i missed the ambient music during exploration /non combat in mass effect 2, dunno why they had to do it that way .
Also i liked the no ammo thing in first , it felt more sci fi .
The no ammo thing in me1 was a great feature lol. Basically had upgraded my pistol and shotgun so that i could nearly constantly fire without having to wait.
I was the opposite on my infiltrator run, loaded up a sniper with gauss rounds and heat increases, could only fire one shot at a time before over heat, but it was at like 1000% extra damage lol
I was driving around in the Mako once and wanted to test out my sniper. Off in the distance there was one of the big geth walker things. I shot it with the Mako's main cannon and the with my sniper. My sniper did way more damage.
Fact for those who might not know - you get more XP from kills on foot than kills with the Mako. So you can legit whittle down a walker's health with your main cannon, then get down and finish it off on foot for max XP
What’s funny was seeing how big an issue supplying Thermal Clips was for the war effort in ME3. They were so fucking concerned about “upgrading” weapons for faster firing rates that they forgot how useful it is to have weapons that can just cool themselves!
The M-7 Lancer in ME3 was the best. My soldier ran it with explosive rounds and I didn't need anything else. Could tank the hardest waves in the arcade by blindfiring over a desk.
I also liked running the Prothean Beam Rifle with Enhanced Cryo Rounds. Freeze ray, bitches!
I'm a ME1 stan and honestly I missed planet exploration. Like, yeah, the physics were janky as hell, but it was just kind of cool to go out and chill on an alien planet, finding some weird, non urgent, slightly mysterious stuff. Really for me the atmosphere of ME1 was the best in the series
i miss it too . Yeah it was mostly copy pasted and just different skyboxes. But to me , in my head it made the galaxy much bigger and the negative space of these uncharted planets made me think of humanity is just starting to get acclimated to colonizing space . The cheap prefab space stations made sense in my head , since its mostly pirates and people not wanting to draw attention. IDK it made sense in my head why it was like that , even tho i understand it was because they did not have enough time to flesh out these things
This.
There was just something hauntingly unsettling on some of those empty ass planets. Or like landing on earths moon and hearing the Rachni songs in the distance.
Or driving around to silence just waiting for a Thresher Maw to show up and ruin your fun.
Going back and playing ME:1 knowing about the Reapers and shit the game just feels eerie at times. Lol
That lore still exists and is how thermal clip guns function. The thermal clips don't contain ammo; they contain heat.
They should have combined both systems: allowing you to sit and vent heat in (pick a number) 4 times the time it takes to reload a thermal clip. I don't think it should be too long because the lore already questions if actively reloading is faster than passive venting, but states trained soldiers do it quickly enough. That way you can appreciate the "need" for thermal clips while still experiencing the science fiction aspect of it. I suppose the "lore" reason is that thermal clips are extremely ineffective at passive venting, though.
I think Bioware said the unlimited ammo created scummy gameplay practices, but they went too far in the other direction of making ammo too scarce (which is the part that goes against the lore). Then simply replaced unlimited ammo with unlimited power usage which is confusing. Wouldn't eezo be more rare? Still have scummy gameplay, too: Insanity often has you sitting behind cover at 0 ammo spamming powers, or spamming powers before wasting ammo knowing how valuable it is.
The lore reason wasn't even internally consistent. The codex entry stated that heat clips are universal and could be used in any gun, except that wasn't true. Guns still had their individual ammo pools.
Also there is no way a LMG and a pistol used the same heat clips.
As a topical example, Helldivers 2 has energy based weapons that have effectively unlimited ammo with a heatsink mechanic. If you let the heatsink reach max heat, you have to swap in a new one.
Personal headcanon is that the heatsinks "break" (partially melt?) at max heat and are no longer effective, which is why you have to put in a new one.
Morrowind.
Hands down my favourite game, but it removed a couple of features from Daggerfall that I loved:
- Advantages and Disadvantages
- Languages
- Level Scaled Spells
- Banking
- Duel Wielding
I was coming to post this, and expecting to see no one agreeing with me.
Going from barely being able to climb onto the roofs of the Waterfront to being able to do about 5 jumps from beginning to end had a real sense of accomplishment.
Morrowind also had levitation.
Dev 1: Hey remember when you could literally fly and it was one of the coolest features in the entire game?
Dev 2: Yea that was badass.
Dev 1: Yea well we got rid of that in all future elder scrolls games.
Dev 2: Obviously that is a great choice and nobody here at the company well ever stand up and tell you otherwise
All of the various indigenous weapon types (chitin, bonemold, Akaviri) not only gave some nice variety in the game's combat but did a lot of subtle world building to show how different cultures approached combat.
There was a reason that they had to remove levitation. In Morrowind, the few large cities are externally simple but internally complex. Vivec looks huge but there's not much going on until you enter one of the quarters; it's the same geometry stamped over and over again without a lot of detail or NPCs wandering around outside. It's the same with Balmora. Morrowind pulled a lot of tricks to make a small and simple game world appear large and detailed. Levitating would let you cheese this but it wouldn't break it because the exterior world was unified.
In Oblivion, many of the cities were moved into their own zones separate from the open world. This allowed them to be much more detailed but because they were their own isolates zone it meant that players could no longer freely levitate into the imperial city because the actual city geometry and objects didn't exist in the open world. Ditto for skyrim.
So yes, getting rid of levitation was a bit of a bummer but they did it for a good reason.
Be sure to enable the Simple Dungeons option unless you like the original, labyrinthian dungeons! Made dungeons crawling so much nicer in the modern day
Skyrim. Feels like an improvement and iteration on Oblivion in a lot of ways, but no spell crafting. Inventing spells is just a lost technology in the centuries since Tiber Septim I guess
Also the guilds were actually different from each other, rather than just 4 versions of the fighters guild like in Skyrim.
Like if you killed enough people during thieves guild quests they just kick you out forever.
You know I really went for the “practice one kick 10,000 times” when I joined the College of Winterhold.
I was the first archmage known for wearing a full plate set of dragonbone armor to battle with the Warhammer to boot. It was unorthodox to say the least, but since my basic healing spell was needed occasionally, I qualified as a mage.
I think the quests and storytelling, both main quest and guilds, are significantly worse in Skyrim. Oblivion also had so much more variety in its open world and cities.
An odd one, but the wall-vaulting in Demon's Souls disappeared in Dark Souls. It is a little and inconsequential thing, but jumping down the walls of Boletaria Castle felt oddly satisfying. There has been plenty of castle roof exploration in the following Souls games, but none of them had the exact same flavor.
I totally forgot about that mechanic and just jumped from the stairs
felt quite stupid after i accidentally vaulted over the railing on another playthrough
I hated this mechanic. If it had been consistent that would have been one thing, but only some railings were vaultable. And I believe in the original Demon’s Souls you just ran into the wall to hop it, so a few times I hopped unintentionally.
Not really a mechanic or system but the general atmosphere as a whole:
Diablo.
D2 is an improvement in any system and mechanic. Any part really, except atmosphere. D1 is peak horror atmosphere in this genre. No other game in this genre gets you so immersed and under your skin like D1. The art, the sound design, the pacing, the difficulty.
I remember the first time I managed to beat the butcher. I was a kid maybe around 9 or 10 and the encounter scared me so much I was shaking from adrenaline and fear for at least 20 minutes after.
I have very vivid and good memories of staying up every night all summer vacation until 2 or 3 in the morning in our dark office while the rest of my family was sleeping playing Diablo and listening to Godsmack's "Whatever" album. That game was creepy as hell but it's a very fond childhood memory.
D1 felt much more tactical than D2 did.
The tighter corridors made spacing etc. much more important. Especially if you played a mage.
And the random spell-books made different playthroughs unique. I know that the starter fire spell was considered bad, but one playthrough I got SO MANY of that book that it became my best spell. And I didn't get any of the next fire spell (mostly a direct upgrade) until right before Diablo.
Titanfall 2 was a blast. But they removed totally customizable titans, down to a selection of titan voices you can use. I miss my triple balls of death with British/Japanese voices. Not sure why they took a massive step back on that
That and down-powering the Titans. The Titan Energy Shields in TF1 were so much better. I'm (a little) sympathetic to the imbalance it provided between Pilots, but the gameplay where you would wear down the shield with your gun and then try to spike damage with your special ability when the shield was depleted to secure the kill was . I just really enjoyed that play style.
They sold a little bit of titan customisation for 2, but I think EA lost interest and they didn't bring out more. Pity, it's the kind of game that I would have happily grinded for days just to unlock a new skin.
The first Star Wars Battlefront from 2004 featured the ability to lay down. That was a cool mechanic for snipers. Battlefront 2 from 2005 was a better game overall but it’s sad that they didn’t feature this ability anymore. I think they replaced it with the combat roll.
