Spiritual Successors will never replace the originals let alone surpass them.

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Dragon Age and Mass Effect are spiritual successors to Baldur's Gate and Kotor respectively.

I always thought Mass Effect was far more a spiritual successor to the Star Control series- particularly Star Control 2

You're probably both right. Various people involved with Mass Effect have admitted to a whole bunch of major and minor influences including Star Trek, Star Control, Starflight, Firefly, Lovecraft, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Syd Mead, Blade Runner and of course previous BioWare games.

 

[Tanis]

Torchlight 2 was better than Diablo 3.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Most people who played both consider Shadow of the Colossus superior to Ico.

I don't even consider both of those games similar.

Gameplay wise they are radically different.

Ico is quiet, Shadows is loud.

I think you're confusing "spiritual successor" with "2 similar games".

 

[Erttheking]

*cough* Stardew Valley is the BEST harvest moon type game no contest, and Rune Factory before it was better than most Harvest Moon games *cough*

*COUGH* Wargroove is better than every Advance Wars other than Days of Ruin (Purely because the plot of that was freakin' stellar) *cough*

Sorry, something must have gotten stuck in my throat..

Oh hey, someone else who likes Wargroove. Sweet. I never played Advance Wars though, I just know a good game when I see it. Also it has a doggo commander. I don't think Advance Wars has that.

Uh no. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is already the Castlevania sequel I always wanted but never got. I'd consider Ritual of the Night to be the bonus at this point.

And as someone who only played two Castlevania games (Symphony of the Night and Dawn of Sorrow) I can also confirm that Curse of the Moon is a darn fine game.

 

[Hawki]

The Dead Space series is a spiritual successor to Aliens and Event Horizon. But with more attention to detail and better guns.

It's taking inspiration, sure, but I wouldn't call it a spiritual successor. And I'm also not sure what inspiration is being taken from Event Horizon when Event Horizon was cribbing off Alien anyway.

Halo was a spiritual successor to Marathon. Marathon was great for it's time, but was extremely limited by the technology of the time. Halo beats the pants off of marathon in every way.

Yeah, pretty much. Still...

Where's my Marathon remake Bungie?

Days of Ruin (Purely because the plot of that was freakin' stellar) *cough*

Wait, someone else likes Days of Ruin?

I mean, I wouldn't call the plot "stellar," but here I thought I was the only one here who liked that game.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Days of Ruin (Purely because the plot of that was freakin' stellar) *cough*

Wait, someone else likes Days of Ruin?

I mean, I wouldn't call the plot "stellar," but here I thought I was the only one here who liked that game.

I call the plot "Stellar" because it managed to not only tell a good story with characters that I got attached to, but it managed to blend "terrible depressing post-apocalypse full of terrible terrible people" almost perfectly with spots of "goofy advance wars humor to provide an excellent mix of serious and silly that just felt "right".

Seriously, one second I'm going "aaaaaah plant virus that literally grows out of you?! Who would MAKE something like this?!" the next I'm laughing my ass off at one of Dr. Morris' puns. One second I'm like "Goddammit, this is some war crimes shit going on here!" and the next I'm cracking up at "I say, do you have no sense of humor?!" "It got shot off in the war, very sad". Etc etc.

Every other advance wars game I played (Never finished any other the others because I had to return the games to the friend I borrowed them from, or I just didn't really get into them) usually felt silly and paper thin in the story and character department. So to have an advance wars game that actually really grabbed me and made me love it and it's characters? That felt special.

The only thing I can really say against it is that it introduces CO powers CRIMINALLY LATE in the story. Because it was the first Advance Wars game to really get CO powers right (A concept that Wargroove picked up and ran into the endzone <3 )

But yeah, I love Days of Ruin, it's excellent.

 

[BrawlMan]

One of their merits is just being something new. They don't need to replace because some of the older stuff has just been done plenty. It's not as if it needs to surpass to be worthwhile and enjoyable otself

This.

And Sam, don't rely on kick-starters too much to keep their promises. You see where it gets ya. I never even funded a kick-starter once.

Uh no. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is already the Castlevania sequel I always wanted but never got. I'd consider Ritual of the Night to be the bonus at this point.

Seconded.

Fight n' Rage and The Takeover are successors to Streets of Rage. Thankfully, SOR4 is a real thing. So we got three awesome brawlers.

Devil May Cry and Dynasty Warriors were successors to the beat'em up/hack n slash genre as a whole, but they both went into and created their respective (sub-)genres.

Code of Princess is the successor to Guardian Heroes.

Evil Within is the successor to Resident Evil.

Night Cry and Haunting Ground to Clock Tower.

Serious Sam , Hard Reset, and Painkiller were the successors to Doom and Doom II.

