I’ll start by saying I had a bit of trouble wording the title but I’ll try to elaborate on it. I find it can be a bit daunting at times figuring out what a decent entry point is in a series of video games without searching online first. Sometimes there will be ten games released across three different generation of consoles with reboots, prequels, and remasters and you can feel a bit left out of the loop if you start with the most recent release.
I’m wondering where people would recommend starting in other popular series like Nier, Final Fantasy, Armored Core, Ace Combat, Assassins Creed, Metal Gear, Metroid, Resident Evil, and so on.
It might make for a fun bit of Friday discussion and encourage some people to try out some new games.
Here’s my example:
With the Fallout series I’d say you could easily start with any game because you have a new protagonist each time and a lot of the lore is reintroduced. The exception being Fallout 2 because it feels a bit more like a direct sequel to the original.
I would probably recommend Fallout New Vegas as a starting point because it’s the fan favorite, has a few quality of life upgrades over Fallout 3, Fallout 4 adds a lot of extra mechanics to the game so going backwards in the series if you wanted more Fallout could feel a tad awkward and take some readjusting if you are accustomed to them, and the classic Fallout games can be a bit of a challenge if you aren’t used to old school RPGs.
Origins is def the best place to start. However, with each game having a new protagonist and about a decade in-between the games you could start anywhere. If you end up enjoying one give the others a shot.
It’s not confusing at all this way like everyone who’s only played 2 and 3 says so.
Only complicated thing is that there’s games in between the numbered entries and they’re crucial to plot and are not side games so it’s stupid they numbered only some of them. Even 2 wasn’t the second game so they didn’t need to call that one 2.
I put it off for a long time but I enjoyed it co-op. It was relatively short, the antagonists weren’t that compelling or even very present in the story, but I felt like it was greater than the sum of it’s parts and I enjoyed re-visiting Far Cry 5 locations with post-apocalypse appearances. Like “Hey, here is the island where you started FC5” and “Hey, here is the gas station at the rural intersection where you had to steal the truck.”
I’ve played Far Cry 2 through most of 6. If you don’t recognize particular references, there’s nothing that makes them substantial otherwise in the sea of creative, humorous descriptions of everyone/everything else.
I would say it’s similar with assassin’s creed, keeping it in the family of “ubisoft series gamers love to shit on”. The references are in the same style as other database entries, so you’re not missing anything if you’re unfamiliar. I’ve played 4 through Odyssey.
I’m trying to think of other series and keep landing on the same reasoning, actually. Yeah, I love having more basis for the lore in other series, but I don’t feel I’m missing much without every reference. I mean, Ace Combat was my personality for a few months when 7 came out, prompting me to replay 4 and 5 and buy Zero and 6. As others have said, the main thing is if you do choose to go backwards, things get clunky for both general game and specific series development reasons. Assin 4 was my most recent AC (tried 3, beat Unity>Ody, then beat 4) and man, parkour is tough. I gave up on 3 because it was so awkward and I was too old to learn at the elder age of like 23.
I gotta say though, Forza Horizon 1 remains my favorite. There’s certainly some nostalgia tied to it because it set me up for impossible expectations in the car community (especially now in the post-covid takeover bullshit). It had a more concise campaign and had some story attached to it. I’m up to 4 and it just drops me in like “this is just what you do now” and every race unlocks 4 more races with no end in sight.
I think the better question might be what series should you start from game 1, brcause thats a much tougher question. Just about all the long running ones you can hop in wherever and be fine. Where you wanna start with Mario? Don’t matter. Whats the play for Final Fantasy? Probably whatever the recommenders first one was. Megaman? X, 0, or basic its nbd.
Yakuza is one I’d say you either start from the beginning (Technically Kiwami, but 0 is fine) or start at Like a Dragon (7, as it has a new protagonist)
Black Mesa, if you are playing through the half life franchise. Also, probably one of the best remakes ever. I can’t think of a remake better than the original, and I played HL and Black Mesa back to back to be sure.
commander keen. there really is no need to play 1-3, 4-6 is where it’s at. just make sure you pirate the non-buggy version (there’s a broken version of one or more of these games floating around abandonware sites where it looks like it works but the save game feature forgets to save your keys, which breaks some of the levels if you reload).
