Most disappointing prequel/sequel/successor

In your opinion, which prequel, sequel or spiritual successor has been the most disappointing for you?

I'm talking about games, by the way!

Personally, I'd probably have to give that honor to Master of Orion 3

I think it was probably Dragon Age II. It felt like they'd taken a promising series in an entirely unwelcome direction. Combined with a general pre-kickstarter lack of good crpgs, I was thoroughly disappointed with it. On reflection it was just clearly the way AAA crpgs were going, so I would be less disapointed these days because my expectations would be pretty much zero….

Honourable mention to the Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance game, which was not at all what younger naive me expected from the name, and Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. Which, when I replayed it years later, wasn't quite as terrible as I remembered… I even kinda enjoyed it for a bit. But it was still far removed from the much loved Gold Box stuff and when I first played it I properly raged.

Pongo said:

I think it was probably Dragon Age II. It felt like they'd taken a promising series in an entirely unwelcome direction. Combined with a general pre-kickstarter lack of good crpgs, I was thoroughly disappointed with it. On reflection it was just clearly the way AAA crpgs were going, so I would be less disapointed these days because my expectations would be pretty much zero….

Honourable mention to the Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance game, which was not at all what younger naive me expected from the name, and Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. Which, when I replayed it years later, wasn't quite as terrible as I remembered… I even kinda enjoyed it for a bit. But it was still far removed from the much loved Gold Box stuff and when I first played it I properly raged.

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Did you enjoy uninstalling it which wiped out your harddrive?

I had a similar experience with PoR2 - which was just horrible compared to the original, which is probably in my top 5 of games.

Oddly enough, I quite enjoyed Dark Alliance - and I don't think I ever expected it to be related to PC BG.

Hmm thats one difficult question. There are several games I was disappointed about so hmmm….

I think I will vote for Dragon Age 2. I really enjoyed DA:O first time around and liked the world/lore etc. DA2 was nothing like DA:O - they even ruined chracters I liked as well (Justice and Anders).

I was also severely disappointed by NWN1 OC but this later made up with HotU and community modding.

NewDArt said:

Did you enjoy uninstalling it which wiped out your harddrive?

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Oh man, that bloody bug. It defies belief that it passed QA!

I don't remember being really disappointed in a sequel, except for Gothic 3. That kind of killed Gothic for me. I never even tried Arcania. I tried Risen some time ago, but never got into it. Of course I never really had the time I used to have, when I poured plenty of hours into G1/2. But I still bought all PB games, just to support them.

But with Elex, I'm somewhat excited for it, more than usual in fact. I'm curious how it'll end up.

I think what hit with Gothic 3, was also that I was a beta-tester on the game while in college. And I saw first hand how the release-date was getting closer, and the serious bugs were not getting fixed due to time constraints. PB really bit off more than they could chew, and frikkin' Jowood didn't help either, pushing it out the door.

That experience also taught me that testing games is the worst thing you can do to a game. You don't get to play the game, or even segments. You're supposed to break it. So I'm sure that also lead to me getting sick of the game. To this day I haven't finished Gothic 3.

Oblivion was really disappointing since it was hyped to the heavens and looked amazing in all the marketing material. The radiant AI turned out to be shit and the level scaling was horrible. Bandits in glass armour anyone? The story was meh as well. I guess it was a nice walking simulator though.
DA2 is up there on my list as well.

I agree with you DA, MOO3 was horrible when compared to MOO2

For me, I would say Risen 2 was also disappointing and I only played it for a couple of hours.
The rolling combat made it really annoying. I am not sure why they had to change combat so dramatically from one iteration of a trilogy to another.

The Settlers 4 was quite disappointing too in my opinion, as was The Settler 5.
The Settlers 4 was basically the same as its predecessors with a bunch of dark magic entering the fray, whilst Settler 5 completely transformed the game to a standard Age of Empires game with less quality.

Starcon 3 which was nothing like its predecessor in feeling and made by a different company. Also MoO3 for making a excel spreadsheet look appealing.

Might and Magic 9 was rage inducing because it was almost at least an okay game and had the bones of a good one.

