Worst Games in Great Franchises

[Agema]

*SIGH* I keep hoping for the day that it gets a Bloodstained treatment; some of the old team reunite and put out a real spiritual successor in it's style.

I think a problem is that lots of people loved that style of game, but relatively few (talented) devs are interested in it, and I suspect a load of guys from the 90s era have retired. So it's left to a series of imitators who were probably great fans of the original, but don't know how to make something that good.

As I also noticed with Phoenix Point, sometimes the masters of yesteryear return to the genre they excelled at, and it turns out they don't have much new to bring. (I like Phoenix Point and it's generally good, but it's not enough of a gameplay advancement on what the lead already did ~20-30 years ago with the original XCOM series.)

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Megaman Battle Network 4. The "campaign" is short, the soul system is underdeveloped with lots of souls being worse than your normal form, the number of different chips is smaller so you have much fewer strategies, the idea of the Dark Chips is interesting in theory but in practice you should either ignore them entirely or go all in on them so they auto-play the game for you, the writing and translations are worse, the tournaments are repetitive and the New Game+ feature makes the game even more repetitive since you need to play through the same game three times to get everything out of it, and after the dramatic ending of 3, the disaster movie plot feels like a big step back.

I place the games in this order of best to worst. 3>2>6>5>1>4 Even the jankiness and lack of polish of the first outing of this series with 1 isn't as bad as 4. The only good thing about the game is that I actually got a lot better at the mechanics of the series due to the difficulty of 4 (Once you hit the third New Game+) and since I couldn't rely on exploiting weaknesses like I can in the other games. I still have no idea why the series regressed so much with this entry.

 

[Brokencontroller]

As great as the last Persona games have been. Id argue 1 and 2 are equally bad. They were obtuse and the series didnt really have a solid identity until 3 imo.

Also marvel v capcom infinite just tainted that series tbh.

 

[AnxietyProne]

I think a problem is that lots of people loved that style of game, but relatively few (talented) devs are interested in it, and I suspect a load of guys from the 90s era have retired. So it's left to a series of imitators who were probably great fans of the original, but don't know how to make something that good.

As I also noticed with Phoenix Point, sometimes the masters of yesteryear return to the genre they excelled at, and it turns out they don't have much new to bring. (I like Phoenix Point and it's generally good, but it's not enough of a gameplay advancement on what the lead already did ~20-30 years ago with the original XCOM series.)

Xenonauts wasn't bad though. Granted, it wasn't the old Microprose crew doing it, but it captured the feel nicely.

 

[Agema]

Xenonauts wasn't bad though. Granted, it wasn't the old Microprose crew doing it, but it captured the feel nicely.

Xenonauts was UFO: Enemy Unknown with as far as I could tell virtually no innovation at all. In fact I was staggered how little it changed the formula, but it worked because UFO was such an amazing game in the first place. Xenonauts 2, incidentally, is in what seems to be protracted development - massive delays. Might be out this year.

 

[Gordon_4]

Tekken 6. This criticism is for the campaign only which was this really awkward and stupid HD upgrade of Tekken Force with a new character - Lars - taking the helm and just being the most insufferable prat imaginable. The game was fine when played as the Gaming Gods intended - as a 1v1 arcade fighter - but utter garbage at all other times. A pox upon Namco for that and all their DLC shenanigans with Tekken 7.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Dark Souls 2
I mean.. right? Given that the Escapist is sometimes the Dark Souls fanboy site (one reason I love it!), is this pick just too obvious?

Assassins Creed Unity
I know there's a whole AC thread but I can't help it- this is the first one that comes to mind. Especially since it was justifiably reviled when I came out for how broken it was, but then like everything else it seems to have a bit of retrospective re-appraisal because of nostalgia or disappointment with the recent games or whatever. But it's B.S., IMO. Yeah parts of it looks good, there are some good ideas in their with the mechanics, and they fixed some of the worst bugs. But I have played it on PC and PS4 after all patches and fixes and it's still a broken mess.
Like, my dudes... sometimes they put pop-up messages ON TOP OF OTHER POP-UP MESSAGES sorry to yell but it drives me nuts when I read "hey you know AC Unity was actually good" like wtf lol

 

[BrawlMan]

Dark Souls 2
I mean.. right? Given that the Escapist is sometimes the Dark Souls fanboy site (one reason I love it!), is this pick just too obvious?

