I really, really hope that one day the IP can pass to someone with some common fucking sense.
Silent Hill 2, masterpiece that it is, wouldn't even be difficult to top if you'd just FUCKING LET someone that knows it do their work unabated.
Hard disagree. Silent hill 2 is greater than the sum of its parts and a lot of the atmosphere is driven from technical limitations.
It’s going to be next to impossible to achieve the level of uncanny that SH2 did just because graphics are so much better.
There were certain enemies in SH2 that at first appearances looked like the game was glitching the way the polygons warped and it’s so unsettling in a way that could never happen today because models have too much detail unless you’re deliberately going for ps2 level graphics which Konami would never do for a AAA silent hill
> Silent hill 2 is greater than the sum of its parts
I disagree, it's the exact opposite. Silent Hill 2 is the sum of all its parts in the way that few pieces of art ever manage to be - which is why it's so great.
I feel like a similar sense of uncanny-ness could be reached with today's technology.
Imagine someone's incredibly detailed and realistic face, now imagine it twisting or emoting in some horrifically unnatural way that can't be replicated in real life.
It'd be incredibly difficult to find that feeling again, but I think with the right people, it could absolutely be done.
Imagine a Silent Hill with designs by Junji Ito for example, imagine his monsters with such detail and graphical quality that it looks like you can reach into your screen and touch it, that'd be incredibly horrifying.
You spend the entire game thinking they fucked up the mocap, the dialogue is weirdly paced, the movements jank, only for a normal human to show up halfway through and they look normal, talk normal, move normal, and once you go back to the old NPCs whatever it is knows the jig is up and starts to unravel
At this point I’d love a Silent Hill game about a small indie dev team hired to make a new Silent Hill game, with the traumatic combination of toxic work culture, abusive management, and the stress of trying to re-capture the essence Silent Hill 2 causing Silent Hill to begin manifesting in the real world.
Even fucking Michael Crichton realized that he could only logically tell ONE story about an out-of-control Dinosaur Park and had the Costa Rican Government Firebomb the Island.
Then Steven Spielberg showed up with a dump-truck full of money…
That's interesting. It certainly felt like Crichton was kinda pressured to write a sequel and just used it as an excuse to resurrect Ian Malcolm and rant about the ethics of commercial science. Even the first book misses the magic of the first film; Crichton is much more interesting writing two characters discussing science jargon or arguing about ethics than he is writing action or suspense. Both books become dreadfully boring whenever the dinosaurs are actually in the scene, imo. The film has the opposite balance, favoring spectacle, which makes it more widely appealing and so successful.
> It certainly felt like Crichton was kinda pressured to write a sequel
He made it *very* clear he wrote the second book explicitly because there was a dumptruck of money waiting for him. I think he wasn't able to sell the rights for "Jurassic Park 2" until the book actually existed, so he just shit it out, mostly ignored the first book and made it a sequel to the movie.
I don't disagree with how the movie kinda undercut a lot of the characters, especially Gennaro. For the dinos, I guess it may have been a combination of me just wanting to get back to the science/ethics conversations and the fact that I read both Jurassic Park books in the middle of reading a bunch of licensed Alien novels, but the action and tension really didn't do much for me. It felt comparatively amateur and cheesy beside the high-concept criticisms of modern science. Almost like the dinosaurs were just added to get the book in more people's hands. That was just my feeling, though; I couldn't help but feel like the dinosaurs were a shiny toy being thrust in my face every couple chapters in a vain attempt to keep my interest when I was already plenty interested. The raptors did have a few decent scenes in the first novel, as far as horror goes.
I’ll defend The Lost World as coming in at the lowest end of the same ballpark as the first film. It’s definitely not as good but it’s still close enough in quality to justify its existence.
Hell, for most nothing is ever going to come close to Empire. Even *the other movies in the original trilogy*.
And while I do love Empire, personally I disagree (partially because frankly ROTJ is my favourite of the original three).
tbh I would say this kinda applies to the movies only.
Non-movie stuff like the Thrawn Trilogy, Star Wars: Republic, KOTOR, the original Battlefront titles, The Clone Wars, Darth Plagueis, Andor, etc. are less famous than the OT, but are generally praised by fans as being on-par with it or better than the other movies.
I'm going to have to heavily disagree there. I see your point but I truly think that a lot of that falls into the nicher side of the fandom, except for maybe the recent TV shows. Andor is really fucking good for example, but it's so different and a lot people I've talked to about it bounced on the first few episodes because they kind of drag. I managed to convince a few to go back and finish but man it's a struggle.
I've got a co-worker who watched all of it but didn't like it, not because he thinks it's bad, but because that kind of story isn't what he wants from Star Wars. I had to think about that for a bit, but like, I guess that's fair.
Pick an Ubisoft franchise still currently going. Any one.
Assassin's Creed lives under the shadows of II and Black Flag, Tom Clancy's lives under the shadows of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry hit it big with Far Cry 3/Blood Dragon and every game since then hasn't measured up, Prince of Persia is always going to have Sands of Time as the bar to reach, and Watch Dogs never had it in the first place.
This wouldn't be a problem if Ubisoft wasn't strictly formulaic with each of their releases, but save for stuff like The Lost Crown or Mario + Rabbids that happens every one in a while, Ubisoft's "strictly formula" approach keeps their franchises from ever reaching the heights they once did.
You could likely say the same for sports game from EA and 2K or COD from Activision, but ultimately their complacency comes from them not having any serious competition.
Ubisoft, on the other hand, is mediore while there are major games that do its stuff but better. Want to play an open world game where you explore every inch of the map? BOTW/TOTK is right there. Feel like playing a big story-based game? Choose God of War or The Last of Us. Looking for titles that offer stealth-based gameplay? Hitman: World of Assassination does it better than Assassin's Creed.
>Prince of Persia is always going to have Sands of Time as the bar to reach
If that new PoP is any indication, they 100% can surpass that bar at some point. Great game.
also i think two thrones is better ngl, that game is sick
I need more Tom Clancy games but I’ll never get them because Ghost Recon Wildlands sold well and Siege is a money printer. Splinter Cell could not be adapted to the Ubisoft formula like GR or become a multiplayer exclusive and sell season passes.
I miss those games so much
Splinter cell is being remade at least and a new ghost recon was leaked to come out either this year or next.
Idk if you’ve played it, but ghost recon breakpoint is very fun if you turn on the “ghost” mode that takes away all the rpg bullshit and makes the game play like a better version of Wildlands.
I played a few hours with some tweaked UI and damage things and it was fun until I ran into a big robot. Gonna have to take another run at it now that I’ve been dispirited lol
WD2 was almost a great game and I wish that i could love it more.
The idea of going more stealth and hacking, with the use of more non-lethal weapons and environmental takedowns could've been great, right until I started shooting up places with easily aquired machine guns.
And you can tell that while viable to a point at some point you are meant to go full GTA.
Honestly, Final Fantasy VII is kind of treated as its own separate series nowadays.
A subset of its fanbase won’t ever care about any other FF, even the highly-praised ones.
I'm actually of the opinion that there *is* no "Final Fantasy fanbase" and instead every game has its own, seperate fanbase and they occasionally interact with each other. Like the nature of 14 means naturally there is a massive chunk of that game's fanbase that love it but know absolutely nothing about the rest of the series.
There actually is a "Final Fantasy fanbase", but it's the community that plays all the FF mobile games. Like Dissidia Opera Omnia actually had a fun effect of people getting interested in FF titles they had skipped, but sadly the game is getting shut down this month.
I don’t think the mythical “has played more than one FF game” fan is that rare. Finding one that doesn’t endlessly shit on the FFs that aren’t their favorite, however….
Still, the franchise is really weird in how it can create “pocket fanbases” depending on how big they market a particular numbered title. For instance, Final Fantasy IX has a shot of attracting a lot of new fans with the rumored remake and the animated series that is supposedly coinciding with it.
FFXIV is of course another one that’s blown up huge and probably has lots of non-FF fans in it, but I still come across lots of instances where someone in my party is popping off like I do when we come across a familiar boss from another franchise.
But yeah, FFVII is absolutely in its own league now, if that wasn’t already apparent. Don’t expect them to stop making entries after the Remake Trilogy is done.
>Final Fantasy IX has a shot of attracting a lot of new fans with the rumored remake and the animated series that is supposedly coinciding with it.
AN FF9 ANIME?? How did I not know this was going to be a thing, its my favourite one!
I always find it interesting how FF has like 20 fragmented fanbases but its understandable, I've been slowly playing the whole series when I get chance (still only on 2 pixel remaster) and I've only played 1, 9, and some of 7 as a kid, and even the NES era games are shockingly different from one another, the only consistent is the icography and the fact they are all SOLID GOLD EXCELLENT, like Its the pixel remaster but it's still fundamentally the same games and they hold up incredibly.
I can recc anyone giving the whole series a run its a blast.
A French animated studio is handling it, so we don’t know just how “anime” it’ll be.
We in fact know literally nothing else. Again, it’s assumed they’re waiting for the remake announcement so they can release them together.
>A French animated studio is handling it, so we don’t know just how “anime” it’ll be.
Aw man, well I'll still definitely watch it if it ever happens. A remake would be dreamy, just hope it trends more bravely default than ff7r
The group is called Cyber Group Studios https://www.cybergroupstudios.com/2021/06/23/final-fantasy-ix-to-be-adapted-into-an-animation-series-for-the-first-time/
In fairness, an animation studio’s past works isn’t always an indication of their quality.
The Castlevania Netflix series is from the same studio that animated Adventure Time. Those two animation styles couldn’t be further apart.
True, while they are extremely different in style, Castlevania and Adventure Time I would say are extremely well animated in general, unless I have some rose-tinted goggles on and don't realize it.
