Well, I am familiar with your school. I’m of the school that says that great games aren’t diminshed by having horrible sequels, and like you said, SC3 is just average, not even horrible.
However, you can’t say it just “stole” the name - it stole just about everything. Dozens of species and ships, huge amount of backstory, the entire combat sequence, the structure of space-time. Half of the dialogue was also ripped right from SC2. It also stole a bit from SC1, actually; the Precursor artifacts were more alike in SC1 and SC3 than in SC2, for instance.
Mortal Kombat 3 and 4, though Deadly Alliance was fun.
Do the bazillion “sequels” to Street Fighter II count? Every one with a “II” in the name besides the first and arguably Super Street Fighter II was a let down.
Final Fantasy VIII was a huge disappointment. It wasn’t necessarily a bad game, it was just sadly mediocre, while most Final Fantasy games were stellar.
Crash Bandicoot 3. Of course, the first two were completely banal and cliched, but 3 was even worse, by virtue of the fact that it was the same freakin’ game.
Sonic Spinball, though not a true sequel to the Sonic franchise, did horribly. I dunno, I kinda liked it.
The “sequel” Sega’s making for Vectorman hasn’t been released yet, but it’s pretty damned boring right now. Maybe they’ll fix it, but I foresee it being added to this list upon release.
Almost every Brand New 3D Update to a classic arcade game has sucked. This includes Frogger 3D, Defender 3D, whatever the Sinistar one was called, Centipede 3D, and probably a bunch more that I’ve thankfully buried in my memory.
Ultima IX wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was so relentlessly buggy that it was a profound test of patience to get through it. Not sure how well it sold.
The sequel/upgrade/whatever to Gauntlet Legends was pretty lackluster. For that matter, there was a true sequel to the original Gauntlet released back in the day. The fact that nobody remembers it probably says something.
Battle Arena Toshinden was a decent game, but more importantly, it was damned pretty for a first-gen PSX title. BAT2 was received with little enthusiasm. BAT 3 sucked much wang.
Jumping Flash 2 (a first-person platformer where you played as a robotic bunny - no, really) didn’t do nearly as well as the first if I remember correctly, more due to lack of interest than lack of quality.
That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. For the record, I think that Phantasy Star II is, in fact, one of the finest RPGs ever made, though I don’t know if I’d call it the best. I don’t have a Dreamcast shrine, either, though I own one - it doesn’t get much playtime anymore. And Abbadon had a story? All I remember of it is that it was a blatant rip-off of Lifeforce, only with more flying gross stuff.
Jeff
Does anybody remember the Golden Axe sequels? The arcade game, The Return of Death Adder was GREAT! The effects were cool, the characters were pretty neat, and the magic spells were nice. The sequel for the Genesis, though, sucked ass. The first Golden Axe had such nice, crisp, solid graphics, and the sequel had soft, pixilated shit graphics like a regular 8-bit game. Nothing solid. I can’t really complain about the storyline, because the first one didn’t have much of one either, and it was just a basic hack and slash game to begin with, but the first game was a Great sword and sorcery game, and this consol version just sucked.
Personally, I hated Quake II. The first one had a great soundtrack, great graphics, interesting weapons, and wonderful villains. The sequel was just pretty much made for multiplayer, and the rest of it just sucked. How’d they go from demons in hell to fighting robots?
Also, Heretic, the sequel to Hexen was pretty bad in my opinion. I did like the ability to turn people into pigs, but outside of that, there wasn’t anything really cool or interesting added to the game. The different fighter classes was a good touch, but that’s about it.
It also stole a bit from SC1, actually; the Precursor artifacts were more alike in SC1 and SC3 than in SC2, for instance.