Game franchises that have regressed

[Spyrone]

Duke Nukem, Borderlands, FEAR and Soldier of Fortune. After Duke 3D came out, the whole development hell fiasco with Duke Nukem Forever ensured that the only two good Duke games that came out since were Zero Hour and Manhattan Project. DNF is a mediocre shitshow due to the incredibly long development cycle where they would come up with some good shit like the '01 build and then throw it away whenever the next killer app came out, whether it was Halo, Half-Life 2, CoD or whatever. The fact that the Greaselord released DNF 2011 with the humor a pale shadow of itself using a script where the most recent reference is to a movie that released seven years prior feels like Randy taking a greasy shit on the franchise because he sucked at mapping for it makes it even worse.

Speaking of Grease, I used to love Borderlands. B1, B2 and The Pre-Sequel not only played well and were as addictive as a mobile game but are legitimately some of the funniest games ever. Handsome Jack is one of best gaming villians ever and everything any of the Psychos say is comedic gold. Then Borderlands 3 came out, fixed whatever niggling gameplay issues the series and turned the story into an unfunny stab at YouTubers because Greasandy BoBandy is a thin-skinned PoS who can dish out greasy slop but can't take it. The movie is like apparently like a grease fire, but I haven't paid attention since B3's unfunniness killed my laughter and turned my smile upside down with it's lame-ass jokes that are worse than a Family Guy cutaway gag where Peter reads Big Bang Theory subtitles in a monotone, bored voice for fifteen fucking minutes.

FEAR: First Encounter Assault Recon was a great game with atmosphere that despite being a horror themed game that wasn't scary is still a badass FPS with combat that makes Chow Yun-Fat cry fat tears of envy. The expansion pack Extraction Point is even better, the only problem with it is it doesn't have Alma brutally disintegrate Norton Mapes to bloody skeleton for being the annoying, atmosphere breaking cheeto stain he is. The Perseus Mandate is where everything went to shit, it feels hollow. Steven Jay Blum, while being one of my favorite voice actors, doesn't really seem like he fits in a game like FEAR and clashes with the atmosphere. Jim Ward seems like he phoned his portrayal of Rowdy Betters in the Perseus Mandate. FEAR 2 is mediocre and feels like every other shooter of that era. F3AR is a lame mess that gives the Point Man a lame voice.

Soldier of Fortune was the gold standard of ultra-gory first-person shooters for a long time (IMO the next game that achieved that level of gory brutality in first-person was Dead Island) and seems like the practice run RAVEN did for the Black Ops series. Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix suffered from a borked launch, but ultimately became a pretty good game. Soldier of Fortune: Payback is one of the worst games of all time. 'Nuff said.

Both Dragon Age and BioShock have incredible first games and, unfortunately, their sequels got worse and worse.

Totally agree with you on Dragon Age, but I honestly like BioShock 2 as much as the first game- it improved on the gameplay aspects of the first that made it the thinking man's FPS, and I like the story too. Sophia Lamb, Augustus Sinclair and Gil Alexander are really great villians even if their not as peak as Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine and Sander Cohen were. It also continues the theme the series had of criticising extremist political ideologies, with Sophia Lamb's biopunk Ultra-Communism in a decaying underwater megacity being the perfect counterpoint to the Andrew Ryan's Objectivist oppression, as well as going into further detail on just how oppressive it became when Ryan started losing market share, like Sinclair's ghetto slum hotels and gulag. The Fontaine Futuristics level where you meet ol' Gil and see how he turned himself into a schizophrenic biocomputer are also really great.

BioShock: Infinite is a good game, but not nearly as good as the first two. If only because it drastically simplified the gameplay and made the only interesting and unique thing about it the skyhook riding and verticality in the game. The story I like as much as the first two, but the gameplay took a major step back with that one.

 

[Moth_Lobster]

Nostalgia is both blinding and true.

I don't think there's a single franchise from my childhood that I can honestly say improved over time. It's the natural way of things... Games evolve with every new entry to their series and that's perfectly fine (and the basis for a worthwhile conversation if taken as such), but it also means that they slowly lose the identity that had started the whole love affair in the first place.

