Disappointing Sequels

[Neo Rasa]

Actually there was definitely some kind of alternate path in each level we got up to. It was just much more immediately "chosen" like in the original Darius as an example.

[necromaniac]

Nah, haven't played MS6 yet actualy, and after some better reserch I'll be willing to give it a try before I knock it. It's just that I detest Mega Enterprise's and Noise Factory's efforts and, coupled with the aparent craptasticnes of Metal Slug 3D and the boring looking 3d backgrounds of Metal Slug 6 let me judge it by it's cover.
I whon't make that mistake again, but I'm still wary of it.

[munchy]

Ninja Gaiden Black: The only real reason this deserves to be in the article is because those assholes at Tecmo took out the NES Ninja Gaidens and replaced them with the shit arcade one. WTF!?

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness: Ugh. Just boring. I don't know what else to say. I know Kurt specifically requested not to mindlessly bash IGAvanias in the Cranky Gamers articles, but this one kinda deserves it.

Devil May Cry 2: Yayyy! Let's not only take out everything that made the first one cool, but downgrade all of the weapons and place way too much emphasis on long-range boring ass gun battles with bosses! USA! USA! USA! (As a side note, I noticed that Devil May Cry seems to follow the same pattern as the Exorcist movies; 1 was a masterpiece, 2 was awful boring shit, and 3 was pretty damn good but not quite up to the level of the first.)

Megaman 2 (GB version): I'll have to second this one from earlier. I had this game, and it was not too good. Plenty of exploitable glitches, and the level design was very bland. The music was absolute shit, too. Thankfully, its sequels were much, much cooler.

Sonic Adventure: Clip-clip-cliiiip-fall-fall-fall through the floor. Fuck that glitchy shit; I'm bad enough at the 2D Sonics, but this is just unfair. Although, in the game's defense, Robotnik's voice actor was brilliant.

Megaman 6: Not a terrible game, but suffers from an overall lack of inspiration. The Rush suits were pretty cool, though.

Megaman X6: They should've renamed this, "I Fucking Hate Spikes and Pits: Starring Megaman X". Absolutely atrocious level design, incomprehensible plot, and those fucking Reploid hostages. Is it just me, or is 6 an unlucky number for Megaman games?

New Super Mario Bros. : Don't get me wrong, I love the shit out of this game, but it seems that it was very overhyped. Oh, well, them's the works.

[kal]

I have to disagree Munchy with Sonic Adventure being disapointing, it's almost undoubtly the best 3d sonic (2 MIGHT be argueably better) but I can't see SA which itself was one of the most popular DC games as being disapointing.

Now if we were to say Sonic Spinball or Sonic Heroes then I could go with that.

I'm also going to stand up in FF8s defence since I'm one of the people that played it before 7, thus it wasn't a disapointment and it's not a bad game. I don't find Squall annoying, he's funny as hell.

[ReyVGM]

Hey don't diss the GB Megaman 2, it had THE best intro/title screen theme after Mega Man 3.

[recap]

necromaniac said:

and the boring looking 3d backgrounds of Metal Slug 6 let me judge it by it's cover.

MS6 doesn't have 3D backgrounds; they're fully in 2D. The actual problem with this game's graphics is the on-screen presentation - they didn't use the original design resolution to display the graphics, they upscaled them instead for the first time, and, as everybody should know these days, this kills every piece of 2D art.

[uncle5555]

Well you named 3 games I loathe greatly.....

Deus Ex Invisible War (I wrote a hate letter to Ion Storm on my 1up blog to this atrocity that dares call itself a Dues Ex game)

Chrono Cross (I'm with ya on this, I put 15 hours into it, got screwed on character selection and said to hell with it and ain't looked back since, maybe me and my Gameshark will tackle it one day, until then)

Sequel to Crono Trigger my butt, it's based off a friggin' text based game for crying out loud and has what in common with Trigger other than the Schala connection. Lame-o X 100.

Final Fantasy 8 (Amen to that, it had a neat story, but the lack of Laguna and that damn draw system really took any enjoyment out of it for me)

Sequels I hate
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Parasite Eve 2:
============
Total change from the original Square thought it needed to be more like RE instead of leaving it alone, just fine as it was and made a mess of it as a psuedo action game.

Guardian Heroes Advance:
==================
Not a total mess, just boring & repititous, and even with the extras to unlock, I didn't feel the need to replay it again after one playthrough, no where near the awesomeness of the original or the depth and reasons to play more than once that the original offered and delivered in spades.

Gunstar Super Heroes:
==================
Another atrocity on a great game, first they femme up Red, then make a crappy fight on top of a airplane that goes in circles, did they even attempt to try to grab some of the magic from the original, because they sure ripped off elements from the original, but just put them in canned form and made them 10x worse. (Black's game fortress, and same bosses from the original) Hell, the first one had a cool Shump section towards the end, what did this game have that stupid tilt-a-whirl I mentioned a second ago.

