"They Finally fixed X"....But I liked X

[Roboshi]

Opinions happen and obviously when a game gets changed there will be detractors. So really this is about those changes to games that most people said had "fixed" the series from previous iterations (or "spiritual predecessors"), But changes your personally feel were either unnecessary or just pain didn't work.

I've personally got a few but I'll start with;

-Zelda; Link Between Worlds Item renting and dungeon design-

This one especially gets me simply because of how much praise it still gets. Zelda has often been criticised for it's formula of getting an item in a dungeon and then using it in said dungeon to unlock puzzles and doors. However this formula has been used so often because it works so well.
In a zelda game each dungeon starts out like a maze, with only a few places you can go, with rooms slowly opening up with the beating of puzzles and enemies with the halfway point usually being the acquisition of an item, this leads to the entire dungeon opening up as you explore it fully ending with a boss that you will need to work out how to use your new item on them.

Now What I described there is basically how each dungeon in Zelda is more akin to a small section of a Metroid game and the fun of progression with your new abilities or items.

But with the item rental/purchase system in LBW each dungeon starts at either a point you go in find you can't progress without an item, go grind for money, rent the item, go in and then you start at the mid point with your item unlocking the dungeon. This makes the dungeons lose a great deal of character as it's almost like buying a skeleton key for half the doors with the other half using the same wall-merging mechanic (interesting though it is). LBW was like a Zelda with cheat codes and codes that replaced clever design for rupee grinding, something famous for dragging down windwaker (one of the best 3D zeldas).


So, yes mechanics you feel were detrimental to a series but got a lot of praise.

 

[Sharia]

Resident Evil 4 and 5 had a certain "identity" as a third person shooter. They had a certain, "strategic" play which separated themselves from your typical "Dead Space" or what not.

RE6's choice to allow the player to move and shoot at the same time, as well as the adjustment in the enemy AI to compensate for the change, ruined the whole thing.

 

[Roboshi]

Resident Evil 4 and 5 had an identity as third person shooters,. The had a strategic play that separated themselves from your typical Dead Space and what not.

RE6's choice to allow move and shoot and adjust the enemy Ai to compensate ruined the whole thing.

Yeah this has often been the problem with the "actionification" of survival horror games.

 

[Dango]

Mass Effect's combat. People said it was sluggish and yeah, I guess compared to Gears of War it was pretty sluggish, but I never really wanted it to be an action game. Mass Effect 2 was a disappointment to me in a lot of ways, and the change from RPG to boring shooter was one of them.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm one of those mutants who prefer Mass Effect to ME2 mainly because it felt more like an exploration-based RPG rather than an action-focused one. Yeah, the shooting and action wasn't great but I never really saw that as being the point of Mass Effect; for me the game was more about exploring the galaxy, talking to people, etc etc. Rather than expand that in the sequels we get cover-based shooting and have our bouncy-car replaced by boring probe launching.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Resident Evil 4 and 5 had a certain "identity" as a third person shooter. They had a certain, "strategic" play which separated themselves from your typical "Dead Space" or what not.

RE6's choice to allow the player to move and shoot at the same time, as well as the adjustment in the enemy AI to compensate for the change, ruined the whole thing.

I have to disagree with this.

Not because I think that RE6 is in any way good, I just don't think it's the moving and shooting that ruined it. The ability to move and shoot is in Resident Evil Revelations 2, and that game is both significantly better than RE6, and feels a hell of a lot more like a proper Resident Evil game.

 

[Skatalite]

Resident Evil 4 and 5 had a certain "identity" as a third person shooter. They had a certain, "strategic" play which separated themselves from your typical "Dead Space" or what not.

Your typical Dead Space? What other games like Dead Space are out there? I'd love to know, because I'll probably be buying them.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Probably not a pure example, but...going from the arcana force system of Arcana Heart 2 to 3's extend force. I say not pure, because it was mechanically an unquestionable upgrade. Only in Arcana Heart 3 can you use the active arcana abilities more than once, and for an actually significant amount of round time (the first and second games made them a once-per-round deal, lasting only as long as you had super meter...hardly game- or playstyle-defining).

