dtgreene: Back in the NES era, it felt like so many series would follow this pattern:
* 1: The original, that ended up setting up the series and its basic conventions.
* 2: Breaks away from the conventions, resulting in a game that's very different and often the black sheep of the series. (Just look at Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA), Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, and Final Fantasy 2 (JP); regardless of how good or bad you feel about these games, you can't deny that they're very different from the rest of the series they're in (excluding PSX-era and later Castlevanias).)
* 3: More like the first game, but with many new features added. You see this with the games I mentioned before: SMB3 is SMB1 with new levels and more power-ups and enemy types, plus a map between levels, Zelda 3 is Zelda 1 with much fancier graphics/sound, people to talk to, and being more linear, Castlevania 3 is CV1 with branching paths and spirit helpers (but Trevor plays just like CV1 Simon Belmont), and FF3 is FF1 with a much bigger class (now called job) selection and the ability to change them at will, albeit more linear and with worse enemy designs.
In general, it feels like the 3rd game in the series was always the upgrade of the 1st game, and if the first game is at least decent, the 3rd game tends to end up quite good. (With that said, I think I prefer CV2 and FF2 over CV3 and FF3, but that may not be the majority opinion in these cases; same with Z2 versus Z3.)
I never noticed this pattern. Thanks for pointing it out.