Same is true for most big games franchises though.
People continually buy the next EA sports game even though it’s basically just the old game but with the year incremented.
People still spend £50 on new copies of 10 year old Nintendo games like Mario Kart 8. And let’s be honest, the last great Mario game released was Super Mario Galaxy.
If there’s one thing you can guarantee, it’s that people will waste their money on stuff they like. And if there is one truism that HN commentators forget, it’s that software doesn’t need to be academically perfect to be good software for their particular target audience. In the case of games, it’s being more enjoyable than the alternative of not playing that game. Which, frankly, is a pretty low bar a lot of the time.
It's the same reason for the decade-long glut of capeshit. Hollywood found that (people who were then) teenage boys could be relied upon to show up for a superhero film, no matter how bad, provided it starred their favourite characters.