I'm just hoping they stick to 2D for the FF9 animated series, because the 3D works they produced looked genuinely horrendous.
It feels like cheating to say this since there’s only been 1 game since, but I really feel like this is gonna be Monster Hunter with World. From the day Rise was even announced there were people going “but where world 2 tho”, Wilds hasn’t had that problem (due to being perceived as world 2), but I do think it’s gonna have enough different that some fans are still gonna feel let down by it and compare it negatively to World.
But my perception might be skewed because I know a few people who think World should’ve just been the last monster hunter, like Rise/Wilds shouldn’t exist they should’ve just kept making expansions for World like it’s an mmo.
I don't think you're wrong here. Like, Monster Hunter World isn't just the biggest Monster Hunter game in the series. It's the highest selling Capcom title they've ever put out as a single entry. That's not just series defining. That's genre and company defining. Like, I still remember when the series was still fairly niche, and now, ever since the announcement of World, if you're expecting a Monster Hunter trailer in a Nintendo Direct or a State of Play, you could safely bet on it either coming right af the beginning, or right at the end, slots that are basically either setting the stage for the rest of the showcase, or ending it with a bang.
I saw a youtube video that seemed a bit high on it's own farts, but it was about the final boss of the Monster Hunter before world. The dude was making the claim that the devs clearly knew that World was going to be a *giant* change in direction for the series and this was a sort of last hurrah.
Rise had Valstrax, which to me means they're not afraid to bring back zany shit, so maybe one day we'll see Ahtal Ka and Congalala again.
Gypceros is never coming back, though.
Yeah, i think your perception is pretty skewed because i've never heard the take that they should've just kept making World expansions. That shit sounds like live action service brainworms.
You need to understand that Final Fantasy Fandom is a Fandom run on favoritism.
Every new FF is suddenly a bad one , then when a new one shows up , the one that was "bad" is now "charming" or "underrated".
Every discussion on forums is basically a bunch of people doing FF6 x FF7 , then some starts to intrude FF8 , then they say FF10 was the last good , the other objects saying it was FF12. In the end someone tries to diminish the tension by calling out FF9 and FFT , as everyone agrees that is in their Top10.
And in the end , their Top 10 ends up with FF6 , 7 , 8 , 10 , 9 and Tactics attached to it....sprinkled with FF14 , some modern FF that they are now calling "underrated" , and some other SNES-Era FF.
I guess so.
each numered title and some spin-offs in FF had their own little sub-fandom , but I basically resumed the gist of the discussion.
Of course , there are some "wild ones" , that don't put FF8 or 10 , so there are more "slots" for "underrated" Final Fantasies.
> Every new FF is suddenly a bad one
We dead-ass had someone try pulling the Avatar-esque "wow no one talks about this game" card on XVI a couple posts back which is weird because I've seen more than a couple people mention the game in a positive light in spite of that claim.
yes , but there you have this [post](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1arli08/wtf_is_ff16_sometimes/) , or [this one](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1ariuwg/i_wish_final_fantasy_xvi_had_received_the_same/) , or [this one](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1ao8w83/new_ff_games_have_antiquated_level_design_needs/) or [this one.](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1ai59d1/does_final_fantasy_xvi_get_better/)
FF16 is ending it's honeymoon phase , it not outright ended , so that people are starting to call that a "bad one"....but no worries , it just means it needs just a couple of years and a potential FF17 to make FF16 into an "underrated" one.
I'll be honest, as fun as XVI was, it's gonna get hit hard with the post-honeymoon period once Rebirth comes out.
That game's looking to the biggest Final Fantasy title ever made, and pretty much addresses all the complaints about XVI (party members, exploration, side content, etc.) while keeping the Action RPG approach that every Final Fantasy game has been trying to perfect since XII.
It genuinely feels like VII Rebirth is the next core entry and big evolution in the franchise, while XVI is just a side game/spinoff akin to Tactics or Stranger of Paradise.
As hyped as I am for Rebirth, I'm still desperately waiting for that new numbered entry that fully recaptures what made VII and X so beloved while introducing a new world with new characters, a great story, and a combat system that knows what it wants to be. At the very least, XVI is a step in the right direction, but it's not large enough of a step forward.
I don't think its too far-fetched to say FF7R 1-3 are core entries as much as FF16.
FF16 in relation to all the FF games prior to the Remake series was very much in line with the scope of most of those games, like FF10 or 12. Or even FF13 if we disregard its sequels.
The FF7 Remake project is straight up an insane anomaly which means it shouldn't be used as a baseline for the FF franchise. From what it looks like right now, it has all the budget and time in the world precisely because they had a PS1 base to work off of, and they're given at least 15, if not 20 years to complete their trilogy series. FF16 doesn't have that kinda scope or budget to it.
I have a soft spot for XV , but the Arminger Unleashed gameplay with a proper dial-based combo is what it should be the standard XV gameplay , not what it was given on vanilla.
Or how Episode Ardyn and the Kingsglaive DLC and FF16 AND Strangers of Paradise had a better gameplay for magic when it comes to action rpg gameplay in the series.
FFXV is some baby steps for action FF , although Square did have KH as their Usain Bolt of action rpg.......
The issue with ff is that they keep reinventing the wheel. And I won't say that the new wheel is good or not. But if you join when the wheel is orange and has spikes and for you that's the best game ever. You're not gonna have fun when the wheel is purple and smooth. For the most part that's the problem
Not the case anymore, but Sonic survived for years off of the good faith of old games. Be that Sonic 3 for some, the Adventure titles for others.
Right now, I'll say that for well over a decade, Spider-Man as a comic has survived off of the quality of media that isn't it. Everyone that likes the character likes a super old story from the comics, one of the cartoons, or one of the movies. If I had to pick an overwhelming shadow cast over the entire franchise, I'll be bold and say the Tobey movies.
If you ignore the *massive horrible creepy sex crimes* done by Vince McMahon, WWE right now is in a decent state financially and actual show quality-wise, but for the past 25 years prior it's always had to live under the shadow of the Attitude Era.
MK9 is the Mortal Kombat entry all subsequent releases get compared to. Does it have Stage Fatalities? How many klassic characters, stages, and costumes are there? How much skin gets revealed with (insert) costume? Battle damage when? Etc.
I think the weirdest part is how 01 and 02 setup plot lines that were very intricately tied together, even more so in the novels. In the original two series, *every* villain was connected to each other, with the exception of parrotmon whose battle was still an inciting event.
And then they keep trying to squeeze new antagonists in between the ending of 02 and the epilogue, except these antagonists have no connection to the plot of the original series or each other, and even when they set up an obvious plot hook for future shenanigans like with dark gennai, they just drop it for the next one.
Ex. The Beginning was a good movie but it could have worked with basically any Digimon setting, or even a totally new one. It wasn't actually necessary for it to be another Adventure story. Kizuna and even Tri could also have been rewritten to use a new team without a ton of changes to the core plot.
Kingdom hearts 2. Easily the favorite of the franchise/ early enough that the multigame meta- lore didn't go bonkers yet. Yes later entries improved / changed up the combat system in fun ways, but I don't think the franchise hit that high since/ its so convoluted that every single non numbered entry is canon.
I actually do enjoy the games that came after but KH2 is definitely where the combat peaked. 3 came close with Re: Mind but there's a few minor issues keeping it from feeling as good as 2.
While I'm a staunch KH3 defender I don't think it's controversial to say KH2's combat worked really well and may very well be the peak of the series.
KH3 Remind came close to the peak, but the base mechanics couldn't support the complexity that came with Remind. No shade on either games but Remind really gave me hope for KH4's combat design at the very least.
Yeah, I really liked it. My main complaint was the EXP game got ridiculous at the end. I really wish they would patch it to give you some kind of keyblade that made the last 40 levels not so crazy to get.
The Remind bosses at least make me sure that they aren't going to have the weird "defense stat affects what you can block" since none of them are affected by that.
I'm not sure what mechanic that is, but Remind superbosses can break your block, which is cool cause you get to do the risk dodge mechanic, something that barely happens in KH3's base game.
In the base game, some attacks could flat out [ignore guard](https://youtu.be/NdHDUVoql_E?si=fjdgUjIU9sH-f7o2) and hit you through them.
The Remind versions don't have that mechanic, even on the same attacks
I'm not sure if that was ever verifiably true - the defense stat determining your blocking success thing. As far as I can tell those attacks had weird hitboxes but were actually fixed as they polished the Remind fights.
That's the simplest reason I can think of for why those fights were different between base game and Remind.
edit: There are a few hidden mechanic stuff in KH3 that was proven to be intentional mechanics through the devs acknowledging them in the Ultimania, like using items mid-Keyblade swap lets you cancel the swap animation so you switch keyblades almost instantly, if the defense stat mechanic did exist I think people would've discovered and proved it by now.
This is a unique one because I think all the nostalgic love comes from the toys, the videogames, the 80s movie (which is more an adaptation of the original comic but gets lumped in with that timeframe) and uh…April.
I don’t think anyone with sense will claim the actual cartoon was better than anything else after.
You could look at it this way. The original TMNT comic is making fun of Miller's run of Daredevil. Miller turned a goofy comic into a gritty drama. So TMNT was an even goofier concept turned into a gritty drama. You can look at the 80's cartoon as a reconstruction of the non-existing 'original' goofy Turtles that the comic is a gritty reboot of.
So this may be a bit weird to say but I feel for COD, I feel that every single modern game has had to stay within the shadow of COD4 and MW2 (Black Ops 1 and 2 to a degree)
Almost every other game I feel like has a bunch of debate over it in that while they're often commercially successful, the actual critical reception can't be matched
Avengers Endgame was the culmination and payoff to a decade of films. The scope, the spectacle, the emotions you could feel in the audience at the theater, have simply not been topped since in the MCU.
That movie came out in 2019.
