What direct sequel to a game has actually been worse than the first?

Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Chrono Cross

Super Mario Bros. 2

Zelda: II

Also Half-Life > HL2.

@uninspiredcup: Fear 3 was actually a good bit of fun. It's nothing legendary like the first one was, but for how cheap it is now, it's worth a play. The side modes are among my favorite in any shooter. The horde mode kicks serious ass, and there's a game literally called "Fucking Run" where you have to charge through a Left 4 Dead style map, wiping out enemies with a team of four, all while a giant death cloud of smoke chases you and insta-kills you.

@primorandomguy: completely agree about bioshock.

Crysis 1 is shit, Crysis 2 is shittier and Crysis 3 beats them both.

Lost Planet 1 is shit, LP2 is worse and LP3 beats them both.

DMC2 and so on.

Fable 2, etc.

So many to name.

I've seen a couple of people praise 3, or at least aspect of it. Probably never purchase it tbh.

a lot of them have already been mentioned so i'll try to be original

- Golden axe 2 ( still very good though but lacks the epicness of the first game)

- Double dragon 2 (it wasn't a bad game at all, but the first one was, well..., you know, double dragon)

- mortal kombat II ( the first one looked more realistic and had more consistent gameplay)

- Unreal tournament (don't shoot me for that, unreal 1 had a full fledged single player game which was no short of stellar, and I preferred the multiplayer mode as well, not to mention the shock rifle was only a shadow of the asmd rifle in art and execution)

- Gta 2 (more of the same)

- hitman 2 (was just too easy, but still an amazing game)

- red faction 2 (I forgot you even existed, console ports...)

- Halflife 2 (sorry the first one was just way better)

- dead space 2 (ah , but it's so close)

- Sniper elite 2 (the first was a hidden gem, the second one had a nicer killcam but didn't improve on the gameplay, we have a fourth now?...)

- call of duty 2 (the first one was just more epic)

- dark souls 2 ( ruined the series for me)

- far cry 2 (how dare you ubisoft )

- dead rising 2 (it was a nice idea, the first one I mean)

- bloodrayne 2 (doesn't even come close)

- gears of war 2 (the cutscene disease has begun)

- mass effect 2 (where's the mako)

- giana sisters ds (blasphemy)

Seems most of you are just picking popular games that have been very well received and did quite a bit to advance from the first iteration to be edgy/cool or to just be a troll...lmao. Either way, everyone has their opinions...

Here I'll try...

Uncharted 2

I really dislike Civilization 6 so far. When it comes to the previous Civ games i like them all quite a bit, so for me, Civ 6 is the worst sequel. It feels like indy level in quality both in gameplay and graphics. When compared directly to Civ 5 it just doesn't match up at all.

All the expansions in the world won't fix the game either. Maybe some day they'll learn to finish a game instead of cutting half of it out and reselling it later on as DLC. I wonder if Civ 7 will be this much of a mess.

@Yams1980: Funny, that's how I felt to 5. 4 is the best PC game I've ever played, I'm still playing it a decade later. 5 was broken to me.

@locopatho: ya Civ 4 did have some unique things that lacked in Civ 5. Like being able to create armies from multiple units. I really hated how the music volume would change as you zoomed in and out also. I ended up just playing the music in its own to avoid it because it bothered me so much.

It is still Kingdom Hearts II for me.

Outside of that:

Super Mario Sunshine

StarCraft II

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Devil May Cry 2

Zelda II

Dark Souls II

Sonic Adventure 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Advance Wars 2

....And many others that I didn't mentioned

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

The first Lords of Shadow was one of those hidden gems for me. It was popular, and it's not at the top of many people's lists, but when I played that game in the last generation everything just clicked. The atmosphere was good, gameplay tight, the journey exciting. It was just a good game. Lords of Shadow 2 comes around and we all know of the steaming pile of garbage that is. Lost that atmosphere and it just became generic action game #1,525,839. I admit that is probably what the first game already is, but that first one had something special.

Jak 2

Jak & Daxter was a charming platformer. They had to go screw up the series by making it open-world GTA-like that wasn't fun to control and had a horrid checkpoint system. The only good thing this game did was teach me not to waste my time to see if a game I don't like will get better after a few hours.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

Game's a fucking abomination. The first was incredible....it had a sense of wonder, innocence, discovery, love, loss. Its story was simple but effective, the character writing and pacing of the Prince and Farah's relationship was exemplary, and it nailed the finale. Aside from pretty bad camera issues there wasn't much to fault. Then WW dropped, and everything that made TsoT amazing was gone. They turned the Prince from a flawed (but likable) guy into some emo wanna-be bad boy hack. The music from the first was replaced with some heavy metal garbage entirely unfitting to Prince of Persia. The level design from the first was absent and it focused too much on combat, which was never supposed to be what the game's about (I know a lot of people griped about the original's simplicity but it was the point).

