8 Video Game Trilogies That Went From Bad To GREAT

It’s fair to say that most successful video game franchises are kickstarted by a banger entry that gets everyone’s attention, because of course, why else would it spawn a shedload of sequels in the first place?

But once a franchise puts out a couple of good games – say, a trilogy – one can easily lose sight of the fact that the game that started it all actually isn’t very good at all.

Hell, you might even call them genuinely bad.

And that’s certainly true in the case of these storied video game trilogies, each of which soared to incredible heights after struggling through the growing pains of an awkward, janky, and just plain not-good opening chapter.

That first game evidently still held enough promise to sell well despite its very rough edges, but looking back within the context of the trilogy it spawned, it’s a tough game to consider playing today.

And sure, such is the nature of progress, but even so, when the original games in these trilogies launched, few could’ve anticipated the trajectory things would take from that point…

Let’s just be completely blunt here – 2002’s RPG Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku is pure booty.

With its simplistic combat system, generally puddle-deep gameplay, mess of a story, short length, and abundance of bugs, it’s easily one of the worst Dragon Ball games ever produced, and did nothing to suggest that developer Webfoot Technologies had the chops to do the franchise justice.

But to their enormous credit, they returned with The Legacy of Goku II just a year later, which improved upon every single maligned aspect of the original game, especially its combat.

As sequel glow-ups go it’s an all-timer, and Webfoot sustained this momentum with the third game, Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury, again released only a year later.

Though perhaps a little too easy for its own good, it was ultimately a worthy adaptation of the Buu saga while further fleshing out the combat and giving the player more to do.

When the original Legacy of Goku dropped to thunderous indifference from critics and fans alike, did anyone anticipate that it’d lead to two genuinely great sequels?