Which game franchise that you used to love you no longer do and why?

I have to finally admit that for me... it is -for now- KINGDOM HEARTS
I LOVED to death the 1st game and the second.

But...

A few weeks ago my 5 year old, discovered KINGDOM HEARTS 3 in my came collection, saw the cover, saw it was about Disney and he insited we play it. I am like 40 hours in and (YES I KNOW there are a gazillion sub-games and KH1.5, KH1.5RE, 1.3.1416 bbq versions etc) But still, why did a game so adorable and lovable became to twisted and complex? This game did not have to be this confusing and weird.

All was godo with Zora, Mickey, Goofy, Donald and the heartless. Visiting iconic disney worlds and having FUN with a good decent story But now it has come to this:

Roxas
Aqua
Terra
Namine
Axel
Venitas
Ventus
Riku
Another Riku?
Xehonart or however it is spelled and so on and so on and so on.
Organization 13
The real organization 13? WTH?

I dont know - nor care- about half fo these guys. Every cutscene I get introduced to a new black-robed guy... this is insane!!!!!

My head is spinning!!!!
The game is way to complex or maybe i am just getting old? lol who knows.

I dont even care nor want to understand the lore anymore.
I just played it so that my son could see the Disney / PIXAR worlds and no matter how much i tried to be enthusiastic.. this game/franchise has been ruined and is no longer in my interest. Hope to finish it soon and good riddance!

How abut you guys?

Any WW2 military fps. I used to eat it up in my teens and early 20's, but lately it's feels a bit fetish-y.

I was never ever into FPS... I was bad at them then.. i guess ill be even worse now

I feel you with Kingdom Hearts. The first one will always hold a place in my heart because I played it with my young daughter. But there is so much nonsense and bullsh*t that they have layered on since (and in) KH 2 that it stopped being worth it.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

I feel you with Kingdom Hearts. The first one will always hold a place in my heart because I played it with my young daughter. But there is so much nonsense and bullsh*t that they have layered on since (and in) KH 2 that it stopped being worth it.

I wanted to LIKE THIS GAME.. I really did,, but it is too weird, complex and confusing!

I have a few.

I loved Smash Bros. Melee on Gamecube so, so much. I played it religiously with three friends 3-5 days per week for probably 3 years in high school. I get excited about each new release, but a little less so each time, and each time I play it less. The games are just as good or better, but it isn’t the same without in-person friends to play with. I’m hoping when my daughter is 5 or 6 I can start playing games with her.

Pokemon, I played every generation at launch between Red/Blue and... X/Y I believe. Something just changed over time. Aging I guess.

CoD used to be a series I played every year starting in 2007 but after 7, 8 games? It had to end sometime. I think the tipping point for me was the return to WW2, though I was also sick of Black Ops.

Assassin’s Creed, played them all between 1 and 4. I loved Black Flag because PIRATES are my favorite, and really the series had nowhere to go but down after that. I think Unity was the next big game in the series and hearing about how buggy it was kept me away at launch, and my interest just never rekindled.

Master of Orion.

The first Master of Orion was ahead of its time and so innovative.

Master of Orion 2 perfected the genre and became the benchmark that I (and let's face it, the rest of the gaming community) measured 4x Space Strategy titles afterwards. Everything about that game was so enjoyable. Over time it began to lose its luster and hasn't really aged well, but the nostalgia was powerful.

And then Master of Orion 3 was announced. It sounded bold, ambitious, exciting, I bought it Day 1.
And was disappointed by Day 2.
It was the worst type of bad. Not so awful you could just toss it away and say "well that was crap", it was bad but you could see the good ideas deep in there. Worse, it felt...incomplete. Like they just ran out of time and didn't even play the game they created. Worst of all, it just had no soul. That "thing" that some games like MOO2 simply had and this just...didn't.

So I let the series sit in my past as a nice experience. And then Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars was announced.

