How the mighty have fallen...

Many video game series have been around for years (if not decades) by now. Some have adapted to the current generation, and the new titles are still fun to play. Others...not so much. Let's have a chat about them. Which series that you once enjoyed do you feel no longer has a place in the game industry? What makes the newer games worse than the ones that came before them?

Bethesda games. It's all downhill and they're on their last leg with Fallout 76.

Pokemon as well. GF gets away with a lot of things only because it's Pokemon.

Anything EA touches? I mean Battlefront was good back in the early 2000's and then on modern platforms it just goes to crap. Same deal with Command&Conquer wherein they're rumored to be remastering C&C1 and RA1 with those that made those games in the first place. Activision is approaching EA reputation with regards to anything it touches but eh we shall see.

Anything Sims

A prime candidate for this, for me at least, is The Legend of Zelda. There hasn't been a good Zelda title since Twilight Princess, with Skyward Sword being a mechanical nightmare with it's truly awful motion controls, Breath of the Wild feeling like anything BUT a Zelda game with it's disgraceful lack of music and anything to do in its pointless open world, and A Link Between Worlds, despite how solid the gameplay was, essentially being a remake of A Link to the Past. Zelda is an awkward franchise for me – as with many Nintendo series, it seems to be stuck in the past to the point of straight-up cloning the previous title, or it's so dramatically different that it's unrecognisable, and all the elements that made the previous titles fun have been stripped out along with everything that made them boring.

Pokemon is another obvious one for it's increased focus on the exact same poorly written narrative that it's had since Gen III. Unless GF hires an actual writer or decides to come away from the narrative and return to the lighter story that the first two generations had, I can't see this ever improving.

With Nintendo games generally I get the feeling that the developers are arrogant enough to feel like they perfected the formula years ago, and feel no desire to try and improve upon things...or are too scared to improve on things because of potential fan backlash, so they can either only clone the previous game or do something else entirely so that if fans complain at least they can use the " we wanted to do something entirely new" excuse and then never do it again if it doesn't work out. Nintendo and progress don't mix when it comes to their flagship titles.

Monster Hunter is going to be this if World is the future of the franchise. At least for me it is. World is another Pokemon case – there was absolutely no need for them to add a garbage narrative and strip away the aesthetic charm of the series when they made those so-called QoL improvements. Removing things that make a game good in the name of stripping out things that were bad doesn't make a game better; often it makes it worse. World stands as a shining monument to this.

I also feel like Final Fantasy doesn't really know what it's doing with itself anymore. Time has softened my view on XIII-2 at least, but you have only to look at XV's development and the "finished" product itself to see that Square Enix are extremely out of touch.

Paper Mario.

They took everything away that made the first three games unique. The story was the main draw for me, but was cut in favor of "Find Peach, Defeat Bowser", the removal of original characters in favor of toads, and making the battle system pointless since you don't earn any form of experience.

From the newer entries in the series, I've only played Sticker Star and Paper Jam. Sticker Star did all of this. Paper Jam would have been enjoyable, but it halts the story so many times and forces you into collection quests. I forced myself to the end, and could not get myself to finish. I ended up misplacing my copy, but didn't feel any loss from that. I gave away Sticker Star.

I have not played Color Splash, I've heard more positive things about it, but can't get the motivation to play anything else in the series.

Dawn said:

Monster Hunter is going to be this if World is the future of the franchise. At least for me it is. World is another Pokemon case – there was absolutely no need for them to add a garbage narrative and strip away the aesthetic charm of the series when they made those so-called QoL improvements. Removing things that make a game good in the name of stripping out things that were bad doesn't make a game better; often it makes it worse. World stands as a shining monument to this.

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would like to hear more on this

ZeoStar said:

I have not played Color Splash, I've heard more positive things about it, but can't get the motivation to play anything else in the series.

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I've played Color Splash but not Sticker Star so I can't give you a comparison between the two myself, but from what I've read it seems like the general consensus is that Color Splash is better than Sticker Star.

But the story might as well be non-existent and the game still strays too far from what the first two titles were like to call Color Splash a great game. I loved the first two, especially Thousand Year Door, and wish that they'd go back to that style of Paper Mario. I have no idea why they decided to drastically move away from the sort of Paper Mario most people liked to what it's been for the past 3ish games, and still continue to refuse to go back to it despite the more recent style being less liked.

CodeHelmet said:

Anything EA touches? I mean Battlefront was good back in the early 2000's and then on modern platforms it just goes to crap. Same deal with Command&Conquer wherein they're rumored to be remastering C&C1 and RA1 with those that made those games in the first place. Activision is approaching EA reputation with regards to anything it touches but eh we shall see.