Assassins Creed Unity
I know there's a whole AC thread but I can't help it- this is the first one that comes to mind. Especially since it was justifiably reviled when I came out for how broken it was, but then like everything else it seems to have a bit of retrospective re-appraisal because of nostalgia or disappointment with the recent games or whatever. But it's B.S., IMO. Yeah parts of it looks good, there are some good ideas in their with the mechanics, and they fixed some of the worst bugs. But I have played it on PC and PS4 after all patches and fixes and it's still a broken mess.
Like, my dudes... sometimes they put pop-up messages ON TOP OF OTHER POP-UP MESSAGES sorry to yell but it drives me nuts when I read "hey you know AC Unity was actually good" like wtf lol

Oh that's nothing. I know there was a GameStop employee that used to be at a store that's no longer there, and she would constantly claim and defend that Assassin's Creed: Unity had no bugs. I told her it was buggy for a few months on release. She says that's impossible. I show her footage on my phone of when the game first came out, and she says I was exaggerating. I showed all the links and everything, and she tries to claim most of those are fake. You know when you're a blind fangirl when you can't even see what's right in front of you and choose to deliberately ignore it. I give her more evidence and at that point it's a defensive and wavering "so what?".

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Dark Souls 2
I mean.. right? Given that the Escapist is sometimes the Dark Souls fanboy site (one reason I love it!), is this pick just too obvious?

I don't think that Dark Souls 2 is an outright bad game, but as far as 'worst game in the franchise' goes, there's no contest.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Mass Effect 2 is the worst Mass Effect game.

It's just a loose connection of recruitment and loyalty missions followed by the assault on the Collector base. There's basically nothing there besides The Arrival and you do *that* mission solo.

 

[meiam]

Mass Effect 2 is the worst Mass Effect game.

It's just a loose connection of recruitment and loyalty missions followed by the assault on the Collector base. There's basically nothing there besides The Arrival and you do *that* mission solo.

I agree that story is outright bad, but gameplay improved so much compared to ME1 and it has a great cast.

ME3 story is worst than ME2 (and not just the ending) and gameplay improved a little bit compared to 2, but not enough to justify that awful story.

 

[Trunkage]

Mass Effect 2 is the worst Mass Effect game.

It's just a loose connection of recruitment and loyalty missions followed by the assault on the Collector base. There's basically nothing there besides The Arrival and you do *that* mission solo.

Can I say all of them? There are only a few actual quests in ME1 on like 3 planets. Most of it is side quests fluff

ME3 has very little quest with some bigger side quests

Edit: Let me say it this way. The whole entirety of the important points of ME trilogy could be written on 2 pages

Then people wondered why Andromeda was the way it was

 

[BrawlMan]

• Wolfenstein: Youngblood
• Crysis
• Gears of War: Judgement
• Quake III
• Sonic 2 (Game Gear) - out of all the portable titles, in this case.
• Samurai Warriors 5
• Need For Speed: The Run

 

[NerfedFalcon]

• Need For Speed: The Run

That's a name I haven't heard in a while. Back on the old Escapist I once drafted a review of this game that pretended it was a movie, but I never got around to posting it. By the time I was done, everybody else had moved on from it and the joke wasn't funny anymore.

Honestly, when I saw the first trailers I was kinda hoping it could beat the odds, but it didn't. At all.

 

[BrawlMan]

That's a name I haven't heard in a while. Back on the old Escapist I once drafted a review of this game that pretended it was a movie, but I never got around to posting it. By the time I was done, everybody else had moved on from it and the joke wasn't funny anymore.

Honestly, when I saw the first trailers I was kinda hoping it could beat the odds, but it didn't. At all.

I don't who the fuck EA was trying appeal to with The Run. It's like they were going after people who don't play racing games, but don't like video games in general. Game came as quick as it went.

 

[Brokencontroller]

I don't who the fuck EA was trying appeal to with The Run. It's like they were going after who don't play racing games, but don't like video games in general. Game came as quick as it went.

It Ran Away! Hahaha!

 

[Dalisclock]

Dark Souls 2
I mean.. right? Given that the Escapist is sometimes the Dark Souls fanboy site (one reason I love it!), is this pick just too obvious?

