Weird sequels

What's the weirdest vidya sequel you've ever played? Not "best" or "worst", just a radical departure from what was previously established. Think pic related.

Spin-offs don't count unless it's a sequel to a spin-off.

Styx - Master of Shadows is definitely a huge departure from Of Orcs and Men, where the former is a pretty hardcore stealth game and the latter is an action RPG.

Touhou 1 is an Arkanoid clone while all the other sequels are danmaku games.

after what was a totally original take on the survival horror/jrpg hybrid with some action elements, squaresoft decides to make the sequel play like resident evil 2.

a franchise that defined survival horror became a franchise that defined 3rd person action games.

Super Mario Sunshine

Zelda II

I would've of loved it if it played like Resident Evil 2, but it plays more like a weird RPG hybrid of Resident Evil... and not the good kind like the first game was.

first game was a scrolling shootem-up, sequel was a character-platformer.

i dunno- i like PE2 just fine.

it has alot going for it like the branching story paths, multiple endings and growth system.

Zelda 2 was a big departure, it was pretty good too.

castlevania was never the same again after this game.

>was a big departure
there was only one other zelda game before it

This may not quite count, but Fallout 4's major DLCs gave me this feeling. Far Harbor was a political feud between militarized Atom's Children, the last fully functional human town on the island, and an underground Synth refuge. You decide who you'll fight for, if any, and you reap the rewards and repercussions for your moral and political decisions.

Nuka World, the next and final DLC, is about helping a collective group of raiders. The same kind of murderous, thieving raiders who you have been fighting all game, albeit a separate sect. No role playing. No important decisions. Just pigeonhole into evil raider character, unless you choose to accept a low tier quest to assassinate the raider gangs, which makes you fail the entire dlc story and lose out on the possible perks. It feels so utterly bizarre.

Persona 3 and 4. Persona went from pure JRPG with a unique setting to a hybrid mix of dungeon crawling and dating sims with a unique setting.

Then Persona 4 had the fighting game sequel and then the dancing game sequel, and the EO-like game. Those were weird.

That's not even getting into how Persona as a whole spun-off from SMT If...

It's a spin off, not a sequel per say. It uses the same character, but it is a new franchise if not the world and lore.

How do you define if something is a sequel or not then, as opposed to a spinoff? Must it directly continue the story of the previous entry? Must it have the same style of gameplay?

I guess the Jak trilogy would count.

The first game is a fun tongue-in-cheek platformer with a cute aesthetic, the second game is a dark oppressive game featuring torture and guns, and the third game is the Mad Max game we never got. Then the fourth game nobody likes to talk about was a racing game.

That series progression was weird as fuck.

Bloody Roar started incorporating monsters and demons in later games. It used to be about animal people fighting each other.

I still like Xion, though.

Chrono cross. That was odd just, lorewise it changed everything, had nothing to do with time travel, combat is completely different and has a ton of characters that aren't fleshed out or even have any reason to be able to recruit that many as you can only use two others at a time.

There is a clear definition of what a spin off is and this fits the bill.

For example - Better Call Saul is not a continuation of Breaking Bad, it's a spin off. It is just using the same character(s).

Resident Evil Outbreak or the ones where you just aim a gun are spin offs, not sequels to the main games.

And it was a big departure from it

It was still different.

What is it with fighting games and having drastically different stories in their sequels?

The first KoF is about some psychopath hosting a martial arts competition to feed his ego. The series later becomes about the summoning of evil gods, evil corporations cloning the protagonist multiple times, and time traveling ladyboys.

Tekken was just about some corporation hosting an international martial arts competition, but it later goes 30 years in the future and has demons, angels, and global wars to suppress some dude's evil energy.

They could just do the Virtua Fighter thing and have the same basic plot threads since most people don't even pay attention to the story that much, so I guess they want to attempting something really unique.

probably VLR.

99 was just some escape room game with a good story and a couple of good twists and ended pretty cool and mysteriously.

VLR was just like wtf.
jumping, alternate timelines, space 207*,protag from 1 is old af.
Massive flip from the first game.

The only real answer.

I have never seen anyone mention this weird point and click game. I replayed it on the snes about 2 years ago. It's actually really funny.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, because it was a pretty drastic departure from the tone of the previous game.

Doom 3, for obvious reasons.

Max Payne 3, to a lesser extent, but for obvious reasons.

I'm not sure if Alan Wake's American Nightmare counts as a sequel, but if so, there's another example.

The first Tekken game was all about the fact Heihachi threw Kazuya off a cliff and he had to make a deal with the devil to survive, then he comes back for revenge and throws Heihachi off a cliff (which is later changed to him inheriting the devil gene or some shit but either way). That's always been the focal point of the plot.

Majora's Mask wasn't even that different

Adventure of Link was the real radical departure of the series

Well seeing how PE2 was million times better than the first game I'd say they made the right choice.

It was bizarre in terms of changing the setting

i dunno...
i find PE1 the more interesting and deeper game.

I do really appreciate though that Jak, for all three games, controlled the same. It gave the series some consistency, so that even if you were in a radically new environment, you were still playing as the same Jak.

Anything that got released by Konami after MGS2 was weird. Substance, MGS3, Subsistence allof it was a very real and considerable change of pace.

>Watching the game center CX episode

Who dat? I just beat this a couple months ago but I don't remember that enemy.

there is so much about onimusha 3 that makes it weird (but awesome) from the rest of the series.