Video Game Review: Top 10 Worst Video Game Sequels I've seen so far: Part 2

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Ceaser is pissed off at these sequels.

 Alright we've seen some notoriously bad sequels in the last list and there were some good things to say about them. For example I hated the gameplay of X6 but the music was still good, and Kingdom Hearts Recoded was much better as a movie then a game. But these next four, no quarter given, in my opinion these are some of the worst sequels I've seen and played.

#4 Devil May Cry 2

 As I mentioned in my best sequels list I'm not a long time fan of the series and the only reasons I checked it out was because Dante and Lady were in Project X Zone, I fought Dante in SMT Nocturne, and the HD collection was on sale so I figured why not. The first game was ok but I was still wondering why everyone loved Dante so much. From what I saw it was decent but not as good as God of War which I've been a fan of since the first game. My opinion of the series didn't improve once I got to Devil May Cry 2. What little personality Dante had was just gone, there was no banter between him and the bosses and we got a secondary lead who was boring, had a clone backstory that went almost nowhere and the gameplay just took a giant dump. 

 Thank whoever is up there for me giving Devil May Cry 3 a chance because when I finished the first fight in that game it all suddenly made complete sense. For me Devil May Cry was like the Original Evil Dead trilogy except Evil Dead 2 was far better then the first and Devil May Cry 2 sucked like a black hole. In both cases thankfully I made it to the third installment because now I know and am so waiting till I can finally get to Devil May Cry 4 and let's play that sucker. Though I do have more games on my to do list before I get to that, but rest assured I will play that game. Also for everyone who whined about DMC, I see where you're coming from but 1 it's an alternate universe and 2 trust me it's not the worst in the franchise that to me will always be Devil May Cry 2 until I see otherwise.

 #3 Assassins Creed 3

 I believe that with this one I barely have to explain myself but the might as well anyway. Assassins Creed 3 right after the conclusion to Ezio's story in Revelations gives us one of the most boring protagonists in the series, Conner Kenway. Even worse they teased us with the first two sequences instead having us play as Conner's far more interesting and entertaining father Haytham. Though admittedly the twist of him actually being a Templar was handled pretty well in my opinion and the fact that we have to kill the people that we've come to know (for the most part) kind of makes it more personal especially since unlike the previous groups of Templars Haytham's order do seem to care about protecting the Colonies. But their methodology is more then a tad questionable because we need to have our conflict somehow.

 Also back in the worst parts of these games AKA the modern segments we get a whole new dimension of annoyance with Desmond in the form of his fucking daddy issues. 

"GET IN THE FUCKING ANIMUS SHINJI, I MEAN DESMOND!"

 I'm not even kidding with that joke, just like in Evangelion Desmond shoves his daddy issues all over the place which are kind of small potatoes when you know THE END OF THE WORLD DEPENDS ON DESMOND FINDING WHERE CONNOR HID THE KEY TO THE TENPLE SO THEY CAN SAVE THE WORLD! Though at least this was only early on and they did reconcile so it's not as bad as it could have been. Also the game at least killed Desmond off so we don't have to follow his boring chosen one ass for the rest of the franchise. 

 At least we now just have Shawn and Rebecca to deal with, at least they both have something resembling personalities that we can get behind. Also Assassins Creed 3 still had the multiplayer which while still fun still had Micro transactions which is never fine for me in a $60 game. Though there was the Tyranny of King Washington DLC which had an incredibly goofy premise and cranked it up to 11 with it giving Conner super duper Native American super powers. Thankfully we had Assassins Creed 4 after this because if we had another boring romp with Conner I would have jumped ship long before the dual release of Unity and Rogue.

#2 Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts

 Do I even have to say anything?!  You all know why this would eventually make the list I don't even need to go over it. But I have to at least fill in 2 paragraphs for these entries so here it goes. Everyone who grew up with an N64 at least heard about Banjo Kazooie and how they were fun colorful platform games. We were teased with a third game in at the end of Banjo Tooie but aside from some GBA spin offs there was nothing for years, especially after Rare was bought out by MICROSOFT! "Spit"

 But then we heard that there was going to be a brand new Banjo Kazooie game for the 360 we were over the moon. But then it was released and all our hope turned into despair faster then you can say "I was stupid, so stupid" and BAM Banjo Kazooie Nuts and bolts was unleashed onto the world. I of course never played it but you didn't even need to play it to know that you don't take a beloved platform game and turn it into a FUCKING BUILD YOUR OWN CAR RACER GAME!? That just doesn't make any sense from either a game design perspective or a brand loyalty perspective. Why in the wide wide world of sports would somebody think "hey we have this beloved platformer IP that people have been begging for a sequel to, let's make it into a goddamn Lego racing game that bitterly insults the fans and mechanics of the two games that made it so beloved!" 