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I mean it's not like they did that just cause of the INSANE backlash their recent necromancy of the series has caused.

The massive culprit here is Pokémon, in all honesty. However by Pokémon I mean the main series which has been extremely formulaic since the beginning; the issue at large is that generally speaking the formula has barely changed since it was implemented. With that in mind, I'd be happy for more things with aspects from Colosseum, XD and the like however. Maybe combine that and the PMD series, hm...

Final Fantasy I wouldn't go as far as to say it doesn't have a place within the industry, it's just that something has happened with 13 and 15, which is a sad sight. Maybe if it continues to trend this way then sure but it is still a huge cornerstone of the industry at large.

.... I don't think the mighty have fallen, I think we're just getting to use to the old...

To be more exact and clear anything I think you think I think, say that 5 times fast, I acknowledge Bethesda has gone down hill. In fact, I hope that Fallout 76 is their grave to which will be a viking funeral I and the fan base will set fire to while singing the theme to Skyrim, UP TOP FOLKS! Any high fives?

EA has always... Well, not always terrible, they did some good shooters starting off and a few others until they reached unto the now and their actions are catching up to them with Anthem among.... Everything else such as scrapping Destiny and what it is.

As far as change goes, well would your prefer to keep asking for chocolate pudding or ask for chocolate pudding with Oreos in it? I got a better question; would you rather play Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time where your whole road is set out before you annd it's a grand 'destiny' to fulfill to test your patience?.... Quoting Game Grumps Ego raptor, Your mostly just waiting in a sword fight, waiting for an animation to a chest and waiting, waiting, waiting waiting to MOVE ON!!! Ok, Bows and Arrows? sure, some enemies are vulnerable like the flying ones, but you got Stalfos, Iron knuckles and so on... Or would you rather play, laying off Breath of the Wild, Wind Waker where you can SAIL THE VAST OCEAN, STEALING STUFF FROM MONSTERS, BREAKING POTS AND CAUSING WIND CHANGES THAT CAN CAUSE TYPHOONS AND HURRICANES!? You can Argue that Wind Waker is like Ocarina of time, it still holds your hand to the story, but you have the freedom to break off the story to go explore, discover islands.... blow up other ships and stealing + trying new monster weapons and so on... well, a weapon and... well, less waiting, battle is a little better-skill based.

... Even then, we don't have control over any of this because we're not making the games. Nintendo is, even then as a programmer, spending anywhere between 2-5 YEARS IN FRONT OF A SCREEN DAY-IN AND DAY OUT, WORKING ON THE SAME PROJECT AND MATH TO WHERE IT TEARS APART YOUR MIND THAT YOU HALLUCINATE YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER IS A "+" SIGN AND YOUR KIDS ARE THAT ONE VARIABLE YOU ASSIGNED A TASK TO FOR THEM TO GO TO AND PASS THROUGH SCHOOL FUNCTION, BUT THEY WON'T BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T VISIT THE DEKU KID TO GET THE ZORA MASK TO CATCH A PIKACHU TO TRADE FOR A POLTERGUST 3000 TO CATRCH A GHOIST TO SELL TO GET A SOLID GOLD TRUCK TO DRIVE TO DISNEY WORLD FOR THE WEEKENED!!!! *Eye Twitch*.. To be fair, programmers get tired, story writers want to explore other avenues with their games, producers want to discover and try other concepts, like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon or the new Breath of the wild or Monster Hunter World. To keep asking them to give the exact formula as... Pick whatever is your perfect game here and expect this every single release is the same as asking them to go climb a tree and nbot stop climbing that same tree until your in your 30's.

Why not build your own game? Gather the other people here and go re-create the game but add more side quests? More puzzles? There are modding communities out there outside of pokemon and the rom hack board here, you can go learn from them. There are coding sites that teach how to code rain or shine like Code Academy or the crash course school over in Unity. Go remake the Ocarina of time, add more dungeons or Majora's mask, heck I'll pay to see a mod of Skies of Arcadia just to add more quests to have fun in it.

If the answer is no because you aren't that talented, too busy or in-experienced, Game companies we're just as inexperienced, such as HAVING TO SHOVE AN ENTIRE GAMES ONTO 40 KB FOR AN NES GAME!!!.... on N64, 5 MB. Final Fantasy 10, 15GB had to be pushed onto a 4GB DVD disk.... They had to start somewhere. If you think they're reading this through a google search engine, I think they're too busy coding their next game to even care or read at this time.