Shadow Warrior (2013) and Bulletstorm are spiritual successors to Duke Nukem style FPS. Ironic, because Shadow Warrior ends up being a spiritual successor to itself.

System Shock has so many successors its ridiculous.

There are plenty of good ones out there, you just have to look for them.

 

[wings012]

I find this a problem with expectations.

Thing is with a lot of these old classics you were fond of - they had the whole 'fresh experience' thing going for them. Then pining for that same experience for years adds to some incredible rose tinting on all your nostalgic memories of them.

So no, nothing is really going to capture that moment again. You are no longer as young and ignorant, you've played many games since and have become more judgmental and cynical. You no longer enjoy things as simply as you used to.

Doesn't help that the term spiritual successor is abused by a lot of indie kickstarters by teams that are clearly out of their depth. Sometimes they have some veteran names behind them - but sometimes it is the first time these big names are striking it out of their own after years/decades of being used to having the infrastructure of a company to support them. Having big names don't guarantee anything. People need to keep their heads on their shoulders before going on a nostalgia fueled hype spree.

And games do some degree have to be modernized, despite what people might say. While tech has improved to make work easier - standards have similarly risen. You can't get away with the same 90's graphics - even if you go with the same approach of like pre-rendered sprites and what have you, screens are at a higher resolution. People are also less likely to put up with shit like shoddy 90s fps enemy AI.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

I always thought "Spiritual Successor" was kind of a lazy descriptor. It's a term that is trying to describe a new game and Ip as something similar to an old game and IP in order to help describe to the customer what to expect.

Bioshock being related to System Shock.
Torchlight to Diablo.
Mighty no.9 to Mega Man.

None of those game are related other than in gameplay elements and feel.

I mean, its the fact they feel similar and play similar that make them a 'spiritual successor' rather than 'direct sequel'. Which is why so many of them stumble, I think. You don't capture the feel of a game exactly, people are going to see it as an imperfect rehash and they're disappointed. You do capture the feel of a game, people are going to notice all the bugs and gameplay headscratchers you've deliberately left in but without nostalgia goggles this time and they're disappointed. There's a fine line somewhere in the middle

 

[Baffle]

Age of Wonders was a pretty good successor to Master of Magic.

 

[Hawki]

The only thing I can really say against it is that it introduces CO powers CRIMINALLY LATE in the story. Because it was the first Advance Wars game to really get CO powers right (A concept that Wargroove picked up and ran into the endzone <3 )

So, I'm actually going to disagree there. Days of Ruin minimizes CO powers because, IIRC, the developers wanted to put more emphasis on moment to moment strategy. I wouldn't say it's better than the previous CO powers, just different. I'd certainly call Black Hole Rising's CO power system as being superior to the vanilla game though, since it adds some more depth with the super power option.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Dunno what's mediocre about Bloodstained compared to any castlevania of the last 15 years. Are you strictly comparing it to games from the 90s? Either way, I'd much rather play it than another 3D GoW clone made by western studios.



As for other successors, Bayonetta was one for DMC and I can say surpassed it until dmc5. Then you have Blazblue succeeding guilty gear, another great game (though there's heated debate about which is better, I love em both). Then you have some of the glaring ones like Sekiro being the successor to Tenchu or Bioshock succeeding system shock or Dragon's Crown being the successor of Princess Crown.

You just wanna differentiate between games that are exploiting an older series for advertising and others which are using it as a blueprint to deliver something different if not strictly better. The latter category of games is definitely worthwhile.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

almost everything is technically some sort of spiritual successor to something else. it's really not that terrible, just an unavoidable part of our culture.

That isn't really what a "spiritual successor" (henceforth, "SS" for short) means. It's a specific thing, more than just games sharing elements, being made by some of the same people or being the same genre. There are hundreds and hundreds of FPS games, they aren't all "spiritual successors" to Doom. They're FPSs certainly, but a SS is something else. I will explain below...

I always thought "Spiritual Successor" was kind of a lazy descriptor. It's a term that is trying to describe a new game and Ip as something similar to an old game and IP in order to help describe to the customer what to expect.

None of those game are related other than in gameplay elements and feel.

In a sense, gameplay elements and feel is entirely right, but not also not quite. A spiritual successor (SS) is when the developer deliberately sets out to try and capture *some part* (large or small) of the spiritual predecessor. It is a statement that the new game will try to have the soul, the essence, the core, the feel of the original, but turn it into something (usually entirely) new. In a real sense, it is trying to capture the way the original made you feel or the same/similar gameplay elements.

Dragon Age:Origins wasn't a great SS to BG2, but did try to capture the group focused gameplay: the real-time pause strategic combat, the group interactions (romance, bickering, etc), the role of the player character (ie. being the protagonist of a story simultaneously personal and epic in scope).