Starting to make me think Treasure needs to go back to the no sequels policy, unless they are psuedo sequels like Ikaruga.

Star Ocean the 2nd Story
==================
This game broke so many RPG cardinal sins (RPG conventions that I think must be in a game for it to be good) that it wasn't funny.

Unkillable enemies, forcing the player to play the subquests to power up, near impossible end boss without certain items (bunny shoes), punishing you for picking certain characters in your party, and more than I feel like typing right now. (Rage against game building again)


Z.O.E. the 2nd Runner
================
I know a lot of people think this is superior to the first game (yeah the one that came with the MGS2 demo If you can't tell that gets old hearing that line, considering ZOE 1 is actually a really good game) but I hated every minute of 2nd Runner, lame story, a boss that won't stay dead and keeps coming back, small mech on mech combat, compared to the massive enemies in the original, a crazy ass end boss, 3 end boss fights that are boring excercises in repitition (dash, zero drive, slash, repeat, ad naseum....) I hammered it in my review a few weeks ago, I hate it with passion.

I played them back to back a few weeks ago and couldn't believe how much the sequel sucked monkey balls.

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue
===============
Took everything I loved about Lunar 1 and flushed it, without looking back. (Like a lot of Gamearts sequels) Soulless, bland, love conquers all drek, for a series of games that were remade constantly throughout the 90's couldn't they at least work on fixing up the crappy story and make it you know interesting.

Silver Star Story is a classic game, the sequels....ouch, total shite.

Grandia 2
========
I have never played a game that seemed to me like the whole planets inhabitants had been body snatched the localization by Ubisoft was so dry and lifeless, I felt more and more dead the more time I spent playing that game. This game showed me that I would never again play a Gamearts title as long as I lived, second best RPG on DC my ass. Long Live Skies of Arcadia.

Sonic Heroes and Sonic Adventure 2
===========================
I second Sonic Zero...I mean Heroes, and one vote for Sonic Adventure 2, or let's take the adventure bit out and put it into the action bits and make it hard to run and full speed, stop and try to find the item they need to continue on that we hid somewhere in our crappy level design, and let them suck on it.

Shadow's much worse, but those are dissapointing because I was expecting so much more out of them.

Megaman X5-7
============
Personally I hate X5, and like X6 alot, and loathe X7, but I come from the quality over ummm...quality camp for those. X6 seemed to do so much right over X5 and it's thrown together mess of a game. (Almost damn impossible to determine if the astroid is going to be destroyed by your efforts and really annoying as well)

The killable reploids (of X6), so what, that's what the reset button is for. Better music, (which is always a plus to me, Showtaro rocks, btw), bosses, and story (more coherent anyway) and you get the Zet Saber, how cool.

So 5 & 7 get my vote and 6 gets the reprive from infamy.

**Stands as the odd man out for his love of MMX6**

ReyVGM:
"Are you sure you aren't confusing Contra Force with also crappy C: The Contra Adventure? "

Now I actually liked that game, Legacy is crap on a stick, breaded and fried. C:A, actually had some neato side scrolling stages, that are precursors to Shattered Soldier, the 3rd person elements mar it abit but otherwise it's quite playable and enjoyable in small doses.

And yes I own both, and got my complete version of Adv. knicked when I sent it back for a copy that actually worked and got disc only and a crappy generic case. **Still burns me to this day**

Another to add:

Musashi: Samurai Legend (article on that when I do BFM)
=========================================
It sucked the soul of the original and pooped something out that isn't even recognizable as a Musashi game, that and they hired some hoarse woman to do the voice instead of hiring the original VA's from BFM back and getting some semblence of quality into the game.

And it lost the playfulness the original had, and it also gives me a reason to hate Tetsuya Nomura's character designs more and more everyday, with his lame-ass Musahsi with 10,000 belt buckles, he can't be the only freakin' artist working as Squenix can he?

Wildweasel:
Unreal 2's story-based architecture (in addition to the fact that the main character speaks, which really kills FPS games for me) and barely-improved gameplay just don't add up. It sure looks pretty though...

You just pointed out the reason I hate Half Life so much, and love Duke 3d and Shadow Warrior so much. I couldn't imagine those two games without the main character being a wise ass, John Blade from Sin comes in 3rd as a real "character" in FPS because of those same reasons, I don't like retarded mute heroes in my games.

It doesn't bother me the main guy doesn't say much of anything in System Shock 2 till the end of the game, but I can't see how Deus Ex 1 would have been as awesome without JC Denton.

That's all I can think of right now.

[Discoalucard]

Right before I went to sleep last night, Star Control 3 popped in my head as being rather disappointing, even though the writing was still pretty good. Then I proceeded to have an awesome dream about a VUX battling with an Ur-Quan, and the VUX pulling off a last minute victory. It was rad.

Also, Uncle, you're like the only person I've ever seen that disliked ZOE2. The first one was one of those games that had a great control scheme that felt fun to play but ultimately didn't know what to do with it. I thought the second was much better in that regard, even if the translation was pretty appalling. I never beat it though, I got to that massive battlefield with like scores of enemies, beat it the stage, then stopped playing for some reason.

