Bad and Disappointing Video Game Sequels 

Save 50% on Keeper Security Plans with code AUSTIN50 over at Keeper! www.keeper.io/austin What's a terrible sequel you played? Feel free to toss in the disappointing ones too. I KNOW there's gonna be some hot takes but let's keep it civil. Otherwise someone's gonna get into a fight over something like Persona 4 and we can't do that.

honestly i'm much more curious about the inverse of this: good sequel(s) to bad/disappointing games

Contract Jack almost comes across as a protest game. "Here's your shitty corridor shooter since you didn't buy our superior games."

It is baffling that Pac-Man World was actually good despite not having any real Pac Man games that weren't just quarter munchers previously, but Earthworm Jim couldn't make the transition to 3D.

With Spider-Man 3 being re released in theaters, this video feels pretty appropriate right about now.

That's what EA does. Buy a good or promising studio, put them in crunch mode, destroy them after the first bad game. Once EA buys you, your company is over.

Listen here!! I can take someone making fun of BoF Dragon Quarter, but not when it's coming from someone who praises Suikoden 3. Pistols at dawn. BE THERE!!

Ultima IX? Cue the obligatory "What's a paladin?" memes!

The most disappointing game for me is a pretty recent one. Drawn to Life Two Realms was meant to be the reintroduction to the world of drawn to life for a modern audience. It went from an okay action platformer with a beautiful art style, well written characters, and a stellar soundtrack to a buggy mess of a puzzle platformer. It’s clear the game had a small budget, but it really showed when the only thing you could draw that was in any way intractable was the main character. I don’t even want to get into the ending which feels like it’s meant to be a massive plot twist, but means nothing for the audience.

To call Perfect Dark Zero a disappointment is like calling the Titanic a little oopsie. After the masterpiece in 2000, I was expecting something decent in 2005, but all I played was sadness.

Oh boy I can't wait to watch a new Austin Eruption video oh BomberMan Act Zero is peak gaming Edit WTF

13:10 This is one reason I hate EA, a single failed game and they scrape everything, shut down a studio and put the IP dormant for literally decades. They can't even admit it's mostly their own fault for mismanaging it and the developers suffer the most, alongside fans who well never see another entry again.

The Vanilla version of Ninja Gaiden 3 was pretty awful. No dismemberment and you had ONE weapon and ninpo spell? Like...bruh

Haha! The old school RU-vid callback complete with the choppy mic and Windows MovieMaker slides - just perfect. 😂

How ironic that a Rockstar game is anti corporation, what does Take 2 think about it?

The Spider-Man 3 PS2 version is a completely different game, not a port. It’s actually decent - not as good as Spider-Man 2 of course, but the PS2 version is kinda overshadowed by how bad the 360/PS3 ones are

Just Bad Games figured out Flatout 3 was just multiple other games smashed together after buying Flatout.

The No One Lives Forever situation especially sucks because Night Dive Studios has been trying to get it back and make it available for years. But the IP rights are a tangled mess with Vivendi (Activision/Microsoft), Monolith (WB), and 20th Century Fox (Disney) all technically having a hand in making it while also not actually owning the IP. Even Activision and the lead designer were interviewed and both parties said they had no clue who owns it. When Vivendi Universal was bought out by Activision they very well said they possibly pawned off the rights meaning it is stuck with some law firm somewhere. Sad story and perfect use case for emulation.

I'm shocked you didn't mention Def Jam: Icons, that game was awful and killed the game series forever

I remember being very excited for Crackdown 2 after finishing the first one. Like, I thought it was going to be about fighting against the agency with the twist at the end of the first game but it was just an extremely bland zombified version of the first one.

Seeing Ultima IX just transported me to Spoonys videos on it

Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter is actually phenomenal. Once I gave it a chance it became my favourite game in the series

As someone who's platinumed FF13 3 times (twice on 360, the most recent time on PC with mods), eat me, Austin.

Mega Man X5, X6, & X7 are BAFFLING in design. Rookie Hunter mode is a godsend for dealing with these games. Also not saying Epic Mickey was anything amazing, but Epic Mickey 2 was so bad that it killed Junction Point & ended Oswald's chance for relevancy.

Worth mentioning also is that Dynasty Warriors 9, as a consequence (or rather, KT making an excuse) of the new combat system, several characters had their unique weapons and movesets taken away from them, now being forced to share weapons with other characters! But don't worry, KT heard your cries! You can now buy them back as PAID DLC. Tragically this mind disease infected and helped to ruin the next Samurai Warriors as well.

