1w ago

What video game franchises do you not need to start from the very beginning to enjoy? What would you recommend as the entry point into your favorite series?

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.

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Any action/fighting/shmup franchise because the stories are typically nonexistent/shit anyway:
Bayonetta: I recommend the original as a starting point for an authentic action experience, but Bayonetta 2 is more beginner-friendly.
Devil May Cry: either 3, or 5 will work—3 if you're after a challenging experience, and 5 if you're looking for an insane combo simulator. 1 could work as an entry point, but it's too old and will not appeal to everyone.
Ninja Gaiden: I recommend the original Ninja Gaiden 2 on XBOX (not Sigma) if you're after nonstop action, and Ninja Gaiden Black if you're more of a souls-like fan.
Crimzon Clover: World EXplosion is the superior game.
Under Night In-Birth: I recommend Sys:Celes because it's the only one with functional netcode.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax because it's the only Persona Arena game, they just started at Persona 4, and the story has tie-ins for Persona 3 and 4.
Guilty Gear: start with XX Accent Core Plus R if you need the "the most Guilty Gear" because every character has the most moves they've ever had throughout the series. -STRIVE- for beginners, and Xrd if you find XX inaccessible. OG Guilty Gear is a broken artifact, maybe to be admired, but not taken seriously.
DoDonPachi: DaiOuJou: widely regarded as a shmup goat and the best DoDonPachi game. I recommend the Black Label release.

The Witcher. The first 2 games are real bad.

The witcher 3 can be played with a great experience even with no background on the series!
- I started with number 2 and felt a bit lost. I wonder if it would have been easier to start with 3 in that case.
  
  I think genuinely yeah. 2 built on 1 iirc. 3 is sort of its own thing insofar as the overall story arc
- Good to hear. I tried to start with 1, but just can't do with those controls.
  
  The story of witcher 1 is still quite good and worth experiencing. I'd suggest playing it on easy only so the bad gameplay doesn't matter too much.
  
  I try to forget but it haunts me

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?

Counter Strike

Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Hooked me and then I explored lots of the rest of the series!

Monster Hunter. There's tons of recurring stuff between games due to the nature of the series, but other than being able to go "hey, I recognize that from this other game!" there's no reason to play the games in any particular order. I'd normally recommend World or Rise to new players, but with Wilds coming out in a month I'd say that's the best option if you have the hardware for it. Wilds is a thematic sequel to World though, so starting with World before Wilds is something you might consider, though it's not really necessary.
- I haven't actually played any of the old monster hunters before world, but from what I understand they are far more clunky, and you tend to fight the game almost as much as the monsters.
  
  You aren't wrong, they're definitely significantly more clunky, but they also absolutely have their own charm to them. If you're a fan of "older" game design they might really appeal to you. There's a much greater focus on the out-of-hunt preparation phase, and while the lack of many QOL features might be frustrating to some players, to others it adds to the personality of the games. They're definitely games worth trying if you're interested in retro gaming, or in Monster Hunter history, and they're all easily emulatable.
  That being said though, most players should probably just stick to the newer games, it truly cannot be overstated how much of a leap World was for the franchise. The amount of quality of life features and gameplay improvements is staggering, and going backwards from that can be a bit jarring.

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

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.

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.

counter strike!

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
- Real heads start with Arena

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.
- I think the better question might be what series should you start from game 1, brcause thats a much tougher question.
  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.
- Mass Effect trilogy.
- 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.

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 compared 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

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

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.

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'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.

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 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.

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.

I've heard you can pick and choose where to start with any sport franchise.

Yeah I was gonna hop in here and say Fallout. New Vegas has all the themes of the classic series with the easier to play gameplay of the 3D era. That said though, I really don't think you can start wherever with that series - IF you want a clear picture of what it's about. I started with Fallout 3, and that definitely muddies the series themes a bit. Fallout 4 comes around and the realistic themes of humanity's repetitive follies are all but thrown out the window to focus on the scifi, retrofuturism, and apocalyptic aspects of the series. Fallout 1, 2, and NV are the continued story of society rebuilding and making the same mistakes we always make as a species. Only the first one is a post apocalyptic game, 2 and NV are post-post apocalyptic with large communities and states starting to form.
No hate on the fun there is to be had exploring bombed out ruins, I still love Fallout 3 and I put in a good bit of time with Fallout 4. But while the West Coast tells the story of society rebuilding, with people making adobe houses reasonably soon after the bombs fell and eventually manufacturing concrete, the East Coast is full of convoluted reasons for why society hasn't rebuilt yet in 200 years and everyone still lives in scrap metal shacks. Not that Fallout games are all realism, but I think the Bethesda games sacrifice the realism of how humanity functions to add more scifi components - and that's just not what Fallout's all about.
I should probably say an actual game series I think you can pick up at any game though, and I'll have to go with Metal Gear Solid. Fantastic story that's convoluted and told out of order. It doesn't matter where you start, you're always going to have fun! I recommend MGS1 for anybody with a day job, and MGS5 for anyone who wants to sink some hours into a sandbox.

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.

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.

Any recommendations on where to start with Dragon Age?
- origins
- 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.

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).

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.

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?

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...

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