I liked Lunar 2 but not as much as the first one. Mostly because it actually had load times (nngghh), and the dungeons were pains-in-the-asses (the main reason why I like the PSOne version better.) I loved the ending though, so it was all good.

[Neo Rasa]

Oh! Speaking of PC sci-fi, Master of Orions 3 was a huge letdown for myself and most other fans of this type of game. It's great if you want an alternative to Microsoft Excel but outside of that it's no fun at all.

ZOE2's translation is pretty awful. If you look at some earlier trailers for it the translation is fantastic. Like they cheaped out at the last second as Namco did with Baten Kaitos.

[shido]

Emmm... ActRaiser 2, Monkey Island 4 and Ys 3 (I know some of you like it, but it has always been regarded as the black sheep of the series)

[Scylla]

While I've seen a little bit of disappointment in Valkyrie Profile 2, I think praise has far outweighed it. I don't suspect the game to become known as a disappointing sequel, but I imagine there are bound to be some people who can't stand the fact that it's not EXACTLY the same (which is apparent to the player long before they buy the game, so they can't whine that they don't know what they're getting into).

I WISH I had first hand experience to say how I personally feel it compares to the original, but NCS royally screwed me over so now I'm going insane trying to get the limited edition Artifact Box at a price that isn't a complete rip-off.

As for some suggestions for new candidates, Rad Racer II definitely isn't as appealing as the first Rad Racer, but then most people don't care about the original anymore either. It was to be expected considering the sequel was made by some American team that had no connection to the original Squaresoft development team. The nice Uematsu music is a sore loss especially.

Most people regard Donkey Kong Country 3 as a disappointing follow-up to DKC2. Many people outright hate it, but I think it's still a very nice game. However, it was a step backward, especially in music. I don't think I even need to get into the sheer hatred a lot of people have for Donkey Kong 64, either.

Oh, here's a good one - Tetris 2. I don't even care for the original Tetris much, but good lord is the sequel a lobotomy. I don't know how it happened, but I was somehow hyped into buying this brand new as a kid. Man, what a waste of 70 bucks. I TRIED to force myself to like it and played it a fair bit, but even back then I knew it was boring shit. Probably the biggest waste of money of any of my gaming purchases as a kid, even worse than Quest 64. I'll play the original Tetris anyday over Tetris 2.

[MRSKELETON]

Quest64 was awesome.

[Scylla]

I actually don't dislike Quest 64 quite as much as most people. I mean, I actually stuck with it long enough to beat the game, AND I bought and beat the Game Boy Color version too (which was surprisingly better). Quest 64 had some clever concepts, but the game reeked of unfinished ideas. You could literally see where things were cut, like when you'd meet a character who looked fancier than everybody else and had some semblance of a back story and you KNOW that the character was supposed to be recruitable (and if you look back to old previews, they prove that hunch). I was following the game a lot before release, and I remember previews when they were saying that the game was 60% done or somewhere along those lines, and the game that got released frankly seems no different. They promised so many features that were supposed to be in the game, yet what we got was so barebones. And not simple like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, which was still at least polished, it was barebones to the point that it could literally screw you over in the game. If you used up all your items and were in a particularly nasty area, you can get so thoroughly stuck that it's impossible to progress. The thing about making cuts in any kind of software is that you have to think about how that cut may affect the rest of the work. However, the things Imagineer did to cheaply cover up their cuts were completely flawed in nature. For instance, in the case of items, you can endlessly get one healing bread for free in towns if you run out, but one weak bread is not get you through the difficult boss battles in the game. Since you can't buy anything in the game at all, it becomes of extreme importance to conserve what few good items you find in treasure chests. While this MIGHT have been okay if the game was billed as and designed as a survival RPG, that's definitely not what they were going for.

In the end, I just wish I hadn't paid 70 bucks for the game, along with another $20 for a controller pak to be able to save. o_O It was an interesting experience, at the very least from a perspective of game design, but the experience wasn't worth paying THAT much. :P

[Gilder]

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask could be considered a disappointment due to it coming out after the massive Ocarina of Time. It's still excellent game on it's own and had top reviews, but many people hated the new time concept that made the game take a much faster pace. Another Zelda game could be Wind Waker only because of the sea farring parts (which were boring as all hell) and the graphics (I know people who still refuse to play it because it's cel shaded!).

Perfect Dark Zero was concesidered disappointing but I personally feel that everyone's expectations were too high for it anyway. I found it pretty enjoyable the little bit I played back in the dorms.

I'd say Strider Returns: Journey From Darkness isn't so much a disappointment as it is an abomination to the series.

[MRSKELETON]

I'm siding with Gilder on Majoras mask.
It wasn't nearly as good as OoT
I'm not however siding with him on Wind Waker because it was awesome.
What i'm putting up for candidate however is Castlevania Circle of the moon.
It was just too boring...Alot of the areas looked the same