Project CARS 3...basically a mobile game on console killed the franchise

Bruce Campbell actually did the voice for a gaming tutorial. The man is a working actor.

Weird how influential Texas was in the rise of videogames, but most people don't know lol

Game sequels that I don't like and regret spending my time or money on: Devil May Cry 2 and the reboot, Final Fantasy 13, Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, Hitman Absolution, Command & Conquer 4 ( so bad it killed the franchise), Borderlands 3, Gothic 3 Game sequels that are considered bad or disappointing but I still had fun with them: Resident Evil 6, Halo 4, Diablo 3, Unreal 2, Street Fighter V, Final Fantasy X-2

Legend of Legaia was actually my first introduction to JRPGs. I LOVED it so much. Bought the sequel on ps2 and couldn’t even finish it..

In Double Dragon, just imagine if they had entered Bimmy and Jilly instead of Bimmy and Jimmy.

EWJ was also on PC in the year 2000. While I agree it's not very good, I'll say this; The PC version's soundtrack is actually pretty neat.

For those who want more about Ultima, this old youtuber - Spoony - did like the most comprehensive and hilarious retrospective of what it was like to grow up with each of these games. Highly recommend those videos!

Not even saying this for memes or whatever, but I was late to the Bomberman hype, played some 360 arcade games, got semi-addicted, then ended up getting act Zero. At first, totally dogged the "Gritty" Bomberman style, but after a while, I actually sunk a crazy amount of time, and had some good times boosting with some friends for achievements. It's honestly not as bad as people think... Oh don't get me wrong, the idea of "Gritty Bomberman with Breasts" is totally a joke. But the game can actually be a ton of fun.

Twisted Metal 3. Absolutely horrible!

I believe I recall reading that they based the original State of Emergency on the idea of the Pedestrians Riot cheat from GTA.

Megaman X7 will always disappoint me. The X series was one of my favorites and I was so looking forward to a new one, and I got it, and it's a janky 3D mess where you can't even play as X until like halfway through the game (unless you know what you're doing).

Fighting Force 2 is maybe my biggest disappointment in Sequel history.

Shots fired in the opening seconds. And they were deserved

Great video! I'm so happy Earthworm Jim 3D was first on here because I'm still not over it. I need more videos of bad video game sequels, there's so many to explore and complain about 🥰❤❤❤

Something to mention about the early 3D era of games. A lot of developers were more focused on making games 3 dimensional, rather than making games good. Thus we ended up with a lot of mediocre or bad games.

"Who made this soundtrack?! The London Symphony Arm-Farters?!" -Daddy Caddy on Bubsy 3D

Jak and Daxter: The Final Frontier. I don't care how it plays out what even the plot is - barely into the game I was disgusted with the amount of character assassination and how much it doesn't care about the previous titles.

If I knew that there was a Pac-Man 2 speed run community when I was younger I would have been able to finish in 15 to 20 minutes without using cheats

What happened to No One Lives Forever, and I'm directly quoted the creator here. Who planned to crowd fund buying the rights back to make a sequel. Found out thanks to studios buying each other and trading hands multiple times. Resulting in no one knowing who even owns the rights to No One Lives Forever featuring Katie Archer. Hence why Jack happened. Hope this clears things up.

I'm very glad I'm not alone zestirea was very empty compared to so many others bersara was better but still attached to zest and don't forget in zest in order to get the full ending you needed to buy DLC

Star ocean the last hope was decent enough that I enjoyed it. Integrity and faithlesness was somehow so bad people realize the last hope wasn't as bad as they thought

Perfect Dark Zero doesn't suck it's just short as hell. I remember getting an Xbox 360 in 2006 and getting Perfect Dark Zero and I beat it in a day and was like what where's the rest of it.

Just wanna say that hudson was doing a lot with bomberman when act zero released Like a lot, they had gba, ds and ps2 titles releasing around that time

Grandia III may not have excelled in every aspect. But it is, in my opinion, a really solid "good-but-not-great" JRPG. It is far from the bottom tier PS2 era sequels such as Legaia 2.

I played Dynasty Warriors 9 a couple years after release and had a good time with it. Must have put 200+ hours. Granted, that maybe had more to do with the fact I had just gotten out of a long relationship and spent my nights drinking a dozen natty lights while staring dead-eyed at the screen, killing thousands of nameless Chinese soldiers just wanting to distract myself long enough for the beer to knock me out so I didn't have a free second to think about my ex-girlfriend... Yeah 8 out of 10.

