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[Teneb]

Well Mass Effect 3 started sucking right around the part of the game that was the start of Mass Effect 2.

Immediate logical collapse of the series pretty much dooms it right there.

Though to admit I cannot think of many games where the entire premise of the game just completely and functionally breaks down right at the freeken start!

Im not sure Bioware thought ME1 was gonna catch fire so quickly--So I dont think they knew where to go with the series after that. I don think they had planned to ever actually make a game bout invading reapers.

Mass Effect suffered from the lead writer changing partway through ME2's development. So you can still see parts of the original plot in 2, but not 3. But the fact that the original plot was ripped out halfway through had its consequences.

Spoiler: Original Plot (click to show/hide)

Mass Effect technology causes Dark Energy to accumulate. This, in turn, causes stars to decay and age way faster than they should. Some ancient alien race saw this and realized that no race would willingly give up their main source of technology, or kill themselves, to prevent the galaxy from becoming uninhabitable. So they made the Reapers, who are part exterminators, part archives of past civilizations. Reapers create Mass Relays and the Citadel to make new species follow the same general technological lines, so it is easier to track and eliminate them when their time is "over". Destroy the Reapers, and you are basically dooming the galaxy to a slow death.

It's not a masterpiece, by any means, but it is coherent and mostly competent.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

That's much better than the current one.

[Sharp]

Unpopular Opinion Puffin: Civ games aren't fun at all.

Mass Effect 2. A lot of people aren't fans of the original--and I hate every single one of you for it--ME2 made me HATE the series. ME1 was so great because you felt so alone and lost in the universe and you were trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. When something important DID happen you really felt like a spec ops badass coming in to save the day. ME2 just became totally bland and generic and lost all the customization and personality that I loved in ME1.

I hated the gameplay in Mass Effect 2 with the stupid ammo and all abilities going on cooldown when you use them. Mass Effect 1 you could do amazing combos by yourself, in Mass Effect 2 it gets more limited. Storywise was more interesting in ME1 and even though there were fewer characters the interactions with them seemed more interesting unlike ME2 and ME3's romance everything. ME2 I accidentally romanced weird sniper guy just by trying to find out his backstory.

The combat seemed a lot more intense in Mass Effect 1, especially fighting Krogan berserks who charge you while invulnerable to your abilities.

Regarding Civ though, I loved Civ 2 and SMAC, the rest of them aren't that interesting.

[Hawkfrost]

Fable 3... Even Fable 2 was kind of shitty, but Fable 3 (while fun enough) made me lose hope in a game about wonder and being a hero. Where the fuck did Molineux go wrong?

Yeah all Fable 3 had to do in order to be a terrible sequal was to be exactly the same...

Fable 2 was a HUGE step backwards as far as what the series needed to be and the series needed to return to its roots in order to remain a good series in people's minds.

But Honestly Fable 3 feels exactly like Fable 2... Except with a terrible moronic plot that could have been completely avoided if people talked out their problems.

Don't get me wrong the original Fable has its flaws... But it wasn't a game you liked inspite of its flaws... It was a good game that had flaws... Unlike Fable 2 and 3 which were flawed games with good in them.

Oh come on now, Fable 3 is significantly worse than 2. Fable 2 is at least like, a video game.

The point Molyneux went wrong is when he started to put being an "auteur" and a "revolutionary" above thinking about good gameplay systems.
Everything had to be different and "interesting", instead of actually being fun to play or useful; That's why you have shit like walking around a 3D space just to use your inventory. All of these "revolutionary ideas" ate up tons of development time and money, especially since Molyneux would often burst into the room and demand sweeping changes to fit whatever new idea he had come up with.

It's like if Hideo Kojima forgot he was supposed to be designing a game for people to play, and instead just made a collage of his brain over four years.

[George_Chickens]

I don't think this is going to be too popular, but Saints Row the fucking Third.

They took out the atmosphere of the world. No longer could you interact with it on the same level. In fact, you could barely interact with it at all.

They took out the diversity of the city. Instead of trailer parks, marinas, high-rises, forests and slums, we got copypasted, nondescript buildings and the occasional industrial area. 

