I think this was Apollo Justice. I think having a new lead and a mostly new cast but setting the game in the same general universe was 100% the right move for Ace Attorney in retrospect, even if the game itself was not short on issues, especially in the last two cases. I always felt like there was a lot of room to make an "Apollo Justice" trilogy, much like the original Phoenix Wright trilogy. Instead, the next two games were spin-offs that starred a character from the original trilogy, and when we finally did get two more mainline games in the series, they brought back Phoenix and largely felt quite a bit tonally different from Apollo Justice, with more callbacks to the original trilogy and even Apollo himself feeling like he had a completely different backstory in Spirit of Justice. While in some ways I think those games are better than Apollo Justice, I miss the tone and cast of characters from AJ. We eventually got the original team to come back and tell a new story with the Great Ace Attorney games, which is more in line with what I wanted, but the world those games take place in feel so removed from the one the other AA games did that it just doesn't capture the same magic to me.
I also think this was Pokemon X/Y. It was definitely not as good as the gen 5 games, but a game that was like those but with a much more fleshed out region than Kalos would have been incredible. Instead, both followup gens doubled down on linearity and having weak post-games, and largely felt like they ignored the improvements X/Y did make to things like the online functionality and training your Pokemon.
Sonic Lost World was the best Sonic felt in 3D in a long time imo, but the level design quality fell off a cliff after the first couple of worlds. Had the game just had more development time it could have been another moment like Sonic Colors where it felt like they figured out how to do Sonic in 3D properly. When we finally got another mainline Sonic Team 3D Sonic a few years later, it went right back to the boost formula that we had before Lost World and felt worse than ever.
I also think this was Pokemon X/Y. It was definitely not as good as the gen 5 games, but a game that was like those but with a much more fleshed out region than Kalos would have been incredible. Instead, both followup gens doubled down on linearity and having weak post-games, and largely felt like they ignored the improvements X/Y did make to things like the online functionality and training your Pokemon.
Sonic Lost World was the best Sonic felt in 3D in a long time imo, but the level design quality fell off a cliff after the first couple of worlds. Had the game just had more development time it could have been another moment like Sonic Colors where it felt like they figured out how to do Sonic in 3D properly. When we finally got another mainline Sonic Team 3D Sonic a few years later, it went right back to the boost formula that we had before Lost World and felt worse than ever.
