Since we were mentioning Indiana Jones:

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure > Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The first game is one of the worst adventure games I've ever played, it basically does all the things you'd want an adventure game nott to do. However, FoA is among the best games I've ever played. Thankfully they got rid of all the obnoxious shit, particularly deaths / unwinnable states / tedious mazes / frustrating action sections / the save disabling at the end / etc...

Then a few years later, LucasArts made Fate of Atlantis. I'd say almost everything in that game is amazingly well made, especially the implementation of the multiple paths. And, yeah, there's still fighting sections in FoA, but it's not bad.

The heroes become too powerful? Age of Wonders 1 and 2 has the same problem, to the point of actually breaking the late game.

SWAT 2 to 3 is a very big change as well, from turn-based tactics to first person. All I know is that SWAT 3 is damned difficult :P

The original Wolfenstein games were more of adventures with stealth included, so I'd say Wolf 3D counts as it turned the series into FPS games with little story and no stealth. I'm not so sure about the new Wolf games, as emphasis to story feels like a natural progression.

Star Fox Adventures took the series in a whole new Zelda like direction. Real marmite game.

Also SWAT 1 to 2, thinking of it.

Dunno. I guess (I'm not that familiar with those series). You'd have to ask the OP. ;)

I understood the OP to mean mostly games that took a known franchise and completely changed the tone and/or gameplay to something that fans of the previous installments probably didn't like as much.

Although from what I recall it started out as a game in a new IP and they then rebranded it as a Starfox game at a later point in development. Plus, the "Adventures" thing makes it pretty clear that it's not just a sequel.

Yea it was a new IP on the N64 till Nintendo saw it and got interested and pushed it to be a Star Fox game on the Game Cube. It is though part of the main series canon and is listed as the sequel to Star Fox 64, Assault did keep some parts from it as well, mainly the on foot fighting levels.

Yep, 4E lost me, and Pathfinder didn't much appeal. Apparently 5E is good, but I've still never tried it.

People probably like to debate this, but I think that Star Control 2 probably had the most impact within the games industry, simply on how it blended genres together nicely.

In my opinion, even far more so than lets say a sequel such as Super Mario World. Even if Nintendos games are way more popular but it simply pales in innovation compared to what SC2 did.

I'd also say either Morrowind (most intricately developed sequel) or Gothic 2 (most innovative sequel/quest design) are also up there, even if I'm not the biggest Morrowind fan, you have to acknowledge on the great things it did in favor of the genre.

When I saw the thread title it was Jak that I thought of, and then Prince of Persia series.

For Jak II, I loved it. When I think of playing some of them, it's Jak II I'd pick if there weren't those difficulty spikes. I seriously don't want to do the car race ever again, as much as I liked driving. I loved the city. I loved the guns. Jak and Daxter felt far simpler and duller after I got to the second game. It was nice game too, though.

For Prince of Persia it's the opposite, I love the far simpler and amazingly beautiful Sands of Time and I don't want to play the other games again. Almost all of it has to do with the combat system, they made far too many moves for Warrior Within and I never wanted to learn them. I think I went the whole game using the same thing over and over again, it was the platforming that I loved, not the combat. First game was delightfully easy combat wise.

Just turns the late game into an RPG :)

The 3 installment of The longest Journey were so different, they were pretty jarring and sequels failed to recapture the magic of the first game.

The Longest Journey is a point and click adventure game, a very well done game and I would rank it up there with the best adventure games the genre has to offer. My only gripe with the game was it crashed after every cutscene.

Dreamfall went in an entirely new direction. The "game" is now TTP, all the puzzles are gone and they were replaced with bad stealh and combat mechanics. I never needed a walkthrough for this game because most of the game was just going from A to B. The game told you were to go. On the plus side, this did keep the narrative going but the gameplay was pretty non-existant.

Dreamfall: Chapters was easily the worst of the 3. It kept the TTP of the previous game, removed combat and steath and replaced them with puzzles but sometimes the puzzles didn't make sense and other times finding the items was extremely tedious. Part of the problem was the game running so badly it made playing it a chore so I had a walkthrough to find all the items. Trying to find an item without knowing what it is you're looking for with poor FPS is really grating. The parts were you played as Saga where particular annoying as that part of the game just seemed like filler busy work and did nothing to push the narrative forward.