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.
Might be a hot take, but Mass Effect 2.
I love Mass effect, despite its flaws, but Mass Effect 2 was the game that derailed the series and basically forced Mass Effect 3 to have an unsatisfactory ending. So many concepts from Mass Effect 1 like the cipher, visions, Virgil, the Thorian were completely abandoned in favor of one giant video game length side mission. Sure the suicide mission was kind of cool, but at the end of Mass Effect 2 we learned almost nothing about the reapers from the last game.
But Cerberus is by far the worst mistake. From Shepard's POV, they literally witnessed Cerberus do grotesque, inhumane experiments throughout ME1 only a month before game start but the writers forced us to join these space Nazis. Cerberus is comically evil and is constantly doing cartoon villain experiments. Also, the space Nazis somehow have it in their hearts to spend billions of credits so that Shepard can save humanity.
The main writer of ME dropped off during the writing of ME2 and they abandoned a lot of his ideas.
I loved the ME trilogy, but after ME1 it really wasn’t about the themes and ideas, just the characters.
Also looking back they’re some of the most lib propaganda games ever like jeez
Yeah I can sign off on this. As the series went on it became clear that Bioware wasn't interested in a lot of the things that made ME1 such a breath of fresh air for video game sci fi and rpgs, and by the time you get to ME3 it's like you might as well be playing a Star Wars game.