It looked great. All my favorite races were back with a fresh coat of paint. The new developers wanted to stay true to the MOO spirit. It even had all these big name sci-fi celebrities doing voiceover, so it couldn't stink right? RIGHT?

...wrong.

Once again, not awful at all. Just...meh. But like the mehiest meh that ever mehed a meh. Nothing in this game was new, interesting, innovative, original, etc. The game had no new ideas and seemed intent to just sit on the past of MOO2 like that would save the game. Worse yet, the game was released in an environment where Stellaris, Galactic Civilizations, Endless Space, Sword of the Stars, and Sins of a Solar Empire existed. Hell even Star Ruler had better ideas, along with all those mid level knock off titles that were trying to make their mark. Where MOO2 existed as the big fish in a little pond, Conquer the Stars was lost in the shuffle.

So yeah, I'm done with the series. Thank you MOO2 for death stars that could blow up planets, for your fabulous races that I have simply recreated in Stellaris, for your ethereal synth music that I still remember, and most importantly for making me feel like I conquered the galaxy. But the series deserved better and there's simply too many contenders for the galactic throne now.

Dead Space I and II are both terrific / terrifying games that scare the crap out of you but give you pewpew guns to let you shake the scare off. Loved both of them, started Dead Space III and found myself playing a non-sensical Mass Effect look alike. Uninstalled after 5 minutes.

Dead space III was mehish""""

It's Civilization for me. Maybe the late game has always been a slog, but I had a lot more patience for it in my teens and 20's.

Also, possibly isometric RPGs. I adored the Baldurs Gate series, but have not been able to finish Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: OS. I think now I like the idea of playing them more than the act itself.

Borderlands, Randy Pitchford.

All of 'em?

Call of Duty

I found the franchise late - at CoD 4: Modern Warfare. The gum has lost its flavour by the time I finished Black Ops, so I never bought another one full price... until this year's Modern Warfare. I can't see myself buying the next edition.

The Souls Games

Loved Demons Souls. Loved Dark Souls - I almost enjoyed anticipating it more than playing it, such was my excitement at the time.

Hated Dark Souls II. It was very much a re-tread that confused making the game harder with more challenging. It was clear that Miyazaki had other priorities, and left it to the Practice Squad.

Madden

In truth, its not the Madden franchise's fault, it was my own. I took a slightly purist view that the way to play was 15-minute quarters and on Madden difficulty.

Life is too short, and I haven't bought one since 2001. But I still consider it every year.

Assassin's Creed

I played a bit of the first game, but it was pretty creaky by the time I got to it, so I eventually put it down
I loved ACII and Brotherhood, but found them too similar to finish the latter.
I enjoyed Black Flag, but the franchise was feeling very formulaic, so I've not been back since.

Uncharted

Didn't play the first one. Loved the Uncharted 2. Thought Uncharted 3 was acceptable.

Didn't think Uncharted 4 showed much progression at all, and hated the' long lost, never previously mentioned brother' storyline.

Civilization

First one was wonderful! Second was da bomb. Three took me time to sink in. But - and this is in general. When they start these 3d modelling with strategy... I somehow loose interest. Civ IV didn't do it for me. Never looked into V, Had VI for free but got dizzy only in the tutorial.

But hey! I still play Civ III.

Football Manager

after 01/02, it became worse and worse - and now it is a game I even don't recognize anymore due to feature creep. The more you can tweak, the less influence I seem to have on the whole.

The better the match engine got, the less the magic was. From shouting and screaming at text blocks to cheering at 2d ants... and now.. meh

Heroes of Might and Magic

up till three, sheer brilliance. IV and V.. meh

on the positive side: Xcom is better and better with each itteration

Reading some of your comments, I think i suffered the same fate with Civilization. At 1st I thought it was a time issue, that prevented me from getting into civ 5 and now 6, but I think that just the game lost its appeal to me. Also, i SEEM to no longer want to play or enjoy games like Tekken or Street Fighther!

