Think of a franchise which you firmly believe is dead, even if it's still receiving soulless instalments to this day.

Which game do you personally consider to be the last hurrah? The last game where it truly still resembled its self before the gentrification kicked in.

Pokemon Black and White was the last good game.

>>716120918 (OP)
story fags are so annoying. at least say generations was the last harah.

>>716120918 (OP)
Black Knight was the last soulful main game
Colours lost its soul but the new writers were mostly just copying unleashed and people were open to the changes so mostly harmless
Generations was a celebration game so nobody cared about the story and the shit writers didn't bother much. If you were smart, this is when you got off the hype train and waved goodbye. Good send off.

Then they got into original projects, but without any of the cruches Colours and Gens had so we ended up with Forces.

Then they got desperate, started letting western fags into the control room and ended up with Frontiers and also the movie slop filled with interracial propaganda.

Mania was a nice enough reminder of how things used to be. But the team got there to late, they were already talking to a corpse. And when they left it finally went cold.

>>716121037
Generations is the very game that fucked up the entire series with the meta shit. Colors was garbage but at least it had all new levels. Every single Sonic game starting from Generations onwards either reuses levels from old games or reuses levels from old games but call them something else. Sonic is stuck in limbo since 2011, he literally can't get out of this weird rehash void world.

The last truly new Sonic game was Black Knight in 2009. Whether you like it or hate it, was new and the setting was completely original. It was also the last Japanese Sonic game from the top to the bottom.

>>716121203
>Then they got into original projects
You say original but every Sonic game since Generations is a Generations game. We might as well call this new series the "Sonic Generations" series instead of the Sonic series proper.

Eh the storybook games were mediocre gameplaywise

>>716121289
Yeah but none of that is Generations fault. It went about as well as it could when the series was about to implode.
I heard the next storybook game was going to be based around ancient Greece before it got canned. God I would have loved to see that...

>>716121437
Yeah but presentation and story-wise they were top notch.
If they had Adventure gameplay instead they'd be hailed as some of the best Sonic games.

>>716121037
>the last harah

>>716120918 (OP)
Can't wait until the next mid Sonic game starts getting hailed as a misunderstood masterpiece due to nostalgia

>>716121289
>The last truly new Sonic game was Black Knight in 2009. Whether you like it or hate it, was new and the setting was completely original. It was also the last Japanese Sonic game from the top to the bottom.
Again, you story fags annoying. If you're going to say that then say colors. It has a unique setting, fun level gimmicks, great music, almost universal praise and actual sonic gameplay. But you idiots choose to ignore it because "muh story" "muh characterization" There's nothing about black knight as a game you find good. you just want a cartoon.

Mania and Shadow Generations were better.

You just have to accept that Sega is pumping out games and you'll get a good new one every five years or so, like every other franchise.

>>716120918 (OP)
For Pokemon I think Black2/White 2 were the last decent mainline games though I loved Pokken and New Pokemon Snap was good too, probably because neither were made by Gamefreak like the main series is.
I agree with you on Sonic, was just talking about this with a friend a week ago
For 3D Marios I think Galaxy 2 was the last great one and Odyssey was mid. I liked 3d world but it feels like it belongs in a different category. Iwatas death (assassination by Freemasons according to Jap conspiracies at the time which I now firmly believe) really marked the end imo

>>716121289
>Colors was garbage
Colors is a great game.

>>716120918 (OP)
I'm a pretty big Black Knight apologist but >>716121037 is right. You can bitch about every game since being a nostalgia romp but that's not Generations's fault. And Generations definitely plays better than Colors and Black Knight so you can't say it's worse on that front

>>716124169
Sun/Moon's only flaw was the rampant handholding and interruptions. Gen 9 is jank as fuck but really fun, as was Arceus.

ZA looks shit, sadly.

>>716121750
Nigger I just told you the series ended in 2009. There is no Sonic cycle and I've been playing these games for 25 years.

>>716120918 (OP)
Metroid has been dead since Prime 2

>>716124286
Dread was fun.

