Bad Sequels

Sequels are supposed to improve upon the originals but sometimes, for whatever reason, they fail absolutely miserably at this. What are some of the worst sequels that you've ever played? What made them worse than the originals?

The first thing that always comes to mind for me when I think of bad sequels is Tales of Symphonia's sequel, Dawn of the New World.

The good original cast was largely shoved aside (they all only briefly join your party and are level and equipment locked) in favor of a boring protagonist and a crappy monster capturing system. It also introduces a group of beings that didn't need to exist (why are Centurions a thing in a world with Summon Spirits? Tenebrae was ok tho), and doesn't really continue the theme(s) of the original game and instead focuses on some revenge plot, which is not a bad thing in general, Berseria did it well, it's just that the plot should've been, y'know, related to the previous game's.

It probably should've been a separate game rather than doing what it did, which both held itself back from doing what it wanted to do and made for a poor sequel to a good game.

I don't think "Red Dead Redemption 2" was a bad sequel, in fact I thought it was better than the original. Yet it's what I thought of when I saw this topic. Some of the features were unnecessary, such as needing to clean your weapons regularly or face reduced stats. To which you would actually need to go all the way to a store to buy the materials to clean your weapon. But on your way to the store to buy the materials for your weapons, it takes longer because you haven't been cleaning your horse and the stats for the horse also went down. Then my horse is slowed and I can't escape a bandit ambush with my reduced health core since I hadn't given my character a bath in a hotel.

I saw many complaints about the realism being too much, and I agree. Sometimes it feels more like a life simulation than a video game.

USUM was a big step down from SM. The additional features were fantastic but the story was a lot weaker.

It barely counts as a sequel I guess since it's really a totally different game but Final Fantasy XII was extremely lackluster. Especially given that the one I played before it was FFX which is such a good game.

I haven't actually played them but everything I've seen of or about the Corpse Party sequels tells me that excluding the remaster/remake it should always have been stand alone.

gimmepie said:

USUM was a big step down from SM. The additional features were fantastic but the story was a lot weaker.

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While I liked USUM, I have to agree that the story became so much worse in the transition.

Besides USUM, I don't think I've consciously bought bad sequels, so I can't say I've played one I can name outright. From the gameplay and reviews that I've seen online, though, Sonic '06, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, and Mass Effect: Andromeda come to mind.

Sadly, most of the productions with "Jagged Alliance" in the title were garbage. Sir-Tech died along with the series and the copyrights were abused by amateurs. Such a grand game it was (especially second part)... Thousands of hours invested back in the day. Fandom is still keeping it alive through mods though.

There were also problems with Bioware's merchandise. "Dragon Age: Origins" for instance. It was something else. A jewel really. And yet the studio trashed it. "Dragon Age 2", "Dragon Age: Inquis." - what are even those? And equally "Mass Effect". Talking about space, about different races and making everything pro-human in the end. "Andromeda" buried them. Not even an option to play as something different than humans, when that feature alone could give them an edge on the market.

Fable 3. As much as I adore and cherish the games, that was the one game that did not hold my love for the Fable game series.

Why? They had a cast of amazing actors in it, but it felt like it was forced in there. The story felt wishy washy, too and I felt that the hype I had for the game, when it was released was gone.

There were just too many drastic changes for me.

Galukxy said:

Fable 3. As much as I adore and cherish the games, that was the one game that did not hold my love for the Fable game series.

Why? They had a cast of amazing actors in it, but it felt like it was forced in there. The story felt wishy washy, too and I felt that the hype I had for the game, when it was released was gone.

There were just too many drastic changes for me.

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I loved the first two Fable games and whenever I told my friends that Fable 3 was not part of my approved list they told me I was wrong. The story was simple enough, the voice actors to your credit where favorable... I just feel they pulled too far away from the traditional story driven game. There was not a lot of lore and some of the missions are just rehashed from previous series... I have to pray that the next Fable game does not go down the same path. The other thing I wanted to point out was the lack of character development. Though similar in the first two at least you can feel the character developing in the first two games.


For me it has to be Super Paper Mario for the Wii and it's for two reasons which is the battling system, and map design... Each of the bosses and characters at least had some backstory to them. The ability to flip flop between dimensions were really cool. The actual plot story to the game from beginning to end was actually a pretty good story in comparison to the previous titles. Music I was rather indifferent towards but that's just the nostalgic Nintendo for me.

Here is where I throw the big BUT at the end of the praise... The traditional Paper Mario battling system was a turn by turn based RPG style format. While I do praise them for trying something new it has not been the same since TTYD. I know they tried to adapt with Stickers but the damage had already been done in my mind that it was not worth being open minded with it. Supposedly the next title in the series is going back to the battling roots that it had started with and I hope for their sake that this is true and they stay in the art of what had made the series great.

Map design, while I do admit that Castle Bleck and the Flower Castle was really cool looking I do feel that some of the areas (In fact most of them) just felt really.... average to me. TTYD had some nicely built areas like the Glitz Pitz, Rougeport, the actual Thousand Year Door. PM had some charm with the volcano area, toy box area, the ruins, bowsers castle, Boo Mansion. (Okay a lot of areas).

To me this is where the bad sequel started and trickled to worse and worse.

While they weren't BAD sequels, I have a tender spot in my heart for Dragon Age: Origins that I'll never have for either of the follow-ups. I have fond memories of connecting with Alistair, Morrigan, Sten and Zevran by the fire before heading out to save the world, those characters seemed so fleshed out to me.

Can I get a shout out for Deus Ex invisible war? It was the 2003 sequel to the amazing first Deus Ex game, they decided to make all three wildly different endings cannon at the same time, while also slicing up the game's levels so that it could run on the original X Box.