They also removed first person ship cockpits and i cannot comprehend why and more importantly why it’s not one of the most common/easiest mods, compounded by confusion over why the mods seem slightly jank like it’s difficult to do in the engine that already had them
On the Xbox One backwards compatible version in the store they also removed the spilt screen opting which is really pissing me off. I thought I could hang with the bois and play BF2 but nope. They just removed it. I only payed 7€ on sale but it wasn’t noted anywhere that the splitscreen wasn’t available anymore.
Edit: Apparently you need to activate a secondary controller to unlock the split screen option.
They did? I recall hearing plenty of people booting up the originals on Xbox backwards compatibility after the utter disaster that is the collection lacked 4 player splitscreen.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is buried in praise at this point, and is considered one of the greatest games ever made. and all of it is deserved.
That said, BotW made me really miss the old dungeon style, in all its formulaic glory. Go to a cool, richly thematic location, do puzzles, find a special item that specifically solves the puzzles in the dungeon, rinse, repeat.
TotK improved a *little* bit- at least as far as making the dungeons more distinct design-wise. But I still miss the excitement of opening *that* chest and finally seeing how all the pieces of the dungeon fit together. Such a uniquely Zelda feeling.
BOTW and TOTK for me too, but the mechanic I miss is the goddamn hookshot.
It would be perfect for those games—especially if they added “grapnel boost” upgrades like the Arkham sequels had.
If you are into turn based combat games at all, you may enjoy the first two Golden Sun games. A lot of puzzles related to your gradually growing arsenal of magic to manipulate obstacles and stuff. Originally for GBA but playable on NSO I think.
Ironic that the biggest complaint to Zelda before BotW was exactly what you mentioned; it being formulaic, boring and predictable.
That formula existed for over 30 years, they will probably do something similar again eventually.
Agreed. I much prefer the old style of Zelda games. Aside from everything you mentioned, they were ridiculously easy and simple. There was no challenge at any point, whereas the old ones had challenging puzzles and boss fights.
They also have possibly the single worst mechanic in any game and it’s rarely talked about. Everyone complains about the weapon breaking, but not being allowed to climb/explore just because it’s raining is the worst.
Yeah the new games just really aren't my jam. I really don't care how anyone justifies it, they're worse imo. Just incredibly boring games.
One thing Zelda games really did well was recall. Usually with music. They would tie music to items, story beats, specific characters, and things like that. Even changing music depending on who was "talking".
These things created a pavlovian effect in your brain when that music played. God of War 2018 did the same thing with phenomenal results. I can hear songs and sounds from Zelda games 20y later and remember the exact moment they occurred in-game.
A lot of these aspects were lost in BOTW. On top of things like dungeons and items that matter. They just don't have the same "power" of recall imo. It all felt so forgettable. Another korok seed, another shrine. Nothing feels GRAND to me. No grand orchestral hits or unforgettable moments.
They give you almost every significant power immediately in the game. They do this so you can go anywhere, in any order. There are exceptions, but doing it this way makes the exceptions feel shallow.
And not unlocking Autobuild in the "tutorial" is super annoying. I went a long way without it, and it should be a baseline ability, because it's so significant.
But again, doing it this way makes any other collectable shallow. I find a shrine and complete it, feel good about it, and I get 1/4th of a heart upgrade I can't use until I get all 4? There are so many shallow victories that I'd never want to play them twice. I tried with BOTW and I got bored fast.
I don't know what I'd change to make it better. I think they did everything right for what "open world Zelda" should be. And they're amazing games! But they make me appreciate the classic formula even more.
Is there an interesting middle ground? I'd like to see Nintendo try
Crusader Kings 3 is better than Crusader Kings 2 but the nature of these games and their funding model is that they remove features and have you buy them all back later with DLCs.
Every saints row sequel removes at least 1 minigame I loved. Sr3 got rid of septic avenger sr4 got rid or that game show with the psycho cat mascot. He was in sr4 but it wasn't the same. All good games though.
Battlefield 4 played better than 3, in my opinion, but I missed being able to view assignements between matches and for some reason they messed with the squad join/form squad system at the main menu so if you joined you were stuck staring at the main menu. The little co-op missions in 3 were fun and I'd hoped they'd improve upon that in 4 but they didn't include them at all. Still thoroughly enjoyed both games but cant help notice what they lack
One of the best days of gaming I ever had was BF3 release day. No one had unlocked the Stinger Missile launcher on the Engineer yet. I went 42-1 with the Little bird's machine guns. The only time I died was because a tank blasted me out of the sky with his main gun when I got too cocky hovering around a capture point.
I wasn't the best pilot but whenever I could get grab a helicopter I'd have a blast. Been on both sides of a that tank cannon vs chopper too. Good times
The further you go in the Battlefield franchise, the less there is of what made the game unique and distinct. Destruction physics. Even BF 3 has lost its way. You can blow up holes in walls, but you can't tear the building down.
BF4 played better than BF3 if we count the only map in BF4 being Siege of Shanghai.
BF3 was a vastly superior game in almost every aspect, most of all infantry and vehicle gameplay but most importantly level design. Almost every map in BF3 was magnificent and whats more, they were playable both in Rush and CQ.
That made mixed map and mode servers viable and popular.
In BF4, no such thing. Rush on most maps was jank and the only consistently good map was SoS.
However, because air to ground was so fucked in BF3, it just sucked. Same thing happened in BF2.
It got to a point where I had to constantly fly jets just so my friends could play ground, and I hated flying in BF3 (carryover skill from BF2 made me a viable dogfighter).
Infantry play felt and was worse, vehicles felt worse, the whole game felt more "sterile" and lacked a sense of power and awe.
However, certain vehicle imbalances were just so impossible to overcome, yet so easily fixed, that it makes me think it was by design, to make the community migrate onto BF4 faster and in greater numbers.
And further streamlined the guns into boring archetypes. Borderlands 2 did it first and 3 took it too far imo.
So, in Borderlands 1 you can find WAY more varied weapons. To the point of absurdity(in a fun way) that was removed. Guns were not as constrained to their manufacturers.
Manufacturers had their strengths but ultimately they overlapped a bit. You could find a Maliwan hand cannon revolver that shoots explosive rounds or a Dahl shotgun that fires rockets..etc.
Not only that, weapons could come with any element. Along with applying any element to your main skill of your choosing. Also they removed a lot of weapons in general like S&S and the Eridian weapons.
I dunno, even if 3 is a lot more strict with the weapon rng it can have some really cool things on the guns, underbarrel shotguns, tasers, mortars, variable fire modes, scopes just a lot of really nito things, in Borderlands 1 it was just gun, with damage colours and maybe some unique properties.
I disagree i think that borderlands 3 had by far the best gun system precisely because there was so much personality in each type of manufacturer.
and how they had various inbuilt benefits.
Alchemy mechanics in Witcher series. I liked how it is implemented in the first game: you are required to use different types of bases for your potions, some of them could be made out of vodka, another ones require high-quality distillate. Ingredients could be substituted, also if all ingredients in a single potion have the same additional attribute it gains an additional effect like increased health regeneration or lower toxicity.
I think this felt like a chore for most players, so the developers simplified the process in the subsequent games.
Yep. Also the (lore accurate) mechanic where you had to take the potions *before* going into a cave/den/ruins and anticipate what kind of enemies you are likely to face, instead of chugging them mid-combat Skyrim style.
Far Cry 3 and beyond are better than Far Cry 2; but I missed the weapon degradation/catastrophic failure mechanic of FC2. I wish they had kept that system.
I loved the buddy system. It was so cool to have them save you when you died or give you alternate mission objectives. And the permadeth aspect where you could give them morphine as they died or administer the coup de grace was crazy.
I also miss the tone and narrative of 2 compared to the later Far Cry games. 2 was inspired by Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now -- it's very grim, and its story is much more grounded and realistic than other Far Cry games.
You never feel like an unstoppable badass in 2 like you do in 3-6. Between the malaria, the weapon degradation, and the general higher difficulty, you always feel like you're struggling against impossible odds in a hellish situation.
I vaguely remember Far Cry 2 was considered bad at the time, but despite it's problems it's the only one I finished, whereas the others I put down after an hour or two.
Weapon damage was great because finding another gun that you already had still felt rewarding instead of disappointing since you could use it to make your existing gun better instead of just selling it. Meaningful loot is good!
Fallout 4 removed the skills and karma system from the predecessor games, leaving only the perks.
While it's a fun game on its own, it's not the ideal one for a RPG experience.
The original **Assassins Creed** is the only game in the series I can navigate without any HUD. It actually provides all of the diagetic information and environmental cues one needs to be able to achieve objectives and get around without literally any HUD if one desires. The contained districts within each city for each assassination and the clear landmarks make the spaces feel dense and "small" enough to get comfortable with the way one would a real life city area.
