Super niche question I know, but here we are.
I’ve had a long held opinion that…
Battlefield: Bad Company is a significantly better game than it’s larger, more popular and more multiplayer focused sequel.
Now don’t get me wrong, BC2 is a fine entry into the series, but with its growth into a more online focused space, it lost an awful lot of what made that first game so special; namely the fantastic story and unique campaign built around four loveable rogues.
I think Bad Company 2 has a campaign, but it’s not nearly as memorable as the OG campaign. And whilst the push for multiplayer obviously made sense from a financial perspective, it turned the series back into just another entry into the wider BF universe.
What about you?
I think you’ll find the same pattern as that in a lot of game series - if they decide to refocus a sequel on multiplayer, they do so at the expense of plot, world building, character design, level design, enemy ai, or “career mode” depending on genre (I can’t remember a specific example right now - but I’ve thought this many times in the past).
For my own personal choice, I’m one of those “Fallout 1&2 were better than Fallout 3, NV & 4” people.
The same goes for any turn based/tactical/isometric games with first-person-shooter sequels - for example Syndicate and Syndicate Wars from the mid 90s, compared to the one they released in the 2010s, or those couple of weird XCOM shooters from about 10 years ago.
Oh, and anything that becomes an always online, microtransaction-ridden cash grab.
Star Craft: Broodwar is much better than Star Craft 2. The campaign is more fun, the story is better and multiplayer has much more stable balance that SC2 is still trying to figure out to this day.
Only thing Star Craft 2 has going for it are some quality of life changes and better pathfinding.
Edit: And I just saw that I’m replying to a 2 months old post.
Mass effect 1.
It’s got jank but it also set up everything to come.
Combat secondary to world writing. Second game to me focuses more on character which is wonderful in its own right, but I personally love the world building more.
Before things got over explained in me2 and 3. Love both those games don’t get me wrong but 1 will always be my favorite.
Every Harvest Moon game after the first one has not ever been as good. IIRC, the creator of Stardew Valley had the same opinion and is why that game exists. It truly is a better sequel to the series than the actual sequels/followups to the series.
