What game series has the most perfect formula for sequels?

[ZedClampet]

You could certainly consider Far Cry and Assassin's Creed as having a great, repeatable base for tons of sequels (and there are tons).

To me you could consider Total War in this, with every game after the first one being a sequel.

I'm not sure all these sports franchises that release annually really count. Those feel like $60 updates to me rather than sequels.

CoD? Battlefield? Others?

For me it's Forza Horizon. It has just an incredible base of systems and mechanics that the majority of players don't seem to want to see changed at all. The driving is absolutely perfect for that sim/arcade blend that they are going for. The large open world maps are fun to explore and help to create a lot of unique races since you race on the streets and trails rather than on dedicated race tracks. And there are too many little things to mention them all, but I really enjoy customizing my cars, designing custom tracks, wheel spins, etc. The game has just about everything you could imagine you would want in this section of the racing genre (some people like the police chases in NFS, but I'm not one of them).

So what game has the perfect sequel formula to you?

 

[Pifanjr]

Anno is the first series that comes to mind. I haven't played all of them, but as far as I'm aware none of the sequels were terrible.

 

[Brian Boru]

Far Cry and AC sure.

Civilization—not only do the sequels build on the original idea, but each expansion to each sequel [from Civ4 on anyway, I didn't play much of the first 3] has also built forward.

Command & Conquer Generals—lots of scope there for asymmetric 3-faction war across the planet.

Royal Envoy casual strategy/puzzler—so much of the level design is brilliant, they could've put out a new one every year and I'd lap it up.

Crysis if it returned to its original open world design and populated its beautiful worlds like modern games do. The nanosuit powers and weapon customization on the fly are a great basis for super-soldier play.

Portal—there should be a lot more scope for such unique gameplay.

 

[Zloth]

Oh, so the FORUMLA for sequels, whether realized or not!

Planescape: Torment jumps to mind. The city of Sigil itself has plenty of story in it, plus it touches on many other planes. You could have all sorts of DLCs whether those planes interact with Sigil or interact with each other via Sigil.

Control should work well, too. An agency that investigates paranormal phenomena - which means anything you can dream up. Anywhere on the planet. And again, the place where the agency resides is itself full of all sorts of mystery. We never actually got into the Hiss home plane/reality/whatever, either.