ITT: sequels that are objectively superior despite not being

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>>389616828
so easily forgotten

>>389616828
Doom II is an obvious one.

It's weird because superior sequels almost never avoid notice.

I also don't think TFTD is superior to UFO defense.
They're both great, but TFTD is just different without being better or worse.

New Vegas is the only obvious example I can think of.

Attila Total War is vastly superior to Rome 2 and was far less popular, but the acclaim part of the question is hard to answer because so many people hated Rome 2 because it was trash. While people do say that Attila is better, not many people talk about it.

And one I disagree with(because it's shit compared to the original) but hear a lot is Company of Heroes 2. Though I am unsure as to how popular the two were comparatively, the original is generally agreed upon to be vastly superior.

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What the fuck happened?

>>389618382
TBF this game is way too hard to be accessible to the average person so it is no wonder it is not as fondly remembered. It is definitely interesting and introduced some cool mechanics but still... way to hard for the average person.

>>389619981
One had an obscene amount of marketing and was shit, and one didn't and was okay.

>>389616828
THPS 2,3, and THUG.

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Rising Storm 2

>>389620089
Which one was which? Because I remember Titanfall 2 being shilled on Buffalo Wild Wings napkins

Mechwarrior 3

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>*whale noises*

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>>389616828
RIP Carlos Carlos

>>389619914
personally I think TFTD has a much better atmosphere than UFO Defense. diving to the darkest and scariest depths of the ocean and encountering Lobstermen and tentaculats at the bottom is pretty spooky

>>389622358
how long ago was that playthrough? like 3-4 years ago? I think it might have been before openxcom even had TFTD support.

>>389618382
You are mah nigga.

>>389622747
It's a good atmosphere, but the original had that too. There are a lot of ways to do atmosphere. Just knowing that you're facing Chrysalids was really unnerving.
One of my favorite missions was one out of when I replayed it in 2012 or something. Named all the squaddies after steam chat cunts, and it was a mad dash through the jungle at night. Lighting fuckers up, stepping forwards knowing that there was absolutely fuckall but a dice roll as to whether or not there was something behind the vegetation or not.
I'd say the condition of the world feels more dire than TFTD, which as a sequel kinda has the underlying, >oh we've done this before, it may be alright
running through it.
It was also very mechanically similar. Like yeah it was underwater, but everything was already designed to be underwater. It's not the alien landscape lit up for the first time in millions of years and viewed through a lonely porthole kind of deep sea horror that is most evocative.

Don't get me wrong, I think TFTD is great too, and I like it as much as UFO Defense. It's just a bit too basic of a sequel. If there were a few more considerations given the environment then it could've pulled ahead.

>>389621481
Well I'm Strayan and I saw fuckall local advertisement, but outside of that online I didn't know Titanfall 2 existed it until I saw let's plays of it. Whereas I remember seeing everyone and his dog showing or talking about the first Titanfall.
Obviously either of our statements individually are anecdotal.

>>389622747
Mmm... they're only more spooky than their counterparts because they're +1 versions.

The Lobstermen are the Mutons, but with hilarious resistances to everything but the new melee weapons... and they have strong melee attack built in ontop of being able to use the alien's weaponry.

Tentaculats... are actually less scary than Chryssalids, as they aren't supposed to show up on terror missions. Other than that, they can "fly," which yeah renders them still a threat after getting the flying armor... but you're not going to be on a mission where every civilian gets zombied, and now you've got to deal with a whole hell of a lot more enemies.

TftD has some interesting ideas, but they overcompensated for a bug in the original that made the difficulty revert to the easiest setting. Ironically, while the same bug existed within it, and caused the difficulty to switch to the highest setting.

Having recently played both, I had fun with UFOD start to finish. TftD is turning into a slog. and FiraXCOM is a joke.

>>389618164
Bullshit, everyone agrees 2 is better than 1.

>>389624550
Oh, and there's the fridge logic moment of Psionics vrs M.C.

The research specifically states that the lesser races are controlled through the use of a "Molecular Control" chip, which means that the process of giving your agents psi-powers should actually make them more susceptible to the mind control, by giving the aliens a recognizable in.

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You knew it was coming

>>389621150
>Rising Storm 2

You wan' suck sucky G.I.? Too bad, you get tripwire instead!! You die G.I.