Lemmings 3 was a fisher price version of the previous games with big clunky buttons and much reduced complexity.

Gabriel Knight 3 was a disaster by most accounts. I've avoided it because I can't handle early (and badly done) 3d.

DA2 - ugh! Enemies dropping from sky, reused and reused and reused locations, etc. etc.

NewDArt said:

In your opinion, which prequel, sequel or spiritual successor has been the most disappointing for you?

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The Star Wars prequels. Without a question. Those were awful. I could go on for hours on how awful they were. Let me just start by saying--

NewDArt said:

I'm talking about games, by the way!

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Oh. Um, in that case, Ultima IX was the biggest disappointment. It was was a terrible sequel in a good series. A shame that it was also how the series ended.

Dragon Age two by far, killed what looked to be a decent franchise. Far as I'm concerned, there's only one Dragon Age.

For RPGs, it has to be Dragon Age 2. Before that it had just been disappointments to aspects of the game, but with DA2 it just took everything and ran it through a meat grinder to the point where I didn't think I'd ever buy a new AAA RPG title again. It was the literal sum of all fears. The final nail in the coffin. It was Edvard Munch's Scream echoed through the halls of Dante's nine hells. It was the... oh, you get the idea.

Previous to that it would have to be Worms 3D. If ever there was a franchise that needed to stay 2D it was Worms. I got to a level involving a Jetpack and my [lack of] motor skills saw me reloading the level about 20 times as my worm flitted around a tower attempting to land on a tiny platform on its reverse before diving into the ocean for the umpteenth time, before giving it up as a bad lot. I never touched a Worms title again [well, for a good many years anyway].

Yup -- that "polarizing", "button awesome", diabolical disaster, Dragon Age 2, gets my vote too.

I presume in video game schools, DA2 must be the subject of a great deal of study; particularly for analysis of "How to Kill a Franchise". And they certainly must cover the associated forum trashing of your shocked and disappointed fan base (just in case your short, shallow, cartoon-combat, sequel somehow leaves something in tact from your previously promising franchise).

And for second place, the franchise-killer KoTOR 2 (demonstrating numerous broken missions, glitches galore, and culminating in a broken main plot) gets a few votes also. Same is also featured on the "Franchise Killer" video game course and focuses on the topic of "Who Needs QA?"

Those were the days…

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Fountain of Dreams…

Ultima 9 for sure
Ultime Online for not being Ultima 9 and for being so lag heavy.

Civ 3 I wanted to like but couldn't. Civ V and Vi are big disappointments to me.

But also, +1 on Oblivion. The problems with Morrowind were not addressed like they promised. I would include Morrowind for being so boring and directionless but I never played the previous Elder Scrolls.

Pac Man Jr - beyond Ms Pac Man there's never been a good Pac Man game since; whereas Nintendo will stick Mario into anything that they think is already a winner and retcon anything to suit them - I mean, he loved Pauline but he's changed careers and obsesses over some plant like creature just because its some sort of royalty, and in spite of the fact that she eats filth!
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Also, I really liked the Maze Runner. I can't believe what they did with the sequel

The Matrix sequels were down right awful Such missed opportunities. But I always thought the success of the first one was an accident. The actors and the final scenes really paid it off and let you look past the holes - like why is everyone so excited that someone who just uploaded judo to their brain is fighting Neo?

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 was also disappointing. Loud and not making a lot of sense.

Deus Ex invicible war.

I did not have to think this more than a second. Never ever have I been that dissapointed by a videogame. Even an abomination like Dragon Age 2 doesn't compare to that. Ofcourse I had set my expectations really really high which explains my reaction to some degree, but heck how could I not? It was the sequel to Deus Ex, one of the greatest games ever made. And even designed by same people behind the orginal game. Well it turned out to be a very good lesson on how even the greatest team of developers can sometimes overthink their own design…

I think Dragon Age 2 happened because of rushed release, short development time and EA, so devs are only partly to be blamed here. However Deus ex 2 happened because of man's foolishness and arrogance. I can't put blame on the publisher. These devs had all the faith in the world and lots of money to make a great sequel. DX Invicible War sucked because the whole game was just so poorly designed.