I think that my favorite example of a series changing drastically but remaining the same is GTA: the first two don't look or play anything like anything that came after the third, but the core idea has remained and been built upon perfectly. Too bad it's the exception rather than the rule.

Zelda as a franchise was pretty great. 3D and top-down Zeldas both had their own thing going on and both went for a while.
And yeah, then BotW happened, but like up until Skyward Sword it was a pretty consistent evolution of the same formula for 3d games.

Depending on who you ask, Resident Evil never stopped being good. Alternatively, some people think it stopped being good, then started being good again with 7 and 2R. (or some people don't like it at all but lmao)

I do think it opens up discussion about if its possible to admit that something "improved", but just not for you. Maybe the first game was great, and the second game threw out what you personally liked to try and build off something else the first game did. The second game still improved on the first one, but just not in the way you wanted. A lot of people seem to think of these things as binaries where their tastes are absolute but given circumstances I can admit that sometimes its a solid game, just not what I want

 

[Octopus]

Depending on who you ask, Resident Evil never stopped being good. Alternatively, some people think it stopped being good, then started being good again with 7 and 2R. (or some people don't like it at all but lmao)

I'm one of those people, I love 5 and 6 with all my heart for very different reasons than why I love the other games. I also don't like 7 at all, so there's also that.

Borderlands

3 was so profoundly unlistenable for sure, which is a shame as you said the gameplay is the best in the series. I literally played through it with all dialogue sounds turned down, and no subtitles. Even outside of the humour the story was so insulting that it was almost unbearable. Tiny Tina's Wonderland wasn't that bad actually, it was mostly listenable and changed up enough stuff in the formula to make it feel decently unique.

 

[Heku]

I agree with the return of the Legend of Zelda franchise and the much underrated but very good game Dishonored PS3 and Xbox 360.

Post automatically merged: Jun 25, 2025

Back then, I played the Game of the Year version of Dishonored, along with the expansions: The Knife of Dunwall, The Brigmore Witches, and Dunwall City Trials. I have memories of when games were truly entertaining.

 

[freebie#47]

Hard to pick one, cause most of good games in a franchise that became....not good was cause it was done by a developer that was cheaper and awfuller. That being said, I found the seiken densetsu series starting to decline after legends, dawn of mana was just awful and ds were not worth it....lucky vision of mana actually did very well, not perfect, but still better.

 

[snes9x]

Shin Megami Tensei. Didn't mind IV and IV-A too much but V had absolutely rancid vibes. Soul Hackers 2 was pretty insulting as well.

 

[Tom88]

The Breath of Fire's franchise : BoF 1, 2, 3 and 4 are still great JRPG. I was really moved by BoF (5) Dragon Quarter on PS2. BoF 6 (on Android) was a complete disaster ; Capcom killed the franchise then and has yet never really tried to make it back on the front.

I confess I still have grudge against Capcom for that.

 

[ChronoFiction]

The StarFox series, the last major game was on the wii u and felt the same story wise with it being another remake or remaining of StarFox 64 which isn't even necessary because there was already a remake that exists being StarFox 64 3D, and the worst part is that StarFox Zero's controls is tied to the gameplay because it felt like Nintendo needed to force the wii u gamepad to show off the game. All that resulted was a terrible StarFox game that controlled terribly and it didn't help that the controls was spit into two different screens, the tv is where you can fly and the gamepad is where you aim at. This game was a utter disaster.

 

[Captain Murphy]

I can’t admit it mainly because I can’t really see it as an actual ”steady” decline, moreso that there have been both steep ups AND steep downs. It’s similar to Sonic, or Spider-Man, nowadays, where every fan and creator has their own specific view of what it should and shouldn’t be, and kind of becoming too big for its britches and failing to please everyone, so there will always be a squadron of fans who very vocally both like and dislike it, and that tribalism sort of confirms to me that it hasn’t totally shit the bed yet.

Square being dumbasses and not knowing what to focus on and blowing money on trends and weird risks nobody asked for is a tale as old as time though.

