Best and worst most extreme departures long running series have taken?

[LegitHyperbole]

I think FF16 is both the best and also the worst departure. The best because it brings a tone and visceral story and backdrop along with hard ass characters in a series that really needed to find some grit and get away from the anime affair (the best they could do before this was a half asked punk boy band) but the worst cause it trades everything else for it, the game mascarades as an RPG, it wears the shell of an open world game and comes across more as an MMO without the multiplayer but at least there is the story and tone and vibes which are on point, which are so good it carries the game above average, heck if even up to being good on story, vibes, themes, characters and spectacle alone and the good thing about the side content being so atrociously bad is you don't want to engage with any of it so the game feels more cohesive since you're forced down the strict main path at any rate. Just would have been cool if they had focused recourses on that path and not added in fetch quests mid story beats to pad and slow down the game.