Assassins Creed Unity
I know there's a whole AC thread but I can't help it- this is the first one that comes to mind. Especially since it was justifiably reviled when I came out for how broken it was, but then like everything else it seems to have a bit of retrospective re-appraisal because of nostalgia or disappointment with the recent games or whatever. But it's B.S., IMO. Yeah parts of it looks good, there are some good ideas in their with the mechanics, and they fixed some of the worst bugs. But I have played it on PC and PS4 after all patches and fixes and it's still a broken mess.
Like, my dudes... sometimes they put pop-up messages ON TOP OF OTHER POP-UP MESSAGES sorry to yell but it drives me nuts when I read "hey you know AC Unity was actually good" like wtf lol

The AC subreddit is full of threads about how Unity is the best AC game,period. As someone who played it a few months ago for the first time, I'll say it's better then I thought it would be but it's far from the best

 

[Bob_McMillan]

The AC subreddit is full of threads about how Unity is the best AC game,period. As someone who played it a few months ago for the first time, I'll say it's better then I thought it would be but it's far from the best

I think Unity probably has the best basic gameplay. I mean... Jesus Christ, I think this was the first Assassin's Creed game in the franchise to add a dedicated crouch button. And who would have thought it would be great not solely relay on haystacks as a means of descending from rooftops? Everything else of course ranges from mediocre to outright bad.

To me, I quite like Unity because a) I got it for free lol, b) I played it 5 years after launch, and c) I felt like they were on the right track. When you look at AC 3 and 4, outside of the ship sailing bits, the games look ancient. The combat is silly fun, the stealth is worthless, and even the free running feels outdated. From a story perspective, both games barely had anything to do with the Assassins. Then you have Unity, which tried to make the combat less mindless, made stealth gameplay an actual thing, and made one of the best feeling free running systems in gaming. An attempt was made at bringing the spotlight back to the Assassins, although they didn't quite succeed. Definitely not the best AC game out there, but it was beginning to reach the potential I think the series had. You actually feel like an Assassin (read in Dunkey's voice).

Then we got Syndicate. Such a... game-y game. Genuinely felt like it was a game that came out before Unity. Then we get Origins, and Odyssey, and Valhalla, all of which are barely even Assassin's Creed anymore.

I can only imagine how good of a game could have existed if Ubisoft had stuck to their guns and made a proper, stealth-focused Assassin's Creed game last generation. Especially with how stealth games seem to be a dying breed. But sadly, stealth isn't very monetizable is it?

 

[Dalisclock]

I think Unity probably has the best basic gameplay. I mean... Jesus Christ, I think this was the first Assassin's Creed game in the franchise to add a dedicated crouch button. And who would have thought it would be great not solely relay on haystacks as a means of descending from rooftops? Everything else of course ranges from mediocre to outright bad.

To me, I quite like Unity because a) I got it for free lol, b) I played it 5 years after launch, and c) I felt like they were on the right track.

It had a ton of potential. Paris is beautiful, the on the ground gameplay and parkour is pretty good, and the main missions assassination missions giving you a whole area to figure out how to get in, do the job, and escape is well done. Unfortunately, Arno generally isn't a very good or interesting character, the main plot is scattershot and all over the place, the assassins are feckless idiots who don't do anything and the whole revolution thing is all over the maps but feels like it barely interfaces with the main plot. Elise is far more interesting then Arno and she's barely in the game, and the few times Arno and Elise are together, the game conspires to seperate them instead of letting them work together(like the trailers heavily implied they would be).

 

[Bob_McMillan]

It had a ton of potential. Paris is beautiful, the on the ground gameplay and parkour is pretty good, and the main missions assassination missions giving you a whole area to figure out how to get in, do the job, and escape is well done. Unfortunately, Arno generally isn't a very good or interesting character, the main plot is scattershot and all over the place, the assassins are feckless idiots who don't do anything and the whole revolution thing is all over the maps but feels like it barely interfaces with the main plot. Elise is far more interesting then Arno and she's barely fucking in the game, and the few times Arno and Elise are together, the game conspires to seperate them instead of letting them work together.

Woops I edited my post after you wrote this. But yeah, I agree with everything you've said. I never understood anything that was going on with the revolution, even though I actually studied it in school. Who the heck are my allies? Who are these random enemies? Why can either groups just walk around freely?

I've been watching a lot of Black Flag lately, and I'd forgotten just how character focused the story was. Edward had great character development, albeit spread across a shit ton of just aimless plundering on the open seas. If they had put as much effort into Arno, considering Unity has less downtime in between story bits, they could have had something special.