games that crack 1m, so it's below that threshold. I get that Nintendo doesn't want to have two Mario RPG series, but Color Splash would have been an excellent combat-free adventure game. The combat is a huge minus in that game. 

[edmonddantes]

I didn't hate Devil May Cry 2 (I always found the complaint that "they made Dante emo" patently ridiculous--he still acts like Dante)

But on a gameplay end it did feel inferior to me than the first game (I'm one of the few who prefers game 1 to game 3.... never got to play the fourth). Most of my problems were the slower combat and that there's no way to disable Dante auto-locking onto enemies, which annoyed me because it meant my combat would be effed up through no fault of my own. They should have made that optional.

I once saw a retrospective on a lets play that went in detail over some of the major complaints most fans had, I can't remember what they all were but one that did resonate with me was most bosses were bullet sponges who could only be fought with long-range weapons, which made the fights kinda boring. This stuff didn't ruin the game for me but it did all feel like a significant step down.

That said, like I said I consider DMC1 the best of the trilogy. DMC3 felt to me too much like an over-reaction, like they took every single complaint about DMC2 and went overboard trying to fix it. Dante was too emo? Well lets have hour-long cutscenes that are just him being an over-the-top (and arguably kinda jerkish) badass (seriously I hated DMC3's long cutscenes. DMC1 and 2 worked fine with minimalist storytelling, and unlike Metal Gear, nothing really happens in DMC3's cinematics)! DMC2 too easy? Let's gimp up the difficulty so much that the "normal" difficulty is another region's "hard" difficulty! Let's have bonus challenges you can only complete if you're an uber gamer who has mastered every nuance of the mechanics! Let's have a story that's a prequel so we can ignore even the interesting aspects of DMC2 without having to actually retcon it out.

While respecting the fans is always a positive trait in creatorship there is a fine line between respect and whoring. DMC3 is by no means a terrible game, but its not quite the return to form some fans say it is.

[Deleted]

Whilst I did enjoy 3, yes it is safe to say it was a bit of an over reaction. The difficulty is manageable but it would be an awful 1st game to play in the series.
4...isn’t really bad. I didn’t much understand why they had Nero as a new character though if he was going to essentially be identical visually to Dante

[ZenithianHero]

Too bad DMC2 caused the series to move backward in the timeline, I would like to see Capcom give older Dante another go. I liked that design the most. At least he showed up in Nocturne.

[edmonddantes]

Might clarify that you mean Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, since there's lots of games named "Nocturne" and we don't need to have DMC fans scrabbling through random games.

Incidentally SMT:N became the first SMT I ever played for that very reason.

[ZenithianHero]

Sorry, yes. I meant his cameo in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I have the habit of thinking that game has the most famous "Nocturne" in the title.

[edmonddantes]

I always think of Nocturne in the Moonlight by default even though that's not even what it was called in my region.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

Nov 3, 2017 10:29:24 GMT -5 cm30 said:

This will be a weird example, but sometimes I think Paper Mario Color Splash is in this camp.

Objectively, it's better than Sticker Star in every way, and a decent halfway point between the old style games and the Sticker Star style ones in terms of characters and atmosphere. It fixes many gameplay issues, has some beautiful graphics and great music, etc.

However, it's then overshadowed because:

1. It's entirely lumped with Sticker Star, since it's still not fixed the overuse of Toads issue.

2. It came out at the end of the Wii U's lifespan, where basically no one was buying games for the thing. So it probably sold about half a million copies at most.

Controversial answer, but yeah, I think it counts.

That's not a weird example at all. I think that might become sort of a cult/hidden gem type game somewhere down the line.
It's not as good as TTYD or the original PM, but it fixes pretty much everything wrong with SS. There's a reason to fight now, there's much more interesting level ideas, the Koopalings are fun to battle, there's some good side-quests... People ignored it because it's not like the classic PM games and because they didn't think Nintendo would learn something from their mistakes with PMSS.

It's certainly a game that deserves a second life on Switch.