I think the biggest one for me is Halo. I really enjoyed them as single-player experiences all the way up through Reach. But Halo 4 was a big disappointment. The story was incomprehensible, the new enemy types weren't fun to fight, there were nasty difficulty spikes and it was somehow both technically impressive but visually ugly to look at. At that point I lost a lot of enthusiasm for any followup, and nothing I heard about 5 interested me.

At the same time, I'm not really even able to go back to the older ones and enjoy them anymore. Maybe I can play a level or two, but then I realize I know exactly the experience I'm going to have, and there's no reason to continue playing. I played them a lot over the years, so it's not too surprising I don't really get anything out of revisiting them now.

I'm also off Assassin's Creed despite loving the earliest games. I was pretty invested in the lore and story, and when Ubisoft stopped caring about them, so did I. (To be fair, it seemed like I was almost the only one who really cared about the "present day" storyline.)

I completely disagree about Dead Space III, but I guess it doesn't matter, because it's not coming back anyway.

You’re definitely not alone. I was eagerly anticipating Desmond becoming an assassin and having his own big cool adventure, then plop.

Madden for me. I kicked the habit about 6 years ago. They just never changed anything. It was basically just a $60 roster update. The same glitches year after year. I just couldn't take it anymore.

I really wish the NFL didn't just re-up their contract with EA.

Madden, Call of Duty, etc.

Used to be great, full single-player experiences, with campaigns, franchises, etc. Now are monetized and multiplayer focused. No thanks.

I dislike shooters so very much

I adored Final Fantasy in the NES and SNES era. I still like replaying those games, especially DS remake of IV. But the series ended there. I didn't own a PS1, so I missed the release of VII, and when I finally played the Windows port I never finished it. I also made attempts at IX and X and didn't care enough to get very far. I haven't attempted another new Final Fantasy since.

IX is an AMAZING FF TILE... give it a shot

Civilization. Civ 1 was one of the first games I got for my fancy 486DX. I loved every entry in the franchise until 5 (all due respect to my esteemed colleague Peoj Snamreh, but Civ4 is the pinnacle of the Civ games - in my opinion of course).

A few things killed Civ for me:
1. Civ 5 was not a good game. Some would say it got better with DLCs etc. but I would disagree. It tried to innovate but innovated the wrong things. Civ 5 made me realize that...

2. ...the Civ games are kind of boring. They show history as an always positive progression through history. Even a setback like losing a war is minor blip in the march of progress. Your civilization would never go backward, at worst it might not go forward as fast as your competitors. Your civilization never felt like a civilization, it felt more like a steamroller of historical inevitability. But you know what game better simulates a nation through time?

3. Europa Universalis. EU3, while pretty rough around the edges, is what I imagined in my head I was getting in Civs 1-4: a dynamic simulation of guiding a nation state through history. EU4 is even better, with a lot of EU3's sharp edges filed down. After heavily getting into EU3, a Civ just felt boring and kind of pointless. EU did not kill Civ for me (Civ 5 did that on its own) but it certainly nailed the coffin shut.

Ys

The series went from being 90% action and 10% RPG to about 50/50. The newer games have more involved stories, crafting, multi-character parties, etc. Blah! Legend of Heroes is awesome, but I don't want Ys turned into it. I miss the simpler days when Adol ran around by himself bumping into enemies.

Final Fantasy

The last main title I really enjoyed is Final Fantasy IX 20 years ago. The newer games either suck or morphed into a Western RPG. At least Dragon Quest is still good.

Castlevania

Symphony of the Night and the GBA games were decent, but all of those crappy Lord of Shadow games are best forgotten. Castlevania I (1986) through Castlevania: Bloodlines (1994) was when I loved the franchise and it just hasn't been the same since.

And that's about it. I thought there'd be more, but most of the franchises I love are already long dead. I'm counting Castlevania as still alive solely due to the success of the Netflix show.