You’ll miss out on some spider-lore, but it’s possible to jump into Spider Solitaire for the Windows XP home computor system without having played its predecessor, Spider Solitaire for the Windows 98 home computor system
I really tried to like Battlespire as a kid but didn’t make it far. Major disappointment after Daggerfall! I didn’t even know there were mobile games, glad I missed those.
Very few game sequels are that tied in to it’s predecessor narratively that this is an issue. I would say the vast majority of games are designed to be picked up from anywhere in the series.
Even Mass Effect, where you play as the same character throughout a multi game story arc, still has each game giving the player an on ramp, and each game having it’s own miniature arc to play through.
Mass Effect is one that while every game is independent enough, I’d still say it’s best experienced as the trilogy. You will miss out on stuff in later games
Spoiler for a game old enough to vote
Wrex apparently dies on Virmire if you don’t. My partner started at 2, that was her experience. She played me1 shortly after and yeah, was upset she’d missed out even though he’s not a companion in 2 or 3 outside of Citadel DLC.
Wrex is a solid character, Krogan story just wouldn’t be the same without him. If I recall he’s a part of the reason Mordin changes his view on the Genophage. If you betray the Krogan and pretend to cure it (which I’ve never done, nor will, there’s a limit to how I’ll play renegade), Wrex will see through the deceit, his brother won’t.
There’s also a small misc quest with a certain recurring character in 3 that has an ending idk I’ve ever seen before that requires you to have done certain things in ME1 and not got that person killed in ME2.
There’s a point in the third game that determines the fate of 2 different species that can play out very differently based upon actions you’ve made across the series. And the “best” version depends on your completing the loyalty quests of multiple characters in ME2 before a certain trigger point.
For final fantasy, quite literally just pick whichever one has a theme and/or gameplay style that looks interesting to you. As long as it’s not a sequel to a previous game you can pick any.
The only ones with sequels (some prequels) are VII, X, XII and XIII.
Although some could argue with XIII you can also start anywhere.
It’s not dead, I started playing it just a few years ago and had a blast for a few months. There’s even a thriving private server at the moment that even integrates with retroachievements as well which is wild.
Thus my quotes around “dead”. I’m well aware people still play it, it’s just an old design and if there are two Final Fantasy MMOs that someone could play, don’t you think almost everyone would suggest the one in active development, with a significantly larger playerbase, and the one that has had a much better critical reception? Seems obvious to me
Depends what kinda playstyle they want. If they want cookie cutter wow-style theme park mmo in it’s best form, xiv. If you want something unique and unlike anything else you can play right now. For better and worse, xi. Some people don’t like the look of modern mmos but might feel at home with a classic one
Spelunky, for co-op. I definitely prefer the first game for solo but it only has local co-op. Spelunky 2 has both local and network play but the difference between having a single camera follow the one flag carrier and everybody having their own screens is like playing a different game. Single screen is total mayhem.
This is mainly a FF focused comment. I might come back later and ramble about other franchises though.
A lot of JRPG franchises generally only have themes in common. So you can play Final Fantasy 6, 7, 10, 11 or 15 and have a self contained story. I donno if it’s been confirmed by Square but I do subscribe to the theory that Final Fantasy Tactics and 12 take place on the same continent, just a few hundred years apart. But even then, both titles are standalone and have nothing in common other than the same Ivalice.
There are a few franchises that have continuity like Breath of Fire(iirc) and XenoSaga.
As for where to start with Final Fantasy, 6 is a really good standout retro one, 7 is always a favorite, and so is 10. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of those. If you really like politics in games, 12 has all that and more. It’s my favorite of the bunch but that makes me an outlier. I also don’t recommend starting with it because it’s a huge deviation from the main game mechanics.
Somewhere between most and all of the Ivalice games are confirmed to take place in the same timeline, though the entire place may just be a child’s dream so :shrug:
The timeline is something like XII->tactics a2->tactics->vagrant story->tactics advance, with legendary events between a2 and tactics that lock off magic.
idk why I deleted that comment, but also learned that you can undelete lol.