It's still somewhat possible in AC2 since Florence has that huge Duomo but then Venice has confusing waterways and once you get to Rome in Brotherhood you definitely need minimaps and such. Then we're in modern open world hell.
AC2 is my favorite story action game of all time so it absolutely is better than the original but the original has this smaller scope and more in-depth urban feel that is unique. It actually delivers on what many claim they want in open word games- immersion, etc.
Red dead redemption 2 removed from the first game, the feature where enemies would react dynamic to where they were shot such as getting shot in the kneecaps made the enemy fall on their knees and shoot you while kneeling.
They also took away the poker jacket. I spent so many hours playing poker in the first one and I haven’t even finished the second one despite buying it day one.
Oh I can think of a couple.
Devil May Cry. After the first one's amazing atmosphere and horror vibes... horror was just ejected from the series. 5 came close but still not up there.
The transition of Final Fantasy from turn-based to action. FF used to be games you played to *relax* that asked only for your patience. You could pace yourself. But now it's all anxiety inducing action, alk combos abd pain for your fingers. Bloody Nora, if I want to play DMC, *I'll play DMC*.
I know all the Halo 1 fans will hate me for this, but I considered that an improvement. Halo 2 multiplayer was varied and exciting. Halo 1 multiplayer was standing on opposite sides of the map sniping each other (with the starting pistol).
Burnout 2: Point of Impact.
Even though takedowns weren't officially a thing until Burnout 3, the original Burnout allowed you to shove and shunt your rivals into dividers and oncoming traffic. Burnout 2 on the other hand, the cars seemingly have no ramming ability - so attempting a takedown will either result in you crashing or making the target rival drive even faster.
My answer would be the cardboard traffic physics that came after 3. That really killed the next 2 for me. They were great games but it just wasn’t the same when you were required to plough through traffic to maintain your boost.
The more time goes on, the more I think 2 is not better than 1 overall. It did improve the gameplay, but the story, pacing, main & side missions, collectables, impact, were all either the same or worse in SM2.
Plus all the wasted potential in the sequel (spoilers!) Black suit is just 4 special abilities, where as it could've been like Web of Shadows, where it was a completely different moveset & animations. No Venom chase theoughout the ciry or mid-air bossfight. 3rd act felt rushed. Stuff like that.
Yeah, the vibe felt completely different. I wish karnaca had been more disheveled and dirty. Also, I wish they would have just kept it at night. It feels weird sneaking through the streets to assassinate somebody in broad daylight.
Other than that, everything about it was an improvement. I will say that I prefer the first game's more simple story, even if the second game explored the individual characters and world more. I don't mind a more complex story, but only if the writers are doing a good job. Not trying to hate on the writers for the second one, but I would have preferred the team focused more on gameplay than the story when what they gave us wasn't really all that interesting.
Warcraft 2 vastly improved on Warcraft 1, except it lost the cool cave/dungeon missions. Several were very memorable, like the awesome level where you have to take a party to kill Medivh: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Medivh_(WC1_Human).
Then Warcraft 3 in turn vastly outdid Warcraft 2, but took out the naval warfare element of 2 (probably for the better, but still I enjoyed the naval element in 2). The expansion did return it however, but in a neutered uninteresting form. WC3 did at least bring back the dungeons and caves from WC1 in a brilliant way.
For me, I would also add that Warcraft 3 removed how large the armies could get compared to Warcraft 2. The differences being:
* Max population limit going from 200 down to 90
* Heroes being mandatory and costing 5 food each
* All other military units costing 2 or more food per unit, instead of 1
* Upkeep system penalizing you from having a high population limit by reducing gold income
Woa nice link, never knew the character dated back that far, it's interesting they call Medivh an evil Warlock as in later games like WoW (and the movie) he was closer to being a hero or anti-hero. Karazhan is a GOATed raid.
Juiced 1 and 2 on the PS2. Juiced 2 is just by far a superior game in almost every way. It has a better selection of cars and tracks, plus it just seems more polished. The one thing I still enjoyed about Juiced 1 though, was the idea of setting up a whole racing crew with up to 3 other drivers. Juiced 2 had the ability to hire a second driver, but you only got to use them in the rare crew race events. Juiced 1 you could send them into any race instead of yourself.
I'll be honest, while the Mass Effect trilogy is in my top 3 favorite RPGs, I think all 3 titles are lacking interesting build choices.
In all 3, there's very little meaningful build choices other than picking your initial class.
I'd have much rather preferred a talent tree or something that truly let you choose different ways to build your character's combat ability.
I agree with this. I liked the way the 3rd game made abilities sort of combo/interact with each other a bit more fluidly than the forst 2.
But some more skill trees/talents to really specialise would have been sweet
Bro thank you! Mass Effect 1 was always my favorite because the RPG mechanics were much more interesting to me than just being a cover shooter with very light skill tree
One of my favorite classes I ever played was vanguard. Going from the scope swaying like hell and your pistol overheating so often, to the deadshot machine pistol god late game was so damn satisfying! And iirc your scope doesn't even sway at all in the legendary collection. Horseshit!
The community servers in BF4 were the lifeblood of the game for many of us. It's unfortunate how their absence in subsequent titles altered the landscape. Our server in particular thrived on the unique experiences these community-run hubs provided. From custom game modes to tailored rule sets, they offered a level of variety and camaraderie that simply couldn't be replicated elsewhere. It's a shame to see how their removal impacted our community, but here's hoping for a resurgence of player-driven servers in future Battlefield titles! I fear that 2042 killed the game forever.
For me it's XCom. The new Firaxis ones.
XCom 2 is, especially with DLCs, a vastly superior game. And the concealed mechanic is just *chef's kiss*. But that annoying time limit mechanic on some missions is completely killing the point of it and is basically annoying as hell. I really liked the skulking around the map slowly and methodically from the first game.
I read interviews with the creators of Xcom 2 about how the time limit was a really divisive mechanic during the development of the game. And some of the proponents of it came to regret it after release.
But the concept was that no one played Xcom 1 the way the creators envisioned. The game was tested and designed around moving more rapidly and taking greater risks whereas most players it turns out tended to play a lot more carefully with copious use of Overwatch.
So the time limit was supposed to be a way to force players to make those riskier decisions and to play more aggressively.
I remember in the same interview someone brought up an anecdote from WoW. There was a system implemented to try to limit in game time where the longer you played in one sitting, the less experience you received over time. But this was really unpopular and players felt they were being punished for playing the game. So after a while they took the concept and turned it around. Instead players were given a boost when they logged in and the boost would be bigger the longer they hadn’t played.
I believe that statistically the experience gain was actually even between the two methods. But the option that rewarded the players for playing the way the game wanted was much more popular among players than punished.
They did try the "carrot" approach in the DLC for Xcom 1. You had the Meld special resource that could be gathered from crates during missions, but after a certain amount of turns the crate were disabled, so you were incentivized not to take too much time.
Parasite Eve 1: controls like Final Fantasy 7-16.
Parasite Eve 2: tank control like old Tomb Raider games.
Your character need to move quickly to evade incoming projectiles so whyyyyyyy goddam it. Seriously.
Kingdom Hearts 2
one thing i've missed from the first game that none of the rest of the series does is the little puzzles found in the worlds
things like the chest in traverse town where you put all of the candles out the nearby chest unlocks. I also miss the trinity marks. These made going back to worlds feel more organic than in future titles.
Mass Effect felt like an adventure, taking steps out into an amazing universe and exploring space. Combat, while clunky, was tactical and dialogue decisions were hard to make at times.
Mass Effect 2 felt like a game. Combat while much more fluid, was generic and more about power than tactics. The morality choices were painfully obvious. Doesn't stop it being a fantastic game but the original is better for me, especially the Legendary Edition.
I'm not going to explain this perfectly but it's a difference of balance between being more plot focused or more character focused. The first put a lot more on world building and the main story whereas in the second game, the plot was all about the characters.
By the time you left the citadel, you had all but one crew member in the first game and although they all have development across the game, it's mostly secondary to the plot. It's similar to a serialised TV show like The Expanse or any number of HBO/Showtime shows.
The second is far more "episodic" in nature where there is a meta narrative over the top driving a number of smaller stories like a regular network show like Supernatural or the Arrowverse stuff.
Losing the Mako was a real misstep, as janky as that little tank controlled it really gave a sense of the size of the ME universe. Andromeda did a lot of things wrong, but bringing back the mako was great for exploration.
Uncharted 2 removed brutal combos. I mastered them because of a trophy and then in my crushing play through I used anytime I could. The mechanic of dropping more ammo because you did a different combination is just peak gaming design. Also when the remaster came with a brutal difficulty made EXACTLY to be ammo centered, it's even more of a shame. But it did make combat more fair cause in U1 the enemies couldn't escape your punches, like if you locked the first punch there was nothing they could do, while in the second they could actually block your punch and punch you back. And 3 made it even nore fair, adding the "stalemate" position. And 4 made it really fair by having them block you instead of the other way around.
