It really depends

For instance something like GTA IV has completely damaged my perceptions and expectations of the series. It makes me hesitant to give GTA V a chance.

Well said, and I feel the same way about that mentality.  If I ever play a game that I don't like (which is surprisingly pretty rare for me), at most I'll be more cautious about buying the next game in the franchise (I would never make an account to a developer's forum just to bitch about the game).  Being a Bioware fan, it's sometimes difficult to go to their forums when a new game has been released, because a surge of negativity floods the forums, from Mass Effect 2, to Dragon Age 2, and especially the more recent Mass Effect 3.

To include an upcoming example, Grand Theft Auto IV did not resonate as well for me as it did for the professional review community at that time.  Despite that, I'm willing to give the next Grand Theft Auto a chance.

No problem with bad games in a franchise you always get a gem along the way, the problem for me is when a franchise get’s beaten to a pulp with endless releases, better to be excited for a franchise release after a length of time, not too long 2 years is just about right imo, every year just seems to come round too quick, fatigue then sets in I think and the interest is not what it was/should be? Assassin’s creed is an example for me, not every game is 10 out 10 but I still like the franchise, it's just released too often imo.

Haha, that was a great picture. That guy is devastated.

A good example. I'm very uncertain about the direction is taking with GTA IV.

OT: Perhaps, depends on the continuation of the series/franchise. For instance, RE6 being shit does in no way hamper my enjoyment of the previous ones, same goes for Tomb Raider. It does make me hesitant to stay on the franchise as a whoel though, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Dungeon Siege, Diablo, Need for Speed, Call of Duty and a lot of other franchises are making themselves so irrelevant in my eyes that I would be unlikely to give their new installments a try, even if they might be games I could enjoy. In that sense, I guess I can "forgive" bad games in otherwise good franchises, but those bad games will turn me away from future purchases. Oh well, they still have the broader audience to sell to.

Yup .... I love the Legacy of Kain series and there were some misses such as Blood Omen 2. I'm still looking forward to more games in the series.

DMC2 was a letdown and yet I still love the series.

Mass Effect 3 was not very enjoyable compared to the previous games (not for the ending), and I'm still fine with it.

Every sonic after the Dreamcast games up until Generations on PS3. Still looking forward to Lost Worlds and the other stuff.

As a a huge fan of the Castlevania series, owning every game except for imports, I was one of the people who hated the changes to the series, even though it was a reboot and blamed how Konami wouldn't accept the game as a new IP and only accepted when they threw out the concept of Castlevania.  Once I played it though, this is one of the games that pushed me to now give a new game regardless if there's a major change atleast the benefit of the doubt.  DmC Devil May Cry is the other.

It's your opinion, but all I want to say is da fuq?

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Yes.  I can forgive one bad game in the franchise.  I've forgiven there being several bad games in a franchise.  Finanl Fantasy for example.  I didn't play Final Fantasy 3 until it had a full translation on an NES emulator and while I enjoy even Final Fantasy 2, the one that majority of the fans dislike, I though Final Fantasy 3 was complete garbage.  When the DS version of Final Fantasy 3 was released way into the future, I gave it another chance and my opinion remains the same. 

Final Fantasy 10 was a disappointment.  Graphically it was beautiful, but or 20 hours you're walking down a long hallway, getting in battles that you do nothing more than switch to a character the enemy is weak against, then attack, steal, magic, or whatever that kills them, usually in one hit without grinding.  The end of the game opens up ever so slightly, but it does nothing to help the get any better.  It just has a lot of side quests that are impossible without actually knowing you need to dodge 200 lightning bolts, a near invisible treasure chest under water, getting 0.00 seconds on the chocobo race the second time you play through the last challenge(if you do it the first time you get a potion, it has to be during a retry.)  The games highlight was Blitzball, a mini game that took up half my playtime in FF10.

Final Fantasy 11 was a disappointment as soon as it was announced, but I bought it and played it anyways.  I have no idea how it is now, but early in the game, getting teams of  more than a few people was actually a requirement in order to do any of the actual story quests, and to do more than one or two side quests.  Back then, soloing this game was not an option at all, unless you like making no progress.  I put maybe 15 hours into this game before I quit the game for good, three weeks left of the free month I received.  I heard the game starts getting good at 40 hours in, but I'm not going to dedicate that amount of time for the g ame to actually start.

Final Fnatasy 12.  I've given this game a chance three times now, and I'm done with it for good.  The first two times I played it, I got eight hours in.  I just couldn't take playing the game anymore and quit.  This last time I really truly wanted to like the game, the storyline is good, the amount of content this game has, etc.  I started where I left off on one of my previous saves and put another 10 hours in.  So I didn't replay the beginning all over again.  I started after the part with Dreadnought.  I continued playing this game.  Every random battle in the game consisted of moving your characters in range and auto attacking, healing when needed.  Magic is worthless because it doesn't deal an amount of damage that's worthwhile for how MP it uses.  The gambit systems AI will never be as smart as the human mind so I removed all skill functions from the gambit system and anything that required healing, a skill to be cast, etc, I did it manually.  Every boss, and I mean EVERY boss, I used blind on until they were blinded, and then I kept attacking and healing when needed to win.  That's the only way you could actually without grinding for even more money.  Bosses attacked had regularly three turns to my characters one, which seems unfair, as each character had a long delay between turns, even if I entered the action myself, it'd remain in queue for almost as long as the ATB took to charge.  So I finally quit and this time for good.  Final Fantasy 12 is a pos.  I g ave it so many chances as I truly wanted to like this game because everything else about the game.  Proof that a truly bad battle system can ruin a game.

Final Fantasy 13.  What did I expect with this game?  I have no idea.  Final Fantasy has went in a downward spiral.  This game decides that a point A to B isn't enough. The battle system recommended auto battle, you were constantly using paradigm shift while using auto battle.  It felt less like a game and more like a really really really shitty movie.

The first Final Fantasy game I've ever played was the original on the NES.  I thought the game was amazing and just about every game in the series I played up to FF9 was high quality, even the SaGa and Mana games, named Final Fantasy in the US.  If it had the name Final Fantasy, you know it was going to be a quality title.  Square Enix has been consistent with releasing shitty titles for the series and in my opinion has ruined the series.  I gave Final Fantasy chance after chance.  Not one, not two, not three, but four different main game and every single onf of them came out a disappointment.  Each of them worse than the last.  The series is dead, and by some chance a good game ever comes out of the series, I'll pick it up , but I'm no longer of the opinion that every game released in the series is going to be a quality title, far from it.  I'm now of the opinion that every game released  will be bad unless proven otherwise.   

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Here are some other series that have had a bad game or two but I still hold them in high regard.

Wild ARMs, while Alter Code F isn't truly a bad game, it's the worst in the series.  It's a remake of the original with very watered down gameplay of the third and some  graphical bugs.  I'm still a huge fan of the series.

Castlevania has had several games late in tthe series life that's been kind of disappointed, and honestly I thought the series was dead because of it.  Nothing as bad as what Final Fantasy did, but some pretty disappointing games, especially Judgement and Harmony of Despair.  I'm still a fan though.

So yeah.  I can forgive a bad game and still be a fan of the franchise.  But it gets to the point where enough is enough and I can't keep supporting a franchise that the developer iis clearly running it into the ground.  Final Fantasy is that series.

Paper Marioooooooooo NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO welll att least we get mario and luigi4