>>716124286
Prime 3 is about as good as Prime 2 and Dread is better than Prime 2

>>716122621
>colors has a unique setting
>garbage space with colors and nothing real like san francisco, greece or arabia
>on top of that it was the first pontaff game with no japanese input
Don't ever disrespect the real Sonic series like that again.

>>716124165
metashit
metashit

if your Lizuka garbage brings back levels it's metashit, nothing else matters

>>716124286
Prime 2 was the best entry but I don't Prime 3 was bad
>>716124338
Dread is a completely different kind of game, you can't compare it

>>716124198
Colors was garbage

>>716124169
>(assassination by Freemasons according to Jap conspiracies at the time which I now firmly believe)
Qrd?

>>716124353
>"No Japanese input" because some white guys came up with the words in cutscenes and literally nothing else about the game.
Retard.

>>716124427
I know it's hard, what with your autojapanophillia, but Colors is a really tight 2D platformer.

>>716124392
>NnnnoooOOOOO IT REUSED LEVEL THEMES I'M GOING INSANE!!!
So did Sonic 2, 3, CD, Advance, Advance 2, Advance 3. Fuck, Adventure has THE Ice Cap Zone, I guess that's dogshit now.

>>716120918 (OP)
>a franchise which you firmly believe is dead
StarFox
>game you personally consider to be the last hurrah
StarFox, SNES, 1993

Play determining your route is OK, but literally everything else about 64 onward is average-to-terrible. The music was better in the original (good job stiffing the guy and putting him off of VGM work forever, Nintendo). The jibber-jabber SFX are better than stilted voice acting. Free Range Mode and the transforming Arwing garbage is unnecessary. The extra characters suck. And so on.
I honestly hope they're done trying to exhume its corpse because it's the strongest example I can think of for a franchise that only ever went downhill.

>>716124678
Terrible taste but I respect your opinion.

>>716124353
>garbage space with colors and nothing real like san francisco, greece or arabia
You know, coming up with your own location is more creative than just renaiming an irl location.
The classic also didn't need to go to San Fran to be creative.

>>716124475
Retard.

>>716124338
>>716124404
Prime 3 was ass, you guys are crazy.

>>716124585
Reused levels themes are unironically done right in the Genesis games.

>>716124921
Can you elaborate?

>>716124280
>25 years.
So exactly the right age range with all the other idiots praising the shit out of bad/mediocre dark age games

>>716124872
Have you ever heard of the term "uninspired"?

>>716124353
>An amusement park made of planets chained together.
>Futuristic Island Resort
>Candy Factory / Dessert Planet
>Cosmic Light Show / Space Parade
>Natural Planet + Industrial Takeover
>Underwater Japanese Aquarium
>Space Rollercoaster / Haunted Planet
or
>City Level
>City Level
>City Level
>Jungle Level
>Ice Level
>Eggmanland
storyfags are the actual worst.

>>716124921
Outside of the intro and that one part in the pirate homeworld being a bit too combat heavy it's really no different than Prime 2. It even follows the same formula for new areas

>>716124914
Yeah. The words said in the cutscenes.
The actual concept art was already done and the game was in development before they got to "write" it. Pontiac even pointed out later that Lost World was the one where he was allowed to come up with stuff at the conceptual level (the Deadly Six).

>>716124914
>>716125164
More accurately what P&G did on Colors would be called Scenario in Japanese game dev.
Its a role that basically means "bitchwork script writer" in that someone else (typically the head dev) comes up with the concept, story, and often key scenes, but instead of having that guy have to rewrite the script every time a change happens to the gameplay, they instead have a guy who's job it it to write the actual script and rewrite it to accommodate said changes.

This is different from later games where they were more the proper writers.

>>716125703
Pretty sure they only wrote Lost World (which is ironically, pretty story heavy compared to Colors)
Forces was just localization IIRC.

>>716125703
Yeah, you get it. Pontac and Graff had a much more hands on role with Lost World, and Pontac apparently had a similar (but not as pronounced) role in Forces. What Flynn did for Frontiers id kinda in between Forces and Colors, where he gave some feedback and they went "oh that sounds cool" and ran with it. Given he apparently had like SEVEN editors on Shadow Gens, I think their next games are going for a writer roundtable approach.