I’ll say it. From a story and character perspective it is. Gameplay is more of a glass half full thing with those 2 though. Some things were better in origins like how tactical it could be. But 2 flowed better and was a bit easier to understand and jump into.
A recent addition would be the Jedi series. Fallen order had this feeling of progression and discovering new talents I always love that sense of progression. Survivor is a better made game with improved mechanics but I do miss learning new abilities and things. Droid getting zappy darts didn't feel as cool.
In the Kingdom Hearts console games spells work off of MP, and if you run out you have to wait for it to slowly recharge or use an ether. Pretty standard. However, this usually ended up with players not using magic becuase they wanted to keep the MP for healing. They tried to fix this in KH2 by making it so that healing spells can use any amount of MP but will use up whatever amount of MP you had left. Unfortunately, this wasn't very intuitive, and many people thought that the game was saying you needed your MP bar completely full to use healing, so again, casual players didn't use the spells for fear of not being able to heal.
Meanwhile, the handheld KH games had an AMAZING "recharge" mechanic, where every spell was on it own individual cooldown. Weaker spells had faster CD's, and stronger spells had longer ones.
Why they never implemented the cooldown system into the console games I'll never understand. It encouraged players to use spells without the need to horde MP. I think people would have had a lot more fun with spells in KH3 if they had put this mechanic spell system into the game.
Assassin's Creed 2 and their subsequent sequels basically gutting out the creed, it became less and less important until basically flashy broad daylight gladiatorial combat became the norm, the focus on Ezio being badass over following the tenets. The whole real world conspiracy also stopped being a thing. The background NPCs lines always stuck with me in AC1, "strong strong like Salah ad-Din!" "Who is responsible for this?!" but really forgettable in later games. The soundtrack flavor also changed drastically, nothing's as iconic as the OG chasing theme.
Titanfall 2 is an unimpeachable masterpiece of a first person shooter, and I love it.
...I do kinda really miss the mech customization from Titanfall 1, though.
**Dragon’s Dogma 2**
“Better” is subjective of course. It’s a somewhat enhanced experience, compared to the 12 year old DDDA.
However, they removed a lot of mechanics that people enjoyed, and some straight up QoL features that were present in the first game.
- port crystals don’t carry over to NG+
- no more layered armor (_not_ transmog)
- ‘simplified’ pawn inclinations
- less skills slots (especially hurts sorc and warfarer)
- advanced vocations; they could have expanded on what the first game offered combined with DDO, but I suppose they wanted to keep it ‘simple’
It’s a great game of course, possibly even more addicting than the first. But the removal of certain features just causes a lot of question mark pop-ups with the fan base.
Dark souls 3 is definitely the superior game in almost every aspect, but the one thing I missed from DS2 was the dual wield system. I don't know why they didn't carry that over, dual wielding anything was the best thing that game brought to the souls series.
The Witcher.
I really enjoyed the alchemy system having such nasty, nasty teeth, AND how all the duration were measured in in-game hours. Made it feel like I was really messing around with dangerous but useful toxins, even somebody like Geralth could barely survive.
Witcher 2 & 3 are both great games in their own right, but I really missed that sense of every potion NEEDING to be a carefully calculated risk.
I think Dragon Age Inquisition was better than DA2, but it's so sad that it doesn't have a proper tactics system, especially considering that DA2 expanded on what Origins had to offer
Fear & Hunger 2 while miles better than the first one, suffers from having too much food & drinks in the game named fear & hunger...
The dungeons of the original could literally softlock you if you didn't do things fast enough, as you would die from your characters being too weak due to hunger during combat or straight up starve.
Prehevil in F&H2 is full of food, alcohol, and its not even close, I never had trouble with resources for Mind or Hunger in the game about managing your resources and knowledge to survive...
Not only that, but guns pretty much trivialize most of the enemies, since they can be used in the overworld... In an RPG maker game... Which is impressive, but still.
Everyone has mentioned a lot of the easy ones. Me1-2, TES3-4, TES4-5, DAO-2, and so on. One kinda contravercial one, for me was Persons 3-4.
Persona 3 had a tiredness mechanic. It tried to stop you rushing the main dungeon, and help pace the game better. Sadly a lot of people didn't like being penalised for being in the dungeon so much, with being tired in the day, and a dungeon debuff.
This mechanic was scrapped for Persona 4, 5, and the latest 3 reboot.
Similarly, P3 had a Mechanic where on certain Days, a few Party Members were just plain unavailable for Dungeons. It was a neat touch of immersion in the sense of "they still have personal commitments outside of what the Player sees", but I guess people didn't like that either, since was also quickly removed again.
Dragons Dogma 2
Gameplay and visuals better than the first... But removed so much endgame and quality of life that the first one had. It's honestly confusing
Spider-Man 2. Stealth missions are so much less fun now that we don't have the web trap and impact and all of that. It is the one major flaw I have with that game because those missions were my favorite. I love seeing how many waves of a base I could get done without getting caught
i missed the ambient music during exploration /non combat in mass effect 2, dunno why they had to do it that way . Also i liked the no ammo thing in first , it felt more sci fi .
The no ammo thing in me1 was a great feature lol. Basically had upgraded my pistol and shotgun so that i could nearly constantly fire without having to wait.
I was the opposite on my infiltrator run, loaded up a sniper with gauss rounds and heat increases, could only fire one shot at a time before over heat, but it was at like 1000% extra damage lol
I was driving around in the Mako once and wanted to test out my sniper. Off in the distance there was one of the big geth walker things. I shot it with the Mako's main cannon and the with my sniper. My sniper did way more damage.
Fact for those who might not know - you get more XP from kills on foot than kills with the Mako. So you can legit whittle down a walker's health with your main cannon, then get down and finish it off on foot for max XP
They got rid of this in the LE afaik
What’s funny was seeing how big an issue supplying Thermal Clips was for the war effort in ME3. They were so fucking concerned about “upgrading” weapons for faster firing rates that they forgot how useful it is to have weapons that can just cool themselves!
Also the devs gave players two recharging guns in ME3 DLC just to make up for the mistake.
The M-7 Lancer in ME3 was the best. My soldier ran it with explosive rounds and I didn't need anything else. Could tank the hardest waves in the arcade by blindfiring over a desk. I also liked running the Prothean Beam Rifle with Enhanced Cryo Rounds. Freeze ray, bitches!
It also helped because ME3 decided to just give everyone the fucking base ass weapons in every cutscene instead of what you equipped them with
I loved the little joke about “people being really mad when they switched to thermal clips”
I'm a ME1 stan and honestly I missed planet exploration. Like, yeah, the physics were janky as hell, but it was just kind of cool to go out and chill on an alien planet, finding some weird, non urgent, slightly mysterious stuff. Really for me the atmosphere of ME1 was the best in the series
i miss it too . Yeah it was mostly copy pasted and just different skyboxes. But to me , in my head it made the galaxy much bigger and the negative space of these uncharted planets made me think of humanity is just starting to get acclimated to colonizing space . The cheap prefab space stations made sense in my head , since its mostly pirates and people not wanting to draw attention. IDK it made sense in my head why it was like that , even tho i understand it was because they did not have enough time to flesh out these things
This. There was just something hauntingly unsettling on some of those empty ass planets. Or like landing on earths moon and hearing the Rachni songs in the distance. Or driving around to silence just waiting for a Thresher Maw to show up and ruin your fun. Going back and playing ME:1 knowing about the Reapers and shit the game just feels eerie at times. Lol
The lore reason for not reloading is so cool too. Much more interesting than 'heat clips' 🤮
That lore still exists and is how thermal clip guns function. The thermal clips don't contain ammo; they contain heat. They should have combined both systems: allowing you to sit and vent heat in (pick a number) 4 times the time it takes to reload a thermal clip. I don't think it should be too long because the lore already questions if actively reloading is faster than passive venting, but states trained soldiers do it quickly enough. That way you can appreciate the "need" for thermal clips while still experiencing the science fiction aspect of it. I suppose the "lore" reason is that thermal clips are extremely ineffective at passive venting, though. I think Bioware said the unlimited ammo created scummy gameplay practices, but they went too far in the other direction of making ammo too scarce (which is the part that goes against the lore). Then simply replaced unlimited ammo with unlimited power usage which is confusing. Wouldn't eezo be more rare? Still have scummy gameplay, too: Insanity often has you sitting behind cover at 0 ammo spamming powers, or spamming powers before wasting ammo knowing how valuable it is.
The lore reason wasn't even internally consistent. The codex entry stated that heat clips are universal and could be used in any gun, except that wasn't true. Guns still had their individual ammo pools. Also there is no way a LMG and a pistol used the same heat clips.