 I mean if this was its own IP people would never have had this big of a fan revolt that wouldn't be matched until the ending to Mass Effect 3. But nope Rare was owned by MICROSOFT "spit" and so owned by their new overlords they took the name of Banjo Kazooie and ran it over their Gummi Ship knock off monster truck. Thankfully the people who were really responsible for Banjo Kazooie being the success that it was broke away from; them, founded their own company and have created a brilliant looking spiritual successor Yooka-Layle which is on its way very, very soon. (Which I personally backed on Kickstarter and yes I will begin a Let's Play of that lovely little game as soon as I possibly can!) So in a way we can be a bit thankful to Nuts and Bolts because without this flaming turd we wouldn't have Yooka-Layle to look forward to. So thank you Nuts and Bolts, now never bother us again. Now before I get to #1 some dishonorable mentions.

Assassins Creed Bloodlines.

 Shitty little PSP game that tries to explain some elements of how Altaïr hid the Apple of Eden on Cypress and was overall unnecessary and graphically repulsive. The only reason anyone would have to play this was to unlock weapons in Assassins Creed 2. Nothing else to say but OH UBISOFT!

Final Fantasy X-2

 Takes place after an ok Final Fantasy story and takes two of of the characters plus a new character and basically makes them into Angsty vapid and poorly written clones of Cutie Honey. While the combat and dresssphere system is interesting, the plot can get stupid and for those who want to 100% this game the monster collection mini game is one of the most tedious obsessive compulsive tasks I have ever seen. Those who have played this game on the PS3, 4 or Vita know exactly what I'm talking about.

 Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days.

 Aside from having one of the dumbest titles I've ever read for a video game, just like the other Kingdom Hearts DS game is just ok. The gameplay is better then Coded, it's story is actually relevant by showing Roxas' time with Organization 13, explaining why he left in the first place and showing how he and Axel became good buddies. And just like Coded this games events are cannon so it's unskippable and it's events have been made into a clip-show/ movie so you don't have to search Amazon for a copy, so no muss no fuss. But as bad as these previous entries was this is still nothing compared to what I consider the worst sequel I have ever encountered!

 #1 The Legend of Zelda, Phantom Hourglass.

 Each of the previous games have their own unique flavors of horrible. From Nuts and Bolt's betrayal of the classic games that made them a household name to Final Fantasy 13's misguided and horribly confused design, but nothing on this list pisses me off more then Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass. Just like Assassins Creed 3 PH comes right after my favorite Legend of Zelda game, Wind Walker which I loved even back when it first came out when everybody else was pissing and moaning about how "kiddy" it looked. When I learned about there being a continuation of that continuity (this was back before I learned how messed up the Zelda timeline was; btw at that point the only Zelda games I played and finished were OOT and Majora's Mask) I picked it up right away. Then a few hours later I put it down and never picked it up again to this day.

 That's right of all the bad games I've played I at the very least try to finish one play-through of it. Not so with Phantom Hourglass, this is one of the very few games that I just gave up on and never looked back on. That comes down to three things. First was the graphics, now I know that going from the GameCube to the DS I knew there would be some kind of a graphical downgrade but wow the graphics for this game were bad. Everyone looked like they were made of Legos and there was little to no expression on their faces aside from their default faces.

 Number 2, the controls were awful. Now when you have a directional pad on your portable console you would at first think that you would use it to move your character. But not in this pile of puke, no no you needed to move Link with the DS touchscreen and Stylus and making such a dramatic change to the controls especially for an established platformer did not win points with me. But that leads me to the biggest problem with Phantom Hourglass, THE TEMPLE OF THE OCEAN KING!!! Oh by the Emperors magnificent golden lazy boy did that place become my personal purgatory. 

 See every time you defeat a boss you have to go back to this place every single time, go through every single floor just to get to the new floor to progress in the story and I repeat you have to go through every single floor in this place every single time to progress through the game. It was when I realized that fact and found seemingly no way to mediate this problem I for the first time in my memory, gave up the game and never played it again. This game along with the horrid controls for Skyward Sword have basically caused me to give up on the Legend of Zelda franchise, a franchise that I was only a very casual fan of to begin with. So that is why Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass is the worst video game sequel I've ever encountered, it took a franchise that everyone said was a seminal classic and turned it into an overrated and overhyped mess. Does anyone else have their own sequel that's worse then this? Then leave it in the comments below and make your case. Now if you'll excuse me I have a good sequel to play to cleanse my palate of this horrible trip down memory lane.