They changed the pacing for the worst, having all the best weapons being granted very early on, and even the pre-mission cutscenes were removed. That's not even going into the customization lost, or the on-disc DLCs, or the missing activities, or the surprisingly easy gameplay, or how short all the above makes the game.

It had a few strong points, and even improvements, but it took out so much. How they managed to make a game with fucking superhuman brutes, the undead, (para)military organizations, and gangs that were much more interesting than the Not Yakuza, Jamaicans, and GENERIC TATTOO TUFF GUYS #52940 so boring is beyond me.

[Neonivek]

It's like if Hideo Kojima forgot he was supposed to be designing a game for people to play, and instead just made a collage of his brain over four years.

Except that would still be better then what Peter ends up with... Peter is about pushing systems...

Kojima is about pushing storytelling and little side projects. He has a passion for character... Even locations have bits of character that are undeniable. Snatcher? I still remember the stupid Chicken Soup Pizza thing.

Peter likes grand simplistic storylines and TRIES, and fails, to sort of encapsulate a sort of fairy tale aesthetic... But can never really balance that with gameplay. It is why the music for the series has been some of the best in all videogames... and even the visuals and atmosphere are often stellar even compared against their contemporaries...

He can create a fairy tale environment but he cannot make things act like a fairy tail.

I don't think this is going to be too popular, but Saints Row the fucking Third.

They took out the atmosphere of the world. No longer could you interact with it on the same level. In fact, you could barely interact with it at all.

Saints Row 4 deals a lot with the differences with the game as it went on... Their general premise is that the games wouldn't even like one another because they are drastically different.

[Folly]

Personally, I enjoyed each iteration of Saints Row much more than the last. However, they did implement massive changes both to aesthetics and gameplay with each new title, so I can totally see how fans of the earlier games could be disappointed. It might have been better if they had changed the title, just so that fans wouldn't be expecting more of the same.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Saints Row 2 was the last actual Saints Row game lol--the other two were just parodies.

[Jopax]

Sword of the stars 2, a sequel so bad it permanently fucked Kerberos, completely deservedly too I say because what a horrible pile of broken shit that was, and even after many fixes and a free expansion thing it's still buggy, poorly optimised and with a UI whose physical manifestation would be a spiky ball of spite.

Supreme Commander 2. The "Hey let's tear out everything that made this game unique so it appeals to a broader audience! Oh and let's cram it full of retarded pun names for units while we're at it, because nothing says majestic Aeon Illuminate like naming your giant experimental gunship the Sooprizer."
Seriously, this game made me bitter about unit names, that's how fucking far they went.

C&C: Generals 2, because it was turned into a shitty F2P attempt at an RTS before being killed without coming out of Alpha. One of the best RTS games I've ever played, one I've sunk hundreds of hours into since my elementary school days sacrificed as an experiment in creating the philosphers stone of gaming, a fucking free to play RTS that isn't shit or P2W.

Sim City, because fuck you you're gonna be always online and you're going to enjoy it mister! No, I'll go and play the one that wasn't shafted in the gameplay department to fit the needs of DRM, thank you very much.

There's others, plenty of them at that, I just can't be bothered either listing stuff already listed or remembering all the series that went to shit for one reason or another.

[Neonivek]

Man... SuprCom 2's names MUST have been absolutely dreadful given that they have always had pun names... (Not sarcasm... I mean they must have been FAAAAR worse then normal)

[Chiefwaffles]

I actually really liked Mass Effect 3. A couple years ago I decided to play all three games back-to-back, importing my save as I went. It took a bit to actually do it, but I still really enjoyed all three games.
And Mass Effect 3 probably had the best gameplay out of the three. ME2, while also still fun, felt a bit too streamlined - the nature of the game removed gameplay choices. Like where in Mass Effect 1, you had the RPG-like system where you managed different weapons with their own stats and the like.
I liked this a lot because sci-fi RPGs (AkA ME1) are amazing, but I can understand some not liking it. But ME2 took the nuclear option and just removed all sense of real choice. Sure, you can choose to use a shotgun or an assault rifle, but all you could do other than that was use the basic model for the majority of the game then sometime very-late game you unlock the better version. Stuff like this permeates ME2.