The horrendous inventory was the first insult. It wasn't just a bad console inventory. It was an inventory which really didn't make any sense. I even tried playing the game with a controller to see whether it would work better that way. A lesson to be learned here is not to fix something which isn't broken. Please don't complicate inventory management needlessly. Don't try to make it "cool" at the expense of user friendliness.

Anyhow I could get over the bad inventory, but the more major problem was how anti-deus ex the entire game felt. For instance I do recall reading that some memory related issues, poor engine optimization and consoles forced devs to cut levels to small corridoors with numerious loading zones, but it doesn't explain everything. They were never fully immersing the orginal formula of semi open belivable level design.

I also disliked smaller stuff like the removal of skill system and dumbing down augmentations. They also streamlined (aka dumbed down) weapons mods, location based damage and hacking to name a few. It was just a big insult.

And then there was the universal ammo. I can't understand how on earth they thought something like that would be a fun feauture. I've read so many reviews and player comments trying to understand and majority of those mention universal ammo as one of the most negative aspects. So it is stunning how little they understood good gameplay design.

However what really broke my heart was how un-deus ex the whole experience felt. There were no cool hidden secrets to be found, just as there were no things like datacubes, e-mails, books, newspapers etc which would reveal more about the world I was exploring. Absent were also those random fun discussions with npcs.

And I can't remember any truly memorable moments like finding a hidden A.I in Morgan Everet's home. Or deciding whether to close Illumanti leader life support. Those things had nothing to do with main story. There were just there to make the gameworld more belivable and intresting. Or how about debating world politics with a random Hong Kong bartender. Or those crucial main story moments such as deciding whether to kill Anna to save Lebedev's life.

Also the lack of memorable sidequests was an other nail into coffin. Deus ex 1 wasn't a very sidequest heavy game, but when there were sidequests, they always made sense and gave more information about the gameworld and npcs. Did Invicible war have any fun side quests? I can remember only the plotline about that pop singer.

I really struggled to finish it, but at the end I did it like a trooper, but just because I wanted reserve myself a right to complain.

Wow the hate for DA2 is palpable here. I guess devs shouldnt half arse changes like that.

And for second place, the franchise-killer KoTOR 2 (demonstrating numerous broken missions, glitches galore, and culminating in a broken main plot) gets a few votes also. Same is also featured on the "Franchise Killer" video game course and focuses on the topic of "Who Needs QA?"

Those were the days…

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Ugh, Obsidian games… two of their games ruined my PC - NWN2 and KotOR2. I still cant forgive Obsidian for that. NWN2 wiped off all games on my PC during uninstallation and KotOR2 gave me BSOD immediately followed by death of my hard drive (couldnt reboot PC at all). Could be coincidents but seriously gave me shits.

I would probably also throw in PoE as one of the most disappointing spiritual successor but DA2 still takes the crown.

The number of DA2 picks helps me to get some idea of the Bioware hatred around here

I don't know, it's funny.

I really, really enjoyed DA:O - but I didn't think it compared favorably to BG in terms of what I most enjoy about Bioware games. I thought the mechanics, exploration and character progression all took a major step down. I also had a hard time forgiving them for not implementing cooperative multiplayer - which was always an essential part of the BG games - to me.

So, I think - for me - Bioware was already "gone" in that way. I didn't expect DA2 to be as bad as it was, but I had already stopped investing in them.

In fact, for me, it goes all the way back to Jade Empire - which was just embarrasingly bad in my opinion. Then came Mass Effect, which I also enjoyed a lot - but still felt like a giant step down from KotOR - to me.

Then Mass Effect 2 was released, and it all but cemented that Bioware would never make "my kind of game" again - and so I made peace with it.

I still think their games range from average (ME3) to very good (ME:A/DAI) - and I'll take what I can from them, but I gave up being emotionally invested way before DA2.

That said, DA2 is definitely the worst game they've made since Jade Empire. Even worse than that, in fact.

Yes, it's probably the worst Bioware game ever made.