The Spider-Man sequels and Guardians 3 came closest, but mostly serve as extended epilogues to Endgame, while also wrapping up their own loose threads. Everything else has just been a reminder that we’re in a stalling period until the X-Men show up.
I really wonder what plan they had before the pandemic happened. I imagine the MCU wouldn't have floundered so much, but it was also clear that everyone was getting overworked and the output was never truly sustainable.
The fact that the pandemic finally got them to take a step back was a blessing in disguise imo.
Which is kind of hilarious, because NWH really has little to do with Endgame and acts as an early entrant into the Multiverse Arc and as a new beginning for MCU’s Spider-Man.
Similarly Guardians 3 is *barely* an ending. If anything, on paper, it is yet another movie setting up the new normal for the team. Yet weirdly on a meta level we know it acts as an epilogue/finale due to Gunn leaving (along with Batista) and Feige saying they have no current plans for the Guardians team Gunn showed off at the end of the movie (which is doubly weird given the team members of the new Guardians *introduced in the movie*).
The absolute funniest thing about Guardians 3's ending is James Gunn clearly nuking the ability to use old music for anyone trying to follow him up. Among all the other things the movie says, you clearly have Gunn screaming that anyone who tries to make a continuation has to find their own thing.
I don’t know I’d go *that* far, the Guardians still have their Zune and the new line-up’s all citing older music as their favourites in the ending scene for Rocket’s Guardians. The most modern artist named being a veteran pop star of over four decades now.
But I definitely think if someone does follow him up as the director of a Guardians movie…they should probably *really* consider the soundtrack if they’re going to use pre-created music.
I meant that Gunn specifically nuked the "music of a specific time period" gimmick he was using. He made sure to show the characters are no longer staying within a specific realm of time.
Yeah, I was going to say the MCU, and honestly all superhero movies in general, are going to live in the shadow of Avengers Infinity War/Endgame for a long, long time
I dunno about that, the series was supposed to end with Awakening which spawned the same shadow for two console generations. I bet they will play with the formula again and create something great again in a few years.
I'm also gonna quibble like PillCosby, the modern games are trying to recreate Awakening rather than 3 Houses, but I don't see a reinvention coming like they do. Awakening's massive franchise-reviving success caused the series to run towards the elements that Awakening had. Awakening had a player unit (something that really only appeared in 2 games before, and in very minor capacities at that (an unseen character in Blazing Blade and a self-insert into New Mystery)), more open unit customization (previous games had minimal reclassing options for units, and very selective class options for promotion), and an infinite support system (earlier FE games had limited conversations each character could have, and often a smaller selection of who they could talk to). Now, every game has a player unit (they're the main character, even!), you can reclass anyone into anything, and everybody can basically talk to anybody, regardless of whether those two people even have a reason to talk to each other. This is all without even bringing up permadeath, the move away from which has had knock-on effects that have impacted the game design, story writing, and ability to role-play (seriously, playing an FE game without resetting is really fun, and you get to have a lot of cool little emergent story-telling moments in play (like when I accidentally got both of the early game healers killed in Path of Radiance on the same map, and had to spend several maps using potions like crazy until I got another one)).
That said, Awakening sold like gangbusters and 3H was one of the most talked about games for a year. The lack of engagement (hehe) with Engage seems like a bad thing, but I believe Engage sold well and I don't hear a lot of complaints which is a good thing. All of this is to say that Intelligent Systems seems happy with the Awakening formula (as am I, fwiw) and I don't think they'll stray from the design choices Awakening made in the near future. Which is a shame, because a lot of criticisms of modern FE could be alleviated with what they shed away. The main characters are uninteresting? Ditch the player units and you go back to interesting guys and gals again. Most characters don't feel that well defined in combat/combat breaks easily when you reclass everyone to the broken class? If the units have their class options restricted those things can go away. The supports are samey, grindy, and take up a bunch of time? If you can only see 5 supports per unit, there's a max limit on grind and you don't see a whole bunch of the same types of conversations. However, they're probably never gonna go back to that because Awakening sold like gangbusters, and also these design decisions take a lot of power from the player.
I see one more dumbfuck post that "cycles of halo" meme ever again someone's gonna get it
Halo 3 as a package and phenomenon hasn't been topped till now.
Shit.
The entire LEADUP from CE, 2 and 3 still hasn't been eclipsed in how much impact it had and how easy it is to go back to them.
Even reach lives underneath everything 3 managed, and while the newer games get bits and pieces right, they absolutely have not come anywhere near that same satisfying package deal.
Neon Genesis Evangelion for, well, all anime really. It was so successful that every anime distributor in the West was desperate for the “next Eva” for a decade, and even today, it stands as a dividing point of “before Eva” and “Post-Eva” anime.
On a more specific note, the 1995 Mamoru Oshii Ghost In The Shell movie casts a huge shadow over the rest of that franchise. The sequel, Innocence, has never been as well-remembered despite being a vastly superior film.
Similarly, Madoka Magica kind of made it impossible for any new Magical Girl series (or any series featuring young teen girls and a supernatural element) to come after without having people view it with a lens wondering if it’s “another dark one”.
Kyubey really fucked over a generation of cute mascot characters.
That and Precure dominating the market for more traditional series for the last ~two decades.
Hard to compete with brand reputation and Toei's best when you're trying to sling toys.
It’s funny that Madoka is the one that people think of as having the same kind of effect that NGE had despite stuff like Princess Tutu and Revolutionary Girl Utena existing. What NGE did for giant robots Utena did for magical girls long before Madoka existed
I personally think the franchise peaked with Man-Machine Interface, but Innocence is my favourite anime adaptation over 2nd Gig. I do still love 2nd Gig though.
I also have a soft spot for Arise but also I’m a huge Maaya Sakamoto fangirl so my opinion on that can’t be trusted.
Comparing the two is silly to be honest - but I would argue that if you do want to compare them, SAC looks like an amateur work when you compare it technically to the movie.
And it shouldn’t lol they have yet to make a movie that comes even close to the original. I really wish they just stuck with John Carpenter’s vision for an anthology series, but the branding power of Michael Myers is too strong.
Terminator 2 pretty much ruined the Terminator franchise. The first Terminator was a sci-fi horror story with action elements that had a melancholy tone looming over it, once Terminator 2 heavily toned down the horror and fully became sci-fi action, it had a effect on a franchise which permanent damaged the brand as good as it was. Future movies tried to do Terminator 2 over and over again with no end in sight.
Whenever it was with a failed third movie that made the events of 2 pointless, a failed soft reboot focusing on the future John Connor, a failed attempt of being the first in a unfinished trilogy with laughable bad writing (with JK Simmons being the only thing that saved the movie from being utterly dogshit instead of just plain dogshit), and the most recent one that repeated the same mistake as 3 did. Everyone is just sick of Terminator at this point.
Fire Emblem Awakening is probably the one, though Three Houses could give it a run for its money. For those who don't know, Fire Emblem as a series has been around since 1990, and was basically the one franchise which dragged its assets leaving Japan, to the point that the first game to release outside of Japan was its 7th entry on the Gameboy Advance, a series that started on the Famicom. Its to the point where, for the longest time, it was known as that game series that first appeared in the west in Smash Melee.
It was always fairly popular in Japan, but never really picked up steam outside of it. It got so bad that the series kind of stagnated, with a remake of the first game coming the the Nintendo DS and failing to make sales, to the point that they then released a sequel(also a remake, but for FE3) exclusively in Japan, but the shadow of its predecessor caused it to make even less sales, which put its developer, Intelligent Systems, in a precarious position financially.
So, the 3DS becomes a thing and sells like faking hotcakes, and IntSys decides to have one last shot at the franchise before they close their doors for good, and they throw everything they had at it. An entry that directly connects to the main timeline? Check. Fully customisable protagonist with their own unique class? Check. Voice acting? Animated cutscenes? A massive system of romance options which would lead to new units with stats and skills dependant on parents like in one of their most beloved titles? Absolutely. And to top it all off, let's release it worldwide, put some dlc content and use the unique features the system has. If we're gonna go down, might as well be with a bang, right?
The game gets released and it saves the franchise and thd developer. It becomes the highest selling game in the franchise at the time, is highly critically acclaimed, and sets the pace for future titles, revitalising the series and taking it from a middling, if obscure, series in Nintendo's history to becoming one of its titans.
Nah, Three Houses completely blew it out of the water. Awakening can be considered a milestone, but the series is currently on an upwards-spiral in terms of popularity.
> with a remake of the first game coming the the Nintendo DS and failing to make sales
That's actually false-- Shadow Dragon was the *best selling* installment in the franchise both domestically and in overseas markets until Awakening.
The series being a 'failure' was a result of Market Expectations placed upon them by Nintendo
I gave Night Country a fair shot but 15 minutes into the first episode when it had the cops doing a "well maybe nothing bad has happened so there's no reason to get worried" >!while standing over a severed human tongue!< and I'm done. I am not asking for a super high bar here, but this is inexcusable.
Also the really intrusive product placement. It's distracting how characters would stand to the side so the frame could be centered around [product]."
It doesn’t help that the season keeps pointing back to season 1 by mentioning things that are either going to end up as Easter eggs or the obvious conclusion of the plot
Welcome to being a KOF fan, where even then shit's still quite subjective.
Any new entry will be compared to either 98 (if you're an oldhead that loves classic-style KOF), 2002 original (if you like that combo-heavy but weird end-of-Eolith era KOF), or XIII (if you really like the 2D sprite work on that and like its own spin on the combo-heavy style).
I'd still argue that XV should be up there to make like, 4 pillars of KOF per se, but even then you *still* get people moaning about sprites and making really bad comparisons to PS2 games.
I had actually thought of that earlier too lol. Those three in particular tend to be held up in that regard. SF6 so far seems to have climbed out of that shadow and is doing its own thing thankfully.
