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Normally as a videogame series progresses the gameplay gets better with new additions and innovations. But I wonder if there's any series where the first installment has the best gameplay and then it goes downhill from there?

I think a possible example is the Legacy of Kain series, which has its strengths in story and atmosphere. In the first game its like a Vampire Legend of Zelda with a sort of isometric view. There's lots of different weapons, items and spells to use and a good variety of enemies. Has the most amount of named characters and locations to visit, as well as fun bonus areas to explore.

In the second Legacy of Kain game the puzzles drove me crazy and there weren't enough warp points. In the third one you're going back and forth across the same areas a lot and there's no bonus areas to explore and no boss fights to speak of. I didn't play the fourth game. And with the fifth game I thought the fighting action got repetitive and limited, and you're traveling back and forth to this one ancient citadel a lot, and the fixed camera angle was annoying for when you needed to find things, and the levels feel bare and less lived in.

So, what series do you think had its best gameplay in the first installment?

Dawn of War instantly comes to mind.

Most often, though, second parts have best gameplay in my experience. The formula is perfected as compared to the first game, but isn't unnecessarily experimented with like in the third +.

Dragon Age: Origins remains the best in the series hands down.

Every game after the first is like they just chucked out the formula that worked.

Gonna cop heat for this one, but the first Witcher game had the best combat system of the 3. Having to switch between strong, fast and group styles depending on who/what/how many you were fighting was great and I really liked that the efficacy of your attacks relied on you paying attention and timing your clicks correctly rather then just button mashing until everyone is dead. I completely understand why people didn't like the combat system in the first game, being almost a Quick Time Event is not for everyone granted, but I still think that it was a largely unique combat system and worked really well for the style of game.

Whether the rest of the game play was better then Assassin of Kings or Wild Hunt is entirely debatable. Both squeals are fantastic games in their own rights (gwent aside).

Only one game come to mind.

Battlefield 1942. The perfect game to play with friends. I had so much fun with this game.

It worked perfectly without perks and kill streaks and all the other garbage that the designers decided to throw at the game as the series continued to grow fatter and fatter with more bloated "features."

I think it depends what you define as the gameplay and if you're including the story and campaign aspects; the multiplayer or purely the games core mechanical side of things.


If we consider story, pacing and level design I would argue that Starcraft beats Starcraft 2. Mechanically both are 100% sound solid and fun; but the campaign in 2 felt a lot more contrived and a "railroads" feel to a good few missions where the time-attack aspects of the mission directly dictate your tactical choices to be made.
The story was also wonky and had some un-needed changes (ex Xel Naga went from normal alien scientists to space god whales)


If we consider story and pacing then Homeworld and Cataclysm beat Homeworld 2 which felt like it picked up the story and then changed a bunch of things; leaned more into the religious elements and threw a bunch of factions at the player without any real in-game introduction to them.
Gameplay mechanics wise 2 is still the best of all the Homeworld games as a direct evolution

I'd also hold up Fire Emblem, though its less a case of the "1st game" directly; but early games like Fire Emblem and Sacred Stones had a wonderful cartoon art style; animation (for the system it was on) and tactical gameplay. Over time the art style was lost to the conversion to 3D (seriously the first non GBA game the characters models just had their feet cut off due to the chibi-style they went with); meanwhile they've steadily added more and more romancing/relationship elements (which are as shallow as standing next to each other and psending 20mins out of battle chatting randomly )and a lot more infinite level grind with breeding and constant class swapping etc...
I will say Engage got the art style back, but its still got a lot of that hollow relationship stuff.

 Snrub wrote:
Gonna cop heat for this one, but the first Witcher game had the best combat system of the 3. Having to switch between strong, fast and group styles depending on who/what/how many you were fighting was great and I really liked that the efficacy of your attacks relied on you paying attention and timing your clicks correctly rather then just button mashing until everyone is dead. I completely understand why people didn't like the combat system in the first game, being almost a Quick Time Event is not for everyone granted, but I still think that it was a largely unique combat system and worked really well for the style of game.

Whether the rest of the game play was better then Assassin of Kings or Wild Hunt is entirely debatable. Both squeals are fantastic games in their own rights (gwent aside).

I would argue the combat system in all the Witcher games are awful, but each for different reasons. I always found the combat in the first game to be trivial. You could essentially build your character in such a way that he could get surrounded by enemies but keep them all in a perpetual stunlock that was really easy to pull off.

If it's the Fire Emblem released just before Sacred Stones (the one starring Eliwood), that's actually the 7th fire emblem game.

 Daba wrote:
If it's the Fire Emblem released just before Sacred Stones (the one starring Eliwood), that's actually the 7th fire emblem game.

Yeah I had a feeling it might have been like that, so I was purely going off western releases where it was the first.

 kyrtuck wrote:
Normally as a videogame series progresses the gameplay gets better with new additions and innovations. But I wonder if there's any series where the first installment has the best gameplay and then it goes downhill from there?

I think a possible example is the Legacy of Kain series, which has its strengths in story and atmosphere. In the first game its like a Vampire Legend of Zelda with a sort of isometric view. There's lots of different weapons, items and spells to use and a good variety of enemies. Has the most amount of named characters and locations to visit, as well as fun bonus areas to explore.

In the second Legacy of Kain game the puzzles drove me crazy and there weren't enough warp points. In the third one you're going back and forth across the same areas a lot and there's no bonus areas to explore and no boss fights to speak of. I didn't play the fourth game. And with the fifth game I thought the fighting action got repetitive and limited, and you're traveling back and forth to this one ancient citadel a lot, and the fixed camera angle was annoying for when you needed to find things, and the levels feel bare and less lived in.

So, what series do you think had its best gameplay in the first installment?

X-Com: enemy unknown/UFO defense from 1994.

Throwing waves of soldiers after more-powerful aliens, building bases, slowing training up and gaining better equipment.
Terror from the deep was pretty good, but follow ups like Xcom Apocalypse, Interceptor, Enforcer, the horrible 2012 "enemy uknown" and its follow up in 2016, and I guess there was also Chimera squad and Legends which I hadn't even heard about until now.

Almost all of these follow ups have been very disappointing and just terrible modern slop. Xenonaughts is more of an Xcom game than the current Xcom franchise.