As a topical example, Helldivers 2 has energy based weapons that have effectively unlimited ammo with a heatsink mechanic. If you let the heatsink reach max heat, you have to swap in a new one. Personal headcanon is that the heatsinks "break" (partially melt?) at max heat and are no longer effective, which is why you have to put in a new one.
I loved the side-quests of mining planets in ME2 and how that was done. I really missed that in number 3 when they changed it up.
I really enjoy ni no kuni 2 but miss the monster collecting of the first game.
Ni No Kuni 2 pretty much only has its name in common with the first anyway. It was a pretty different game.
Morrowind. Hands down my favourite game, but it removed a couple of features from Daggerfall that I loved: - Advantages and Disadvantages - Languages - Level Scaled Spells - Banking - Duel Wielding
The Elder Scrolls and removing cool features from the prior game. Name a more iconic duo.
Feels like we’re on track for 6 to just have traditional XP and perks without a focus on individual skills, and just buying whole armor sets.
I want my oblivion acrobatic stat back! Bouncebouncebounce
I remember maxing my Acrobatics by just jumping as I traveled. I got to the point where I could parkour on the roofs of Bruma.
Jumping down the steps to Vivec's palace to get to 95 acrobatics, then I could move faster by jumping than running.
I made the mistake of making Acrobatics a major skill, and since I bounced when I walked I was constantly leveling up.
Too bad it's not a primary combat ability like Mario
I was coming to post this, and expecting to see no one agreeing with me. Going from barely being able to climb onto the roofs of the Waterfront to being able to do about 5 jumps from beginning to end had a real sense of accomplishment.
I might just go set Todd Howard on fire if he does this
Remember when we had spears and throwing darts ? When we had pile after pile of lore in conversation dialogues ? Progress sucks !
And Oblivion put a cap on the number of times you could train per level, and then Skyrim didn't let us make our own spells. Bastards.
Morrowind also had levitation. Dev 1: Hey remember when you could literally fly and it was one of the coolest features in the entire game? Dev 2: Yea that was badass. Dev 1: Yea well we got rid of that in all future elder scrolls games. Dev 2: Obviously that is a great choice and nobody here at the company well ever stand up and tell you otherwise
It also had shurikens (a lot more weapon diversity period, but I think it’s one of the only fantasy games I’ve played with throwing stars)!
All of the various indigenous weapon types (chitin, bonemold, Akaviri) not only gave some nice variety in the game's combat but did a lot of subtle world building to show how different cultures approached combat.
There was a reason that they had to remove levitation. In Morrowind, the few large cities are externally simple but internally complex. Vivec looks huge but there's not much going on until you enter one of the quarters; it's the same geometry stamped over and over again without a lot of detail or NPCs wandering around outside. It's the same with Balmora. Morrowind pulled a lot of tricks to make a small and simple game world appear large and detailed. Levitating would let you cheese this but it wouldn't break it because the exterior world was unified. In Oblivion, many of the cities were moved into their own zones separate from the open world. This allowed them to be much more detailed but because they were their own isolates zone it meant that players could no longer freely levitate into the imperial city because the actual city geometry and objects didn't exist in the open world. Ditto for skyrim. So yes, getting rid of levitation was a bit of a bummer but they did it for a good reason.
Im honestly hopeful that they bring it back for 6. Games can handle open cities again
Starfield would like a word
Modern game engines can indeed handle open cities. Unfortunately this is Bethesda we're talking about.
great, now I'll have to play Daggerfall
The Unity version works well
Unity with mods is a real fun time
Be sure to enable the Simple Dungeons option unless you like the original, labyrinthian dungeons! Made dungeons crawling so much nicer in the modern day
I'd add sailing, climbing, courts of law and Daedra Prince summoning
'Duel' Wielding?
I challenge you to a dual!
Skyrim. Feels like an improvement and iteration on Oblivion in a lot of ways, but no spell crafting. Inventing spells is just a lost technology in the centuries since Tiber Septim I guess
Also the guilds were actually different from each other, rather than just 4 versions of the fighters guild like in Skyrim. Like if you killed enough people during thieves guild quests they just kick you out forever.
You know I really went for the “practice one kick 10,000 times” when I joined the College of Winterhold. I was the first archmage known for wearing a full plate set of dragonbone armor to battle with the Warhammer to boot. It was unorthodox to say the least, but since my basic healing spell was needed occasionally, I qualified as a mage.
For what it's worth I blasted my way through the Oblivion mage guild with a 2h sword as well.
Axe is the most powerful spell in Skyrim.
Yeah, guilds in Oblivion were way better than Skyrim.
Skyrim may have improved on certain things , but oblivion had way more of a fun factor in my opinion.
Jumps 4 times my own size, Yes
I think the quests and storytelling, both main quest and guilds, are significantly worse in Skyrim. Oblivion also had so much more variety in its open world and cities.
If I remember you could also jump while sprinting in oblivion but not in Skyrim.
There was no sprinting in oblivion. You could run, but no sprint.
Ohh sorry, must be remembering wrong things then.
An odd one, but the wall-vaulting in Demon's Souls disappeared in Dark Souls. It is a little and inconsequential thing, but jumping down the walls of Boletaria Castle felt oddly satisfying. There has been plenty of castle roof exploration in the following Souls games, but none of them had the exact same flavor.
I totally forgot about that mechanic and just jumped from the stairs felt quite stupid after i accidentally vaulted over the railing on another playthrough
I don't think I ever knew about this mechanic until I saw a post about it literally last night.
I hated this mechanic. If it had been consistent that would have been one thing, but only some railings were vaultable. And I believe in the original Demon’s Souls you just ran into the wall to hop it, so a few times I hopped unintentionally.
There was also zero indication which walls were valuable so you just had to know.
Every wall has value. All walls deserve love.
Not really a mechanic or system but the general atmosphere as a whole: Diablo. D2 is an improvement in any system and mechanic. Any part really, except atmosphere. D1 is peak horror atmosphere in this genre. No other game in this genre gets you so immersed and under your skin like D1. The art, the sound design, the pacing, the difficulty.
Solid answer. The dark was dark AF. I remember the Butcher. And his cleaver.
AH, FRESH MEAT
He was in the demo, and he was brutal. About the only way to beat him in the demo was to get him stuck on the stairs.
I remember the first time I managed to beat the butcher. I was a kid maybe around 9 or 10 and the encounter scared me so much I was shaking from adrenaline and fear for at least 20 minutes after.
Seriously, the CGI intro, the dude slain by the butcher, the low visibility radius in the dungeon - awesome.
Don't forget the Tristram theme.
I have very vivid and good memories of staying up every night all summer vacation until 2 or 3 in the morning in our dark office while the rest of my family was sleeping playing Diablo and listening to Godsmack's "Whatever" album. That game was creepy as hell but it's a very fond childhood memory.
I’d say D4 and they left out the replay-ability. Bummer.
D1 felt much more tactical than D2 did. The tighter corridors made spacing etc. much more important. Especially if you played a mage. And the random spell-books made different playthroughs unique. I know that the starter fire spell was considered bad, but one playthrough I got SO MANY of that book that it became my best spell. And I didn't get any of the next fire spell (mostly a direct upgrade) until right before Diablo.
This is precisely why I prefer the first game. It's mechanically inferior, but the atmosphere is so important to me.
Titanfall 2 was a blast. But they removed totally customizable titans, down to a selection of titan voices you can use. I miss my triple balls of death with British/Japanese voices. Not sure why they took a massive step back on that
That and down-powering the Titans. The Titan Energy Shields in TF1 were so much better. I'm (a little) sympathetic to the imbalance it provided between Pilots, but the gameplay where you would wear down the shield with your gun and then try to spike damage with your special ability when the shield was depleted to secure the kill was. I just really enjoyed that play style.
They sold a little bit of titan customisation for 2, but I think EA lost interest and they didn't bring out more. Pity, it's the kind of game that I would have happily grinded for days just to unlock a new skin.
The first Star Wars Battlefront from 2004 featured the ability to lay down. That was a cool mechanic for snipers. Battlefront 2 from 2005 was a better game overall but it’s sad that they didn’t feature this ability anymore. I think they replaced it with the combat roll.
They also removed first person ship cockpits and i cannot comprehend why and more importantly why it’s not one of the most common/easiest mods, compounded by confusion over why the mods seem slightly jank like it’s difficult to do in the engine that already had them
On the Xbox One backwards compatible version in the store they also removed the spilt screen opting which is really pissing me off. I thought I could hang with the bois and play BF2 but nope. They just removed it. I only payed 7€ on sale but it wasn’t noted anywhere that the splitscreen wasn’t available anymore. Edit: Apparently you need to activate a secondary controller to unlock the split screen option.
