Doom II is considered to be the most iconic of all of the Doom games. Terminator 2 is considered to be better than it’s predecessor and also far superior to the later sequels.
It seems rare that the 2nd installment in a franchise is ever the best. Usually, either sequels fail to capture the lightning in the bottle of the original (ie: The Matrix) or a series takes a while to hit it’s stride before reaching a creative peak (Seasons 3- 7 of The Simpsons).
Both Doom and Terminator had substantial gaps between the 2nd and 3rd installment, perhaps putting a slight asterisk on their claims. Apart from those two, the only one I can really think of is Super Mario Brothers if you consider it a sequel of Mario Brothers.
Ignoring franchises in which there’s only 2 installments so far (Half Life, Portal, System Shock etc.), what are some franchises in which the 2nd installment is generally considered to be the best?
Not by me–and plenty of others, too. Lots of great special effects, but the first one is better in every other conceivable way.
I think I like the second Bourne film the best, though they’re all fairly interchangeable to me.
Seconding Star Wars & Star Trek and adding:
Spider-Man 2 with Doc Ock POTC: Dead Man’s Chest, mostly because of the FX work The Road Warrior Evil Dead 2 The Dark Knight (if reboots count) From Russia with Love, hands down.
And though I don’t think The Godfather, Part II isn’t as good as the first, that’s a highly debatable point. They’re both remarkable.
I’ll nominate Harry Potter. In fact, I felt like the best of the HP franchise was actually 3 (Prisoner of Azkaban), but 2 was definitely better than 1.
Can we nominate Fellowship of the Ring (and really, the whole Lord of the Rings) as being better than The Hobbit? The Hobbit is a fun little tale, but would be totally forgotten without the trilogy that followed it.
The ones I was going to name were said. I will submit I think great second installments are more common than the OP implies. They seem to come in three flavors:
Cynical cash grab. Which are always bad.
More of the Same. Which can fluctuate between well done if a little stale or unsurprising to boring.
Growth and Change. You learn from the first one, expand it and enrich it. This makes for some of the best, many that were mentioned in this thread.
So one is positive, one is neutral at worst and one is bad.
Donkey Kong Country 2
Diablo 2
Resident Evil 2 (maybe controversial, depending on how you feel about 4 and beyond; I think most see this as the best of the classic ones)
I think a lot of people would disagree re: Doom II. While the super shotgun and some of the new enemies are pretty cool, the game is really more of an expansion pack, and the feel isnt as good as the original, which was much creepier/hellish. I bet a lot more people remember the maps in the original game as opposed to the sequel.
Other nominations…
Super Smash Brothers Melee
Unreal Tournament (if you consider it the second game in the Unreal series)
Mega Man 2
Soul Calibur 2 (have to ignore Soul Blade though)
Mass Effect 2 fixed all of 1’s gameplay problems, and lacked 3’s plot issuies. Assassin’s Creed 2 was the best of the series, hands down.In fact, if you count AC2 and its two DLCs, *Brotherhood *and Revelations, as separate games - and they’re each big enough - then Brotherhood, the second, is the best of the three.
As for movies: The Two Towers is my favorite LOTR movie. Road Warrior is the best Mad Max film.
And many examples already noted.
In fact, I disagree with the OP: the second is more often than not the best of the series. It’s better than the first because the creators manage to work out the many of the bugs, and figure out what worked and what didn’t; and it’s better than the third because trilogies have a hard time nailing the landing (as in the aforementioned Mass Effect and Star Wars), or if it’s not a trilogy, then it risks repeating itself.
Series one of Blackadder (set in the middle ages) is not generally well thought of, but series 2 (Elizabethan era), 3 (Regency) and 4 (WWI) are considered classics of British sitcomery. In my opinion series 2 was, in fact, the best, although 3 was almost as good.