That doesn't make it any less infuriating. Us long suffering old bastards who remember the good old days... lol. Am I becoming a curmudgeon or what? I gave up on the series after ff15 and the pixel remasters. I know some ppl like these a lot but it just seems to me that final fantasy just had lost the unified vision that made it relevant creatively.

 

[Sunnyside]

Etrian Odyssey technically fits this, though it's not the fault of the game's creators. The DS line of consoles died and with it so did the perfect control scheme for the series. It took Atlus years to figure out a way to satisyingly replicate the mapping for the EO1-EO3 remasters and even then it's an inferior experience. To sum it up, Nintendo indirectly murdered one of my favorite franchises. T_T

 

[KaiserMk7]

Golden Sun's sequel is often seen as lesser than the original GBA titles, and it left players with many unanswered questions. Since then, Camelot has virtually abandoned the series in favor of Mario Golf.

Post automatically merged: Jun 25, 2025

Etrian Odyssey technically fits this, though it's not the fault of the game's creators. The DS line of consoles died and with it so did the perfect control scheme for the series. It took Atlus years to figure out a way to satisyingly replicate the mapping for the EO1-EO3 remasters and even then it's an inferior experience. To sum it up, Nintendo indirectly murdered one of my favorite franchises. T_T

Etrian Odyssey my beloved. I'd love for people to make more games like it, even without a touch screen to physically draw maps on.

 

[Sunnyside]

Etrian Odyssey my beloved. I'd love for people to make more games like it, even without a touch screen to physically draw maps on.

If it meant more Etrian I'd begrudgingly accept a new entry without touch screen mapping. It'd be rough though. The series awakened a love for physical mapmaking that I never knew I had in me. I went into IV's demo thinking it'd be a slog. Gave all my characters dumb meme names because I fully expected to drop it. Over 100 hours later, Diabeetus and his motley gang of misfits became legendary explorers.

 

[Captain Murphy]

Final Fantasy is still doing the exact same thing they've always been doing, but unfortunately game development means it takes a decade before you'll get your next mainline game now.

If you didn't like 13, don't worry, 14 will launch in 3 years. Nevermind, 14 was a disaster and had an in-universe reset as a result three years after that... oh, you don't like MMOs anyways? Don't worry though, in another three years you'll finally get 15! Oh, didn't like 15 either? 16 will be your game, trust me, just wait 7 years. Wait, you don't like 16 either? Fine, in 2033 we got you with 17, trust me.

at least back in the ps1 and ps2 days if you didn't like that specific FF game, maybe the next one in one or two years would get you. I can find forum posts from back when 7 dropped and there were people doomposting about how it didn't feel like FF anymore because of how different it was to the first six games. If only they were psychic and could see 9 was coming in a few years specifically as a throwback to that era lol.

Good point. Ff6 development was what.. a year and a half? One of the greatest games ever made too. That's insane. PlayStation 1 had THREE mainline final fantasy titles and comparatively speaking, were all memorable and highly regarded. (Yes even final fantasy 8) and were incredibly financially lucrative in comparison. So the current model just isn't working. Is it bc of bloated dev times or is due to a failed production model for budgeting? They're not really making games that push the envelope in narrative. Final fantasy used to be a series where not only could SQUARESOFT do no wrong but it was more than that .. there was magic. The series was highly regarded, influential and financially lucrative as a game design business model. Now they're just good games but for those of us who remember, there was a time when final fantasy as a series was untouchable.

 

[Spyrone]

I can't believe I forgot my namesake- the Spyro the Dragon series were the best 3D platformers for the PSOne (eat it, Crash, you sadistic, child-hating game made by dudes who just wanted to make badass shit like The Last of Us, Uncharted and every Jak & Daxter game after the first[1]), then Enter The Dragonfly rushed out unfinished and started the slow death of Spyro. I liked A Heroes Tail and the isometric GBA games were pretty good IMO, but then The Legend of Spyro came out and swapped Tom Kenny for Elijah Wood (no offense to Frodo, but Spyro was not a game I wanted to see try and get serious). The only good decision those entries made was casting David Spade as Sparx, as he is far less annoying then the buzzing noises that passed for speech prior. Then, Skylanders came out, started a craze of toy collecting that has long since bottomed out and, worst of all, barely had Spyro in it. Reignited is one of the worst remasters IMO because it was made on a completely different engine (UE4, IIIRC) that feels and plays entirely differently from the original custom one that Ned Hastings did. Worst of all, they took the Gnorcs guns away. Twilight Harbor had some of the best enemy designs in the first game and they ruined them.

