Third Games in the Series That Were Good

[nickyv917]

Last week, Yahtzee was talking about trilogies not usually producing good third installments, and it got me wondering, what good third games are there? Personally, I liked Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon (you can probably tell), Crash 3: Warped, and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. What do you think? Which ones do you like?

 

[JCD2k4]

God of War 3.

 

[Nimcha]

Grand Prix 3.

And duh, ME3.

 

[JohnDoey]

Uncarted 3,Jak 3,as OP said Sly 3,Rayman 3,Gears 3,MGS 3,Fallout 3.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Sonic
Metal Gear Solid
Mass Effect
Elder Scrolls
Deus Ex
Gears Of War
Halo
Modern Warfare
Saints Row
Fallout
Splinter Cell

and many, many more that I've enjoyed over the years

 

[hazabaza1]

Mass Effect, Saints Row, Persona, Sonic, Assassin's Creed, Elder Scrolls, Fallout...
Many of them.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Super Metroid, Morrowind, New Vegas, SSBB, Rome: Total War, Persona 3, etc. Although, trilogies are different than series in this regard because they have a story to conclude.

 

[Fappy]

Morrowind is probably one of the best 3rd installments out there. I'm sure most people would say Mario 3 and Sonic 3. Mario 3 is widely considered the best Mario title.

 

[Batou667]

Number 3's that were good:
Gears 3
Halo 3
Sonic 3
Mario 3
Zelda 3
Fallout 3
Doom 3
Quake 3
GTA 3
Splinter Cell 3
Dead or Alive 3

Number 3's that were average, or which I'm cautious of getting excited for:
Golden Axe 3
Streets of Rage 3
Shining Force 3 PAL/US (incomplete release outside of JAP)
Ninja Gaiden 3 (starting to look formulaic, and frankly 2 was inferior to the original)
Metal Slug 3
Far Cry 3 (would love to be proved wrong)
[edit] Assassin's Creed 3

Number 3's that were bad:
Prince of Persia 3
Monkey Island 3
[edit] Age of Empires 3 was pretty damn bad.
[edit] Phantasy Star 3, which is weird because 2 and 4 were both awesome.

tl;dr: Yahtzee has a bias for short, perfectly-formed, self-contained games. Possibly this is because he's a reviewer, or possibly he's a reviewer because he plays short(er) games - but he's certainly unapologetic about not having much truck with online, multiplayer or multi-game franchises. There are a lot of people who think differently to him. To each their own.

 

[Frankster]

Trilogy rule doesn't apply to games too well imo.

I mean who could forget classics such as Masters of Orion 3 and....Oh god.
The trilogy rule USUALLY doesn't apply to games I mean.

I had started typing a list of 3rd installements then looked up and saw everyone already listed them.

Golden Axe 3
Streets of Rage 3

What was meh about those 2 titles might I ask? :O Been a while since I played streets of rage 3, but played Golden Axe 3 on one of those sega anthology titles and found I still really enjoy it a lot.
Course Golden Axe 2 would still be my overall fav of that series.

 

[Launcelot111]

Persona 3 and Morrowind were lightyears ahead of what came before them. The third Ratchet and Clank was the best in my book.

As for limiting this strictly to trilogies, I think Yahtzee has a point. I feel like developing a trilogy would force developers to have a certain level of continuity between the three installments in terms of gameplay that might not be able to hold interest across three titles, to say nothing of the challenge of satisfying someone's expectations when writing a conclusion to a story spanning three games

 

[Nelle]

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, Because that game really thought me Freedom. And it is veeery moddable. Also Fallout 3 is the greatest Fallout ever made (Well that will change if Fallout 4 will release.) But it will be forever called the best 3rd Fallout Game ever. (Van Buren is the Offical Fallout 3 tho. But Bethesda's Fallout 3 is much, much better.)

Trilogies are the ones that are story intensive right? Mass Effect showed that Trilogies are very story intensive.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

God of War 3
Uncharted 3
Devil May Cry 3
Duke Nukem 3D
Wolfenstein 3D
Marvel VS Capcom 3
Fallout 3
Serious Sam 3
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (3rd in the series, 1st in the timeline)
Spyro: Year of the Dragon
Crash Bandicoot: Warped
Silent Hill 3
The Curse of Monkey Island
Super Mario Bros. 3

That's all I can get by scanning my gameshelf for 10 seconds.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Jak 3, Killzone 3, Rome Total War (3rd Total War series)

 

[Erttheking]

Fallout
Halo
Gears of War
Metroid
Metroid Prime
Mario (not paper mario, that one was kinda weak)
Zelda
And a couple of others I can't think of at the moment. Yahtzee hates trilogies mainly because he hates franchises...oh yeah, and because he's YAHTZEE!

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

Quest for Glory 3 was good, although it's the weakest of the five in my opinion. It or the fifth game.

King's Quest 3 is the best King's Quest, I say.

Trying to think of many other games that got to number 3. Um...

Grand Theft Auto 3, duh. Heroes of Might and Magic 3. WarCraft 3.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Uncarted 3,Jak 3,as OP said Sly 3,Rayman 3,Gears 3,MGS 3,Fallout 3.

I actually agree with this entire list. Even though I didn't really care for Metal Gear, the third entry was, by far, my favorite. Gears 3 is the best iteration of the Gears forumla though my enjoyment was tarnished by the legacy of Gears (the overwhelming number of cover based shooters that followed). I preferred Sly 2 but 3 was a solid entry. Fallout 3 was not my favorite entry in the series (If I was honest, it was probably New Vegas) but Fallout 3 was quite excellent in its own right in much the same way that Tactics was a good twist on the formula.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Monster Hunter Tri? Althought technically that was the fourth game but I assume the game before Tri was also good!

 

[Punch You]

Some new things to add

Wild Arms 3

Suikoden III

Time Splitters: Future Perfect