Mechner wasn't involved in it, and man could you tell. Warrior Within missed the entire point of what made The Sands of Time (and Prince of Persia) so awesome to begin with. That being, feeling like you were in a majestic, wondrous world in ancient Persia. They turned it into some dark emo boy hardcore slaughter fest fantasy, thus robbing the game of any sentiment of soul and identity. It was like they actively tried to destroy everything great about what had defined the franchise up to that point.

**** that game.

Crackdown 2

Gravity Rush 2: while not really worse, they didn't change the gameplay much from the first. It lacks innovation, and wasn't full of surprises like the first game. Mind you, still a decent to good game, but it's sad that they didn't build on the gravity mechanic for actual puzzles. It also didn't fix some of the shortcomings of the first.

Prince of Persia 2.

Arkham City comes to mind. Though it was widely praised and still is, the game made many noticeable improvements to game mechanics, opening the world up to more of a city sized sandbox, but I feel the sequel failed to match up to the original in many ways, starting with the pacing, also the original Asylum game did a better job writing in the villains into the narrative whereas they added quite a few signature villain encounters in City but they glossed over almost all of them and they felt lacking in substance. Also, Asylum did a much better job exploring the Batman franchises lore through the collectible audio tapes with inmates, and as someone with not much exposure to the franchise except through the main films from Tim Burton to Christopher Nolan, this opened the world up to me in new ways; City didn't for me in the slightest.

two sequels everyone seems to love to shit on yet I will defend are Crysis 2 and FEAR 2

the original Crysis was boring as hell, sure maybe one of the most beautiful game engines ever created with tons of modding to make it look even better, but it plays like shit, Crysis 2 is much better paced, the Ceph design was a substantial improvement what the original Crysis offered, all the hate for it really just stems from bitchy PC gamers upset they weren't pandered to first, was an awesome game nonetheless, and people keep trying to make it seem like the first game is this massive sandbox like it's some kind of Far Cry game

FEAR 2 was also a nice improvement to the original, the level design in the original FEAR was so damn bland, FEAR 2 also really did more to enhance the narrative of the game, and the paranormal bits were a lot cooler in FEAR 2 than any of those in the original FEAR, but again here's a game that mostly got shit on by bitchy PC gamers claiming again another great PC game was too compromised to make it available on consoles, I disagree though, both games were created by Monolith and I find them to be a very talented studio, they've just had shit luck which thankfully finally took a turn for the better with Shadow of Mordor, if anything FEAR related deserves to be shit on then its the first game's expansion which wasn't even made by Monolith

Fighting Force 2. It might as well have been part of a different IP altogether.

LOL!

You're really putting a target on your back with that one. ;)

-STIRRING THE POT NINJA APPROVED-

@videogameninja: Lost Planet 2, Fable 2, FF XIII-2,

Umm, Dune was a text based adventure game and Dune II is the grand daddy of the RTS genre, they were completely unrelated games. With out Dune II there would have been no Command and Conquer and without C&C the RTS genre would likely have never taken off or even existed.

Hmmm, I wonder how many people could name the green faction in Dune II?

@GarGx1: Oh yeah, I guess I never played Dune 2. The one game on that list. :P

No, Dune was a story-driven turn-based 4x-lite strategy with point&click adventure elements and Fallout-like free map traversal. It's basically one of its kind, so don't shrug it off as some random adventure game.

Ordos were my favorite, even though their faction is completely made up.

@R10nu: Regardless, Dune and Dune II are still utterly unrelated to each other, different studios going in a completely different direction within the confines of Frank Herbert's universe, the only thing the two games have in common is Virgin Interactive published them. Dune II ultimately made a far greater impact, influencing the future of an entire genre.

There's only a couple of months separating the release dates of the two games but in 1992 that was enough time to create an entire game from scratch.

Well done on getting the Ordos, didn't come to mind until I actually looked at the screenshot :)

Fable 2 awful gameplay compared to the first one

FFT Tactics Advance awful story not nearly as deep

@MirkoS77: God, I didn't even think of Warrior Within for this list. Must have just blocked it's existence out of my mind. Honestly, Prince of Persia is a great series, but none of the subsequent entries have lived up to Sands of Time. Definitely on my GOAT list.

Viewtiful Joe is kind of the same way. They all have their merits, but the first game is damn near perfect.

Crysis 2

Witcher 2

Dragon Age 2

Two Worlds 2 (not saying the first one was a great game but IMO it was more fun and had a 100 times better UI for PC)

FEAR 2

• Final Fantasy II
• Alex Kidd: High-Tech World
• Target: Renegade
• Space Harrier II
• Final Fight 2
• Radical Dreamers
• Alundra 2
• Devil May Cry 2
• Final Fantasy X-2
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Xenosaga
• Ninja Gaiden II

No way man, both of those games were gold.

On that note, Soldier of Fortune II

The first game, while nowhere near perfect, was still quite underrated. Never did play the second one but I’m starting to think maybe that was a good decision.

-WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE NINJA APPROVED-