Most people point to sonic 06 being the worst sonic sequel which is understandable, its fucked beyond belief and the only fun you can have form it is breaking it or watching other people suffer through it like Lythero did recently, but personally to me sonic forces is the worse sonic sequel simply by the merit of being a disappointing bland ball of grey sludge that squanders any promising idea's it has (infinite, Eggman winning, phantom ruby, custom character), plus its an actual sequel/continuation to sonic mania, a game good enough to be in the S tier of sonic games, so to go form S tier to E tier at best is far, far more annoying (soundtrack is banger as usual tho)

Star Ocean I&F - yes, what all the fans are clamouring for - a Star Ocean game with no spaceships/space travel.

Nice vid 🔥🔥🔥 never knew about that theme!

Heard in your saints row video that Forspoken is coming soon! I’m one of the few people who enjoyed that game (I even moderate the subreddit!) so I truly look forward to seeing it! Hope you at least had a little bit of fun like a lot of us have!

It saddens me that Tales of Berseria is one of my favorites in the series, but if you want someone to fully understand the story you need to tell them to play Zestiria...

At least Samurai Warriors 5 is a thing. Really need to finish playing it, one of the best art styles Ive seen lately imo. Cell/painterly style done right for a game.

oh god you unearthed some deep memories of me watching Spoony videos back in the day when you brought up Ultima

Lovely video, no notes. Always nice to see something amazing come out of Austin, Texas.

Austin, you completely forgot that the creators literally released No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 on their site for free a few years ago.

"It doesn't say anything about charging" You mean the text on screen that says "Press and hold square to charge an attack"? 😂

Metal gear 4 is probably the worst of mainline MGS’s

Great video as always!

Calling a sequel "Unnecessary," I'd always funny, cause it implies the first was necessary, which it just isn't, no game or movie is.

I bet Suikoden IV won't be here if they let Lazlo kill snowe in the most humiliating way and don't put him as one of the 108 star of destiny

seeing tales of symphonia dawn of the new world flash on the screen for a couple of seconds made my heart rate spike as the only person in the west who genuinely loves that game so i was relieved when you didn't say a word about it and just went on to talk about zestiria lol

Another problem with dynasty warriors 9 was that alot of characthers had had the same animation and special atks for a lot of sequels, and then they changed it so that there was only the generic set of atks for each weapon, and some of the warriors got a weapon change so they also have the same generic atks. Thus killing all the flair of each warrior.

Sonic Adventure 2...im probably the only crazy person who actually loved wandering around the over world and getting pieces of the story. Even getting through the same levels, altered slightly for each character. But the 2nd one did away with the exploration and only kept the action levels.. its probably just me!

More of these please 🙏

The PS2 version of Spider Man 3 was also the one the Wii got, and I actually had a fantastic time with it, much more than with the Xbox 360 release anyway. The motion controls really work well in it for the most part, and it makes you feel more like Spider Man doing it, so you do have to engage a bit with your imagination to get than fun, I bet. But also just mechanically I had fun playing it, several times over even just like with Spider Man 2. The Wii release is a unique animal, and if you're a rare cross section fan of the games style, the film, and motion control gameplay, it might be the hidden gem for you that it was for me.

Another banger, so fast too

I am Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness' soldier. It gets dragged down because of the also overhated Castlevania 64, but it's a solid action title in the N64 library and a fine adaptation of the classic gameplay in 3D.

This will probably mean nothing to most except for like 3 people, but Spellforce 2 was such a downgrade compared to Spellforce 1. Spellforce 1 was this fun germanjank RPG/RTS hybrid that was glitchy as hell, but also just gave you so much freedom on how to create your character. I replayed it like 2 years ago and it was an absolute blast. And then I played Spellforce 2 and turned it off like 2 hours later. Instead of just allowing you whatever you wanna do (like having a heavy-armored greatsword wielding guy who also is specifically into necromancy), it streamlined everything. Now you have to work through levels and levels of skilltrees to get the stuff you want. Meanwhile the RTS side also got streamlined way too much - the first one had like silly resources that only certain factions could use (and some factions needed to be provided with resources from other factions to get speciality units). The second one reduced it to just 3 or 4 resources all factions use, and it just took the fun out of the game. Theoretically all those options are better on paper - making it easier to approach for new people. But in practice, it made the game just absolutely boring.