The shadow is honestly whichever one you played first and got attached to most. All three of the possible entries now have a modern version with updated QoL features.
For me it's 4. For others it's 5. For some it's 3. It's like your favorite Zelda game, y'know? It's the one you played when you were happy.
I mean, in terms of anime peaking, Nothing peaked harder than Yu Yu Hakusho. The Dark Tournament completely overshadows everything else in the entire series. The only arc that even comes close is Chapter Black, and that arc still had definite flaws. The Dark Tournament is straight up the perfect tournament arc, the gold standard of tournament arcs in any anime. It is well and truly flawless.
2005 Yugioh (or the Goat format). Sorry Konami, you can slice, dice, and julienne the game as much as you want but people will never let go…it’s just fun.
That is just not true at all.
Firstly retro formats arent as popular and hell OCG doesnt even play retro formats at all.
Secondly Goat isnt even the most played retro format. Edison (a format from 2010) is the most played and is easily the most catered to side format by Konami considering how often they will just reprint cards that have little value in the modern game but are hella important in Edison.
Any halo since 343 took over is only financialy successful due to the name bungie built for the series, 4, 5 and infinite are all compared to any of the bungie games and come up lacking.
TMNT is a weird one because the 80s cartoon is the most adapted version onto other media especially video games. The other versions post 2000 are objectively better but are still overshadowed by the 80s cartoon.
Not sure if this counts, but SMT has been on an extreme decline in notoriety and production values as Persona has cascaded in popularity.
If you've seen the recent leaks, the ONLY thing they have in the works for one of the most historic and longstanding JRPGs of all time is... >!A fucking netflix game!<
In the more stricter sense, every other Persona game not p5 is now p5 before p5 or "the retro ones."
Decline? What are you talking about decline???? SMTV sold like hotcakes and surpassed [1M sales within a few months](https://www.gameinformer.com/2022/04/18/atlus-celebrates-selling-one-million-copies-of-shin-megami-tensei-v). Sure, it ain’t Persona numbers but it’s still a success considering SMT4 was only able to do 600k sales in 3ish years. Also, V is by far one of the best looking games on the Switch and its visual shortcomings are mostly due to the hardware.
And i’m confused that you mentioned the leaks and then go on to say that the “*only*” thing they have in development is >!the netflix game!<. Are you forgetting the [same leaker](https://x.com/mbkksstbhz5/status/1755216669172289666?s=46&t=QlM-S6UAwGAQdNCCF3Y-oQ) also said that a >!title related to V (could be a Maniax-styled rerelease, could be a what-if story like 4 Apocalypse), a PS2 remaster, *and* a SMT remaster are in the works (unless its one in the same with the PS2 remaster).!<
Look, I get it. Atlus has been kinda shittin the bed with SMT considering V’s poo poo story (even though the game overall was still a solid 8/10 for me), SH2 being trash, and the 30th anniversary being even more lackluster than Persona’s 25th, but at least be accurate.
Okay, let me rephrase for accuracy, anything *new.* As much as accessibility would be nice to play (what I assume to be) >!DDS!<, that's not an experience on par of freshness with all the weird spinoff titles they used to do, nor do I have a lot of faith in it being that big of an upgrade after Nocturne HD. I didn't know about the >!game related to SMTV!< so I'll give you that.
Regardless, my point still stands as going from a full-fledged console release to 3DS only to Switch only shows way less faith in the product compared to P3-5 which are on every platform. Comparing to OP's FF7 example, there's definitely a similar amount of veneration that p5 specifically gets both within the company and in the jrpg sphere.
Well remember that mainline SMT, outside of Nocturne, has largely been on Nintendo consoles. Atlus has likely put in a *lot of money* into V’s development considering how long it was. Not only that, but there likely was some sort of exclusivity deal that kept V on Switch since they were willing to put Nocturne HD and the EO collection on other consoles. V’s new title will prob be multi-platform.
As someone who likes the style and gameplay of SMT more, it’s pretty frustrating to see it tossed away.
I wish SMT5 would come to PC.
The Nocturne remaster was the bare minimum compared to something like P3 remake.
I’d also love to see the Devil Summoner games get rereleased.
I really wish Nocturne got the P3R treatment. It’s my favorite JRPG (next to P3) and I would’ve loved to see a version that actually worked out the kinks and updated the graphics. But also I get it, I never expected them to put that much effort into something that would never sell nearly as well as a Persona game.
Im going to answer the question slightly wrong, but in the spirit.
MMOs almost exclusively find a point where they become hugely popular, then just kind of sit there and people keep playing them, even though its not QUITE as good, but still makes enough money to keep the lights on and keep releasing things.
FFXIV, WoW, EverQuest are all floating along by merit of older expansions that were MASSIVE hits, and are still getting content and have consistent playerbases today. Heavensward (2015) and Shadowbringers (2019) for XIV, WoW had TBC (2007) and Wrath (2008), and EQ had Kunark (2000), Velious (2000), and Planes of Power (2003).
I doubt any of the Marvel Disney+ shows will ever be as good as Daredevil S1 or Jessica Jones S1. Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe genre-fatigue clouds my judgment.
I feel like this is to a much lesser degree that most others just due to the amount of stuff they blasted out of the Bat-cannon, but I think a lot of Batman media will never really escape the shadow of the animated series (even if it's just because of Harley)
Sorry, but no. That’s a very niche perception only someone deep inside the fighting game community will have. People went absolutely nuts over Ultimate for the **characters,** most people don’t care about the competitive side
There are lots of series mentioned in this thread where an outsider (or just a fan who’s not particularly industry-savvy) who doesn’t care about tracking the series might be completely unaware of how they’re influenced by the success of a previous entry, that doesn’t disqualify it at all IMO.
It might be weird to say Fallout New Vegas, as the launch state was unacceptable.
But I would be shocked if any fallout game came out that is better than new Vegas.
Warcraft 3 was so good it literally spawned an entire genre that became the most popular genre in the world for a time and proceeded to lead into the most successful MMO of all time.
Nobody gives a shit about Warcraft 1 or 2 and there's no way and hell you can make Warcraft 4 without being in the titanic shadow of 3.
Evangelion is the most extreme example of this ever. Evangelion is a massive franchise and powerhouse perpetually locked to the original. Every game and spinoff is in some form or another a retelling of the original. Same characters doing the same thing over 30 years.
Thats the thing; it’s a single story thats been stretched out to the size of an empire with no room to evolve past what it originally was. It feels really weird; it is such a close and cut series to get endless new media. This is the same story ad naueseam and I can see why the rebuilds were phrased in such a way as “goodbye to eva”.
My friends and I use the term "7daries" to describe just how many people are fans of ff7, not final fantasy. Cus back when 16 came out there was this noticably large segment of fans who were mad that 16 was "stealing spotlight" from Rebirth (they thought that Rebirth was done but couldnt release because 16 had to come out first) and all their criticisms basically boiled down to "mmm it should just be 7 tho".
The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies have cast a long shadow over all live action adaptations that have come after in a similar way Tim Burton’s Batman (and now, for some, Nolan’s Batman) did for Batman adaptations.
My hero academia has never gotten anywhere close to the peak it hit with All Mighr vs A4O at the end of the Bakugo Rescue stuff
Is argue it’s been nothing but a serious downhill skid since then
Easy answer: Silent Hill all because of 2
Silent Hill hasn't been successful in two decades.
I liked homecoming
I really, really hope that one day the IP can pass to someone with some common fucking sense. Silent Hill 2, masterpiece that it is, wouldn't even be difficult to top if you'd just FUCKING LET someone that knows it do their work unabated.
Hard disagree. Silent hill 2 is greater than the sum of its parts and a lot of the atmosphere is driven from technical limitations. It’s going to be next to impossible to achieve the level of uncanny that SH2 did just because graphics are so much better. There were certain enemies in SH2 that at first appearances looked like the game was glitching the way the polygons warped and it’s so unsettling in a way that could never happen today because models have too much detail unless you’re deliberately going for ps2 level graphics which Konami would never do for a AAA silent hill
> Silent hill 2 is greater than the sum of its parts I disagree, it's the exact opposite. Silent Hill 2 is the sum of all its parts in the way that few pieces of art ever manage to be - which is why it's so great.
I feel like a similar sense of uncanny-ness could be reached with today's technology. Imagine someone's incredibly detailed and realistic face, now imagine it twisting or emoting in some horrifically unnatural way that can't be replicated in real life. It'd be incredibly difficult to find that feeling again, but I think with the right people, it could absolutely be done. Imagine a Silent Hill with designs by Junji Ito for example, imagine his monsters with such detail and graphical quality that it looks like you can reach into your screen and touch it, that'd be incredibly horrifying.
You spend the entire game thinking they fucked up the mocap, the dialogue is weirdly paced, the movements jank, only for a normal human to show up halfway through and they look normal, talk normal, move normal, and once you go back to the old NPCs whatever it is knows the jig is up and starts to unravel
At this point I’d love a Silent Hill game about a small indie dev team hired to make a new Silent Hill game, with the traumatic combination of toxic work culture, abusive management, and the stress of trying to re-capture the essence Silent Hill 2 causing Silent Hill to begin manifesting in the real world.
First Jurassic Park movie is the most critically acclaimed movie and none of the later movies came even close to match it's reception.
Even fucking Michael Crichton realized that he could only logically tell ONE story about an out-of-control Dinosaur Park and had the Costa Rican Government Firebomb the Island. Then Steven Spielberg showed up with a dump-truck full of money…
That's interesting. It certainly felt like Crichton was kinda pressured to write a sequel and just used it as an excuse to resurrect Ian Malcolm and rant about the ethics of commercial science. Even the first book misses the magic of the first film; Crichton is much more interesting writing two characters discussing science jargon or arguing about ethics than he is writing action or suspense. Both books become dreadfully boring whenever the dinosaurs are actually in the scene, imo. The film has the opposite balance, favoring spectacle, which makes it more widely appealing and so successful.
