Is it possible for any game to fail as hard as moo3 did ? ( I don't think it is )

[Mesina2]

For notorious failures:

-Any of the Total War franchise after Rome: Total War.

Medieval 2 was a major success, especially with modding community.

Napoleon is what Empire should have been and it's well received.

Shogun 2, especially the Fall of The Samurai expansion, is widely considered the best Total War game so far. It is a tragedy campaign map overhaul modding is impossible, otherwise it would have been the perfect game. Plus, this game still has a very active multiplayer community. More so then any other previous title and next two poorly received titles.

 

[milamber81]

DA2 definitely. ME3, well. The ending was atrocious, but I felt it was a pretty good game till that point. Problem was it was still pretending it was an RPG when it was far more of an Action-RPG with an emphasis on the former. Once I removed my Baldur's Gate = RPG goggles and just took it as it was it felt ok. It just always felt like I was playing someone else's story, not my own. Would have been a cardinal sin if it actually was an RPG in the proper sense of the term, but it wasn't.

If you say so. For me, ME3 also was quite a good game till the final part. The Ending on the citadel made no sense and managed to ruin the complete series for me. Before, I loved ME1, I liked ME2 and was already looking forward to make a complete play-trough. Bought every DLC for ME1 and 2. Than I played ME3. Liked it at the beginning, still liked it in the middle. Than there was the ending and I sat in front of my monitor and thought "wtf?". They broke their own ingame-laws with that shit, if you ask me. (You know, playing with reaper tech leads every god damned time to disaster, but believing the space child is a good idea?). And if one game manages to spoil 2 other games I really liked, than that game clearly failed in my eyes. Never even thought about buying at least one DLC belonging to ME3...
The later delivered refusal-ending gave the series at least a believable closure, but playing three games to only see the galaxy burn to ashes again? No thanks...

On the other hand, perhaps someone will someday make a MassEffect mod in Stellaris, starting with the Final of ME2. Perhaps that could save the series for me^^

 

[Mesina2]

As for me, Mass Effect 3 is my the biggest disappointment.

Just thinking about it makes me go on a very angry rant.

 

[RogalDorn]

It's not an unpopular sentiment. A lot of people instantly forgave BioWare after that. To me, however, it's basically just one big pandering DLC. Very good pandering, and a lot of effort was put into it. I think it just infuriated me more, however because if they had put that much effort into the base game, things could have been better.

The Citadel DLC made me go from despising ME3 to plain being disappointed. A good effort, but too little, too late (that's actually an unpopular opinion, lol).

I just can't imagine what else they could have done to improve it. They wrap up nearly every story line in the game to a satisfying conclusion (my opinion) and leave it open to explore a new set of characters moving forward. What would you have done different?

And to try and keep things on task...I can't imagine anything failing harder that MoO3. I got 15 minutes into that game before uninstalling after dozens of MoO2 campaigns.

 

[Alucardex]

Side note: Dragon Age 2 had an excellent story if you could get past them reusing a lot of locations frequently...thankfully I had no difficulty doing that! Anders STILL pisses me off...

The central conflict of the game was very interesting, but:

Spoiler

Meredith going crazy was a HUGE cop out in my book. The ending would have been sooo much better if both faction leaders where shown to have their own equally valid motives for starting the war but instead Orzino just went mad with Blood Magic and Meredith crazy from that red crystal.

Also one thing that bugged me. Almost every single mage you meet in the game ends up using blood magic in the end.

Also another thing: The central story of Hawke railroads the player a bit too much in my book.
You have very little influence on how his story plays out in the end.

 

[Jarac Rassen]

I also can't believe no-one has mentioned Aliens: Colonial Marines. That was a blatant bait-n'-switch marketing BS campaign filled with lies! Even now, CEO Randy Pitchford still refuses to take responsibility for what he did and blames the FANS for his releasing of a shitty game!

I still despise Gearbox to this day. I even refuse to buy the Homeworld games because I don't want one red cent going to them.

 

[DJIM]

I played MoO3 back in the day and i remember really liking it but never going beyond the middle game because it always got boring. As for some of the other games mentioned here, i was reading about Dragon Age 2 before it got out so i had very low expectations and as a result i liked it. Mass Effect 3 was amazing i just could not stop playing it. A lame and arbitrary ending does not ruin it for me - i did play it with all the dlc's and extented ending though.

My personal biggest disappointments are 1)Elemental: War of magic, 2)Empire: Total War and 3)Rome 2: Total War. Most recently i found XCOM2 very frustrating and worse than enemy within in almost everything. As for paradox games HOI3 was a disappointment for me i could never get into it (loved HOI2) but it is the only paradox game i disliked.

 

[Druesling]

It may not be ready yet, but Godus is a candidate for beating Moo3 to the punch.

 

[hsuzy1987]

I just can't imagine what else they could have done to improve it. They wrap up nearly every story line in the game to a satisfying conclusion (my opinion) and leave it open to explore a new set of characters moving forward. What would you have done different?

As for the ME 3 ending...

