Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Improved Second Attempt / Video Games

Go To

  • The biggest criticism of Bravely Default was the final act, in which you travel through four Alternate Universe versions of the same world and fight all the Jobmasters and Crystal Guardians again in what is essentially a "Groundhog Day" Loop. Bravely Second does something similar, but only has you hop timelines once, the Jobmaster refights are significantly altered from the get-go, and the plot instantly goes Off the Rails so it doesn't feel like a re-hash of the first half. This was much better received.
  • Dragon's Dogma II: Hideaki Itsuno has said on multiple interviews that the first game was incomplete, with myriad ideas he had been floating for years having been impossible to implement into the first game (like the Beastren, which were actually shown in concept art for the first game), and as much as 60% of intended content left on the editing room floor. The sequel is, for all intents and purposes, what Dragon's Dogma was always intended to be, with all the ideas he had been wanting to implement finally being fulfilled, as well as polishing and modernizing already existing concepts.
  • Final Fantasy XV:
    • Players unsatisfied with the base game's Bittersweet Ending can take solace in the alternate ending of the Episode Ignis DLC. Ignis isn't blinded, he sends Ardyn into retreat by fighting and weakening him, and his short-lived alliance with Ravus sparks a peace treaty with Niflheim now that Ardyn is out of the way. While Noctis still enters the Crystal and emerges ten years later into the World of Ruin, he doesn't die defeating Ardyn at Insomnia, and goes into the throne room together with his friends, reaffirming the theme of brotherhood emphasized by the rest of the game (therefore addressing some accusations of the original ending having a Broken Aesop), and after restoring the light takes his place as king.
    • Some players didn't like that the Final Boss was a Duel Boss fought one-on-one with Noctis, because the rest of the game, both in story and in gameplay, emphasized the friendship and teamwork of the party and the strength the four had together. The Episode Ardyn AU timeline allows the player to fight a Superboss that is a recreation of the final battle from the boss's perspective, but this time Noctis' friends join in to help him — it's not clear if it's meant to be a Retcon or a What If?, though.
    • The cancelled season of DLC-turned-Novel, Dawn of the Future, fleshes out numerous characters who were considered wasted, including Aranea, Luna, Somnus, and even Iedolas. In addition to providing Luna with much-needed backstory, it also shows that Luna, contrary to what the game originally implied, did not actually know or hide from Noctis that he would have to die to fulfill his destiny, and also has her reject her Extreme Doormat tendencies, two traits that made her very unpopular with fans. Likewise, while Somnus still caused Ardyn's fall to villainy, the novel version of Episode Ardyn shows that Somnus' criticisms of Ardyn's self-martyring methods weren't unwarranted. Also, for those who felt destiny was unfair or that the Astrals seemed like Karma Houdinis for being partly to blame for the main game's conflict, the happy ending of the novel is only made possible because characters chose not to go along with fate and defeating Bahamut becomes the main drive of the finale.
  • Every so often, Guitar Hero will bring back older songs for new games, whether by coincidence (such the case with band games like Metallica or Van Halen), as DLC for World Tour onwards, or intentionally with Smash Hits. These returning songs are re-charted to use original masters instead of covers, as well as to fine tune the notes to be more closer to the song's original fretting or to implement new gameplay mechanics that makes them more natural and fun to play. This goes double for any song that originally debuted in III, which was infamous for its Fake Difficulty by abusing three-note chords along with the complete engine overhaul, in which the re-charting is seen as a vast improvement (a perfect example of this is Metallica's "One", where the simple addition of tap notes makes the Fast Solo sections much more manageable to beat on harder difficulties where as you were pretty much screwed if you miss one note in III).
  • Just Dance: "Toxic" from 2 is widely considered to be one of the worst routines ever created, with a boring choreography, lame visuals and what is widely agreed to be the worst cover the series has ever used. When the song returned for 2023 Edition, the routine was given a massive overhaul, getting a much better choreography, far more engaging visuals, the original music being used and even getting an extreme version, leading to the song being viewed far more positively by many fans.