>>716125817
Pontac apparently had some input on it. You can tell Forces' story in dev was a mess because half the song lyrics are alluding to dropped plot points. Didn't Graff not work on that one, too?

This was the beginning of the end and anyone who thinks otherwise can requeste in pace

>>716125093
>>City Level
>>City Level
>>City Level
Only a brown would be unable to appreciate the different architecture and just call everything city
>Mykonos
>Spain+Italy+London
>jew york
>great wall of china
Are all a step above
>food level
if you are high IQ enough

>>716126064
I was going to rag on you until I realized you said BEGINNING of the end because 3 certainly was the final nail in the coffin.

>>716121203
>Then they got into original projects, but without any of the cruches Colours and Gens had so we ended up with Forces.
And Lost World! Erased that so hard from my memory I legit couldn't remember that shitshow

>>716125817
I feel so bad for Lost World on so many levels. You could tell what they were going for, it just all fumbled. Pontac and Graff wanted Looney Tunes villains and actual character dynamics, but the scripting and limited budget cutscenes didn't deliver. Sonic Team clearly wanted the D6 to be Oni, villains Sonic could relentlessly clown on and who fans could extrapolate on and make up fanon about, but they just didn't catch on.

They took all the criticism to heart from prior games and really tried to make a new system for Sonic that would make him feel more fun and fluid, but they implemented it horribly. They tried to add level variety, but instead half the game is unfinished tech demos. They tried to take inspiration from Mario since he had his shit together, but it just came off desperate and flaccid.

They really tried and utterly failed. I get why they retreated so hard into nostalgia.

>>716125917
I still think it's really funny that the director got the English script, read it, and then hastily scrapped together a Google translate based rewrite because it was so against everything they want from the series and characters.

>>716126110
Yeah see even that’s wrong because how could you not see by Revelations that they lost their vision

>>716125917
>he apparently had like SEVEN editors on Shadow Gens
Holy shit man. Why can't they just bring back Maekawa?

Final fantasy, and the clear death is after final fantasy X, there's a great exposition of this death showing first Yuna performing the sending at Kilika in ff10, and then her singing some "la la la" cringe slop in X-2.

Then we get two games that are so unmemorable I literally just have nothing to say about them.

Then we have 13.

Now we have ff7 remake, and ff7 rebirth, where they took a nice big sloppy shit in our hands, and then looked us in the eye and told us to clap like a seal.

>>716126434
I dunno.
And I don't have an exact number, it's just that one of the current social media people made a point that Shadow Gens only credits Ian for the script when several internal SoA people helped with revisions and dialogue adjustment (seems like it was mostly the people who worked on Murder of Sonic).

End result was decent. The Gerald Diary was pretty good, even! It's just not me that like, no, he didn't suddenly get way better at writing dialogue.

>>716125917
>>716125992
The only big plot change between languages I remember is the 'torture' and 'this is war' lines being added into english.
In terms of plot points, I only really noticed that the game seemed to act like Infinite was some kind of artificial being made in a lab rather than just a guy with a magic rock.

>>716126493
Square kept making FF, they just stopped calling it FF.

12 gets a pass from me because it's an Ivalice game cosplaying as FF because money.

>>716126637
You can like 12, that's fine, but it being something else cos playing as final fantasy even to those who like it is just kind of proof.

I actually don't mind ff15, I thought it was fun, I could have even enjoyed ff7 remakes combat if the story had been untouched.

>>716126604
No, no, you're misunderstanding those posts. They're saying the Americans got some say in the story outline. My post is just pointing out Forces probably had a bunch of stuff change mid development, because the songs reference stuff like virtual reality and perception (barely touched on) and fighting your friends/delusions (not in the game at all).

Some stuff changed a little between languages, but we're talking about writing before final scripts.

>>716126917
7R would be a fun game if it kept the expanded material as optional side content instead of forced padding. Rebirth is just a mess.

>>716126971
>virtual reality and perception
That is literally Infinite's power. Hell his whole character is about his perception in a way.

>>716127342
Yeah, but the story barely does anything with it.

>>716124286
Metroid was always dead except for Prime.