I have never seen a series taken out back and absolutely destroyed with a sawed off shotgun blast quite like Borderlands 3. Borderlands 2 is the best shooter I have ever played and was my absolute favorite thing to do as soon as I got home from school. Cut forward to B3 being announced and I was stoked, my friend and I pre ordered and played it all at release and god did we ever do that. The writing, characters, the total itendity of Borderlands was utterly shit on for the entire run time. I have never been burned quite like that ever before or after.

Another great Austin eruption video to start off the day.

At the start of this video, I thought for a bit, and then remembered how Suikoden IV was such a disappointment that I never even purchased it. SMH At least V was good.

I tend to be pretty open minded about games and sequels, or at least I try to be, but I think the one that sticks out most for me is Megaman X5. I don't think it's like, irreconcilably awful or anything, but the quality level is such a nosedive from X4 (which is also one of my favorite games of all time) that I couldn't help be disappointed. Top that off with baffling and obnoxious design decisions like losing X's Fourth Armor if you play the intro stage as Zero or having some story outcomes decided by RNG and it was just such a letdown

Would like a second and third part. There is definitely enough out there to keep this going.

Force Unleased 2, Dead Rising 4, Dead space 3, Metal Gear Survive, Dino Crisis 3, Mass Effect Andromeda, Megaman X7, Paper Mario Sticker Star/Color Splash, just tipping the iceberg for what companies did to them

My game sequel disappointment manifested in two different series. The first was Tomb Raider. I LOVED Legend, PC equivalent platinumed it, played it dozens of times. Found Anniversary really clunky, especially with the game breaking bugs on PC. And Underworld just felt...flat. Never finished it. Those two turned me off TR as a player, though I will remain a fan. The second was Travellers' Tales LEGO titles. I LOVED the games between Star Wars the Video Game in 2005 and LEGO Indiana Jones and Batman in 2008. Then...LEGO Clone Wars just feels really weird, and the other later games just don't seem to have any heart. And they seem to be becoming jankier.

Suikoden IV and Grandia III were actually my introductions to their respective series. Thankfully, they didn't dissuade me from checking out the earlier entries once they became available on Steam and the PS Store. As for sequels that I personally think are disappointing, Mario Party 8 might not be horrible (at least with its gameplay; MC Ballyhoo is a creepy little guy), but I will never remember it as fondly as the N64 or Gamecube entries.

Love yer videos~ but also if you’re gonna mention Earthworm Jim you gotta mention Doug TenNapel. Earthworm Jim and Neverhood were both some of the wackiest video game experiences I had as a kid

I played the original Dark Souls for the first time in 2018 and, by the end, it became my favorite game of all time. Then I played Dark Souls 2 right after. Talk about disappointing

Blood 2 was my first really big disappointment, way back in the 90s. The OG Blood is a retro FPS classic... whereas Blood 2 is 'clearly' unfinished in many ways (yeah, the devs didn't have enough time to finish it). There are so, so many bad sequels it's hard to make a comprehensive list, but your video highlights some really interesting examples!

Obviously not the focus of the video but I'm glad you're enjoying Hundred Heroes.

The worst kind of bad sequels are the ones that were so bad that it basically killed it’s franchise or maybe even killed the potential to become a franchise.

Why does Spiderman 3 MJ look like a discount Makima lol

When/if bloodlines 2 ever comes out im 100% expecting it on this type of list

The shirt you’re wearing is the same shirt I was wearing when I got arrested a couple years back lmfao

"whats a paladin?" now that brings me back

You should totally get into Ultima! I played U4 up to U7 for the first time a few years back and had a lot of fun doing it. They all hold up surprisingly well, and there are a bunch of fan made custom engines that make playing them on modern hardware really easy.

I absolutely loved playing perfect dark zero in co op with my buds, getting the jetpack, silly weapons and maps it was fun

Bomber man act zero is peak gaming.

I'm glad that I see more mentions of No One Lives Forever, these days. If I don't get NOLF 3 someday I'll pitch suuuch a fit.

Integrity and Faithlessenss has a really weird special place in my mind. It's the first time where I was playing a video game and it didn't feel like a game was happening. I vaguely recall walking from place to place, walking into a portal at one point, and eventually filling out the party. It wasn't bad; it was nothing. I genuinely can't recall the plot in any way, shape, or form except the main character's name was Fidel Camuze.

Austin im so high and this video is just hitting the spot rn

These vidoes are my comfort food

i LOVE "Darksiders 1+2" couldn't get into 3, i don't know if its bad or disappointing

If you're interested in learning more about the Ultama games @Majuular is doing a retrospective series. He just did an episode on Ultama 4

Awwwhhh, man!!! I freaking loved State of Emergency as a kid!!!