I still really enjoyed Mass Effect 2, but Mass Effect 3 improved on it in a lot of ways. I shall once again use weapon customization as an example representative of the whole. You can actually customize your guns! I mean, sure, it doesn't have all the different guns and RPG stats of Mass Effect 1, but ME3's mod system was an acceptable compromise that I found enjoyable. The gameplay was also just better, and while it would have been nice to have more direct consequences of choices made in the previous games, I found the existing consequences and acknowledgments satisfying.

Though I was ambivalent with the ending. I don't really get what some people were expecting. I mean, sure, lots of different endings based on your choices throughout the last three games would be nice, but let's be realistic. I can't think (at least offhand) of any choices offhand in Mass Effect 1 and 2 that would actually change the ending. They may change the way you got to the ending, which Mass Effect 3 did somewhat replicate through the war assets rating thingy, but why would these past small choices change how the game ends?
And in terms of the actual endings, disregarding the possibilities for the branching paths, I'm still okay with them. They definitely weren't amazing, but it still feels like a fairly satisfying conclusion. You (probably) saved the day and have ended the threat, but it's not without sacrifice and there's still challenge ahead.

I can definitely understand people not liking the ending, and people of course have different opinions on gameplay, but people claiming it's the worst sequel ever?
Really?
And it isn't like I didn't experience the hype so I wasn't missing out on that either. I just don't get why people say that ME3 is the worst sequel ever.

[Neonivek]

The problem with Mass Effect 3 wasn't that it had a "bad ending" it was that its ending was bad.

 

You (probably) saved the day and have ended the threat

Yes, no thanks to anything you did or your character's contributions.

"I can't think (at least offhand) of any choices offhand in Mass Effect 1 and 2 that would actually change the ending"

Well... There was this whole... Galactic threat thing... But I guess it wasn't important

[Jopax]

Man... SuprCom 2's names MUST have been absolutely dreadful given that they have always had pun names... (Not sarcasm... I mean they must have been FAAAAR worse then normal)

I'm not sure to what you're reffering to there. SupCom had sensible names that went with the character of the faction and perhaps a bit of dry military humor thrown in here and there. The Aeon themselves were kinda zelaous nutjobs which was reflected in their unit names all being vaguely religious in one way or another.

[Teneb]

I just don't get why people say that ME3 is the worst sequel ever.

Because it is not. It has absolutely great gameplay, as you noted, and a story that really suffered for reasons I already covered in this thread. People complain about the more recent ones, but BioWare tends to be bad at writing characters since their earliest games. They take one characteristic and just focus on that alone. DA:Inquisition creates some hope, however, in that the characters are deeper than the BioWare average.

If you want a truly bad sequel, well, SotS2 has been mentioned here. It is truly one of the best examples of how not to do a sequel. Instead of iterating on the good mechanics of the first game while addressing the bad parts, they instead stripped out everything and tried to rebuild it from the ground up in a different, and worse at that, manner. The only thing that game did right was battle graphics, because those are super pretty.

FUCKING NINJAS IN MY POST.

[Neonivek]

DA:Inquisition creates some hope

I am just going to put Dragon Age Inquisition onto this list of worst sequels I ever played >_> not out of spite but because... Yeah it is deplorable.

Yet its characters are seriously patchy in that... people sometimes feel alive and sometimes they feel like raving lunatics.

"Well, to admit you have been reasonable the entire time and gave me absolutely no reason not to trust you... so I guess I'll trust you" Great writing
Sitting alongside
"A Orb!?! That must be the orb that will bring for the end of the world! You can tell because it is an orb in water! And no other orb could possibly be in water! AHHH!" BAAAAAD writing

Mind you... The bad writing is typical of the "We don't know how to get the characters to this place... so we are just going to force it". So instead of organic thinking, they just go insane temporarily.

So yes I can see why you say it gives you hope even while I deride some of its WORST qualities.

---

And this isn't even getting to its gameplay... and... the less said the better... Basically imagine someone took Neverwinter Nights and made a MMO out of it (ohh wait!)