What made you drop a series of games?

I dropped Assassin's Creed after Revelations and also hearing about how 3 ends, where it became pretty clear that the story was going absolutely nowhere, and they just completely gave up on even telling it.

I used to be really big on the Atelier series, but at some point, they just kept pumping out new ones every year and I couldn't keep up and now I'm, like, 6 games behind or something. I'd like to catch up at some point, but that just doesn't seem likely.

I think the only series i've dropped is Halo, the reason i kept playing after 3 was because everyone was raving about the games when they came out but i couldn't figure out why.

I dropped Assassins Creed after Brotherhood. It was the best of that AC era but also was a lot to deal with. I didn't feel like playing another one afterwards. Same goes for Far Cry. After 4, I felt I never needed to play another one.

Get nuts with it, Ubisoft.

I usually just burn out on a series if it comes out too often. Call of Duty is a modern example, there wasn't anything wrong with it but it just lost its charm due to frequency.

Back in the PS1 days, there were so many sequels that I would drop off by year 3 or so (Tomb Raider, Syphon Filter, even Crash Bandicoot). While I don't like having 5 games between sequels nowadays, the annual or bi-annual plan is too much for me.

What's funny is I'll go back years later after some distance and realize something like "hey, Tomb Raider IV is actually quite good."

I dropped the Tales series after they started getting weird with the kid characters. They were already on thin ice with the sexploitation characters, so I kinda just stopped looking at them. I watched the anime and that one was.. Fine I guess.

I'm all for game creators not being locked into a formula, but around the time they started Westernizing Final Fantasy into being more action oriented with less interesting worlds to explore, I noped out.

I don't know if it counts as a series, but I dropped Fortnite because it got way too popular and commercial for my taste. I was one of the first people playing it before that nonsense happened. And I haven't gone back to it since.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, the game does count, since it pretty much killed my interest in a whole genre, that being the so-called battleground games: PUBG, Warzone, Apex Legends, and so forth. I was going to try Rumbleverse, because it was based around wrestling combat and not shooting, but that game died before it made any kind of impact.

Gears of war for me. Loved the first 3, thought it told a great story and was heavily invested in the conclusion of the trilogy. Judgment felt like a desperate cash grab. Have zero desire to play the new trilogy.

Actually, the frequency of release hits me too. I've since switched platform allegiance but Forza 3 and Forza 4 put a bullet in that series. I keep going back to Gran Turismo because there's years between releases. Forza doesn't stay cold long enough.

Enjoyed the Assassin's Creed games. Then I played 3 for 2 hours and haven't touched the franchise since. It was just so route and boring.

I loved Tales of Zillia and enjoyed the sequel even if it was pretty stupid. Haven't enjoyed a Tales since, neither older nor newer. I guess I just clicked with the Zillia characters and fighting styles. Especially Jude was a lot of fun.

Dropped Dragon Quest after 8. They're just too simplistic, both when it comes to gameplay and story. Couldn't even make it through the DQ11 demo.

Tried the Persona series because of its style and music. played 3 back in the PS2 days, got 4 on the Vita for cheap, and 5 through PS+. I want my time back. The gameplay is dull as dishwater, the writing is stupid at best, hateful and pedo-friendly at worst. Their handling of sensitive issues in P5 was so laughable I'm completely done with the franchise. Also, someone at Atlus sure seems to have a bone to pick because the homo- and transphobia is CONSISTENT. Even their best game, Catherine, is marred with that crap (they couldn't even stop themselves from making a transphobic joke in the 'best' ending). I've heard P1 and 2 had a different writing team so they are perhaps better, but I doubt the gameplay is any more interesting than the newer ones.

I was completed DONE with God of War after 3. I was tired of both gameplay and Kratos as a character. But I did still give GoW 2018 a shot and I'm glad I did, so I guess I only skipped a single game.

Dropped Far Cry the second it became an open world game, i.e. FC2.

Final Fantasy: I used to get each game as soon after release as possible. XII was such a mirthless slog with boring combat and a Frankensteined story that I waited years to dip into XIII and XV. When I did, I found the writing beyond piss-poor for both. Absolutely no interest in playing any future FFs (aside from 7 Remake, which I’m currently playing and find ok).

Far Cry: The dumb “not a political statement” announcements around 5 forewarned me that the game would have nothing interesting to say. Given that both 3 and 4 were letdowns as the story progressed, and the gameplay for 5 looked like just more of the same, I fell off the series. Never even occurred to me to give 5 or 6 a try since then.

Kingdom Hearts: After attempting and falling off of Chain of Memories I realized that all the side games were "important story content" and I was expected to buy ALL THOSE CONSOLES and play ALL THOSE GAMES. So I just read the plots until KH3

Then I played KH3 and decided they had completely lost the magic from 1 and 2.

Call me deluded but I've never dropped anything, I'll finish this backlog someday

IOW "They were still good but you moved on"

When different parts of a series are exclusive to different platforms/online stores which don't let me keep my save.
I loved the most-recent Hitman series and finished every achievement possible when the first game came out on Steam. But when the second game came out exclusively on the Epic store, and I was not able to transfer my progress, this completely killed my desire to get achievements anymore. While I still enjoy the series this made me more likely to mainline the campaign without the completionism mentality I used to enjoy, which is a shame.

@releso9020: This reminds me that I still think Bloodmoney is the best in the series, and that I enjoyed Absolution more than the new Hitman. The new games have too large maps and feel like a hassle to play. The always online aspect hurt them even more. I tried slogging through the first one until I finished a level in like 60 minutes, only for the game to not unlock anything because my connection dropped. Haven't touched the franchise since.

