Last few years I’ve been excitedly waiting for sequels from several small-to-medium sized studios that made highly acclaimed original games—I’m talking about Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Coaster, Frostpunk, etc.—yet each sequel was very poorly received to the point I wasn’t willing to risk my money buying it. Why do you think this happens when these developers already had a winning formula?
Nothing went wrong. Remember the era where every sequel was straight to DVD? Who remembers The Lion King 2? How about Brother Bear 2? Sonic Adventure 2?
It’s difficult to iterate on a piece of media that was written to be a standalone entity.
The only exceptions really are when stories are split into multiple games (such as halo 1-3)
Lion King 2 was pretty good. Also, direct to VHS
Uhh…there was a Brother Bear 2?
100% on everything except including sonic adventure 2 in your list. The chao garden was so great in that one i still go back and play it now and then. And the music to the intro stage is a straight up classic lol