>>389624550
I don't mind the reboots.
They're good games. They just don't come close to the original.

I think it has to do with the investment and the "economy" of the game.

In the first one you can(outside of base defense), fuck up and really feel the loses of your soldiers and get set back; but you can't like lose your B team in enemy unknown, while your A team is injured, and fall into a loss cycle of not being capable of responding to missions. You lose a campaign because you lose your two best guys.

I've discussed save-scumming in a lot of different titles(usually strategy games), and the original x-com is always the exemplar. The risk versus reward and the punishment if you fail are all lined up perfectly.
The reboot games are good, and there isn't that much within reason that can be done to improve them. Except get this balance right.
They have different atmospheres and you might prefer one to the other but that isn't enough to definitively say one is objectively better than the other. The kill-cams are obnoxious but once those are gotten rid of, the game presents a lot better.
Heck, even Enemy within(and xenonauts, somewhat) does something that advanced graphics and/or having more narrative allows for that the original didn't, and portray some of the changes and consequences of the Alien invasion beyond the threat of genocide.

>>389624643
I've heard the same, but I've heard a lot less people talk about 2 than 1. Maybe it was just the timing, that Grimlock was the first we had in a long time, and the sequel was just another one slightly improved?
Or is this like the Titanfall thing and I uniquely avoided hearing everyone talk about 2?

>>389624720
Unironically this
I know most people tried the launch but Scholar as a first timer is incredible.

>>389625589
i played a buttload of the DS2 before scholar. then i play scholars years later for the dlc, and it was pretty fun to see the changes they made. I even got my shit pushed in a few times. it was fun

>>389625187
I'm not saying they're bad. I'm saying they're a joke.

Also, they're closer to the "After___" series than classic X-COM.

In the After___ series, you have a limited pool of people, who level up and gain specialities and skills that make their potential loss much more painful.

With FiraXCOM's locking of (sometimes basic functionality) abilities behind rank, the loss of any high end soldier becomes extremely painful, to not even mention that it is 1/4-1/6th of your total firepower for a mission, meaning that your even more likely to lose someone in the next pod. (Which are a whole joke in and of themselves.)

Yeah, in OldCOM, losing people was painful. As their stats grew slowly, and the higher rank a soldier, the more their death affected the morale of the other troops, which could create its own death spiral for a mission.

But, all of your troopers were effectively interchangable. Yeah, they might not be able to mount the same kit without losing movement, or move as far and still be able to shoot... or shoot as accurately as each other. (Though all of these things slowly increase to a capped value)
But, the rookie memes are about as over blown as the 95% chance to hit FiraXCOM memes.

>>389621556
AI and mission variety are worse than MW2's. Combat balance is heavily skewed towards legging, and taking out a mech's arms is made much harder and no longer viable.

>>389626104
Not him but I've only played 4.
Are you telling me at one point in the series of non-turn based games there was an ideal approach that was NOT pinging the centre torso immediately?

>>389626726
For MW3, legging is a very quick way to destroy a mech. Legs don't take much damage, and you only need to take out one leg to destroy a mech. However, your AI teammates only target the torso so if you'll be fighting alongside them, then contributing to the torso damage will sometimes get the job done quicker.

For MW2, taking out one leg will only prevent the mech from moving, you need to take out both legs to destroy the mech. It's still pretty easy because one leg has less armor than the torso and you can just avoid that mech's limited angle of fire once you've disabled its movement. Mechs' arms have pretty large hitboxes so it's easy to destroy them if you want to.

The problem with MW4 is that they reduced the damage of the weapons considerably. It takes much longer to destroy individual parts of a mech so it's better to just concentrate damage on the center torso. And even if you take out one leg, the mech can still limp around. Maybe these things were done for better balance in multiplayer or something, but it's shitty for singleplayer.

>>389627759
Thanks for the explanation. Having only played MW4 and Living Legends all I know is Centre Torso all day. Which I can see as not the point given the entire body part system in general. Just haven't experienced otherwise.

>>389624643
>ITT: sequels that are objectively superior despite not being as popular or getting as much critical acclaim as their predecessor
>or
I posted it because it has like a third of the sales despite its obvious superiority.