The StarFox series, the last major game was on the wii u and felt the same story wise with it being another remake or remaining of StarFox 64 which isn't even necessary because there was already a remake that exists being StarFox 64 3D, and the worst part is that StarFox Zero's controls is tied to the gameplay because it felt like Nintendo needed to force the wii u gamepad to show off the game. All that resulted was a terrible StarFox game that controlled terribly and it didn't help that the controls was spit into two different screens, the tv is where you can fly and the gamepad is where you aim at. This game was a utter disaster.

Definitely, although the series did have it's ups and downs before the Wii U trashed it- Star Fox: Adventures was pretty lame despite being the first appearance of my #1 waifu, and I quite liked Star Fox: Assault and Star Fox: Command. Then the Wii U titles came out and tried to reboot the franchise w/o Krystal, Panther and all the good shit that Assault had introduced, with the icing on the cake being a tower defense spinoff game.

[1] I honestly don't mind Crash and the first Jak & Daxter at all now (or ever in the latter's case), but the first game is a sadistic platformer. Even if you win a level, if you miss any boxes it fucking drops them on your head in the end level tally. I hated the first one so much as a kid I snapped the CD in two. It's also funny to me how quickly Jak got edgy, and no one hated it unlike Shadow the Hedgehog. It's clear Naughty Dog did not want to make kids games.

 

[JPZ]

Final Fantasy.

The series went down hard after FFX. I found FFXII to be a shockingly large drop and that was followed by XIII which was even worse. Felt like after FFX, the magic was lost. Up to then, you could feel the passion that went into those games.

After FFX, the feeling of fun to me in those worlds were gone, and they mostly felt soulless, maybe as the studios got bigger?

Perhaps I should give FFXV another go though, as it did look like it had potential, but at the time I found the combat system complex and not as fun, but I probably should give it another go.

(I'm excluding the FFVII Remake, only considering the new entries and spin-offs to the series.)

 

[iamthemilkman]

Halo, F.E.A.R., Dragon Age, Final Fantasy

 

[Moth_Lobster]

Good point. Ff6 development was what.. a year and a half? One of the greatest games ever made too. That's insane. PlayStation 1 had THREE mainline final fantasy titles and comparatively speaking, were all memorable and highly regarded. (Yes even final fantasy 8) and were incredibly financially lucrative in comparison. So the current model just isn't working. Is it bc of bloated dev times or is due to a failed production model for budgeting? They're not really making games that push the envelope in narrative. Final fantasy used to be a series where not only could SQUARESOFT do no wrong but it was more than that .. there was magic. The series was highly regarded, influential and financially lucrative as a game design business model. Now they're just good games but for those of us who remember, there was a time when final fantasy as a series was untouchable.

I like 8 :(

 

[Viviana Santos]

Totally agree with you on Dragon Age, but I honestly like BioShock 2 as much as the first game- it improved on the gameplay aspects of the first that made it the thinking man's FPS, and I like the story too. Sophia Lamb, Augustus Sinclair and Gil Alexander are really great villians even if their not as peak as Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine and Sander Cohen were. It also continues the theme the series had of criticising extremist political ideologies, with Sophia Lamb's biopunk Ultra-Communism in a decaying underwater megacity being the perfect counterpoint to the Andrew Ryan's Objectivist oppression, as well as going into further detail on just how oppressive it became when Ryan started losing market share, like Sinclair's ghetto slum hotels and gulag. The Fontaine Futuristics level where you meet ol' Gil and see how he turned himself into a schizophrenic biocomputer are also really great.

