Sometimes, a video game gets remade/remastered, and as a result, some things are changed. While changes tend to be for the better (particularly for *good* remakes), every now and then, some changes are made that actually make the game worse. So, what examples can you think of?

Here are some of mine:

Dragon Quest 6 DS:
* Removed monster recruitment. (This is the biggest complaint here.)
* "balance" changes that make game balance worse. They made one of the most useful skills, Vacuum (Thin Air), more powerful (to the point where enemies using this skill feel more dangerous than they should be), and made a rather niche skill whose use is hard to justify, Magic Burst, weaker. (Magic Burst was reduced from 3x MP to 2x MP; this change was justified in DQ8 because it could be boosted by tension, but not in DQ6 where it was balanced without that feature in mind, which was not added to the remake.) While less egregious, making Double Up always go first makes it a bit too good in random battles.
* (Interestingly enough, I hear those "balance" changes were also made in DQ7 3DS, and I have a feeling they're also bad there.)

Final Fantasy 2 WSC/PSX:
* Spells level more slowly than in the original. In particular, using a level 1 spell once during a fight against rank 1 enemies would give it 4% of the way to level up in the original, but now only 3%.

So, what other examples can you think of?

I dont like remasters by default.
They should make new games, not remake old ones.

- Age of Empires 1-3 HD / Definitive. DRM added. (The DVD-ROM Collectors Edition was DRM-Free).

- Age of Mythology Extended - DRM added. (The DVD-ROM Gold Edition was DRM-Free)

- ARMA Cold War Assault. Not so much a "remaster" but it's a re-release of Operation Flashpoint Cold War Crisis that missing half the DLC for legal reasons (no Red Hammer campaign, only Resistance). OF:CWC had both.

- Bioshock 1 & 2 Remaster. Doubling the disk space due to the texture "enhancements" that often look worse. Eg, aside from some textures like the wet walls looking better in the Original vs the " Remaster", they actually forgot to redraw Andrew Ryan's moustache in the Remaster (as if the people doing it never even played the game). Many new bugs introduced with the UE3 port (crashes, game save corruption) that weren't in the UE2 originals went unfixed for a long time and the games actually sank down to "Mostly Negative" on Steam at one point.

- Broken Sword Directors Cut. They removed a great deal of content including death scenes, a lot of dialogue then added a new scene that has little to do with the main story, feels very out of place (it's written in a noticeably different style) and completely messes up the original's pacing.

- Commandos 2 HD. "Hey guys, we removed all German flags from German military units in WW2, just in case someone on Farcebook & Twatter mistakes spending the whole game blowing up the Nazi's with glorification of the Nazi's..."

- Deus Ex Human Revolution Directors Cut. Some things improved (the Missing Link "DLC" was reintegrated so well it was obvious it was a main chapter of the base game that was artificially split off in the first place) and improved boss bottle options. However the DC was based on a console version with inferior textures. Also the random stutter bug (that was previously patched out) was reintroduced due to the console version being based on an older pre-patched build, and this was never fixed. Hence it stutters more and looks worse than the original. Screenshots : Director's Cut vs Original (see reflections & textures on cars, overdone bloom, detail on distant buildings in upper right, etc).

- Diablo 2 Resurrected. DRM. "This game requires a constant internet connection for all game modes".

- Downfall Redux (2016). Perhaps this is subjective but I preferred the 2009 original. The Redux both removed end-game content / changed the ending and added the most awful voice acting.

- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition. "Let's take the great voice acting by Tim Curry, Mark Hamill and Michael Dorn, and replace them with... people who are not very good voice actors..."

- Half Life Source. Fixes some bugs but adds many more. "Mixed" rating on Steam are entirely due to engine-transplant bugs.

- Jagged Alliance Back In Action. An attempt at a loose JA2 remake, it was plagued with bugs, crashes, far worse AI, and of course "all versions use Steam DRM".