But as with most examples, being entirely different IPs (BG2 was D&D, KotOR was Star Wars, etc), devs couldn't use the same setting (see my Planescape: Torment example above). So that means new setting, new characters, new story...but capturing some of the core of what made the games great. Dishonored is a SS to Thief, certainly much more than the 2014 reboot travesty ever was. Heck, Arkane even got Stephen "Garret" Russell to voice Corvo in 2! That's right, Dishonored 2 did what fans wanted, while Eidos Montreal were unable or unwilling to do, and it goes without saying which one did better (the Thi4f team were laid off). Eidos were too busy motion-capturing some knob in their shiny new mocap facilities because some other knob thought us fans wanted a mocapped knob more than Stephen Russell.

I would add one thing, tho it's a personal thought and could probably be argued either way. I think a SS also needs to be "sufficiently different" from the predecessor. To illustrate what I mean, I would not describe The Surge as a SS to Dark Souls. The reason being the same as why not all FPSs are SS to Doom. In those cases, they never intentionally set out to recapture the feel or moment to moment gameplay of the original. In The Surge's case, it's kinda pure Souls. It isn't deriving something new, it's more of the same, another entry in the genre. The devs never set out to capture the essence of Souls, they copied it almost wholesale. It's a pretty good game, don't get me wrong, but my point stands.

Various people involved with Mass Effect have admitted to a whole bunch of major and minor influences including Star Trek, Star Control, Starflight, Firefly, Lovecraft, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Syd Mead, Blade Runner and of course previous BioWare games.

I don't think Mass Effect was itself a spiritual successor to anything. It might have had influences from many sources, but while DA:O was stated to be an SS to BG2, ME came about because BioWare didn't want to make licensed games anymore.

From Baldur's Gate thru KotOR, all their work was licensed games. That's why Jade Empire came about; they wanted to create and own their own IP. ME was bourne out of the desire to have their own Star Wars essentially. They wanted their own sci-fi universe, and I remember reading at the time, that they set out to make it "every bit as rich and detailed" as Star Wars. They wrote so much lore, most of it had to go in the codex. Alien races, cultures, histories, technology, galactic politics and that's not even mentioning the characters or plot of the game. That was why ME1 did so well; they had Drew Karpshyn and the original creative team creating this universe, and then the devs expertly crafting a story within it.

Then Mac Walters chalked up and was like kill Shepard, destroy the Normandy, get rid of the crew, f**k the Reapers, we're doing something else. (Obligatory f**k Mac Walters.)

Anyway, ME wasn't really a SS, but BW wanting a sci-fi universe of their own. It's just a shame that the EA takeover at the time of ME2 meant the great role-playing would be no more. Instead they make Mass Effect themed shooters. The OT was great because they managed to hang on to just enough of the magic, tho it was really running out by the end of ME3.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

To illustrate what I mean, I would not describe The Surge as a SS to Dark Souls....
In The Surge's case, it's kinda pure Souls. It isn't deriving something new, it's more of the same, another entry in the genre. The devs never set out to capture the essence of Souls, they copied it almost wholesale.

Speaking of The Surge, just noticed it's 70% off on Steam right now. It is well worth it for anyone who enjoys Souls-style torture gameplay. Cool space setting, fun weapons, albeit only a handful of them, only 5 boss fights, but I would recommend it, especially that discounted.

 

[Elfgore]

Sometimes, they're the best you can do. IPs are a ***** and there is a market for this stuff, just gotta hope they're good. Like Chernobylite looks kinda good!

A big part of your problem looks to be Kickstarter though. I honestly trust Kickstarter for video games as far as I can theoretically throw it. Way too many horror stories. If I'm backing game, it has to be less than twenty bucks. A big reason I didn't back that one Iron Harvest game. I think the bare minimum to get the game was 50-60 USD. Way too high for my blood.

I see kickstarter as a gamble to begin with. Sometimes you back something amazing and help bring it to fruition. Sometimes you lose your money entirely. Regardless, always be prepared to consider that money lost. You're helping fund a concept in hopes it will become the reality that was promised, but unlike an investor, you're not guaranteed a return on investment. Or maybe I'm wrong and you're only guaranteed a return if the project is a success, though that return might just be a copy of the game, even if not the game you wanted.

Kickstarter is solely based on investing in a project and then receiving said product in whatever form it may be upon completion. I believe FIG is the only one so far that actually offers an investment option where you get a return of money.

But you're right, Kickstarter is always a risk. All you got to do is look up some horror stories, like the Coolest Cooler, and see how big of a risk it can be. I haven't been burned yet, hopefully that continues.