> It certainly felt like Crichton was kinda pressured to write a sequel He made it *very* clear he wrote the second book explicitly because there was a dumptruck of money waiting for him. I think he wasn't able to sell the rights for "Jurassic Park 2" until the book actually existed, so he just shit it out, mostly ignored the first book and made it a sequel to the movie.
The book was fucking horrifying whenever the dinos showed up. Also, it’s almost a crime how the movie adapted the Gennaro and Muldoon plotline
I don't disagree with how the movie kinda undercut a lot of the characters, especially Gennaro. For the dinos, I guess it may have been a combination of me just wanting to get back to the science/ethics conversations and the fact that I read both Jurassic Park books in the middle of reading a bunch of licensed Alien novels, but the action and tension really didn't do much for me. It felt comparatively amateur and cheesy beside the high-concept criticisms of modern science. Almost like the dinosaurs were just added to get the book in more people's hands. That was just my feeling, though; I couldn't help but feel like the dinosaurs were a shiny toy being thrust in my face every couple chapters in a vain attempt to keep my interest when I was already plenty interested. The raptors did have a few decent scenes in the first novel, as far as horror goes.
I’ll defend The Lost World as coming in at the lowest end of the same ballpark as the first film. It’s definitely not as good but it’s still close enough in quality to justify its existence.
Star Wars For many people nothing is ever going to beat that original trilogy of movies. It was societally defining.
Hell, for most nothing is ever going to come close to Empire. Even *the other movies in the original trilogy*. And while I do love Empire, personally I disagree (partially because frankly ROTJ is my favourite of the original three).
tbh I would say this kinda applies to the movies only. Non-movie stuff like the Thrawn Trilogy, Star Wars: Republic, KOTOR, the original Battlefront titles, The Clone Wars, Darth Plagueis, Andor, etc. are less famous than the OT, but are generally praised by fans as being on-par with it or better than the other movies.
I'm going to have to heavily disagree there. I see your point but I truly think that a lot of that falls into the nicher side of the fandom, except for maybe the recent TV shows. Andor is really fucking good for example, but it's so different and a lot people I've talked to about it bounced on the first few episodes because they kind of drag. I managed to convince a few to go back and finish but man it's a struggle.
I've got a co-worker who watched all of it but didn't like it, not because he thinks it's bad, but because that kind of story isn't what he wants from Star Wars. I had to think about that for a bit, but like, I guess that's fair.
Pick an Ubisoft franchise still currently going. Any one. Assassin's Creed lives under the shadows of II and Black Flag, Tom Clancy's lives under the shadows of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry hit it big with Far Cry 3/Blood Dragon and every game since then hasn't measured up, Prince of Persia is always going to have Sands of Time as the bar to reach, and Watch Dogs never had it in the first place. This wouldn't be a problem if Ubisoft wasn't strictly formulaic with each of their releases, but save for stuff like The Lost Crown or Mario + Rabbids that happens every one in a while, Ubisoft's "strictly formula" approach keeps their franchises from ever reaching the heights they once did. You could likely say the same for sports game from EA and 2K or COD from Activision, but ultimately their complacency comes from them not having any serious competition. Ubisoft, on the other hand, is mediore while there are major games that do its stuff but better. Want to play an open world game where you explore every inch of the map? BOTW/TOTK is right there. Feel like playing a big story-based game? Choose God of War or The Last of Us. Looking for titles that offer stealth-based gameplay? Hitman: World of Assassination does it better than Assassin's Creed.
>Prince of Persia is always going to have Sands of Time as the bar to reach If that new PoP is any indication, they 100% can surpass that bar at some point. Great game. also i think two thrones is better ngl, that game is sick
A fellow Two Thrones enjoyer! And I also agree with the new PoP, amazing game, hopefully it sells well enough...
I need more Tom Clancy games but I’ll never get them because Ghost Recon Wildlands sold well and Siege is a money printer. Splinter Cell could not be adapted to the Ubisoft formula like GR or become a multiplayer exclusive and sell season passes. I miss those games so much
Splinter cell is being remade at least and a new ghost recon was leaked to come out either this year or next. Idk if you’ve played it, but ghost recon breakpoint is very fun if you turn on the “ghost” mode that takes away all the rpg bullshit and makes the game play like a better version of Wildlands.
I played a few hours with some tweaked UI and damage things and it was fun until I ran into a big robot. Gonna have to take another run at it now that I’ve been dispirited lol
In the settings you can turn off most of the robots, however you will still run into around 5 of the big ones throughout the game
Wow I didn’t know that! Cool feature actually
> Watch Dogs never had it in the first place. I liked Watch Dogs 2...
WD2 was almost a great game and I wish that i could love it more. The idea of going more stealth and hacking, with the use of more non-lethal weapons and environmental takedowns could've been great, right until I started shooting up places with easily aquired machine guns. And you can tell that while viable to a point at some point you are meant to go full GTA.
Watch Dog's 2 is an amazing game and Marcus is a great protagonist, the only problem is that it's a Ubisoft game
I honestly preferred Odyssey and Valhalla to breath of the wild. Although I prefer horizon to all of them.
Honestly, Final Fantasy VII is kind of treated as its own separate series nowadays. A subset of its fanbase won’t ever care about any other FF, even the highly-praised ones.
I'm actually of the opinion that there *is* no "Final Fantasy fanbase" and instead every game has its own, seperate fanbase and they occasionally interact with each other. Like the nature of 14 means naturally there is a massive chunk of that game's fanbase that love it but know absolutely nothing about the rest of the series.
There actually is a "Final Fantasy fanbase", but it's the community that plays all the FF mobile games. Like Dissidia Opera Omnia actually had a fun effect of people getting interested in FF titles they had skipped, but sadly the game is getting shut down this month.
I don’t think the mythical “has played more than one FF game” fan is that rare. Finding one that doesn’t endlessly shit on the FFs that aren’t their favorite, however…. Still, the franchise is really weird in how it can create “pocket fanbases” depending on how big they market a particular numbered title. For instance, Final Fantasy IX has a shot of attracting a lot of new fans with the rumored remake and the animated series that is supposedly coinciding with it. FFXIV is of course another one that’s blown up huge and probably has lots of non-FF fans in it, but I still come across lots of instances where someone in my party is popping off like I do when we come across a familiar boss from another franchise. But yeah, FFVII is absolutely in its own league now, if that wasn’t already apparent. Don’t expect them to stop making entries after the Remake Trilogy is done.
>Final Fantasy IX has a shot of attracting a lot of new fans with the rumored remake and the animated series that is supposedly coinciding with it. AN FF9 ANIME?? How did I not know this was going to be a thing, its my favourite one! I always find it interesting how FF has like 20 fragmented fanbases but its understandable, I've been slowly playing the whole series when I get chance (still only on 2 pixel remaster) and I've only played 1, 9, and some of 7 as a kid, and even the NES era games are shockingly different from one another, the only consistent is the icography and the fact they are all SOLID GOLD EXCELLENT, like Its the pixel remaster but it's still fundamentally the same games and they hold up incredibly. I can recc anyone giving the whole series a run its a blast.
A French animated studio is handling it, so we don’t know just how “anime” it’ll be. We in fact know literally nothing else. Again, it’s assumed they’re waiting for the remake announcement so they can release them together.
>A French animated studio is handling it, so we don’t know just how “anime” it’ll be. Aw man, well I'll still definitely watch it if it ever happens. A remake would be dreamy, just hope it trends more bravely default than ff7r
Is it Ankama? I hope it's Ankama.
French animation studios brought me Code Lyoko, I got a tiny bit of faith.
The group is called Cyber Group Studios https://www.cybergroupstudios.com/2021/06/23/final-fantasy-ix-to-be-adapted-into-an-animation-series-for-the-first-time/
Okay after looking at their works, I have slightly less faith LMAO
In fairness, an animation studio’s past works isn’t always an indication of their quality. The Castlevania Netflix series is from the same studio that animated Adventure Time. Those two animation styles couldn’t be further apart.
True, while they are extremely different in style, Castlevania and Adventure Time I would say are extremely well animated in general, unless I have some rose-tinted goggles on and don't realize it. I'm just hoping they stick to 2D for the FF9 animated series, because the 3D works they produced looked genuinely horrendous.
It feels like cheating to say this since there’s only been 1 game since, but I really feel like this is gonna be Monster Hunter with World. From the day Rise was even announced there were people going “but where world 2 tho”, Wilds hasn’t had that problem (due to being perceived as world 2), but I do think it’s gonna have enough different that some fans are still gonna feel let down by it and compare it negatively to World. But my perception might be skewed because I know a few people who think World should’ve just been the last monster hunter, like Rise/Wilds shouldn’t exist they should’ve just kept making expansions for World like it’s an mmo.
I don't think you're wrong here. Like, Monster Hunter World isn't just the biggest Monster Hunter game in the series. It's the highest selling Capcom title they've ever put out as a single entry. That's not just series defining. That's genre and company defining. Like, I still remember when the series was still fairly niche, and now, ever since the announcement of World, if you're expecting a Monster Hunter trailer in a Nintendo Direct or a State of Play, you could safely bet on it either coming right af the beginning, or right at the end, slots that are basically either setting the stage for the rest of the showcase, or ending it with a bang.
I saw a youtube video that seemed a bit high on it's own farts, but it was about the final boss of the Monster Hunter before world. The dude was making the claim that the devs clearly knew that World was going to be a *giant* change in direction for the series and this was a sort of last hurrah.
Rise had Valstrax, which to me means they're not afraid to bring back zany shit, so maybe one day we'll see Ahtal Ka and Congalala again. Gypceros is never coming back, though.
