Civilization IV was far better than Civilization III. Civ2 is one of the great games of all time and Civ3 tried to add a bunch of concepts which just weren’t really fleshed out well. Civ4 fleshed out the concepts Civ3 introduced and actually evolved the series, divorcing units from cities and adding more robust governmental selections, making trading more interesting, adding religion, etc. In addition, Civ4 has probably the best combat AI. And Leonard Nimoy being the narrator of discoveries helps as well.
In the case of Final Fantasy, the big one game jump was between FF III and FF IV. IMHO FF IV holds up so well it’s still on my list of top 10 games of all time.
It was a huge step up. Final Fantasy III on the NES had a great little class system and a neat overworld, but its main characters were generic and the story was barely memorable.
IV was kind of the first regular game in the series.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was a surprising delight.
A fun tongue-in-cheek linear shooter from the POV of an unreliable narrator. I hear all the other games are trash though, so I stayed away.
I have one of the other ones, “Bound in Blood” and it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either. “Generic” is the word that comes immediately to mind, and the only thing that really stands out about it is it’s part of a type of game (Western FPS games) for which there was (and still is) a dearth of titles (it predates RDR1 by a year).
Check out 4 if you can. While the fantasy elements are still there, some of them are skippable, and the protagonist is much less annoying that Jason. In fact, he’s actually kind of likable. The game is also a lot more smooth, polished and fun than 3.
The DS remake (which got rereleased on Steam a few years back with the touchscreen-specific aspects pruned out) is the definitive version of the game, IMO.
As far as the 2-D era of Final Fantasy goes, though, Final Fantasy VI is the one I come back to again and again - it does a great job giving (almost) all of the playable characters a well-rounded story arc built around a common theme of coping with mourning and loss, the soundtrack makes use of leitmotif in a way few games ever have, and it has a compelling story that gets me every time I replay it. I think the main reason I love Final Fantasy XV (which I’d say is a close tie for best game in the series) so much is that it’s the game that most clearly takes its story cues and inspiration from FFVI.
FC4 is my choice as fave game, I do need to go back and try FC2 though, it was one I tried years ago and didn’t take and put my off the trilogy for a long time. FC4 got me back in, FC3 was decent with annoying bad guys and stuff. FC5 onwards were ok.
FC5, while very well made, is by far the worst in the series in terms of story. New Dawn is actually really good, despite being essentially a DLC of FC5 that was sold as a separate game. I recommend skipping 5 and going right to ND.
The last Final Fantasy I played was X-2. I’ve never been one for MMORPGs so I gave up on the series starting with XI. VI was very good as well, but not quite on the same level with IV. Maybe I’ll look into XV.
Yeah, there was something really not quite right about FC5 even compared to the mad bad guys of previous FCs. Ending was stupid too. Still, all fiction.
Outpost 2 was leaps and bounds over Outpost. It was not Outpost 2 was super, but it was very playable with an interesting storyline for RTS. It contends for the most improved category because the original Outpost (which was suppose to be more of a builder sim), was horrible, incomplete and just utterly a piece of crap.
Fallout 4 also has one of my most favorite lines from any video game. When the CIA Operative compliments Ajay by telling him he’s, “American on the inside and useful on the outside.”
… unlike that “SoCal douchebag” Jason Brody (you’re right - it’s a great line).
I hate to be a naysayer, but I will say that Final Fantasy XV was such a mess, I quit after 18 hours. The story was absolutely unfollowable and the game was a boring mess. I do see what they were going for, but it was a failure for me.
I also quit XIII after 14 hours or so. Just a total mess as well.
I have played every single non-online Final Fantasy game and finished all of them except XIII and XV.
I’d sworn off the Far Cry series after 3, though I accepted the “Blood Dragon” DLC as an apology of sorts.
Then, because I was a fool, I bought two copies of FC5 so I could play with my wife. For awhile, it was awesome! We’d careen about the countryside in a trophy truck fitted with a machinegun, mugging bears for pelts and kicking over complexes. It was a bit like Skyrim with assault rifles and we had an amazing time.
And then the plot happened.
I’m not going to rehash it at length. I wasn’t offended by the subject material itself, and I think it had a lot of potential. The way it was executed, and the forced magical realism (especially the druggy lady’s bits) offended both of us enough that we instantly ragequit. I would have refunded the game at that point but all the bear-mugging and trophy-trucking had us with 50 hours of gameplay.
My review dunking on FC5 on Steam is one of my more popular reviews, apparently.
So I thank you most courteously for the FC4 suggestion, but am going to decline it with respect.
And then I forgot! One of the most-improved series was Saints Row!
Saints Row the original was a discount GTA. It had a gritty gangsta tale, I guess.
Saints Row 2 had full, 100% coop implementation. And that, my friends, makes any game amazing.
Above and beyond that, while it was still telling a gritty gangsta tale (up until the DLC missions), there were so many absurd sidequests and the plot itself could be undermined by careful wardrobe selections (ie: showing up at a cutscene wearing a hotdog suit).
It was also very gender positive, in that characters were fully customizeable, and a person could straddle the lines as much as they pleased, if they wished. All clothing and hair styles were available regardless of gender.
The PC port of SR2 was appalling, however. The game had many strengths, but the PC port was rushed and had a memory leak that would put a cap on how long a person could play without a reboot.
Saints Row 3 had a new engine that ran well on a PC. The controls and interface were sensical, the graphics were sharper, the animations smoother, and while there was less depth of customization for the characters, the game ran beautifully.
SR3 was also aware of how absurd it was, and fully embraced it. Some mind have found its embrace of crass humour offputting, but… I am not one of those. The opening missions started with a lot of bombast, and then steadily kept topping itself.
(SR4 and Gat Goes to Hell, well… a series can only climb so high, I suppose.)
So in the spirit of the OP, I have to say the Saints Row series, from 1 to 3, was a pronounced, vast improvement. I tried to play 2 again with my wife, and after a couple minutes we just noped out, despite all the fun we’d had in the past.
A lot of the series where the second game blew up but the first is mostly unknown:
Street Fighter II
Wolfenstein 3D
Agree on GTA3. I enjoyed it immensely at the time, but VC was a significant upgrade in both gameplay and plot. Also at the end of 3, basically every gang hates you except the Yakuza (and only because you didn’t get caught when you screwed them over). The Mafia was especially annoying because they had shotguns which could quickly explode your car if you just pass through.
None of the recent Fallout games are bad per se, but New Vegas was a major upgrade (by a different team than the others, many of the people from the original games too). Then Fallout 4 team decided they’d improve on 3 while seemingly ignoring the existence of NV.
I like 3 more than 4. The non-silent protagonist was a TERRIBLE choice for Fallout as it took away all the funniest and best ways to speak.
Yes, me too, meant more gameplay mechanics (who though aiming down the sites is not necessary).
But I didn’t mind the speaking protagonist, so much that dialog was “yes I’ll help” “sarcastic yes” or “no, but yes”