- Neighbours Back From Hell. Removing 3x levels (S2 E3 - One Little Piggy, S3 E1 - Laundry Day and S3 E4 - Night Of The Hunter) that were in the originals. The developer explained that the Remaster was based on the inferior console version.

- Pathologic 2. So where's the remaining 2/3rds of the game (Bachelor & Changeling stories still missing 2 years post-release)?...

- Rise of Nations Extended. DRM added. (Later versions of the DVD-ROM Gold Edition were DRM-Free)

- Sam & Max Save the World. Censorship of jokes plus charging extra for the soundtrack that was free with the original.

- Serious Sam HD FE & SE. DRM added. (Non HD versions are DRM-Free)

- SimCity (2013). Mandatory "had to be online to save", and even that didn't work...

- Skyrim SE. Encouraging formerly free mods to be paywalled behind Creation Club.

- Xiii Remake. Many issues as described on the game page with its 1.7/5 rating speaking for itself.

- There are many others like The 7th Guest 25th Anniversary, Grim Fandango Remastered, etc, where there were no actual "worst changes" in the new one simply because they were hardly any changes at all vs an utterly trivial fix like adding ScummVM or ResidualVM to the original. Just an excuse to bump the price back up. If anything I'd the say the opposite. Very occasionally and rarely someone actually does a HD / Remaster right and the significant price increase (often 2-5x what the original was selling for the week before in an 80% off sale) is justified. Most of the time the bulk of Remaster / Remake / Enhanced re-releases are either cheap & nasty cash-ins, or "enhancements" that do actually improve something but then just add another negative issue (eg, even more DRM for a re-release of a 24 year old game than the original had...) that wipes out the "enhancement" value.

Doom 3 BFG Edition - the game lost all its atmosphere, which was one of the main reason why it was good. Brightened areas, more ammo and supplies etc. The game was already easy enough, this made it absolutely trivial, generic, run off the mill shooter.

Hard Reset Redux - massive visual downgrade, made the game easier and added a dash which the original game was absolutely not balanced for, allowing you to circle the enemies infinitely.

Worms World Party Remastered - missing voices, flags, censored weapon names and missing default teams.

Command & Conqeuer Remastered Collection - gated behind DRM. Would grab it immediately otherwise.

Nice, detailed post. However, in case of Grim Fandango Remastered, adding mouse controls was a huge change. Can't imagine the game being played with the original controls...

A lot of good stuff posted already. Here was my first thought to come to mind:

Ni No Kuni Dominion of the Dark Djinn -> Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch (which then also got a Remaster).

While this considerably improved the plot/story, it added too much post-post game content, and added obscene amounts of grind. So, instead of wrapping things up, it half-wrapped things up and put you on a treadmill so you could try to get the real new ending. The game's mechanics were OK, but already weak at the seams. Boosting and lengthening the way that they did just mead it actually become an not-at-all enjoyable experience.

There were some good changes (graphics, voice acting & cinematics, menus, etc; party building & character+familiar swapping) and the in-game references is actually great, but the major structural change broke things. And the combat system was completely changed [turn-based to real time]. And -- worst -- multiple extra layers of RNG were added.

Random article link on the topic: https://gamerant.com/ni-no-kuni-wrath-white-witch-ds-games-comparison/

EDIT: Adding a 2nd game.

All those Final Fantasy 1 Remakes
While there are considerable improvements in all of them (graphics, bugfixes, conveniences), the change to MP rather than spell slots broke it.

While layer FF1 remakes (starting with GBA) did suffer from being too easy, it wasn't the change to MP that broke it; the problem was actually that they made the party stronger (faster leveling, and some classes (notably Thief) got a big boost, not to mention attack and healing spells are stronger), but they did not do the same to the enemies (excluding the final boss and maybe the one right before it).

Try playing Origins (PS1) on Easy Mode. You get more spell casts than you would on GBA, yet the game still feels like it can provide some challenge, unlike in the GBA version.