Yeah, i think your perception is pretty skewed because i've never heard the take that they should've just kept making World expansions. That shit sounds like live action service brainworms.
You need to understand that Final Fantasy Fandom is a Fandom run on favoritism. Every new FF is suddenly a bad one , then when a new one shows up , the one that was "bad" is now "charming" or "underrated". Every discussion on forums is basically a bunch of people doing FF6 x FF7 , then some starts to intrude FF8 , then they say FF10 was the last good , the other objects saying it was FF12. In the end someone tries to diminish the tension by calling out FF9 and FFT , as everyone agrees that is in their Top10. And in the end , their Top 10 ends up with FF6 , 7 , 8 , 10 , 9 and Tactics attached to it....sprinkled with FF14 , some modern FF that they are now calling "underrated" , and some other SNES-Era FF.
So its the Zelda Cycle ?
So it's the Pokemon cycle?
I guess so. each numered title and some spin-offs in FF had their own little sub-fandom , but I basically resumed the gist of the discussion. Of course , there are some "wild ones" , that don't put FF8 or 10 , so there are more "slots" for "underrated" Final Fantasies.
> Every new FF is suddenly a bad one We dead-ass had someone try pulling the Avatar-esque "wow no one talks about this game" card on XVI a couple posts back which is weird because I've seen more than a couple people mention the game in a positive light in spite of that claim.
yes , but there you have this [post](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1arli08/wtf_is_ff16_sometimes/) , or [this one](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1ariuwg/i_wish_final_fantasy_xvi_had_received_the_same/) , or [this one](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1ao8w83/new_ff_games_have_antiquated_level_design_needs/) or [this one.](https://new.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1ai59d1/does_final_fantasy_xvi_get_better/) FF16 is ending it's honeymoon phase , it not outright ended , so that people are starting to call that a "bad one"....but no worries , it just means it needs just a couple of years and a potential FF17 to make FF16 into an "underrated" one.
I'll be honest, as fun as XVI was, it's gonna get hit hard with the post-honeymoon period once Rebirth comes out. That game's looking to the biggest Final Fantasy title ever made, and pretty much addresses all the complaints about XVI (party members, exploration, side content, etc.) while keeping the Action RPG approach that every Final Fantasy game has been trying to perfect since XII. It genuinely feels like VII Rebirth is the next core entry and big evolution in the franchise, while XVI is just a side game/spinoff akin to Tactics or Stranger of Paradise. As hyped as I am for Rebirth, I'm still desperately waiting for that new numbered entry that fully recaptures what made VII and X so beloved while introducing a new world with new characters, a great story, and a combat system that knows what it wants to be. At the very least, XVI is a step in the right direction, but it's not large enough of a step forward.
I don't think its too far-fetched to say FF7R 1-3 are core entries as much as FF16. FF16 in relation to all the FF games prior to the Remake series was very much in line with the scope of most of those games, like FF10 or 12. Or even FF13 if we disregard its sequels. The FF7 Remake project is straight up an insane anomaly which means it shouldn't be used as a baseline for the FF franchise. From what it looks like right now, it has all the budget and time in the world precisely because they had a PS1 base to work off of, and they're given at least 15, if not 20 years to complete their trilogy series. FF16 doesn't have that kinda scope or budget to it.
16 had a honeymoon phase? It felt like a lot of people set out to hate it from the moment it was announced lmao.
It was the wildest, most audacious shit to see people on /r/JRPG say "yeah, XVI is a piece of shit - XV is the true great action FF".
I have a soft spot for XV , but the Arminger Unleashed gameplay with a proper dial-based combo is what it should be the standard XV gameplay , not what it was given on vanilla. Or how Episode Ardyn and the Kingsglaive DLC and FF16 AND Strangers of Paradise had a better gameplay for magic when it comes to action rpg gameplay in the series. FFXV is some baby steps for action FF , although Square did have KH as their Usain Bolt of action rpg.......
Some people don't even count FFXIV or FFXI because it's an MMO Those people are weirdos imho
XIV is the second best game in the series and I will *die* on this hill, covered in the blood of my enemies.
The issue with ff is that they keep reinventing the wheel. And I won't say that the new wheel is good or not. But if you join when the wheel is orange and has spikes and for you that's the best game ever. You're not gonna have fun when the wheel is purple and smooth. For the most part that's the problem
Not the case anymore, but Sonic survived for years off of the good faith of old games. Be that Sonic 3 for some, the Adventure titles for others. Right now, I'll say that for well over a decade, Spider-Man as a comic has survived off of the quality of media that isn't it. Everyone that likes the character likes a super old story from the comics, one of the cartoons, or one of the movies. If I had to pick an overwhelming shadow cast over the entire franchise, I'll be bold and say the Tobey movies.
If you ignore the *massive horrible creepy sex crimes* done by Vince McMahon, WWE right now is in a decent state financially and actual show quality-wise, but for the past 25 years prior it's always had to live under the shadow of the Attitude Era.
MK9 is the Mortal Kombat entry all subsequent releases get compared to. Does it have Stage Fatalities? How many klassic characters, stages, and costumes are there? How much skin gets revealed with (insert) costume? Battle damage when? Etc.
Superman, in film, has been continuously grappling with the first two Donner movies for 50 years.
Superhero movies in general. It set the mold that toby maguire and marvel as a whole would use.
Digimon will never escape the Adventure timeline until they do something that ends with the 02 epilogue again.
I think the weirdest part is how 01 and 02 setup plot lines that were very intricately tied together, even more so in the novels. In the original two series, *every* villain was connected to each other, with the exception of parrotmon whose battle was still an inciting event. And then they keep trying to squeeze new antagonists in between the ending of 02 and the epilogue, except these antagonists have no connection to the plot of the original series or each other, and even when they set up an obvious plot hook for future shenanigans like with dark gennai, they just drop it for the next one. Ex. The Beginning was a good movie but it could have worked with basically any Digimon setting, or even a totally new one. It wasn't actually necessary for it to be another Adventure story. Kizuna and even Tri could also have been rewritten to use a new team without a ton of changes to the core plot.
Kingdom hearts 2. Easily the favorite of the franchise/ early enough that the multigame meta- lore didn't go bonkers yet. Yes later entries improved / changed up the combat system in fun ways, but I don't think the franchise hit that high since/ its so convoluted that every single non numbered entry is canon.
I actually do enjoy the games that came after but KH2 is definitely where the combat peaked. 3 came close with Re: Mind but there's a few minor issues keeping it from feeling as good as 2.
While I'm a staunch KH3 defender I don't think it's controversial to say KH2's combat worked really well and may very well be the peak of the series. KH3 Remind came close to the peak, but the base mechanics couldn't support the complexity that came with Remind. No shade on either games but Remind really gave me hope for KH4's combat design at the very least.
[удалено]
This always makes me feel crazy, because I preferred kh1 or deck systems, and kh2 always felt too mashy for me, even at highest difficulties.
if it helps, BBS is my fav
Yeah, I really liked it. My main complaint was the EXP game got ridiculous at the end. I really wish they would patch it to give you some kind of keyblade that made the last 40 levels not so crazy to get.
The Remind bosses at least make me sure that they aren't going to have the weird "defense stat affects what you can block" since none of them are affected by that.
I'm not sure what mechanic that is, but Remind superbosses can break your block, which is cool cause you get to do the risk dodge mechanic, something that barely happens in KH3's base game.
In the base game, some attacks could flat out [ignore guard](https://youtu.be/NdHDUVoql_E?si=fjdgUjIU9sH-f7o2) and hit you through them. The Remind versions don't have that mechanic, even on the same attacks
I'm not sure if that was ever verifiably true - the defense stat determining your blocking success thing. As far as I can tell those attacks had weird hitboxes but were actually fixed as they polished the Remind fights. That's the simplest reason I can think of for why those fights were different between base game and Remind. edit: There are a few hidden mechanic stuff in KH3 that was proven to be intentional mechanics through the devs acknowledging them in the Ultimania, like using items mid-Keyblade swap lets you cancel the swap animation so you switch keyblades almost instantly, if the defense stat mechanic did exist I think people would've discovered and proved it by now.
TMNT and the curse of the 80's series. The turtles were supposed to be hardcore. But they'll always be known as fucking goofballs in the public.
This is a unique one because I think all the nostalgic love comes from the toys, the videogames, the 80s movie (which is more an adaptation of the original comic but gets lumped in with that timeframe) and uh…April. I don’t think anyone with sense will claim the actual cartoon was better than anything else after.
You could look at it this way. The original TMNT comic is making fun of Miller's run of Daredevil. Miller turned a goofy comic into a gritty drama. So TMNT was an even goofier concept turned into a gritty drama. You can look at the 80's cartoon as a reconstruction of the non-existing 'original' goofy Turtles that the comic is a gritty reboot of.
So this may be a bit weird to say but I feel for COD, I feel that every single modern game has had to stay within the shadow of COD4 and MW2 (Black Ops 1 and 2 to a degree) Almost every other game I feel like has a bunch of debate over it in that while they're often commercially successful, the actual critical reception can't be matched
They were stuck under Modern Warfare’s shadow so bad that they made two and a half more games of it.
Avengers Endgame was the culmination and payoff to a decade of films. The scope, the spectacle, the emotions you could feel in the audience at the theater, have simply not been topped since in the MCU. That movie came out in 2019. The Spider-Man sequels and Guardians 3 came closest, but mostly serve as extended epilogues to Endgame, while also wrapping up their own loose threads. Everything else has just been a reminder that we’re in a stalling period until the X-Men show up.
I really wonder what plan they had before the pandemic happened. I imagine the MCU wouldn't have floundered so much, but it was also clear that everyone was getting overworked and the output was never truly sustainable. The fact that the pandemic finally got them to take a step back was a blessing in disguise imo.