BioShock: Infinite is a good game, but not nearly as good as the first two. If only because it drastically simplified the gameplay and made the only interesting and unique thing about it the skyhook riding and verticality in the game. The story I like as much as the first two, but the gameplay took a major step back with that one.

I remember being very disappointed with BioShock 2 because I felt it was a rehash of the first game, but it's been a long time since I played that game and your positive comment about it got me interested in revisiting it.

---

On the other hand I HATE BioShock: Infinite, I hate the gameplay, I HATE the story and the characters, I HATE the messages and themes of this game as a whole, I think it's a complete total disaster.

 

[Lokgamer]

I remember being very disappointed with BioShock 2 because I felt it was a rehash of the first game, but it's been a long time since I played that game and your positive comment about it got me interested in revisiting it.

---

On the other hand I HATE BioShock: Infinite, I hate the gameplay, I HATE the story and the characters, I HATE the messages and themes of this game as a whole, I think it's a complete total disaster.

The only sin of Bioshock 2 is not having a story as good as the first one. Apart from that, it's a great game that improve first Bioshock gameplay.

 

[depes]

The modern ATLUS output is a whole lot of reheated plots from back when they had The Sauce, or remasters of games from that time. Then there's the whole Kaneko debacle with his AI game, and it makes me wonder about where are we going. Nostalgia is an awful friend.

 

[Retro Doomer]

 

[ISSO1407]

Final Fantasy stopped being turn-based long before 20 years ago, they switched to ATB based back on the SNES. They have always been innovating and trying new things while building off previous systems. From FF4 to FF9 they used the ATB system, changing up the gameplay with different characters and jobs, building off what the (admittedly far more basic) first three games paved way for. 10 then introduced the conditional turn-based system. 11 ignored 10 and went with its own combat system as it was an MMO, although still taking inspiration from the previous entries in other ways (mainly the job system, although traces of the original battle system can still be found). 12 was then taking inspiration from 11, but with much more ATB influence. 13 went back to being purely ATB driven, although its own take on it. 14 took most of its inspiration from 11, as it was the only previous MMO, although by this point its been updated and changed so much over the years that a lot of that inspiration is less visible.

The two (2) FF games to then be completely different than the rest of the series are 15 and 16. And even then I could argue for what comparisons they do have, although less explicitly obvious than previous entries.

Final Fantasy's strength has always been in its stories and characters for me, and that's the one thing I think this franchise has never compromised on in any mainline entry, but I will defend its gameplay because I think it being an anthology series with each entry having its own unique gameplay mechanics that fit the game has been one of its strengths since the beginning (since 2 technically but whatever). You aren't going from 4 to 16. Its 4 to 5. 5 to 6. 6 to 7 all the way to 16, and in that manner 16 builds off what came before just as the earlier games did. Its gameplay and narrative were chosen for a reason. It does not exist in a vacuum.

I include the atb titles before XIII in ..turn based.. since you can just turn it off, even XII is just turn based in 3D arenas if you want to and XI/XIV are entirely different conversations all together in my mind, theyre random mmo spinoffs because that was the big money maker back then with a mainline number slapped onto them to sell more copies/get you addicted and pay the monthly cost.

 

[Moth_Lobster]

I include the atb titles before XIII in ..turn based.. since you can just turn it off, even XII is just turn based in 3D arenas if you want to and XI/XIV are entirely different conversations all together in my mind, theyre random mmo spinoffs because that was the big money maker back then with a mainline number slapped onto them to sell more copies/get you addicted and pay the monthly cost.

I don't want to say you are completely wrong on the FFXIV/XIV thing but you were right about XI originally being conceived as a spinoff at least lmao.
The only difference is they saw it was amazing and worthy of mainline so they bumped up its status from spinoff to mainline and now it's started debates for 20+ years lol

 

[kuroro]

Both Dragon Age and BioShock have incredible first games and, unfortunately, their sequels got worse and worse.

DA2 was a gigantic dumb down and Inquisitions just made me go "wut??" It's amazing how fast they lost touch with what was interesting about the first game.

 

[ThunderBoy]

Need for Speed
Each new game is worse than the previous one