But aesthetically, I loved the old system. Arcana force summoned a super move portrait of your patron spirit symbolizing them briefly shifting your fight from the material to the spirit world, where you can draw extra power from their presence (active abilities) and they can intervene directly with an Arcana Blaze. Extend force? Just a brief button press and quick background change. I get why they couldn't do the screen-filling background portrait, even briefly (takes up time that otherwise displays the spirit world imagery, without pausing the clock like AH1 or 2), but I miss it nonetheless.

Also why, why, why did they add those annoying animated bars on either side of the fight in AH3? With no way to get rid of them?

 

[loa]

People called dragon age origins the "spiritual successor" of baldurs gate even though that game had everything fun about magic rationalized out of it and forced grindy level progression down your throat while you could summon a djinn in baldurs gate to wish for a strong enemy which you could then kill for tons of experience.

Your typical Dead Space? What other games like Dead Space are out there? I'd love to know, because I'll probably be buying them.

Probably dead space 2 and 3.

 

[Roboshi]

Shadow of the Colossus, in the HD remaster they made Wanda flail around way more when holding on to a Colossus, also the grip meter seems to go down faster. Not really sure if its a "fix" maybe to make the game more realistic or something, but its a change that made the game -but especially the time attack mode- ridiculously harder.

 

[elvor0]

Gonna have to agree with OP. I /enjoyed/ Link Between Worlds, but it was pretty forgettable at the end of the day. The item rental was an interesting experiment, which I respect developers choice for trying, but ultimately made the dungeons shallow, as instead of relying on a standardized increasing roster of items for its puzzles, each dungeon can only assume for 1, maybe 2 items, thus rely on 1 item to work.

For myself? Final Bloody Fantasy combat system. I like the classic atb/turn based system, I have no idea why Square Enix keeps trying to invent the wheel, 13, 13-2 and Lightning Returns combat systems are horrendous to get through, whether its the fact that autobattle does all the work, that even basic enemies take forever defeat past a certain point, that stagger mechanic, half the mechanics clashed with themselves or the dodgy AI, or just sheer tedium of not really feeling like you're involved. 15 and 7 Remake seem to be taking the same route and I've no idea why. Lightning Returns was the worst, trying to mix action with atb and instead annoying both sides of the design, never mind the fact that Lightning could physically miss as well as dice roll miss.

Bravely Default was beloved! And lets be honest here, if you don't like atb? Well then don't celebrate a game being gutted to appease you, its totally unfair on the people who do like it.

 

[Frankster]

Count me amongst those who preferred Mass Effect 1 to the sequels and most things people complain about and said was "fixed" was things that I enjoyed:

Aim isn't perfect and is wobbly! Thus the combat in the games suck!
That was rpg stat system at work, you shot more or less straight depending on how much points put into mastery of that particular weapon. This is something that I actually enjoyed, developing a character and seeing them control better as you invest points into stats.
In a related note I enjoyed the non corridor aspect of me1 that allowed you to get out of the mako and snipe enemies from afar before entering the place you were supposed to get into. Replaying Me1 atm and this little thing in particular is making me fall in love with the game all over again.

Can't think of any other example at this time, hate being unoriginal.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

People called dragon age origins the "spiritual successor" of baldurs gate even though that game had everything fun about magic rationalized out of it and forced grindy level progression down your throat while you could summon a djinn in baldurs gate to wish for a strong enemy which you could then kill for tons of experience.

Yep! Neverwinter Nights had so many combat options too. ESPECIALLY if you were a Wizard/Sorceror. Then they took ALL OF THOSE options out and then filled it with a bunch of gear bloat like I was playing effing WoW again and boring ass party gear management. Maybe I'm just a solo fag but I really hate rooting around in my inventory through 25 sets of equipment, each with slightly different stats, taking so long to decide which one I should keep.

I really did love DA:O's story and characters and especially the demons but dat combat... Such a terrible downgrade...

 

[maninahat]

Mass Effect's combat. People said it was sluggish and yeah, I guess compared to Gears of War it was pretty sluggish, but I never really wanted it to be an action game. Mass Effect 2 was a disappointment to me in a lot of ways, and the change from RPG to boring shooter was one of them.

