For me it's Diablo II. Granted I've played my fair share of D2 since launch, and also recently on a private server with a comrade from hexbear, but I still feel like years later the game didn't grab me as much as D1 did.
Granted I don't hate D2, but for a game that I keep coming back to, D1 takes the prize.
Ooh this one is easy, Red Dead Redemption is a tight action game with a solid if sterotypical cowboy story about the end of the Wild West. Red Dead Remption 2, despite it's technical improvements in basically every way failed to draw me in even after hours of trying. I dunno what it is, maybe I just really am not interested in "the Gang in it's heyday" prequel hook, or maybe it's just how much Rockstar decided to try and make the game into a weird simulator instead of a video game. Played a ton of the MP with friends, as our own little posse rocking around, I made a cool half-native looking dude with a top hat and that was fun, but then we ran into the problem of Rockstar just giving up on wrapping any of the live stories they developed so that's a half-dead game right there. Hard to sell infinite money cards with the cowboy game I suppose.
Evil Genius is a pretty fun little strategy game from like 2004 that was an homage to old bond movies and the cold war, it was buggy as hell but it had some really neat ideas and charm to it and I really liked playing it. Evil Genius 2 is the over-polished sequel that utterly failed to live up to any of the first games energy, the art style got all the weird edges sanded off and has no character of it's own, and I feel like the new team just didn't really vibe with the classic's idea. I dunno maybe I should give it another go but it just rubbed me the wrong way.
Same here for RDR2. I played it once for a couple hours, and then every time I thought about picking it up again I decided not to because it just took so long to do anything. Go to the camp, get the mission, go to the mission start, get the mission again, go the the actual mission location, finally do the mission (but don't deviate from the Devs' planned path by even one foot or you'll have to restart).
RDR2 had all of Rockstar's worst habits charged up to eleven.
The game is incredible the first time. I want to replay it, but the thought of needing to play over a dozen hours of slow railroaded cutscenes/shooting galleries during the mountain prologue, and then the exceptionally long Guarma chapter, just throws me off ever wanting to replay it fully
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