Devil May Cry is owned by Capcom and Hideki Kamiya.
Assassins Creed 3 is owned by Ubisoft, Patrice Désilets, Jade Raymond and Corey May.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is owned by Microsoft Game Studios and Rare.
The Legend of Zelda is owned by Nintendo & Shigeru Miyamoto
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is owned by 20^th Century Fox

Video Game Review: Persona Retrospective: Persona (PSP) Part 11: Too cool for school.

Please be sure to read, comment, spread the links, re-tweet and follow me on Twitter @OnDavidsBrain! and support me on Patreon.

For those who've been keeping up with my Persona retrospective you are no doubt aware that there's a second story for the original Japanese release which was recovered for the international PSP re-release and that's what I'll be covering. Also no there will be no Frozen references in this review, mainly because I've never seen the movie and it's been done to death by this point. But for those who haven't read my previous reviews here are the links, enjoy.

 You remember back in Part 4 where I mentioned the Snow Queen Quest? Where here's where we can get on that quest. After you've rescued Setsuko and head back to the school instead of telling Ayase that you're going to attack SEBEC instead talk to the girl in classroom 2-4 who says that she heard from Devil-Boy aka Tsutomu that the reason the town is so screwed up is because of a curse on St Hermelin. So then we find Tsutomu in the Library who tells of the Snow Queen, a fairy tale that's performed by the St Hermelin drama club as a traditional play. However the tradition stopped since the play is cursed, every person who's ever worn the Snow Queen's mask and played the role died in unnatural ways.

 However that's as far as he knows aside from there being supposedly only one person who played the role and survived the curse, so now to find out who that is. Somebody in the Drama club might know more so that's the next stop. Of course with a story of such infamy the Drama club denies it ever happened, so time go over their heads and make a stop to the student council room to see if there were records kept. There are records but the President isn't budging on showing them and suggests asking someone who was there, a good guess would be the Principal.

This is Principal Ooishi who works hard for her students and their welfare.

 Once Naoya makes it to her office she knows that he's been looking into the Snow Queen rumors, so she gives the whole story. She never believed the rumors until eight years ago when Ms Saeko was cast as the Snow Queen, and that Ms Saeko lost her best friend. Ooishi blames herself for what happened, that if she had forbade the use of the mask then nobody would have died; so to prevent any more deaths she had the mask purified and sealed away. But hey guess who's going to ignore all of that and find the mask? YOU!!!! But hey it's not like we haven't heard several times before that the mask is clearly evil or anything, I mean come on

when has a mask

ever been the source or cause of ungodly evil

in the world? They were probably just unlucky or something.

 If you did all of the steps right you completely ignore logic and head for the Gyms storage area you'll find a box with talismans on it, open it up and retrieve the Snow Queen Mask. Naoya then makes his way to the hole where he sees Mark and Maki walk off to attack SEBEC leaving Yukino and Ayase behind. Yukino says that Nanjo got hurt so Mark, Brown and Elly brought him back so he could recover. But then Maki showed up out of nowhere so like last time more then a few eyebrows were raised.

 But that's put on the back burner for now as Ms Saeko shows up to see what all the commotion is; after getting brought up to speed and convinced to hold down the fort by Yukino she notices that Naoya is carrying the Snow Queen Mask. She starts to reminisce about her school days and tells the story of the play. Afterwords she stupidly decides to put on the mask to prove how lucky she is since she survived the curse, however the entire school is frozen over and the structure has completely been reshuffled. So the moral of the story kids?

 But she did and now look what happened. She's been possessed by an evil spirit and is now going to turn the entire world into an eternal frozen night unless the group stops her. But of course they can't just force the mask off of her no no, the Snow Queen has frozen Ms Saeko and if the group tries to just remove the mask from her and free the school they would end up shattering her into little pieces. The Queen then pulls a move stupid enough for the Great Leader to blush by telling the three that she has set up three towers to stall for time while she prepares the spell to summon the eternal night and that if they can defeat each of the towers guardians before the clock's respective tower strikes twelve she'll leave and return the school and Ms Saeko back to normal. Of course the three have absolutely no reason to trust her and try to find a surefire way to remove the mask. But since neither Uncle or Toru are there to whip up the Mask removal potion they're pretty much up the creak without a paddle.