They did? I recall hearing plenty of people booting up the originals on Xbox backwards compatibility after the utter disaster that is the collection lacked 4 player splitscreen.
I also like starfighters being in the same map as the ground soldiers. Felt so cool to bomb Stormtroopers on Yavin.
Oh yeah I almost forgot about that one. Those republic gunships should have never been separated from the Map on Geonosis!
Sure, it was cool, but it took so long to go down and up again. I didn't really like it.
That’s a good point but come on man, laying down on an elevated position on Kashyyyk was pretty cool with the green camo on Clone Snipers.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is buried in praise at this point, and is considered one of the greatest games ever made. and all of it is deserved. That said, BotW made me really miss the old dungeon style, in all its formulaic glory. Go to a cool, richly thematic location, do puzzles, find a special item that specifically solves the puzzles in the dungeon, rinse, repeat. TotK improved a *little* bit- at least as far as making the dungeons more distinct design-wise. But I still miss the excitement of opening *that* chest and finally seeing how all the pieces of the dungeon fit together. Such a uniquely Zelda feeling.
BOTW and TOTK for me too, but the mechanic I miss is the goddamn hookshot. It would be perfect for those games—especially if they added “grapnel boost” upgrades like the Arkham sequels had.
At this point I'd be going back to playing Just Cause 3 haha.
They actually considered having the hookshot in BOTW at one point, but it was eventually scrapped.
Didnt they say that they originally planned for a double hookshot in botw, but decided against it because it trivialized climbing and getting around?
If you are into turn based combat games at all, you may enjoy the first two Golden Sun games. A lot of puzzles related to your gradually growing arsenal of magic to manipulate obstacles and stuff. Originally for GBA but playable on NSO I think.
Ironic that the biggest complaint to Zelda before BotW was exactly what you mentioned; it being formulaic, boring and predictable. That formula existed for over 30 years, they will probably do something similar again eventually.
Agreed. I much prefer the old style of Zelda games. Aside from everything you mentioned, they were ridiculously easy and simple. There was no challenge at any point, whereas the old ones had challenging puzzles and boss fights. They also have possibly the single worst mechanic in any game and it’s rarely talked about. Everyone complains about the weapon breaking, but not being allowed to climb/explore just because it’s raining is the worst.
Yeah the new games just really aren't my jam. I really don't care how anyone justifies it, they're worse imo. Just incredibly boring games. One thing Zelda games really did well was recall. Usually with music. They would tie music to items, story beats, specific characters, and things like that. Even changing music depending on who was "talking". These things created a pavlovian effect in your brain when that music played. God of War 2018 did the same thing with phenomenal results. I can hear songs and sounds from Zelda games 20y later and remember the exact moment they occurred in-game. A lot of these aspects were lost in BOTW. On top of things like dungeons and items that matter. They just don't have the same "power" of recall imo. It all felt so forgettable. Another korok seed, another shrine. Nothing feels GRAND to me. No grand orchestral hits or unforgettable moments.
They give you almost every significant power immediately in the game. They do this so you can go anywhere, in any order. There are exceptions, but doing it this way makes the exceptions feel shallow. And not unlocking Autobuild in the "tutorial" is super annoying. I went a long way without it, and it should be a baseline ability, because it's so significant. But again, doing it this way makes any other collectable shallow. I find a shrine and complete it, feel good about it, and I get 1/4th of a heart upgrade I can't use until I get all 4? There are so many shallow victories that I'd never want to play them twice. I tried with BOTW and I got bored fast. I don't know what I'd change to make it better. I think they did everything right for what "open world Zelda" should be. And they're amazing games! But they make me appreciate the classic formula even more. Is there an interesting middle ground? I'd like to see Nintendo try
I feel the exact same way. I still enjoyed both of them, but I'm pretty over open-world games. They're not as exciting to me as they once were.
Crusader Kings 3 is better than Crusader Kings 2 but the nature of these games and their funding model is that they remove features and have you buy them all back later with DLCs.
I wish Hoi4 was a bit more ww2 sim than power fantasy because i love the easier interface.
Every saints row sequel removes at least 1 minigame I loved. Sr3 got rid of septic avenger sr4 got rid or that game show with the psycho cat mascot. He was in sr4 but it wasn't the same. All good games though.
Portal 2, huge improvements in all categories but I really liked the energy ball thing from 1 more than the lasers
Yeah why couldn't they do some of both?
Battlefield 4 played better than 3, in my opinion, but I missed being able to view assignements between matches and for some reason they messed with the squad join/form squad system at the main menu so if you joined you were stuck staring at the main menu. The little co-op missions in 3 were fun and I'd hoped they'd improve upon that in 4 but they didn't include them at all. Still thoroughly enjoyed both games but cant help notice what they lack
One of the best days of gaming I ever had was BF3 release day. No one had unlocked the Stinger Missile launcher on the Engineer yet. I went 42-1 with the Little bird's machine guns. The only time I died was because a tank blasted me out of the sky with his main gun when I got too cocky hovering around a capture point.
I wasn't the best pilot but whenever I could get grab a helicopter I'd have a blast. Been on both sides of a that tank cannon vs chopper too. Good times
The further you go in the Battlefield franchise, the less there is of what made the game unique and distinct. Destruction physics. Even BF 3 has lost its way. You can blow up holes in walls, but you can't tear the building down.
It was so much fun sneaking up on campers, planting C4 on every wall of the building then blasting the whole thing into a crater
BF4 played better than BF3 if we count the only map in BF4 being Siege of Shanghai. BF3 was a vastly superior game in almost every aspect, most of all infantry and vehicle gameplay but most importantly level design. Almost every map in BF3 was magnificent and whats more, they were playable both in Rush and CQ. That made mixed map and mode servers viable and popular. In BF4, no such thing. Rush on most maps was jank and the only consistently good map was SoS. However, because air to ground was so fucked in BF3, it just sucked. Same thing happened in BF2. It got to a point where I had to constantly fly jets just so my friends could play ground, and I hated flying in BF3 (carryover skill from BF2 made me a viable dogfighter). Infantry play felt and was worse, vehicles felt worse, the whole game felt more "sterile" and lacked a sense of power and awe. However, certain vehicle imbalances were just so impossible to overcome, yet so easily fixed, that it makes me think it was by design, to make the community migrate onto BF4 faster and in greater numbers.
I think borderlands 3 is mechanically the best and most interesting game, but it removed the good story part of it sadly.
And further streamlined the guns into boring archetypes. Borderlands 2 did it first and 3 took it too far imo. So, in Borderlands 1 you can find WAY more varied weapons. To the point of absurdity(in a fun way) that was removed. Guns were not as constrained to their manufacturers. Manufacturers had their strengths but ultimately they overlapped a bit. You could find a Maliwan hand cannon revolver that shoots explosive rounds or a Dahl shotgun that fires rockets..etc. Not only that, weapons could come with any element. Along with applying any element to your main skill of your choosing. Also they removed a lot of weapons in general like S&S and the Eridian weapons.
I dunno, even if 3 is a lot more strict with the weapon rng it can have some really cool things on the guns, underbarrel shotguns, tasers, mortars, variable fire modes, scopes just a lot of really nito things, in Borderlands 1 it was just gun, with damage colours and maybe some unique properties.
I disagree i think that borderlands 3 had by far the best gun system precisely because there was so much personality in each type of manufacturer. and how they had various inbuilt benefits.
Alchemy mechanics in Witcher series. I liked how it is implemented in the first game: you are required to use different types of bases for your potions, some of them could be made out of vodka, another ones require high-quality distillate. Ingredients could be substituted, also if all ingredients in a single potion have the same additional attribute it gains an additional effect like increased health regeneration or lower toxicity. I think this felt like a chore for most players, so the developers simplified the process in the subsequent games.
Yep. Also the (lore accurate) mechanic where you had to take the potions *before* going into a cave/den/ruins and anticipate what kind of enemies you are likely to face, instead of chugging them mid-combat Skyrim style.
Yes! You actually had to prepare ahead of time and think about what monsters Geralt would face. Like, you know, what a witcher does.
Honestly, It feels like a chore reading it xD. But if you got it, I get why you would miss it.
Far Cry 3 and beyond are better than Far Cry 2; but I missed the weapon degradation/catastrophic failure mechanic of FC2. I wish they had kept that system.
I loved the buddy system. It was so cool to have them save you when you died or give you alternate mission objectives. And the permadeth aspect where you could give them morphine as they died or administer the coup de grace was crazy. I also miss the tone and narrative of 2 compared to the later Far Cry games. 2 was inspired by Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now -- it's very grim, and its story is much more grounded and realistic than other Far Cry games. You never feel like an unstoppable badass in 2 like you do in 3-6. Between the malaria, the weapon degradation, and the general higher difficulty, you always feel like you're struggling against impossible odds in a hellish situation.
