Only thing that springs to mind right away is Torchlight. Bought it on sale after reading so much praise about it. Completely boring yawnfest for me. Ditched it after a couple hours.

I don't remember their names.

The one that sticks with me the most was the sequel to Betrayal at Krondor (not BoA but Krondor 2 or something or other can't recall the exact title).

Betrayal at Krondor was, and still is, one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE GAMES OF ANY GENRE. It stood in first place several years until Fallout 1 knocked it off.

But the second one?? OMG. Piece. Of. Crap. I played and finished it just... I dunno.. because. But man what a let down. Absolutely NOTHING like the first one. It should have been illegal for them to market such a different game under the same banner.


EDIT: The title of the game is Return to Krondor.

Return to Krondor?
I actually bought that here on Gog, but couldn't even deal with the camera controls, so I deleted it after 15 minutes.

There's likely something else that I'm forgetting, but right now I'd say The Witcher 2. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's so very different from the first one (which is one of my favorite if not the favorite RPG), and pretty much every change other than the graphics was for the worst. I was really shocked when I first started playing it, to the point where I pretty much rage quit after the prologue and took a few days to give it another go with an open mind.

I really hate how much more console-like tha game became, how the character progression got simplified, how the combat was now just a console-ish slasher, how alchemy became next to useless, and, while the story is still ok, it feels much more like any generic grim medieval fantasy and not nearly as close to the spirit and mood of the books as the first one. I used to call it Witcher 2: The Quickening, in "honor" of the infamous Highlander sequel, I was so dismayed with it all at first. After pushing myself to play the whole thing, and accepting that it isn't really a sequel to the first game in any meaningful way, I did end up enjoying it, but in a very forgettable "I guess it was alright" way.

Assassin's Creed. It seemed that everyone who played it raved about how balls to the wall amazing it was. I bought it, and it was one of the most boring, repetitive and unashamedly padded games I've ever played. There were not one, not even two, but three long winded, unskippable and completely redundant tutorials. The game forced you to play the same three or four missions over and over, purely to pad out the time between assassinations. The only side content was collecting flags, of which there was a truly ridiculous number and all for no reward whatsoever. The only halfway interesting part of the game was the parkour, which in all fairness was fantastically animated. However, once the novelty of watching Altair Spidermanning his way up buildings wore off, you quickly realise that all you're doing is holding A and forward on the left thumbstick.

How that game didn't flop, I'll never understand.

Skyward Sword, in most recent memory.

Picture this: It's the 25th year of your franchise. That's a long time! How do you celebrate it? With a terribly linear compressed game that can't even set event flags right.

This. Plus instead of immersing the player in the historic environment the game does everything to reming you that you are actually playing a guy basically playing a video game, and puts a crappy story about ancient aliens on top of it. How that turd supplanted the Prince of Persia series is indeed baffling.

The most recent version of Sim City (2013)
What a total disaster that was. They seemed to forget everything that people liked about the previous Sim City games.
Textbook example of what happens whe EA takes over a franchise and kicks out the people who originally created it and truns it over to a bunch of hacks.

Dark Reign 2.

I loved the hell out of Dark Reign 1. Great game (though the campaign was a little lacking), and even better engine to mess with.

Dark Reign 2 was big letdown. Different game play. It was in that awkward "transition to 3d" era where almost all games sucked. Etc, etc. I had gotten a free copy from being in the betas (mailed disk updates, yay, since the Internet was slow). I wish I'd kept those development versions.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. The game without any content or game play. All you do is running from A to B, watch cutscene, get new color for light saber. Then run from B to A, watch cutscene, get new color... you get the picture. Then the game ends.

Hm for me its probably a tie between Deus Ex Invisible War and Dragon Age 2.
I played through both and while not fantastic i thought that DX IW at least was a halfway decent game, just not a good sequel to Deus Ex. Dragon Age 2 on the other hand is just terrible in my opinion. There really was almost nothing that i liked about it, except for a few characters and the general idea of the story (not the way it was told though)

Myst V - Similar to Deus Ex Invisible War, not a bad game in itself, but as a sequel it was very dissapointing.

Half Life series - I probably played them too late, only bought HL2 and the episodes this year, but i never got whats so great about the first one either. Sure, the weapon variety was nice and allowed for some tactical thinking, but it got so much praise for its story and i just thought it wasnt all that impressive. Compare it to the Marathon Trilogy for example and its ridiculously simple really. Still, i thought they were really good games, just not as legendary-awesome as people say.

Sweet Jesus, I forgot about this! I even deleted the savegames, so I won't be tempted into starting all over again.

Even something as simple as quitting the game is an arduous chore that will take you a minute or two.

I would say KQ MOE because I was thinking this could be the game that ended such a beloved franchise of games but it left a sour taste in my mouth. I even cheated by downloading a saved game to see the ending but that wasn't even worth it. As game by it self it's not that bad of a game. But as a KQ game it's very very disappointing.

My Runner ups would be
KQ1 SCI because I expected more than just an SCI upgrade. I expected the next version of the SCI engine that powered games like KQ5,6 and 7 and in 256 colors. But nope we got stuck in 16 color VGA. So it's no wonder the game failed to sell.

Diablo III. After the masterpiece that Diablo 2 that Diablo 3 would top that but boy was I wrong. I competed the game once and had help to finish the expansion act. Also the post gameplay was fun but it got bland after a while because nothing new was happening and adding the Necromancer didn't do much. Plus there is no offline single player which is a major downfall And finally the Story was a major disappointment and I won't go into details because of spoilers.

Bard's Tale IV.

I will buy a new gaming rig for Dragon Age Inquisition, and be fecking cruelly disappointed because it is not an RPG for PC, mouse, keybpard.

It is a flower picking WASD troll vs - you know, PC gaming impact the world.

Fuck it! We always fear that from BW whenever they might do a great PC title. (LIke DA2 ;-) )

But sorry: Bard's Tale IV. Top gaming rig to mitigate save-time disaster? Sorry if I am arrogant, but I have hard time to swallow BW rig expectation from you.


EDIT: Ps. Recency bias, I admit.