I’m not at all sure about the timeline order so that’s pretty cool. For some reason to me FF12 feels more future-y tho. I do recall someone stitched the map for the original Tactics and FF12 and they match up pretty much exactly.
Do you have more info on the “child’s dream” take? I’m curious.
Major spoilers for A2, but it opens at a school in the town of St. Ivalice before the protagonist awakens in Ivalice roughly circa ffxii. It eventually turns out that another kid at school found a magic book or something and recreated the world as they want it to be, so you have to get them to wake up to return the world to how it was.
Theres nothing in the game to clarify whether that means any of the events happened in the timeline or not, or what it means for the other games.
This is, I believe, the last entry in the series. DLC is confusing, but I feel like WotC fundamentally changed things in ways I enjoyed. It added a captain system similar to Shadow of Mordor and has half the main characters from ST:TNG doing the voice acting. I started this series at the very beginning (90’s? Early 2000’s?) and can recommend only the first and second games. However, consider their age and thus I probably enjoy those old ones out of nostalgia.
Ahem. While skipping the vanilla XCOM 2 straight for WOTC is a decent idea, the plot literally grows out of EU/EW! Having at least one attempt at the direct prequel is pretty much a must.
Zelda does a good job of this. You don’t usually “miss out” on the lore, because they tend to explain a bit as things go on. Sure, you’d miss the easter eggs placed in the game for fans of older titles, but you also wouldn’t know any different. For example, in Breath of the Wild, a dilapidated farm is present in the main field, and this is a reference to the farm in Ocarina of Time where you find Epona, your horse. If you didn’t play that earlier game, it would just seem like scenery to you. But you wouldn’t actually miss out on anything. So the makers of the Zelda titles do a good job striking a balance between providing nods to earlier titles while also being welcoming to new players.
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Any recommendations on where to start with Dragon Age?
Origins is def the best place to start. However, with each game having a new protagonist and about a decade in-between the games you could start anywhere. If you end up enjoying one give the others a shot.
origins
Kingdom Hearts, first game, go in release order.
It’s not confusing at all this way like everyone who’s only played 2 and 3 says so.
Only complicated thing is that there’s games in between the numbered entries and they’re crucial to plot and are not side games so it’s stupid they numbered only some of them. Even 2 wasn’t the second game so they didn’t need to call that one 2.
Forza Horizon lol
Also Far Cry. No story connection between the games although there is one minor recurring character.
Isn’t New Dawn a sequel to Far Cry 5?
Yes, you got me there. Forgot about New Dawn even though I finally played it for the first time a couple months ago.
I feel like I recall a lot of people saying it was kind of forgettable though I might be thinking about Far Cry 6.
What did you think of it?
I put it off for a long time but I enjoyed it co-op. It was relatively short, the antagonists weren’t that compelling or even very present in the story, but I felt like it was greater than the sum of it’s parts and I enjoyed re-visiting Far Cry 5 locations with post-apocalypse appearances. Like “Hey, here is the island where you started FC5” and “Hey, here is the gas station at the rural intersection where you had to steal the truck.”
I’ve played Far Cry 2 through most of 6. If you don’t recognize particular references, there’s nothing that makes them substantial otherwise in the sea of creative, humorous descriptions of everyone/everything else.
I would say it’s similar with assassin’s creed, keeping it in the family of “ubisoft series gamers love to shit on”. The references are in the same style as other database entries, so you’re not missing anything if you’re unfamiliar. I’ve played 4 through Odyssey.
I’m trying to think of other series and keep landing on the same reasoning, actually. Yeah, I love having more basis for the lore in other series, but I don’t feel I’m missing much without every reference. I mean, Ace Combat was my personality for a few months when 7 came out, prompting me to replay 4 and 5 and buy Zero and 6. As others have said, the main thing is if you do choose to go backwards, things get clunky for both general game and specific series development reasons. Assin 4 was my most recent AC (tried 3, beat Unity>Ody, then beat 4) and man, parkour is tough. I gave up on 3 because it was so awkward and I was too old to learn at the elder age of like 23.