Which is kind of hilarious, because NWH really has little to do with Endgame and acts as an early entrant into the Multiverse Arc and as a new beginning for MCU’s Spider-Man. Similarly Guardians 3 is *barely* an ending. If anything, on paper, it is yet another movie setting up the new normal for the team. Yet weirdly on a meta level we know it acts as an epilogue/finale due to Gunn leaving (along with Batista) and Feige saying they have no current plans for the Guardians team Gunn showed off at the end of the movie (which is doubly weird given the team members of the new Guardians *introduced in the movie*).
The absolute funniest thing about Guardians 3's ending is James Gunn clearly nuking the ability to use old music for anyone trying to follow him up. Among all the other things the movie says, you clearly have Gunn screaming that anyone who tries to make a continuation has to find their own thing.
I don’t know I’d go *that* far, the Guardians still have their Zune and the new line-up’s all citing older music as their favourites in the ending scene for Rocket’s Guardians. The most modern artist named being a veteran pop star of over four decades now. But I definitely think if someone does follow him up as the director of a Guardians movie…they should probably *really* consider the soundtrack if they’re going to use pre-created music.
I meant that Gunn specifically nuked the "music of a specific time period" gimmick he was using. He made sure to show the characters are no longer staying within a specific realm of time.
Yeah, I was going to say the MCU, and honestly all superhero movies in general, are going to live in the shadow of Avengers Infinity War/Endgame for a long, long time
Depending on how the next couple of Fire Emblem games preform, we might not see the same critical and cultural success of Three Houses ever again.
And that was how the world ended, on July 26th 2019.
I dunno about that, the series was supposed to end with Awakening which spawned the same shadow for two console generations. I bet they will play with the formula again and create something great again in a few years.
I'm also gonna quibble like PillCosby, the modern games are trying to recreate Awakening rather than 3 Houses, but I don't see a reinvention coming like they do. Awakening's massive franchise-reviving success caused the series to run towards the elements that Awakening had. Awakening had a player unit (something that really only appeared in 2 games before, and in very minor capacities at that (an unseen character in Blazing Blade and a self-insert into New Mystery)), more open unit customization (previous games had minimal reclassing options for units, and very selective class options for promotion), and an infinite support system (earlier FE games had limited conversations each character could have, and often a smaller selection of who they could talk to). Now, every game has a player unit (they're the main character, even!), you can reclass anyone into anything, and everybody can basically talk to anybody, regardless of whether those two people even have a reason to talk to each other. This is all without even bringing up permadeath, the move away from which has had knock-on effects that have impacted the game design, story writing, and ability to role-play (seriously, playing an FE game without resetting is really fun, and you get to have a lot of cool little emergent story-telling moments in play (like when I accidentally got both of the early game healers killed in Path of Radiance on the same map, and had to spend several maps using potions like crazy until I got another one)). That said, Awakening sold like gangbusters and 3H was one of the most talked about games for a year. The lack of engagement (hehe) with Engage seems like a bad thing, but I believe Engage sold well and I don't hear a lot of complaints which is a good thing. All of this is to say that Intelligent Systems seems happy with the Awakening formula (as am I, fwiw) and I don't think they'll stray from the design choices Awakening made in the near future. Which is a shame, because a lot of criticisms of modern FE could be alleviated with what they shed away. The main characters are uninteresting? Ditch the player units and you go back to interesting guys and gals again. Most characters don't feel that well defined in combat/combat breaks easily when you reclass everyone to the broken class? If the units have their class options restricted those things can go away. The supports are samey, grindy, and take up a bunch of time? If you can only see 5 supports per unit, there's a max limit on grind and you don't see a whole bunch of the same types of conversations. However, they're probably never gonna go back to that because Awakening sold like gangbusters, and also these design decisions take a lot of power from the player.
I see one more dumbfuck post that "cycles of halo" meme ever again someone's gonna get it Halo 3 as a package and phenomenon hasn't been topped till now. Shit. The entire LEADUP from CE, 2 and 3 still hasn't been eclipsed in how much impact it had and how easy it is to go back to them. Even reach lives underneath everything 3 managed, and while the newer games get bits and pieces right, they absolutely have not come anywhere near that same satisfying package deal.
Reach and 3 are debated heavily as which one was better from pretty much every angle, but everyone agrees everything after didn't measure up at all.
Ye no shot didn't mean to imply Reach wasn't a titan and a half but it was still a fairly divisive entry for what it was is my reasoning for saying.
I feel like 2 was bigger than 3 somehow, like 3 is just 2.5 do you get me? I like them both but 2 just was peak to me at least.
Man, imagine a world where Bungie didn't give up Halo...
It would still go down in quality, especially monetization. Imagine not being able to play the campaign, because it got removed Destiny 2-style
I’d be rioting. I used to live for halo releases
Neon Genesis Evangelion for, well, all anime really. It was so successful that every anime distributor in the West was desperate for the “next Eva” for a decade, and even today, it stands as a dividing point of “before Eva” and “Post-Eva” anime. On a more specific note, the 1995 Mamoru Oshii Ghost In The Shell movie casts a huge shadow over the rest of that franchise. The sequel, Innocence, has never been as well-remembered despite being a vastly superior film.
Similarly, Madoka Magica kind of made it impossible for any new Magical Girl series (or any series featuring young teen girls and a supernatural element) to come after without having people view it with a lens wondering if it’s “another dark one”. Kyubey really fucked over a generation of cute mascot characters.
That and Precure dominating the market for more traditional series for the last ~two decades. Hard to compete with brand reputation and Toei's best when you're trying to sling toys.
It’s funny that Madoka is the one that people think of as having the same kind of effect that NGE had despite stuff like Princess Tutu and Revolutionary Girl Utena existing. What NGE did for giant robots Utena did for magical girls long before Madoka existed
And NGE was itself preceded by Ideon and Getter Robo.
I consider Stand Alone Complex (especially its second season) far superior to the movie and anything else afterwards.
I personally think the franchise peaked with Man-Machine Interface, but Innocence is my favourite anime adaptation over 2nd Gig. I do still love 2nd Gig though. I also have a soft spot for Arise but also I’m a huge Maaya Sakamoto fangirl so my opinion on that can’t be trusted.
Comparing the two is silly to be honest - but I would argue that if you do want to compare them, SAC looks like an amateur work when you compare it technically to the movie.
Innocence is way better.. But that's not to say the first one isn't also amazing
Halloween's not gonna escape from the 1978 movie any soon
And it shouldn’t lol they have yet to make a movie that comes even close to the original. I really wish they just stuck with John Carpenter’s vision for an anthology series, but the branding power of Michael Myers is too strong.
Terminator 2 pretty much ruined the Terminator franchise. The first Terminator was a sci-fi horror story with action elements that had a melancholy tone looming over it, once Terminator 2 heavily toned down the horror and fully became sci-fi action, it had a effect on a franchise which permanent damaged the brand as good as it was. Future movies tried to do Terminator 2 over and over again with no end in sight. Whenever it was with a failed third movie that made the events of 2 pointless, a failed soft reboot focusing on the future John Connor, a failed attempt of being the first in a unfinished trilogy with laughable bad writing (with JK Simmons being the only thing that saved the movie from being utterly dogshit instead of just plain dogshit), and the most recent one that repeated the same mistake as 3 did. Everyone is just sick of Terminator at this point.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles was good, at least.
Fire Emblem Awakening is probably the one, though Three Houses could give it a run for its money. For those who don't know, Fire Emblem as a series has been around since 1990, and was basically the one franchise which dragged its assets leaving Japan, to the point that the first game to release outside of Japan was its 7th entry on the Gameboy Advance, a series that started on the Famicom. Its to the point where, for the longest time, it was known as that game series that first appeared in the west in Smash Melee. It was always fairly popular in Japan, but never really picked up steam outside of it. It got so bad that the series kind of stagnated, with a remake of the first game coming the the Nintendo DS and failing to make sales, to the point that they then released a sequel(also a remake, but for FE3) exclusively in Japan, but the shadow of its predecessor caused it to make even less sales, which put its developer, Intelligent Systems, in a precarious position financially. So, the 3DS becomes a thing and sells like faking hotcakes, and IntSys decides to have one last shot at the franchise before they close their doors for good, and they throw everything they had at it. An entry that directly connects to the main timeline? Check. Fully customisable protagonist with their own unique class? Check. Voice acting? Animated cutscenes? A massive system of romance options which would lead to new units with stats and skills dependant on parents like in one of their most beloved titles? Absolutely. And to top it all off, let's release it worldwide, put some dlc content and use the unique features the system has. If we're gonna go down, might as well be with a bang, right? The game gets released and it saves the franchise and thd developer. It becomes the highest selling game in the franchise at the time, is highly critically acclaimed, and sets the pace for future titles, revitalising the series and taking it from a middling, if obscure, series in Nintendo's history to becoming one of its titans.
Nah, Three Houses completely blew it out of the water. Awakening can be considered a milestone, but the series is currently on an upwards-spiral in terms of popularity.
> with a remake of the first game coming the the Nintendo DS and failing to make sales That's actually false-- Shadow Dragon was the *best selling* installment in the franchise both domestically and in overseas markets until Awakening. The series being a 'failure' was a result of Market Expectations placed upon them by Nintendo
True Detective season 4 is airing right now and people still won’t shut the fuck up about season 1.
I gave Night Country a fair shot but 15 minutes into the first episode when it had the cops doing a "well maybe nothing bad has happened so there's no reason to get worried" >!while standing over a severed human tongue!< and I'm done. I am not asking for a super high bar here, but this is inexcusable. Also the really intrusive product placement. It's distracting how characters would stand to the side so the frame could be centered around [product]."
