Ever felt let down by a franchise?

[ProfessorK]

Sonic

Ditto.

I second this ditto.

[VincentX]

The Mana Series. Secret of Mana is one of my favorite games of all time and Final Fantasy Adventure is my favorite original Game Boy game next to Link's Awakening. When I finally had access to the translated ROM of Seiken Densetsu III I played the hell out of it and I really enjoyed a great deal of Legend of Mana.

Then things starting going downhill with Sword of Mana; it certainly wasn't terrible and I loved the updated Soundtrack but FFA is still the better game.
Then silence on the series...then all of a sudden Square announced that they were going to release three big titles: Children of Mana and Heroes of Mana for the DS; with the latter being a prequel to SD3 and then Dawn of Mana to bring the series into 3D for the first time ever.

I was ecstatic...then they got released one by one and my hopes for a truly great Mana game got crushed with them. Children was a decent dungeon crawler and the visuals and music are definitely in the style of the old games, which was good, but it's story is bland and no where near the older entries.
Heroes was a disappointment in every way as I can't even tolerate the awkward RTS style gameplay and from what I hear the story isn't all that great. That last part being my biggest problem because to me SD3 had the best story and characters (Angela and Hawk are my personal favorites) and I really wanted to see a good prequel to it especially after I saw that Valda (Angela's mother) and Loki (Duran's father) were in it in some way. Plus I wanted to see if they were actually going to confirm that King Richard was Angela's father.

But I think what really killed my hopes for this series was Dawn of Mana. I always tell people this, "The game was great until I actually played it."
The visuals were BEAUTIFUL, the music was amazing and the story looked like it could be really interesting. But calling the gameplay broken would be a compliment with its abysmal camera, wonky physics, frustrating mechanics and awful progression system that reverts you to Level 1 at the beginning of each chapter for no reason.

I loved this series and I still love the old GB, SNES and PS1 titles to death. But now it's a shadow of its former self and the deterioration of this once amazing series is one of the reasons I really dislike Square-Enix lately as it feels like they're trying to destroy all their franchises.

One of the only ways I could see Square redeeming this series is by doing this:
Release a remake of Seiken Densetsu III for the PSP with the original on the same disc. Update the graphics to hand drawn sprites, get Hiroki Kikuta to revamp the soundtrack to PSP quality, fix the bugs of course and update the script just enough to flesh out the plot a little more.
Square seems to do its true fan-service for the PSP lately like the new Parasite Eve, remake of Tactics Ogre, Dissidia, Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions. This would be the crowning jewel for me but I doubt it will ever happen.

So for now I'll just mourn the deterioration of one of my favorite series from the 90's and hope that once again time will flow like a river and history can repeat in the form of a quality release for the Mana series.

[Xonticus]

Sonic indeed. Sega in general.

[girlracer]

Sonic

Ditto.

i believe everyone feels this way, this is what i said in my head when i read the title of the topic

[csvo2000]

For me it has to be Sonic, unfortunately.

[lisalover1]

The Namco Tales series. It has been over 2 years since we have seen a US release, and less than half of the series has been released outside Japan.

[corn619]

I felt a little disappointed with the Silent Hill series after part 3. Part 4 was major letdown, and its only gotten worse since. Although Shattered Memories for the Wii is passable. Another series that has tanked is Castlevania. Lets hope Kojima has the magic touch to make it cool again.

[Jrecee]

Blue Streak, Speeds By
Sonic the hedgehog
Too fast for the naked eye
Sonic the hedgehog
Sonic
He can really move
Sonic
He's got an attitude
Sonic
He's the fastest thing alive
Watch out when he storms through
Shadow Cream the rabbit Blaze the Cat
Don't doubt what he can do
Big has a fishing pole and fishes for a frog with a tail
Sonic
He has a sword
Sonic
He wears soaps
Sonic
He's the fastest thing alive
when entering loops that spontaneously speed him up
he's the fastest thing aliiiiive

[Pichu]

Pokemon.
I must admit, D/P were not as good as I hoped them to be, but Pt did fix that, so I dunno.

Also, I feel that Sonic has gotten better.


...




Nah who am I kidding, I just cant get hyped for Colors or 4, no matter how awesome they are making it out to be.

[AwesomeMonstar]

Metal Gear Solid.

That's right, I said it.