 Thankfully Philemon shows up to calm the group down and gives them the frame of the demon mirror, which if they collect at least eight of the twelve shards can free Ms Saeko from the Mask. So they have their goal and three towers to climb but they're gonna need two more people to help on their quest and luckily Nanjo, Elly and Brown are still in the school, however since Nanjo is a default party member in the SEBEC story we'll just go find Elly and Brown. Ladies first then as we find Elly talking to Tsutomu in the library. The group figures that since she knows a lot about demons, can read the runes on the doors leading to the towers and already has a Persona she would be invaluable and thus she joins the party when asked.

 Brown is located in the cafeteria and here is where I finally get to explain my dislike of Ayase. In the cafeteria Brown is desperately trying to calm down Toro who's gone crazy and is planning on eating every last scrap of food and watching everyone else starve as revenge for Ayase turning down his love confession. Actually that's putting it lightly, she pretty much smashed his self-esteem to pieces by essentially saying he's a boring, sloven, disgusting, gluttonous waste of skin with all the charm of a ten day old roadside skunk carcass. Then she makes the dumbest comment she could say in this situation by asking if the truth really hurt that much, do you see why I hate her? She just throws her comments out into the either without taking even the slightest consideration that her words might come off as callous and mean-spirited and she doesn't even know that what she says is so destructive.

So if I were to put her on the old Bastometer (TM) she'd be between Cartman and Maleficent since she later admits that she can go too far and does direct her sharp tongue at people that deserve such bile.

This understandably make him completely lose his shit and unleashes his Persona on the five; Mara of the Tower Arcana.

Known as "The Evil One" in Buddhist mythology Mara is a tempter, through the deceit of regarding the mundane and negative as alluring, and personifies unwholesome impulses, unskillfulness, and the "death" of the spiritual life.

 (Also yes I know that this isn't what Mara looks like in the game I'm not going to show what it really looks like for obvious reasons so for those who are morbidly curious, just make sure you're at home before you look up what Mara looks like in the games.) However due to his warped mind state his Persona instead manifests as part of his body and not as a Spirit like the others' Personas. He manages to get off three attacks before Ayase discovers her Persona; Houri of the Magician Arcana.

Houri are mystical spirits that exist in heaven according to the teachings of Islam. The Houri are described as being modest, beautiful virgins that linger in Paradise. The Qur'an describes that anyone who enters paradise is promised a beautiful companion of their opposite gender (which refers to the houri) and becomes an houri.

Just like another fire wielding character affiliated with the Magician Arcana Ayase discovers that the only way to deal with an evil penis monster growing out of a fat kid; is to burn it!

 Following the advice of the greatest leader the Fire Nation has ever known she does indeed burn it which then causes Brown to waken to his Persona (which wasn't revealed yet in this series of events, remember in the main game he awakens to his Persona at the Police Station) with the two new Persona users they manage to calm Toro down. After they all compare notes Brown joins the group and now with their team of five Persona users they're ready to take on the three towers, defeat the three guardians, recover the Mirror Shards, save their teacher and exorcise the spirit of the Snow Queen Mask before the whole world becomes the nightmare world of Silent Hill Shattered Memories, sounds easy. But first just make sure you walk around the place, learn where everything is and make sure your equipment is up to snuff. Next time we'll talk about the towers and their guardians.

Shin Megami Tensai Persona is owned by Atlus and Sega.
The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask is owned by Nintendo & Shigeru Miyamoto.
Jackie Chan Adventures is owned by Jackie Chan, The JC Group, Blue Train Entertainment, Adelaide Productions, Columbia TriStar Television and Sony Pictures Television.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is propriety of Hirohiko Araki, David Production, Tokyo MX, Warner Bros Entertainment and Viz Media.
The Ren & Stimpy show is owned by Bob Camp, John Kricfalusi, Spümcø, Games Animation and Nickelodeon.
Venture Brothers is owned by Adult Swim, Williams Street, AstroBase GO!, World Leaders Entertainment, Noodlesoup Productions and Titmouse inc.
Grand Theft Auto IV is owned by Rockstar Games and Take-Two interactive.
South Park is owned by Matt Stone, Trey Parker and Comedy Central.
Sleeping Beauty (1959) is owned by Walt Disney, Walt Disney Productions and Buena Vista Distribution.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is owned by Gen Urobutchi, Studio Shaft, and Studio Aniplex.
Silent Hill Downpour is owned by Vatra games and Konami Computer Entertainment.
Kamen Rider is owned by Ishinomori Productions, Toei Productions, and Bandai.
Super Sentai is owned by Ishinomori Productions, Toei Productions, and Bandai.