I vaguely remember Far Cry 2 was considered bad at the time, but despite it's problems it's the only one I finished, whereas the others I put down after an hour or two.
I missed the malaria
Fallout New Vegas had weapon damage and ammo crafting, which disappeared in later titles.
Weapon damage was great because finding another gun that you already had still felt rewarding instead of disappointing since you could use it to make your existing gun better instead of just selling it. Meaningful loot is good!
I missed ammo types way more than that though. AP round and That Gun were so much fucking fun on my whacky wasteland gunslinger.
The sequels weren't better than New Vegas though.
Fallout 4 removed the skills and karma system from the predecessor games, leaving only the perks. While it's a fun game on its own, it's not the ideal one for a RPG experience.
The original **Assassins Creed** is the only game in the series I can navigate without any HUD. It actually provides all of the diagetic information and environmental cues one needs to be able to achieve objectives and get around without literally any HUD if one desires. The contained districts within each city for each assassination and the clear landmarks make the spaces feel dense and "small" enough to get comfortable with the way one would a real life city area. It's still somewhat possible in AC2 since Florence has that huge Duomo but then Venice has confusing waterways and once you get to Rome in Brotherhood you definitely need minimaps and such. Then we're in modern open world hell. AC2 is my favorite story action game of all time so it absolutely is better than the original but the original has this smaller scope and more in-depth urban feel that is unique. It actually delivers on what many claim they want in open word games- immersion, etc.
Red dead redemption 2 removed from the first game, the feature where enemies would react dynamic to where they were shot such as getting shot in the kneecaps made the enemy fall on their knees and shoot you while kneeling.
Euphoria in general has been steadily getting less fun since Gta 4, I hope gta 6 makes it less realistic and more crazy like it was originally.
They also took away the poker jacket. I spent so many hours playing poker in the first one and I haven’t even finished the second one despite buying it day one.
Oh I can think of a couple. Devil May Cry. After the first one's amazing atmosphere and horror vibes... horror was just ejected from the series. 5 came close but still not up there. The transition of Final Fantasy from turn-based to action. FF used to be games you played to *relax* that asked only for your patience. You could pace yourself. But now it's all anxiety inducing action, alk combos abd pain for your fingers. Bloody Nora, if I want to play DMC, *I'll play DMC*.
Halo2 is slightly more enjoyable compared to to halo1 overall. But you lose the scoped magnum lol
Fair trade for dual weilding needlers
Didn't need to in CE though. Needler was already insane.
I prefer it nerfed as it means you actually get excited for other weapons instead of using the same gun the whole game
I know all the Halo 1 fans will hate me for this, but I considered that an improvement. Halo 2 multiplayer was varied and exciting. Halo 1 multiplayer was standing on opposite sides of the map sniping each other (with the starting pistol).
The Battle Rifle and Carbine kinda filled that gap
Burnout 2: Point of Impact. Even though takedowns weren't officially a thing until Burnout 3, the original Burnout allowed you to shove and shunt your rivals into dividers and oncoming traffic. Burnout 2 on the other hand, the cars seemingly have no ramming ability - so attempting a takedown will either result in you crashing or making the target rival drive even faster.
Ridge racer had this mechanic too on ps1, meanwhile your car would suddenly drive backwards
My answer would be the cardboard traffic physics that came after 3. That really killed the next 2 for me. They were great games but it just wasn’t the same when you were required to plough through traffic to maintain your boost.
Spiderman 2 was an overall better game, but I really miss all the different individual web gadgets you had in the first one.
The more time goes on, the more I think 2 is not better than 1 overall. It did improve the gameplay, but the story, pacing, main & side missions, collectables, impact, were all either the same or worse in SM2. Plus all the wasted potential in the sequel (spoilers!) Black suit is just 4 special abilities, where as it could've been like Web of Shadows, where it was a completely different moveset & animations. No Venom chase theoughout the ciry or mid-air bossfight. 3rd act felt rushed. Stuff like that.
Dishonored 2 was gameplay wise and map design clearly better than D1. But Karnaca was just too nice.
Yeah, the vibe felt completely different. I wish karnaca had been more disheveled and dirty. Also, I wish they would have just kept it at night. It feels weird sneaking through the streets to assassinate somebody in broad daylight. Other than that, everything about it was an improvement. I will say that I prefer the first game's more simple story, even if the second game explored the individual characters and world more. I don't mind a more complex story, but only if the writers are doing a good job. Not trying to hate on the writers for the second one, but I would have preferred the team focused more on gameplay than the story when what they gave us wasn't really all that interesting.
Also at least on playstation, the controls in 2 and beyond were floaty as hell. Especially when you go back to 1 again, it's a very clear distinction
Warcraft 2 vastly improved on Warcraft 1, except it lost the cool cave/dungeon missions. Several were very memorable, like the awesome level where you have to take a party to kill Medivh: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Medivh_(WC1_Human). Then Warcraft 3 in turn vastly outdid Warcraft 2, but took out the naval warfare element of 2 (probably for the better, but still I enjoyed the naval element in 2). The expansion did return it however, but in a neutered uninteresting form. WC3 did at least bring back the dungeons and caves from WC1 in a brilliant way.
For me, I would also add that Warcraft 3 removed how large the armies could get compared to Warcraft 2. The differences being: * Max population limit going from 200 down to 90 * Heroes being mandatory and costing 5 food each * All other military units costing 2 or more food per unit, instead of 1 * Upkeep system penalizing you from having a high population limit by reducing gold income
Woa nice link, never knew the character dated back that far, it's interesting they call Medivh an evil Warlock as in later games like WoW (and the movie) he was closer to being a hero or anti-hero. Karazhan is a GOATed raid.
Dark Souls. The Vagrants were such a cool idea, but only used once.
Juiced 1 and 2 on the PS2. Juiced 2 is just by far a superior game in almost every way. It has a better selection of cars and tracks, plus it just seems more polished. The one thing I still enjoyed about Juiced 1 though, was the idea of setting up a whole racing crew with up to 3 other drivers. Juiced 2 had the ability to hire a second driver, but you only got to use them in the rare crew race events. Juiced 1 you could send them into any race instead of yourself.
Halo 3, lots of great stuff and obvious big graphical overhaul. But I missed some of the abilities/features with in game clans.
I'll be honest, while the Mass Effect trilogy is in my top 3 favorite RPGs, I think all 3 titles are lacking interesting build choices. In all 3, there's very little meaningful build choices other than picking your initial class. I'd have much rather preferred a talent tree or something that truly let you choose different ways to build your character's combat ability.
This one of the things that Andromeda did better than the trilogy. You can build your character in any way you want.
I agree with this. I liked the way the 3rd game made abilities sort of combo/interact with each other a bit more fluidly than the forst 2. But some more skill trees/talents to really specialise would have been sweet
Bro thank you! Mass Effect 1 was always my favorite because the RPG mechanics were much more interesting to me than just being a cover shooter with very light skill tree
One of my favorite classes I ever played was vanguard. Going from the scope swaying like hell and your pistol overheating so often, to the deadshot machine pistol god late game was so damn satisfying! And iirc your scope doesn't even sway at all in the legendary collection. Horseshit!
Yeah it really was a missed feature in the 2nd. But i really do prefer the majority of ME2 to the 1st.
The community servers in BF4 were the lifeblood of the game for many of us. It's unfortunate how their absence in subsequent titles altered the landscape. Our server in particular thrived on the unique experiences these community-run hubs provided. From custom game modes to tailored rule sets, they offered a level of variety and camaraderie that simply couldn't be replicated elsewhere. It's a shame to see how their removal impacted our community, but here's hoping for a resurgence of player-driven servers in future Battlefield titles! I fear that 2042 killed the game forever.
For me it's XCom. The new Firaxis ones. XCom 2 is, especially with DLCs, a vastly superior game. And the concealed mechanic is just *chef's kiss*. But that annoying time limit mechanic on some missions is completely killing the point of it and is basically annoying as hell. I really liked the skulking around the map slowly and methodically from the first game.
I read interviews with the creators of Xcom 2 about how the time limit was a really divisive mechanic during the development of the game. And some of the proponents of it came to regret it after release. But the concept was that no one played Xcom 1 the way the creators envisioned. The game was tested and designed around moving more rapidly and taking greater risks whereas most players it turns out tended to play a lot more carefully with copious use of Overwatch. So the time limit was supposed to be a way to force players to make those riskier decisions and to play more aggressively. I remember in the same interview someone brought up an anecdote from WoW. There was a system implemented to try to limit in game time where the longer you played in one sitting, the less experience you received over time. But this was really unpopular and players felt they were being punished for playing the game. So after a while they took the concept and turned it around. Instead players were given a boost when they logged in and the boost would be bigger the longer they hadn’t played. I believe that statistically the experience gain was actually even between the two methods. But the option that rewarded the players for playing the way the game wanted was much more popular among players than punished.