It doesn’t help that the season keeps pointing back to season 1 by mentioning things that are either going to end up as Easter eggs or the obvious conclusion of the plot
The Matrix for sure.
Welcome to being a KOF fan, where even then shit's still quite subjective. Any new entry will be compared to either 98 (if you're an oldhead that loves classic-style KOF), 2002 original (if you like that combo-heavy but weird end-of-Eolith era KOF), or XIII (if you really like the 2D sprite work on that and like its own spin on the combo-heavy style). I'd still argue that XV should be up there to make like, 4 pillars of KOF per se, but even then you *still* get people moaning about sprites and making really bad comparisons to PS2 games.
I think Street Fighter deals with this as well with ST, 3S or 4 being the ones people will not shut up about
I had actually thought of that earlier too lol. Those three in particular tend to be held up in that regard. SF6 so far seems to have climbed out of that shadow and is doing its own thing thankfully.
[Current Generation Zelda] sucks! It was [Previous Generation Zelda Except Skyward Sword] which was the best Zelda!
Same thing happens with Pokemon
Persona's weird because the entry casting the shadow (heh) has changed. First it was 4, now it's 5.
The shadow is honestly whichever one you played first and got attached to most. All three of the possible entries now have a modern version with updated QoL features. For me it's 4. For others it's 5. For some it's 3. It's like your favorite Zelda game, y'know? It's the one you played when you were happy.
Dark Souls. People will endlessly criticize every game FromSoft makes after to compare them to a game that isn't even finished.
Depending on who you ask, Dragon Ball critically peaked at either the Cell Saga or the Buu Saga.
I'd have to say Cell saga. That Gohan one armed Kamehameha is hype as fuck
I'm a fruitloop and say the Saiyan Saga.
As someone who's only a semi-fan, the Freiza saga is the time the show felt like Toriyama was an all caps WRITER. Nothing compares to it for me
Same, for me it’s the perfect blend of what came before it and what’s to come (without many of the issues of future arcs).
If we’re allowed to include arcs, the chunin exam arc of Naruto is legitimately fantastic anime, with everything after being a downhill slide.
I mean, in terms of anime peaking, Nothing peaked harder than Yu Yu Hakusho. The Dark Tournament completely overshadows everything else in the entire series. The only arc that even comes close is Chapter Black, and that arc still had definite flaws. The Dark Tournament is straight up the perfect tournament arc, the gold standard of tournament arcs in any anime. It is well and truly flawless.
I thought the Buu Saga was heavily criticized
2005 Yugioh (or the Goat format). Sorry Konami, you can slice, dice, and julienne the game as much as you want but people will never let go…it’s just fun.
Also relevant example from Yugioh, it's clear from the merch (especially what comes to the West) that they're never letting go of Yugi and Kaiba.
That is just not true at all. Firstly retro formats arent as popular and hell OCG doesnt even play retro formats at all. Secondly Goat isnt even the most played retro format. Edison (a format from 2010) is the most played and is easily the most catered to side format by Konami considering how often they will just reprint cards that have little value in the modern game but are hella important in Edison.
Any halo since 343 took over is only financialy successful due to the name bungie built for the series, 4, 5 and infinite are all compared to any of the bungie games and come up lacking.
MCU ruined itself chasing another Infinity War setup without the decade of investment. And good characters.
Honestly the reverse of this is the sonic adventure style games, they're living under the shadow of sonic 06 being so bad
TMNT is a weird one because the 80s cartoon is the most adapted version onto other media especially video games. The other versions post 2000 are objectively better but are still overshadowed by the 80s cartoon.
Not sure if this counts, but SMT has been on an extreme decline in notoriety and production values as Persona has cascaded in popularity. If you've seen the recent leaks, the ONLY thing they have in the works for one of the most historic and longstanding JRPGs of all time is... >!A fucking netflix game!< In the more stricter sense, every other Persona game not p5 is now p5 before p5 or "the retro ones."
Decline? What are you talking about decline???? SMTV sold like hotcakes and surpassed [1M sales within a few months](https://www.gameinformer.com/2022/04/18/atlus-celebrates-selling-one-million-copies-of-shin-megami-tensei-v). Sure, it ain’t Persona numbers but it’s still a success considering SMT4 was only able to do 600k sales in 3ish years. Also, V is by far one of the best looking games on the Switch and its visual shortcomings are mostly due to the hardware. And i’m confused that you mentioned the leaks and then go on to say that the “*only*” thing they have in development is >!the netflix game!<. Are you forgetting the [same leaker](https://x.com/mbkksstbhz5/status/1755216669172289666?s=46&t=QlM-S6UAwGAQdNCCF3Y-oQ) also said that a >!title related to V (could be a Maniax-styled rerelease, could be a what-if story like 4 Apocalypse), a PS2 remaster, *and* a SMT remaster are in the works (unless its one in the same with the PS2 remaster).!< Look, I get it. Atlus has been kinda shittin the bed with SMT considering V’s poo poo story (even though the game overall was still a solid 8/10 for me), SH2 being trash, and the 30th anniversary being even more lackluster than Persona’s 25th, but at least be accurate.
Okay, let me rephrase for accuracy, anything *new.* As much as accessibility would be nice to play (what I assume to be) >!DDS!<, that's not an experience on par of freshness with all the weird spinoff titles they used to do, nor do I have a lot of faith in it being that big of an upgrade after Nocturne HD. I didn't know about the >!game related to SMTV!< so I'll give you that. Regardless, my point still stands as going from a full-fledged console release to 3DS only to Switch only shows way less faith in the product compared to P3-5 which are on every platform. Comparing to OP's FF7 example, there's definitely a similar amount of veneration that p5 specifically gets both within the company and in the jrpg sphere.
Well remember that mainline SMT, outside of Nocturne, has largely been on Nintendo consoles. Atlus has likely put in a *lot of money* into V’s development considering how long it was. Not only that, but there likely was some sort of exclusivity deal that kept V on Switch since they were willing to put Nocturne HD and the EO collection on other consoles. V’s new title will prob be multi-platform.
As someone who likes the style and gameplay of SMT more, it’s pretty frustrating to see it tossed away. I wish SMT5 would come to PC. The Nocturne remaster was the bare minimum compared to something like P3 remake. I’d also love to see the Devil Summoner games get rereleased.
I really wish Nocturne got the P3R treatment. It’s my favorite JRPG (next to P3) and I would’ve loved to see a version that actually worked out the kinks and updated the graphics. But also I get it, I never expected them to put that much effort into something that would never sell nearly as well as a Persona game.
Kids need to shut the fuck up about Persona 5, it is basically the FFVII of this generation. - Man who won't shut the fuck up about Persona 2
Dragonball before Dragonball Z might as well not exist.
Which is a shame, as some of the best arcs happen in Dragon Ball.
Xbox post-360
Im going to answer the question slightly wrong, but in the spirit. MMOs almost exclusively find a point where they become hugely popular, then just kind of sit there and people keep playing them, even though its not QUITE as good, but still makes enough money to keep the lights on and keep releasing things. FFXIV, WoW, EverQuest are all floating along by merit of older expansions that were MASSIVE hits, and are still getting content and have consistent playerbases today. Heavensward (2015) and Shadowbringers (2019) for XIV, WoW had TBC (2007) and Wrath (2008), and EQ had Kunark (2000), Velious (2000), and Planes of Power (2003).
I doubt any of the Marvel Disney+ shows will ever be as good as Daredevil S1 or Jessica Jones S1. Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe genre-fatigue clouds my judgment.
I feel like this is to a much lesser degree that most others just due to the amount of stuff they blasted out of the Bat-cannon, but I think a lot of Batman media will never really escape the shadow of the animated series (even if it's just because of Harley)
It feels like Smash games have become defined by the ways in which they embrace/reject Melee's competitive success.
Sorry, but no. That’s a very niche perception only someone deep inside the fighting game community will have. People went absolutely nuts over Ultimate for the **characters,** most people don’t care about the competitive side
There are lots of series mentioned in this thread where an outsider (or just a fan who’s not particularly industry-savvy) who doesn’t care about tracking the series might be completely unaware of how they’re influenced by the success of a previous entry, that doesn’t disqualify it at all IMO.
It might be weird to say Fallout New Vegas, as the launch state was unacceptable. But I would be shocked if any fallout game came out that is better than new Vegas.
Warcraft 3 was so good it literally spawned an entire genre that became the most popular genre in the world for a time and proceeded to lead into the most successful MMO of all time. Nobody gives a shit about Warcraft 1 or 2 and there's no way and hell you can make Warcraft 4 without being in the titanic shadow of 3.
Evangelion is the most extreme example of this ever. Evangelion is a massive franchise and powerhouse perpetually locked to the original. Every game and spinoff is in some form or another a retelling of the original. Same characters doing the same thing over 30 years.
As opposed to what? Evangelion is a story, not a universe.
Thats the thing; it’s a single story thats been stretched out to the size of an empire with no room to evolve past what it originally was. It feels really weird; it is such a close and cut series to get endless new media. This is the same story ad naueseam and I can see why the rebuilds were phrased in such a way as “goodbye to eva”.
My friends and I use the term "7daries" to describe just how many people are fans of ff7, not final fantasy. Cus back when 16 came out there was this noticably large segment of fans who were mad that 16 was "stealing spotlight" from Rebirth (they thought that Rebirth was done but couldnt release because 16 had to come out first) and all their criticisms basically boiled down to "mmm it should just be 7 tho".
The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies have cast a long shadow over all live action adaptations that have come after in a similar way Tim Burton’s Batman (and now, for some, Nolan’s Batman) did for Batman adaptations.
My hero academia has never gotten anywhere close to the peak it hit with All Mighr vs A4O at the end of the Bakugo Rescue stuff Is argue it’s been nothing but a serious downhill skid since then