  • The King of Fighters:
  • The "Ruined King Saga" of League of Legends was an in-game story event that spanned 2021 and served to be a massive Crisis Crossover involving the return of Viego the Ruined King and the fight to stop him, but was widely criticized for an abundance of problems with tone, characterization, and contrivances, as well as issues of very inconsistent continuity that made it unclear what elements were and were not canon. Riot Games took note of the criticisms, and several of these problems were addressed in a few derivative projects:
    • Ruined King was intended to be released before the actual event as a preamble, but was postponed to after it due to pandemic-related issues. When it was eventually released, it was much better-received in large part due to its focus on a limited, but better-developed cast and a significantly different, but much tighter, tonally-balanced plot. The developers at Airship Syndicate admitted to having taken advantage of the delay and knowledge of the criticisms of the story to adjust some of its own, retroactively turning it into a loose, yet canonically valid prequel that leaves enough room for being accepted as a retry of the whole thing.
    • The novel Ruination was also praised for its depiction of the backstory leading into the Ruined King Saga, elaborating on several crucial parts of character development leading into Viego's Start of Darkness that the previous in-game event was inconsistent and vague with, appropriately encapsulating the tragedy of the character that Riot sought to depict with him.
  • Mighty Gunvolt Burst is considered a vastly improved version of Mighty No. 9.
    • It delivers a much more traditional Mega Man experience, and Beck no longer needs to dash into everything to defeat enemies.
    • Cryosphere's boss fight in Mighty Gunvolt Burst was completely reworked into something more similar to the various shield bosses in the Mega Man franchise, rather than the slow and tedious, but easy fight from her home game.
    • The Call DLC, which promotes her to a fully playable character in Mighty Gunvolt Burst instead of being restricted to a single Kickstarter-funded Prison stage and the online co-op missions in Mighty No. 9. Furthermore, players can alternate Call's appearance based on the Call A◊, E◊ and H◊ designs from the Kickstarter voting campaign as collectible modules.
    • The RAY DLC release for Mighty Gunvolt Burst retains the Xel Decay mechanics that made her so interesting compared to Beck, plus adds the ability to use melee combos, which have the notable effect of, due to how Burst works, guaranteeing much higher Burst combos than anyone else, since all other players use ranged attacks exclusively. RAY's Xel Decay mechanic also can be turned off, if players wish, and RAY has much higher health pick up amounts anyway.
    • The 3DS and PlayStation Vita ports of Mighty No. 9 went AWOL after the game's disastrous reception and Comcept being bought out by Level-5 as a result, and said systems have reached the end of their lifespans. Mighty Gunvolt Burst, on the other hand, is available on the 3DS and Switch, filling out the portable Mighty No. 9 niche.
  • Odin Sphere:
    • It has been long held by fans that Mercedes and especially Ingway received too cruel an ending in the True End of the game when compared to Gwendolyn/Oswald and Cornelius/Velvet. The Updated Re-release provides a new screen after the shot of the World Tree (Mercedes' reborn form), showing Ingway in the Netherworld and a root with Mercedes' signature flower blooming from it reaching him, which will allow him to be taken to her so they can be Together in Death.
    • One of the biggest complaints of the game even back when it released was that the battle system was clunky, slow-paced, and an absolute slog to work through and level, especially with the food system. Leifthrasir completely reworks the system from the ground-up, not only improving the pacing significantly but also allowing for command shortcuts for your various skills, turning the game into a fast-paced action title worth its salt, on top of the streamlining of the extraneous mechanics like food.