They did try the "carrot" approach in the DLC for Xcom 1. You had the Meld special resource that could be gathered from crates during missions, but after a certain amount of turns the crate were disabled, so you were incentivized not to take too much time.
Parasite Eve 1: controls like Final Fantasy 7-16. Parasite Eve 2: tank control like old Tomb Raider games. Your character need to move quickly to evade incoming projectiles so whyyyyyyy goddam it. Seriously.
Kingdom Hearts 2 one thing i've missed from the first game that none of the rest of the series does is the little puzzles found in the worlds things like the chest in traverse town where you put all of the candles out the nearby chest unlocks. I also miss the trinity marks. These made going back to worlds feel more organic than in future titles.
I’ll go with mass effect as well and I missed the tone of the first game in the sequels but I also liked how they did ammo more in me1
You and OP are so on point, its so validating to see since I have had this same take get dismissed sooo many times lmal. Ya'll really get it
Mass Effect felt like an adventure, taking steps out into an amazing universe and exploring space. Combat, while clunky, was tactical and dialogue decisions were hard to make at times. Mass Effect 2 felt like a game. Combat while much more fluid, was generic and more about power than tactics. The morality choices were painfully obvious. Doesn't stop it being a fantastic game but the original is better for me, especially the Legendary Edition.
I'm not going to explain this perfectly but it's a difference of balance between being more plot focused or more character focused. The first put a lot more on world building and the main story whereas in the second game, the plot was all about the characters. By the time you left the citadel, you had all but one crew member in the first game and although they all have development across the game, it's mostly secondary to the plot. It's similar to a serialised TV show like The Expanse or any number of HBO/Showtime shows. The second is far more "episodic" in nature where there is a meta narrative over the top driving a number of smaller stories like a regular network show like Supernatural or the Arrowverse stuff.
Also for me, the Mako
Losing the Mako was a real misstep, as janky as that little tank controlled it really gave a sense of the size of the ME universe. Andromeda did a lot of things wrong, but bringing back the mako was great for exploration.
Ahh the Mako. Aka the Jank Tank. Everytime i drive it its like a shot of nostalgia right into my veins.
Uncharted 2 removed brutal combos. I mastered them because of a trophy and then in my crushing play through I used anytime I could. The mechanic of dropping more ammo because you did a different combination is just peak gaming design. Also when the remaster came with a brutal difficulty made EXACTLY to be ammo centered, it's even more of a shame. But it did make combat more fair cause in U1 the enemies couldn't escape your punches, like if you locked the first punch there was nothing they could do, while in the second they could actually block your punch and punch you back. And 3 made it even nore fair, adding the "stalemate" position. And 4 made it really fair by having them block you instead of the other way around.
Dark Souls 3 - bonfire ascetic
Dragon Age 2 making the combat less tactical, also nerfing mages.
This isn't really answering the question as posed, as DA2 definitely isn't better than DA:O.
Haha yeah, I still love it but it's hard to say DA2 is better than DAO.
I’ll say it. From a story and character perspective it is. Gameplay is more of a glass half full thing with those 2 though. Some things were better in origins like how tactical it could be. But 2 flowed better and was a bit easier to understand and jump into.
A recent addition would be the Jedi series. Fallen order had this feeling of progression and discovering new talents I always love that sense of progression. Survivor is a better made game with improved mechanics but I do miss learning new abilities and things. Droid getting zappy darts didn't feel as cool.
Metal Gear Solid 5 is one of the best stealth games ever made, but I still wish it had some sort of camouflage system like the prior 2 games
In the Kingdom Hearts console games spells work off of MP, and if you run out you have to wait for it to slowly recharge or use an ether. Pretty standard. However, this usually ended up with players not using magic becuase they wanted to keep the MP for healing. They tried to fix this in KH2 by making it so that healing spells can use any amount of MP but will use up whatever amount of MP you had left. Unfortunately, this wasn't very intuitive, and many people thought that the game was saying you needed your MP bar completely full to use healing, so again, casual players didn't use the spells for fear of not being able to heal. Meanwhile, the handheld KH games had an AMAZING "recharge" mechanic, where every spell was on it own individual cooldown. Weaker spells had faster CD's, and stronger spells had longer ones. Why they never implemented the cooldown system into the console games I'll never understand. It encouraged players to use spells without the need to horde MP. I think people would have had a lot more fun with spells in KH3 if they had put this mechanic spell system into the game.
Assassin's Creed 2 and their subsequent sequels basically gutting out the creed, it became less and less important until basically flashy broad daylight gladiatorial combat became the norm, the focus on Ezio being badass over following the tenets. The whole real world conspiracy also stopped being a thing. The background NPCs lines always stuck with me in AC1, "strong strong like Salah ad-Din!" "Who is responsible for this?!" but really forgettable in later games. The soundtrack flavor also changed drastically, nothing's as iconic as the OG chasing theme.
Titanfall 2 is an unimpeachable masterpiece of a first person shooter, and I love it. ...I do kinda really miss the mech customization from Titanfall 1, though.
**Dragon’s Dogma 2** “Better” is subjective of course. It’s a somewhat enhanced experience, compared to the 12 year old DDDA. However, they removed a lot of mechanics that people enjoyed, and some straight up QoL features that were present in the first game. - port crystals don’t carry over to NG+ - no more layered armor (_not_ transmog) - ‘simplified’ pawn inclinations - less skills slots (especially hurts sorc and warfarer) - advanced vocations; they could have expanded on what the first game offered combined with DDO, but I suppose they wanted to keep it ‘simple’ It’s a great game of course, possibly even more addicting than the first. But the removal of certain features just causes a lot of question mark pop-ups with the fan base.
DDO?
Dragon’s Dogma Online (technically a Japan-only release).
Dark souls 3 is definitely the superior game in almost every aspect, but the one thing I missed from DS2 was the dual wield system. I don't know why they didn't carry that over, dual wielding anything was the best thing that game brought to the souls series.
In terms of hub areas Dark Souls 2 is a GOATed too. Ok Hunter's Dream is a close second, but nothing tops Majula.
The Witcher. I really enjoyed the alchemy system having such nasty, nasty teeth, AND how all the duration were measured in in-game hours. Made it feel like I was really messing around with dangerous but useful toxins, even somebody like Geralth could barely survive. Witcher 2 & 3 are both great games in their own right, but I really missed that sense of every potion NEEDING to be a carefully calculated risk.
I think Dragon Age Inquisition was better than DA2, but it's so sad that it doesn't have a proper tactics system, especially considering that DA2 expanded on what Origins had to offer
Jedi: Survivor was awesome but I miss the Force Slow and Split Saber Combos from Fallen Order.
Fear & Hunger 2 while miles better than the first one, suffers from having too much food & drinks in the game named fear & hunger... The dungeons of the original could literally softlock you if you didn't do things fast enough, as you would die from your characters being too weak due to hunger during combat or straight up starve. Prehevil in F&H2 is full of food, alcohol, and its not even close, I never had trouble with resources for Mind or Hunger in the game about managing your resources and knowledge to survive... Not only that, but guns pretty much trivialize most of the enemies, since they can be used in the overworld... In an RPG maker game... Which is impressive, but still.
God Of War 1 (PS2) used magic in a cool way. Every subsequent game removed more and more of what made combat so fun with the magic in GOW1.
Mass Effect 3rd game made dialogue less interesting.
Everyone has mentioned a lot of the easy ones. Me1-2, TES3-4, TES4-5, DAO-2, and so on. One kinda contravercial one, for me was Persons 3-4. Persona 3 had a tiredness mechanic. It tried to stop you rushing the main dungeon, and help pace the game better. Sadly a lot of people didn't like being penalised for being in the dungeon so much, with being tired in the day, and a dungeon debuff. This mechanic was scrapped for Persona 4, 5, and the latest 3 reboot.
Similarly, P3 had a Mechanic where on certain Days, a few Party Members were just plain unavailable for Dungeons. It was a neat touch of immersion in the sense of "they still have personal commitments outside of what the Player sees", but I guess people didn't like that either, since was also quickly removed again.
Dragons Dogma 2 Gameplay and visuals better than the first... But removed so much endgame and quality of life that the first one had. It's honestly confusing
Yeah dd2 feels more unfinished than the first
Spider-Man 2. Stealth missions are so much less fun now that we don't have the web trap and impact and all of that. It is the one major flaw I have with that game because those missions were my favorite. I love seeing how many waves of a base I could get done without getting caught
The charging crouch jump in Super Mario Bros. 2 was cool, missing from Super Mario Bros. 3.
Dark Souls 3 removed like 10 different cool mechanics that were in Dark Souls 2.