I gotta say though, Forza Horizon 1 remains my favorite. There’s certainly some nostalgia tied to it because it set me up for impossible expectations in the car community (especially now in the post-covid takeover bullshit). It had a more concise campaign and had some story attached to it. I’m up to 4 and it just drops me in like “this is just what you do now” and every race unlocks 4 more races with no end in sight.
I think the better question might be what series should you start from game 1, brcause thats a much tougher question. Just about all the long running ones you can hop in wherever and be fine. Where you wanna start with Mario? Don’t matter. Whats the play for Final Fantasy? Probably whatever the recommenders first one was. Megaman? X, 0, or basic its nbd.
Yakuza is one I’d say you either start from the beginning (Technically Kiwami, but 0 is fine) or start at Like a Dragon (7, as it has a new protagonist)
I would be curious to see which games would have you going back the furthest to fully get the story.
Maybe something starting off on something like the MSX or Intellivision that was never remastered.
Black Mesa, if you are playing through the half life franchise. Also, probably one of the best remakes ever. I can’t think of a remake better than the original, and I played HL and Black Mesa back to back to be sure.
Mass Effect trilogy.
Trails in the Sky.
2 picks up immediately after 1, and expects the player to already be proficient with the battle system from the start.
3 would be confusing and boring without having played the prior two games.
And yes, it’s a subseries, but still. Lol
I’m so glad I started the series from Trails in the Sky 1. I’m currently on Cold Steel 2 and it’s been a great time.
deleted by creator
commander keen. there really is no need to play 1-3, 4-6 is where it’s at. just make sure you pirate the non-buggy version (there’s a broken version of one or more of these games floating around abandonware sites where it looks like it works but the save game feature forgets to save your keys, which breaks some of the levels if you reload).
You’ll miss out on some spider-lore, but it’s possible to jump into Spider Solitaire for the Windows XP home computor system without having played its predecessor, Spider Solitaire for the Windows 98 home computor system
thank you
I wouldn’t recommend starting with Daggerfall over, say, Skyrim or Oblivion, for example.
One must start with Arena, of course.
Then Battlespire and all the mobile exclusive games
I really tried to like Battlespire as a kid but didn’t make it far. Major disappointment after Daggerfall! I didn’t even know there were mobile games, glad I missed those.
Real heads start with Arena
Very few game sequels are that tied in to it’s predecessor narratively that this is an issue. I would say the vast majority of games are designed to be picked up from anywhere in the series.
Even Mass Effect, where you play as the same character throughout a multi game story arc, still has each game giving the player an on ramp, and each game having it’s own miniature arc to play through.
Mass Effect is one that while every game is independent enough, I’d still say it’s best experienced as the trilogy. You will miss out on stuff in later games
Spoiler for a game old enough to vote
Wrex apparently dies on Virmire if you don’t. My partner started at 2, that was her experience. She played me1 shortly after and yeah, was upset she’d missed out even though he’s not a companion in 2 or 3 outside of Citadel DLC.
Wrex is a solid character, Krogan story just wouldn’t be the same without him. If I recall he’s a part of the reason Mordin changes his view on the Genophage. If you betray the Krogan and pretend to cure it (which I’ve never done, nor will, there’s a limit to how I’ll play renegade), Wrex will see through the deceit, his brother won’t.
There’s also a small misc quest with a certain recurring character in 3 that has an ending idk I’ve ever seen before that requires you to have done certain things in ME1 and not got that person killed in ME2.
There’s a point in the third game that determines the fate of 2 different species that can play out very differently based upon actions you’ve made across the series. And the “best” version depends on your completing the loyalty quests of multiple characters in ME2 before a certain trigger point.
For final fantasy, quite literally just pick whichever one has a theme and/or gameplay style that looks interesting to you. As long as it’s not a sequel to a previous game you can pick any.
The only ones with sequels (some prequels) are VII, X, XII and XIII.
Although some could argue with XIII you can also start anywhere.
