Oh my god, Brutal Legend was a goddamn gut punch. The demo was a
complete bait-and-switch, it was only the amazing introduction and stuff and cut off before the Action-RTS bullshit. But, sadly, it didn't even stop there. As the game continued on, all of the humor and amusing characters started to give way and by the end it was just some terribly phoned in, by the numbers, cliche-riddled power fantasy narrative. Absolutely soul crushingly disappointing.
Final Fantasy XV should be on the list for a lot of people. Even I, Chief Hatessquarealot, don't
really hate it. It's just... bad at everything. Unfinished - even doing all of the DLC, I often get the nagging feeling like I never finished the game. It lacks direction, earns none of its "emotional moment" segments
(WHO THE FUCK IS JARED?!), can't even figure out what genre it wants to be. Totally embarrassing. For all that Versus XIII was supposed to be, for all that XV
should be, it's just... not. Truly an astonishingly sad way to end a series. Though for me personally by the time XV rolled around XII and XIII had already shoved my love and enthusiasm off a cliff. I only picked up XV a couple years after the fact, post-Royal Edition launch, which was the first time in series history I'd done that since I started in the late 90's. If I was more invested, I'm sure it would be more bad than disappointing for me.
And again, for a lot of people,
Assassin's Creed III is going to be an easy choice. But that's not the real answer; the real answer is
Revelations. Originally meant to be a throwaway smartphone game, they shuffled plans and made it into a third and final game for Ezio and even brought Altair along for the ride. In terms of gameplay, it was just uninspired. Not bad, not good, just... there. As a narrative hook, they decided that they wanted to have it continue the modern day storyline too. Give some more closure for Lucy, and actually introduce us to Clay. And... that's the problem. I didn't play AC3 for a decade because it just didn't matter anymore.
Going against the modern community's grain for this last one,
Kingdom Hearts II. It's not really a character action game, not at all an Action-RPG, baffling design decisions all over the place, the Disney worlds are
there but in no way meaningful or connected, and... not a single bit of the original character stuff makes sense if you didn't play the GBA game (Chain of Memories) that released before it
and the DS game (358/2 Days) that released
after it.
In recent times some people want to point to Critical Mode (which was added in the Japanese-only Final Mix version) as making it into one of the best Action-RPGs of all time. I know better, though; what KH2 had could not be fixed with just some tweaked difficulty and HP sliders. Four years and hundreds of hours of sharing fan theories all across the internet, all for nothing. KH2 will always be my most disappointing anything.