What franchises that you love are long dead?
Reading some of our posts.... and now that my rant over kingdom hearts is a bit over I CAN also think about Final Fantasy series. Even though, FFXV was not bad, it does not mean to me what it once did. You mention a perfect example with Dragon Quest XI. I am having a much much better time with DQXI, than what I did with FFXV.

Grand Theft Auto

I played GTA, GTA II, GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas. I had a great time with each. There remains fond memories there. I bought Chinatown Wars, GTA IV, The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony, yet I never made a start with any of them. I never purchased GTA V, either. I'm not sure what happened. The series suddenly no longer felt worth the time, nor the effort. I had less time to distribute amongst games, a higher bar to clear for mechanics, and a changing palate for themes. Grand Theft Auto suddenly seemed a mediocre juvenile affair.

I'm told GTA V is worth playing. Characters. Narrative. Story. Mechanics. Animations. Etc. All supposedly top notch. Yet I cannot overcome the feeling it's no longer for me.

RnRClown wrote:

Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto suddenly seemed a mediocre juvenile affair.

I pondered adding GTA to my list for the reason you cite. But what stopped me was:

GTA IV, which I thought attempted to say something more profound than its predecessors and successor.

GTA V, is a fantastic technical achievement (I still marvel at the way you 'leap', Sam Beckett-style from character to character), but it is pretty juvenile. The way it handles female characters is objectionable.

Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, which I regard GTA games with an 'Old West' skin. Also, RDR2 gives me hope for better characterisation, narrative and story in the next GTA... if there ever is one.

Oww... shall I name the game no one dares to name...?

World of Warcraft

There, I said it.

loved loved loved Warcraft I to III, had an absolute blast with World of Warcraft. The first expansion was perfect, the second... there I lost it. Dumbed down grindfest where you had to run from gold blinking dot to gold blinking dot and fight of bots that were harvesting things to sell on net and all. Or the complete other side of the spectrum with near impossible instanced that would take hours and hours and hours with a team. Pftoeiii... I just want to ride Gank Forest again to show off my stead. Times that will never come back.

The new Far Cry's do not speak to me. I was in the group of people that loved Far Cry 2 because it was so different from most other shooters, even though I accept it's flaws and agree it goes on too long.

Far Cry 3 I enjoyed it for a while but fizzled out close to the ending. Far Cry 4 felt like more of the same so I fizzled out faster. Far Cry Primal, even sooner. Didn't even bother with 5.

It's part of my disdain of a lot of singleplayer gameplay loops in general these days. The stuff of MMOs that I had zero interest in doing (collectathons, grinding, crafting, etc.) has been slowly moving from being side stuff to basically being mandatory for you to continue.

Also, by the time I got to Arkham Knight, the Batman formula was wearing thin on me. They would need to do something drastic for me to be interested in another one at this point.

kergguz wrote:

Also, possibly isometric RPGs. I adored the Baldurs Gate series, but have not been able to finish Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: OS. I think now I like the idea of playing them more than the act itself.

Yes, I'm in the same boat. I guess my nostalgia for them was just nostalgia for playing these huge campaigns on my computer for the first time. I even tried replaying the first Baldur's Gate a couple times the last few years and eventually bailed. It's like I played Neverwinter Nights, The Witcher and Dragon Age: Origins and then my brain decided I could never go back.

DOUBLE POST

Darkhaund wrote:

What franchises that you love are long dead?

I've been playing games since the NES, so that's just the nature of the beast. Sometimes companies go out of business and sometimes franchises just die out. You can't expect every company to continue to make games in the same franchise for decades. I still miss them though.

Adventure Island
Arc the Lad
Ape Escape
Bonk
Ganbare Goemon / Legend of the Mystical Ninja
Lufia
Monkey Island
Phantasy Star
Shining Force
Shinobi
Wild Arms

And plenty more I'm not remembering right now.