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.
I started Wizardry 8 as my first one and it instantly became one of my favourites. Even though the story is somewhat continuation of 6 and 7, not knowing these is not a problem at all. It’s still interesting and well explained even for novice players. Much later I’ve tried both 6 and 7 and even though I felt I could like them and I even liked the hand made graphics, it was the user interface of the early 90s that was just too much for me.
Uncharted
You can pick up any game in the series and you get a complete story.
Plus imho, one of the best series in recent memory
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Hooked me and then I explored lots of the rest of the series!
Favourite Series - Recommended Entry Point
- Final Fantasy - VI
- Atelier - Sophie
- Dead or Alive - 5 Last Round
- Senran Kagura - Burst Renewal
- Romancing Saga - 2 Revenge of the Seven
Final Fantasy - VI
I actually think IV, but then skip to VI and go from there.
4 is better if you want an old school fixed-class character-driven JRPG. But 9 and 10 do that in a more modern way.
6 is better if you want an old-school blank-slate character-driven JRPG. But 7 and 8 do that in a more modern way.
7, 8, 9, and 10 are all retro themselves though.
5 is great if you want an old-school “character class” JRPG. And if you want it to be character-focused, you’ve gotta look at something like 10-2.
Recommending specific games from the franchise really depends on what someone is looking for.
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.
Counter Strike
For Metroid, start with 2, then Super is a big step up in terms of feel and gameplay. The first one doesn’t explain anything at all, and compared to modern standards feels quite clunky and tedious (you have to find multiple secret passages to finish the game normally, for example.) It’s worth playing if you’re in the mood for NES-era retro gaming, but it can be frustrating trying to figure it out on your own.
For lore, Fusion is next, followed by Dread. I didn’t like Fusion, felt too hand-holdy for me, I would skip it but many seem to like it. Dread is worth playing on its own though. It’s a much faster pace, more action-oriented gameplay. Fusion added a horror element to the game, but for the most part it’s more for vibe than gameplay reasons. Dread took that scary vibe and moved it into the gameplay.
The Prime series I think is a separate canon story. They can definitely be played independently. They follow a storyline and are direct sequels to each other, but gameplay-wise they don’t require playing other games before. You don’t unlock any important knowledge relevant to one game from playing the previous one.
Substitute 1 with Zero Mission, which is a much better remake.
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.
All you’d get with starting with an earlier Arma than 3 is losing quality of life features and gaining eurojank
Oh come on! First Arma (Operation Flashpoint) had photorealistic graphics and played like a dream… That’s how I remembered it until I tried it 20 years later. Boy oh boy…
The Witcher. The first 2 games are real bad.
I’ve heard you can pick and choose where to start with any sport franchise.
With Grand Theft Auto I would say you could start anywhere. Each game features a different protagonist and they play quite different to each other.
I would say playing 4 before 5 is probably a good idea because it doesn’t feel like as much of a tremendous leap compare to going from Vice City to San Andreas. Going from 5 back to 4 would probably make things like the car physics stand out even more.
I have a vague memory of some 2D ones early on
The first three GTAs were 2D
Except GTA III—what was 3D, hence the number
There was GTA, GTA London 1969, and GTA 2 all in the 2D era.
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.
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
Real heads start with Arena
So many nice recommendations here but here are some of my recommendations in genres (in top 5 form). All of them have PC ports (but not all of the series may be available on PC)
Platformers:
- Rayman
- Sonic
- Wonder boy
- Shantae
- Trine
RPGs
- Final Fantasy
- Tales of Series
- Star Ocean
- Elder Scrolls
- Pathfinder
Some noteworthy mentions for RPGs
- YS
- Mana
Shooters:
- Medal of Honor
- Shadow Warrior
- Doom
- Call of Duty
- Wolfenstein
Puzzles, point and click: Note: This was very hard to list since most of them are standalone and those that are not have interesting plot lines that you will not appreciate unless you play in order such as Syberia, Gabriel Knight, Secret Files. Walking Dead)
- Myst (You can play in any order but it would be nice to play the sequels or prequels)
- Broken Sword (Don’t touch 4 and 5 but you can play in any order and it would be nice to play the sequels or prequels)
- Life is Strange (1 and 2 are standalone stories)
- of Loathing series (It has turned based combat but very fun)
- Nancy Drew
I would say I prefer them in the chronological order of their release date. Some of the series I have listed completely have either loosely, small references or completely standalone only sharing a “franchise name”
Do none of the Final Fantasy involve each other?