But I'm thinking of giving them another shot now that they've been consolidated into a single game and have received a bunch of patches.

@theonewhoplays completely agree re the online too. I just returned to it for the new freelance mode and have to admit I've gotten really into it again (although not exactly in the spirit of this thread). To be fair, if the exclusivity was the only way to get the game funded then I guess I'm supportive as I'm guessing they wouldn't have done it voluntarily.

FIFA is better example of a series that completely died for me. Used to buy every single one, and would be my go-to game to play to pass time. In the past few years EA has been making noticeable cuts to all my favourite modes and focusing more of their time on the loot-box stuff. Maybe the shareholders want that, but I don't want anything to do with it.

The real answer is all of the above, but the time sink one is the biggest, and Elden Ring Vs Assassins Creed Valhalla is the example I will cite. Both I put about 100 hours into, but assassins creed I regret because it felt like I was being exploited for my need to do everything with low-quality busywork, but Elden Ring felt like every minute was a high quality, curated experience.

GTA. I played 3 and 4 but I found them both... hollow somehow. It's fun for a couple hours exploring the world and causing mayhem, but the story just seemed to be one mission after the other without much connecting tissue. It seems like they make some of the best open worlds and don't do much interesting with them. Some of the missions made me feel a bit icky, too. I never bothered with 5 despite all the glowing reviews.

for me i never exactly say i dropped a series cause you never know what the future holds... that said i dropped AC for a bit with black flag not grabbing me and i skipped till syndicate came out n seemed solid , it was the break i needed when it didn't feel like it was doing what i liked about those games and i thought it was a great entry all things considered before we got the overbloat that was the last 3 AC games ... they Almost make me wish i had actually dropped them cause as usual the stupid modern-day tie-in once again keeps me roped in so i'll sadly be trying mirage when it comes out or shortly after if the price is 70 ... another i might have just dropped Maybe is farcry , suprise supriise another yearly ubisoft series , i loved 3 and 4 was ok , but after primal i was kinda done? idk i started 5 and wasn't loving aspects of it n when i did enjoy a breif bit of side stuff it took me back out of it with the kidnapping you aspect of that game.. needless to say i didn't touch it after that didn't play the sequel , and while i was curious about 6 the talk of it at the time made me say naa i'm good even tho my fiancee has a copy sitting in the other room which he also has not touched .

all that was long winded but honestly i guess it just comes down to a combo of not feeling worth my time either cause enough hasn't changed or cause they changed to something that doesn't do it for me.

@brian_: for the Atelier games i was the same way , honestly they're all sorta stand alone enough i always felt , but if you don't want to go back with all the entries you missed i would say just pick 1 new arc of games and go with that? the ryza games are ok , a 3rd comes out next month ... i still need to beat ryza 2 myself , i liked aspects of the older entries better like deadlines but the characters are good in this set of games imo. before that i'd only played the 1st 2 arland games and the first dusk game before not keeping up with them myself

@styx971: I started playing the series at Rorona and last Atelier game I played was Lydie & Suelle, which I only barely started. I do own the first Ryza, I just haven't started it yet. I'd like to finish up Lydie & Suelle before I move on any of the ones I missed. I might try and do that next month. Talking about the series again kind of makes me want to go and play one again.

@styx971: Atelier Ayesha and Escha & Logy are both really good IMHO (Dusk series). The third one felt like a major downgrade and I played the first release which didn't include any scenes with Ayesha (a completely hare-brained decision). The portable version and the latest console release fixed that but for me it was too little too late.

I skipped the Sophie games because of the major creep factor of the design of the 'book' character. Honestly, I haven't even looked into any of the games after it - the diminishing returns I felt from the Dusk trilogy didn't help either.

@theonewhoplays:thats some pretty fair reasoning i can understand those things pushing a person away , specially how they were churning them out for a while there . its honestly part of why i hadn't played those arcs , by the time i realized there was a new one there were a handful. looking up said 'book' character i get what you mean , those types of things never really bug me but as a chick i can totally get why it would bug some ppl , honestly considering it should bug me more but i've just excepted thast type of design after all these years , specially from more niche jp stuff.

@brian_:yeah for most things i'm the same way , i hope you can clean it off the backlog if your in the mood :)

There's something somewhat amusing about this statement given that FF was based off Dragon Quest, which in turn came about from Japanese devs wanting to play a single-player Dungeons & Dragons game. Old-school FF was based more on Western RPG principles. Modern FF is closer to what Japanese audiences expect from an action videogame. Look at Asian MMOs vs Western MMOs in the mid to late 2000s to see what I mean - WoW and Everquest were very plodding, methodical games based on cooldowns, whereas games like Vindictus and Dragon Nest were about action and movement.

Not that it invalidates your opinion, just thought the statement was amusing in its topsy-turvyness.

None of the above: I usually drop a game series when it becomes clear that they're just extending an ongoing plotline and going nowhere with it to cash-in while dragging their feet.

AKA: The Ubisoft problem...

Well ok, it's not THE Ubisoft problem, but it's one of many.

Some games that I have dropped include "Anthem," "Fallout 76," "No Man's Sky," "Mass Effect: Andromeda," and "Star Wars Battlefront II," due to a lack of new content or updates, while others may have changed too much from their original format.

I used to love playing Fifa on my own.

Sadly Ultimate Team is the entire focus of the game now.

None of the above for me—I tried, so hard, to get into the Life is Strange games, but it was the writing—it couldn't escape the feeling that it was forty-year-olds writing what they THINK teenagers sound like. I couldn't get into it or take any of it seriously.

I can't think of any other series I was invested in that I bounced off of. I guess maybe Resident Evil, but in both cases I just felt, after a few games of each, like I'd had my fill.