  • In Persona 5, the character of Goro Akechi and his subplot were considered decent in theory but poorly handled in practice, with the game and its characters telling the player he felt kinship with Joker instead of showing it and having him awkwardly dump his backstory without prompting to make the player sympathize with him. The Updated Re-release Royal changed his Confidant from an automatic story one to a manual one, meaning the player needs to actively go out of their way to bond with him, and re-wrote the Confidant to give Akechi and Joker's bond more natural development and make the backstory drops less forced. While the climactic scenes with him are mostly the same as the original, these changes made them feel much more organic. The new third semester returns him to the party, but alleviated fears he would be Easily Forgiven by making him a Token Evil Teammate who the rest of the Phantom Thieves barely tolerate, while giving him a lot of hilarious Comedic Sociopathy.
  • Rushdown Revolt is this to Icons: Combat Arena. Icons was made as a free-to-play clone of Super Smash Bros. Melee for PC, inspired by some of the devs' past work on Project M. Because it followed Melee's steps so closely, it ended up feeling like an inferior clone that was too inaccessible to newcomers. Rushdown Revolt reuses the same characters from Icons, but has its own unique mechanics while keeping the fast-paced, competitive gameplay of Melee, and was better-received as a result.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic Heroes' special stages are infamous among fans for being one of the worst special stages in the series, due to the physics being nearly impossible to get a hang of. The 3DS version of Sonic Generations opts to bring back the special stages from Heroes with one-to-one gameplay mechanics, but they're actually fun to play due to the physics actually being optimized around it, proving that Heroes' special stages can work with the right level of polish.
    • One of the many reasons for Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)'s infamy are the pseudo-realistic human designs which clash horribly with the cartoonish animal main characters and look like they came from a completely different game. Later Sonic games with human or human-like characters (e.g. the humans from Sonic Unleashed, Sage from Sonic Frontiers) have taken care to use stylized designs that don't look so awkward next to Sonic and friends, and even the vanishingly rare appearances of the 2006 game's human characters give them less unsettling makeovers — in early 2023, a piece of official Sonic Channel artwork debuted a new, more stylized look for Princess Elise that many fans instantly fell in love with.
  • Street Fighter: Both characters may be blond, American and meant to serve as a successor as series protagonist to Ryu, but Luke has caught on much more easily than his predecessor Alex. Alex didn't catch on too well thanks to being a beginner-unfriendly grappler character, a lack of III-related supplementary material making it hard for fans to get to know his backstory, and being outright portrayed as being inferior to Ryu (the low point being Alex's own ending in 3rd Strike having him get trounced by Ryu), enough for Capcom to quietly give up and restore Ryu's status as the protagonist of the series while having Alex make sporadic appearances and cameos. Luke, on the other hand, came with a Shotoclone moveset easier to pick up, had both Street Fighter 6 and Aleks Le's social media to flesh out his character, and is displayed as competent enough in fighting to be a Mentor Archetype to the player's avatar in 6's World Tour mode, all of which has helped Luke be treated more favorably than Alex.
  • The Super Robot Wars Massively Multiplayer Crossover franchise is beloved among fans for taking mecha series that are disliked or controversial, such as Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny and Cross Ange, and rewriting their storylines to address their flaws, while also taking well-liked series with unpopular elements and removing or reworking those elements (for example, allowing popular characters who were killed off in their home series to survive and providing an Adaptational Alternate Ending for Downer Endings). As a result, there are several fans who prefer the SRW versions of their series to their original incarnations.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles, the Spiritual Successor to both Xenogears and Xenosaga, features this by nature:
  • Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is widely considered by the series' fans as a vast improvement over its first game.
    • The game's combat has been greatly overhauled from the first game while refining Jehuty's repertoire of attacks and mobility, allowing the game's combat to be much faster paced.
    • The overworld was stripped out and instead the game progresses in a linear fashion, eliminating backtracking between places and keys to advance are not too far off between level sections.
    • The game doesn't force the player to be cautious about their surroundings outside of a few key moments, giving players more freedom in how they engage in combat.
    • Sub-weapons no longer use ammunition, instead the game uses a Sub-Weapon Gauge which can be replenished through pickups such as Metatron or attacking enemies, and it grows as the player levels up.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top