Well, I think you’d have a hard time finding anyone who’d suggest XI as a starting point too. Considering it’s a “dead” mmo
It’s not dead, I started playing it just a few years ago and had a blast for a few months. There’s even a thriving private server at the moment that even integrates with retroachievements as well which is wild.
HorizonXI for anyone wanting to know the server
Thus my quotes around “dead”. I’m well aware people still play it, it’s just an old design and if there are two Final Fantasy MMOs that someone could play, don’t you think almost everyone would suggest the one in active development, with a significantly larger playerbase, and the one that has had a much better critical reception? Seems obvious to me
Depends what kinda playstyle they want. If they want cookie cutter wow-style theme park mmo in it’s best form, xiv. If you want something unique and unlike anything else you can play right now. For better and worse, xi. Some people don’t like the look of modern mmos but might feel at home with a classic one
Spelunky, for co-op. I definitely prefer the first game for solo but it only has local co-op. Spelunky 2 has both local and network play but the difference between having a single camera follow the one flag carrier and everybody having their own screens is like playing a different game. Single screen is total mayhem.
This is mainly a FF focused comment. I might come back later and ramble about other franchises though.
A lot of JRPG franchises generally only have themes in common. So you can play Final Fantasy 6, 7, 10, 11 or 15 and have a self contained story. I donno if it’s been confirmed by Square but I do subscribe to the theory that Final Fantasy Tactics and 12 take place on the same continent, just a few hundred years apart. But even then, both titles are standalone and have nothing in common other than the same Ivalice.
There are a few franchises that have continuity like Breath of Fire(iirc) and XenoSaga.
As for where to start with Final Fantasy, 6 is a really good standout retro one, 7 is always a favorite, and so is 10. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of those. If you really like politics in games, 12 has all that and more. It’s my favorite of the bunch but that makes me an outlier. I also don’t recommend starting with it because it’s a huge deviation from the main game mechanics.
Somewhere between most and all of the Ivalice games are confirmed to take place in the same timeline, though the entire place may just be a child’s dream so :shrug:
The timeline is something like XII->tactics a2->tactics->vagrant story->tactics advance, with legendary events between a2 and tactics that lock off magic.
idk why I deleted that comment, but also learned that you can undelete lol.
I’m not at all sure about the timeline order so that’s pretty cool. For some reason to me FF12 feels more future-y tho. I do recall someone stitched the map for the original Tactics and FF12 and they match up pretty much exactly.
Do you have more info on the “child’s dream” take? I’m curious.
Major spoilers for A2, but it opens at a school in the town of St. Ivalice before the protagonist awakens in Ivalice roughly circa ffxii. It eventually turns out that another kid at school found a magic book or something and recreated the world as they want it to be, so you have to get them to wake up to return the world to how it was.
Theres nothing in the game to clarify whether that means any of the events happened in the timeline or not, or what it means for the other games.
Start with The Witcher 3 and head back to 2.
I was just thinking about witcher 1 while coming in this morning
Coming in what?
Xcom 2: War of the Chosen
This is, I believe, the last entry in the series. DLC is confusing, but I feel like WotC fundamentally changed things in ways I enjoyed. It added a captain system similar to Shadow of Mordor and has half the main characters from ST:TNG doing the voice acting. I started this series at the very beginning (90’s? Early 2000’s?) and can recommend only the first and second games. However, consider their age and thus I probably enjoy those old ones out of nostalgia.
Ahem. While skipping the vanilla XCOM 2 straight for WOTC is a decent idea, the plot literally grows out of EU/EW! Having at least one attempt at the direct prequel is pretty much a must.
Zelda does a good job of this. You don’t usually “miss out” on the lore, because they tend to explain a bit as things go on. Sure, you’d miss the easter eggs placed in the game for fans of older titles, but you also wouldn’t know any different. For example, in Breath of the Wild, a dilapidated farm is present in the main field, and this is a reference to the farm in Ocarina of Time where you find Epona, your horse. If you didn’t play that earlier game, it would just seem like scenery to you. But you wouldn’t actually miss out on anything. So the makers of the Zelda titles do a good job striking a balance between providing nods to earlier titles while also being welcoming to new players.