Spoiler

The ending premise (with the refusal ending included among our favourite 3 colours of light endings) was that life in the galaxy could either die on their own terms or live on the terms imposed by the bloody godchild. The latter is extremely unsatisfying because it renders Shepard's greatest achievement, that of uniting a galaxy to fight as one, pretty much irrelevant. It was an impressive and unprecedented achievement, as Javik notes, and the motif that this cycle is DIFFERENT from all the others because of Shepard is played up heavily, only to be thrown away at the very last minute.

My tweak to the ending would be that the refusal ending could result in the defeat of the Reapers by conventional warfare and sheer will if the EMS was high enough, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory with some (read: almost all) of the key characters possibly dying. The galaxy's civilisations would be shattered and have to rebuild from ground zero, but at least they would have made and fulfilled their own destinies as opposed to being merely pawns in the godchild's.

EDIT: Left out the spoiler tags. Major boo boo on my part. Sorry :s

 

[Druesling]

My god, put it in spoilers, please! I'm avoiding the ending of me3 successfully for years now, only to get it spoiled here! D:

 

[hsuzy1987]

More on topic however, as recent 4X games go, I was underwhelmed by Civ Beyond Earth. Gal Civ 3 was disappointment on a whole new level.

 

[hsuzy1987]

My god, put it in spoilers, please! I'm avoiding the ending of me3 successfully for years now, only to get it spoiled here! D:

Oh crap sorry! I forgot the spoiler tags!

 

[Jarac Rassen]

The ending premise (with the refusal ending included among our favourite 3 colours of light endings) was that life in the galaxy could either die on their own terms or live on the terms imposed by the bloody godchild. The latter is extremely unsatisfying because it renders Shepard's greatest achievement, that of uniting a galaxy to fight as one, pretty much irrelevant. It was an impressive and unprecedented achievement, as Javik notes, and the motif that this cycle is DIFFERENT from all the others because of Shepard is played up heavily, only to be thrown away at the very last minute.

My tweak to the ending would be that the refusal ending could result in the defeat of the Reapers by conventional warfare and sheer will if the EMS was high enough, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory with some (read: almost all) of the key characters possibly dying. The galaxy's civilisations would be shattered and have to rebuild from ground zero, but at least they would have made and fulfilled their own destinies as opposed to being merely pawns in the godchild's.

Thank you, couldn’t have said it better, myself. The ending as it is currently, subverts the premise that the trilogy tried to build up at the last possible second.

Spoiler

I also would have preferred that we never knew the Reapers true motivations. Their motivation is so... dumb. [/spolier]

 

[Valhallas Call]

Honorable mention: Sword of the Stars 2

Whatever happened to that? The game was released unfinished and then they kind of half-assedly released a couple patches and that was that. Did Kerberos completely abandon it?

 

[Druesling]

Oh crap sorry! I forgot the spoiler tags!

Thanks, that's better.

 

[Jarac Rassen]

It's looking like the reboot will flop harder than MoO3.

 

[Alucardex]

It may not be ready yet, but Godus is a candidate for beating Moo3 to the punch.

Anyone still believing a single word uttered by Peter Molyneux deserves to be dissappointed.

 

[Mesina2]

Thank you, couldn’t have said it better, myself. The ending as it is currently, subverts the premise that the trilogy tried to build up at the last possible second.

Spoiler

I also would have preferred that we never knew the Reapers true motivations. Their motivation is so... dumb. [/spolier]

Spoiler

Not having motivation for Reapers ever to be revealed would be a major cop out. But Mac Walters sure did tried to find the worst possible motivation.

 

[Alucardex]

Spoiler

Not having motivation for Reapers ever to be revealed would be a major cop out. But Mac Walters sure did tried to find the worst possible motivation.

Spoiler

I can understand where you are coming from, but I always likened the Reapers to the eldritch horrors from lovecraft.
They have no motivation we could ever truly hope to understand without going insane.

 

[apoc527]

I loved MOO2 so much and played so many multiplayer games by LAN(though it crashed a lot). Incredible game.
I was in my mid 20's when MOO3 arrived and it broke something in me. Until Stellaris I've never been as excited about the release of a game as MOO3. Years later I thought GalCiv2 quite good. Had some pretty good games on it but.........
GalCiv3 bored the hell out of me. Not as badly as MOO2 probably because GalCiv2 wasn't as good as MOO2 and so I didn't expect GalCiv3 to be perfect.
I'm as excited about the release of Stellaris as I was for MOO3. I could feel happiness again.

Same here. I was incredibly...vociferous...on the MOO3 forums and even got invited to be a beta tester (like Sencho/Admiral Howe) and seeing that game crash and burn was incredibly painful. Quicksilver just didn't have the resources to deal with that game's design ambition.

At any rate, the answer, for me anyway, is "no" because I've never let a game become so important to me again after MOO3. I'm super excited about Stellaris and this is, without doubt, the most excitement I've felt in probably 20 years for a single game. Based on the Blorg streams and my experience with EU4, I'm not worried about a flop.