The 3D remakes of FF3 and FF4 could also be mentioned. (Note that these remakes are still good, and improved on many aspects, but there are some aspects that are worse in these remakes.)

FF3:
* Fewer enemies per battle.
* Status ailment spells, which were very useful in the original (except that they didn't work on bosses at all), are useless in the remake; this, in particular, makes an entire spell level (4th level) useless for white magic users.
* Why did they make the Black Belt job not appear until the earth crystal, near the end of the game?

FF4:
* Many augments are permanently missable. (It's worth noting that they weren't in the original game at all.)
* In particular, waiting until after the giant to get the Sylph summon (a reasonable option in the original, as it saves some going back and forth) means you now miss some augments.
* In the Magnetic Cave. Cecil (the main character) can't use his sword. In the original, you could give him a bow (for physical damage) or a healing staff (for free minor healing), but in the remake both options are no longer available.

And for good measure, Dragon Quest 4's remake also had some negative changes:
* Can no longer attack party members. While this might seem minor, it severely hurts the usefulness of the Zenithian Sword; in the original, it was great for removing negative effects on party members, but you can't do that in the remake.
* Return/Zoom is no longer usable during combat. (In the original, you could use this to escape from a desparate situation, though only in places you could cast the spell outside of combat, and you would lose your position in the world.)
* Transform is no longer player usable.
* Healusall/Omniheal had its MP cost reduced from 36 (low enough to be useful, but not gamebreaking) to 20 (too cheap for a party-wide full heal spell), making the endgame, and even the postgame, a bit too easy. (This change follows DQ7, but there the spell was not easily obtainable. DQ8 raised the cost back to 36 (assuming you don't have any passive skill that reduces MP consumption, like the one that you have to get before you can learn Omniheal.)

I was quite taken aback they thought they could just change Balder's Gate 2 menu's, so I'm playing the original. I think I read they lost a bit of Homeworld or something and had to re-do a bit, I don't trust them at all to edit any of it. I generally like playing games in their original condition, though I guess a fresh coat of paint is sometimes nice.

In the Metal Gear Solid 1 remake they changed all the cinematics by adding this ridiculous "bullet time" effects with slow-down, which was obviously copying the Matrix movies. I'm sure they thought it looked "cool" at the time but nowadays it just looks silly.

Also they re-recorded the voice acting, which for me at least was very hit or miss. For example I found Meryl's performance in the remake wasn't as good as the original.

Hmmm some remakes just need an EXE update for compatibility, upgrade textures/models and maybe re-render the videos to HD.

Saw that Dark Alliance came out, watched a review, it sounds terrible. It looks and feels nothing like the original one either... And i just wanted a playable full game that isn't on the Xbox (original) or PS2 system that i don't have to dust off or pay huge amounts of money for the collector's disc... And doesn't need an insane amount of power to emulate at a decent speed.

Hmmm perhaps the worst part is some are put more 'by the numbers' and less to do if they are fun or wanted or compelling.

This reminds me, didn't they change the intro and cinematics for BG Enhanced? Never played it but I think I remember reading about it. Something about full cinematics being changed to only slideshows?

Definitely wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

Yeah, they ditched the original 3D intro for a sloppy 2D animation.

Good mention. And don't forget, that besides the DRM, the engine used for the games is also unable of weird physics tricks that were present in the original. The areas that originally utilized them have been changed in the HD remakes.

And in general, the physics behave very differently. Most noticeable on Kleer lunges or Gnaars and Werebulls running into terrain irregularities or even the knockback you receive from getting hit by Werebulls. Makes for a noticeably different game, if you've ever played the originals.

Great list, but the missing levels of Neighbours Back From Hell were all put back in place with the latest update, so at least in this case we have a decently done remaster.

Then you forgot those two abominations of Simon the Sorcerer: 25th Anniversary Edition and Simon the Sorcerer 2: 25th Anniversary Edition, where they simply applied a horrible automatic filter that mixes all the colors creating a ghastly effect.