Speaking of Mass Effect, them removing the space buggy sections in the sequels. I liked the monster truck madness-esque ramping off of giant dunes!

 

[MoltenSilver]

Mass effect 1 again, though in this case I'm in the camp that preferred the combat in 2 (yes it would have been nice if ME2 was a bit more rpg-ee than straight shooter, but something felt very un-visceral about the combat in the first game, the weapons beside the shotgun felt like they had no weight to them, weapons hitting you didn't really have any feeling of impact, it seemed more like cardboard targets standing opposite each other exchanging meaningless lights than an intense battle). My 'I preferred it unfixed' is the Mako; granted it wasn't perfect and likewise had a very cardboard-ee feel but there was at least something interesting the first time you were driving over these alien landscapes, and it sure as hell beat that stupid probe minigame.

 

[Worgen]

Mass Effect's combat. People said it was sluggish and yeah, I guess compared to Gears of War it was pretty sluggish, but I never really wanted it to be an action game. Mass Effect 2 was a disappointment to me in a lot of ways, and the change from RPG to boring shooter was one of them.

Speaking of Mass Effect, them removing the space buggy sections in the sequels. I liked the monster truck madness-esque ramping off of giant dunes!

Really the problem wasn't the Mako, it was the planets they had for it tended to be badly designed. Some of the flatter planets were a ton of fun to drive around, it was just when you spent half an hour trying to get up a 90 degree incline that it became a pain.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Really the problem wasn't the Mako, it was the planets they had for it tended to be badly designed. Some of the flatter planets were a ton of fun to drive around, it was just when you spent half an hour trying to get up a 90 degree incline that it became a pain.

Let's be fair, for a lot of the planets they probably just used a terrain generator, tweaked the result a little and called it a day.
Half of them look like they were generated in Bryce 3D.

 

[RedDeadFred]

ME3: They finally fixed the combat (seriously, people say Gears is better, but I don't find it nearly as enjoyable, biotics and abilities make it way more interesting), but then added the ending which kinda took all of the mystery out of the Reapers. I would have preferred them to stay this mysterious, malevolent force that we simply had to band together to stop. It's cliche, but I still would have preferred it. Much better to think of them as these galactic monstrosities that simply cultivated galaxies for later consumption.

Fallout 4: They finally fixed the cumbersome looting system, but I liked the old leveling system more. I didn't mind it at first, I even thought it made sense on some level. However, I now think that it's actually sapped a lot of the replayability that the series once had. I never felt a need to use any of the leveling and perk overhauls in Skyrim (preferred a more precise approach with many different mods to address different things), but I'm probably going to get one for Fallout 4.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Pretty much anytime they utter the words "multiplayer focused": I basically don't play multiplyaer at all, so anytime I hear this it's usually an indication that a lot of the single-player aspects are going to be dumbed down or sacrificed.

It plays faster now!!: This is mostly for fighting games, but for some reason a lot of devs seem to think that just making fighting games faster and faster somehow makes them better. This is why I was somewhat disappointed in MKX: the game has gotten so fast now it's just bananas. You have basically 0.005 seconds to punish your opponent for missed combos and special moves. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

 

[Roboshi]

ME3: They finally fixed the combat (seriously, people say Gears is better, but I don't find it nearly as enjoyable, biotics and abilities make it way more interesting), but then added the ending which kinda took all of the mystery out of the Reapers. I would have preferred them to stay this mysterious, malevolent force that we simply had to band together to stop. It's cliche, but I still would have preferred it. Much better to think of them as these galactic monstrosities that simply cultivated galaxies for later consumption.

Fallout 4: They finally fixed the cumbersome looting system, but I liked the old leveling system more. I didn't mind it at first, I even thought it made sense on some level. However, I now think that it's actually sapped a lot of the replayability that the series once had. I never felt a need to use any of the leveling and perk overhauls in Skyrim (preferred a more precise approach with many different mods to address different things), but I'm probably going to get one for Fallout 4.

I think you miss the meaning of the title, it's not about gaining one thing and losing another that would be fixing X and losing Y. I mean where there is a big fanfare about a change that you feel was for the worse.