LogFAQs > #971062208

yeah Frontier's a pretty reasonable place to start (particularly with the remaster having a lot of UI/QoL improvements) since it has most of the series staples, isn't too difficult (although Riki has a couple obnoxious battles, and there's a couple places where you can get a game over outside of battle), and each playthrough would be pretty short (probably about 15 hours the first time, once you know what you're doing and everything is it would probably be more in the 5-10 hour range).

the bad ones to start off with would probably be Romancing SaGa 2 (one of the better games in the series, but also one of the more brutal 16 bit rpgs. it's easier once you get some experience with it or use a guide since you can actually hard counter a lot of stuff, and the ng+ feature of the remaster mitigates it somewhat too if you're willing to start over), Unlimited SaGa (since it's pretty unconventional both in terms of the series and compared to rpgs in general since it's going for more of a tabletop aesthetic. might be more worth considering if/when it gets remastered like the other games in the series since increasing the transparency would go a long way to addressing people's issues with the game), and Scarlet Grace (again one of the most difficult games in the series, it's pretty easy to break/fail quests or mess up the reward, and it's also 99.9999999999999% battles and doesn't have towns/dungeons. I'm actually a bit surprised that it seems to have reviewed decently for what it is, since I thought it would end up being a bit of a pariah and hatred by everyone like Unlimited SaGa... I guess the market's just different now and people's expectations are different.) Frontier 2 might not be a great spot to get a feel for what the series is like either, since it's got more of a broad timeline/historical record concept to it and you're basically just picking short episodes with a fixed party from the map (also the final boss is pretty difficult and might require some grinding before you hit the ponr but that's kind of the series in general).

RS3's on the easier side for the series (outside of if you try to kill the final boss without weakening it), though it kind of has the issue that it has multiple characters to select from but it's more of a standard length rpg (compared to SF1 or US) and there's not much differences between them and you'd probably do most of the content on your first playthrough since it's also one of the more unfinished feeling ones. Minstrel's Song is the most polished/complete game in the series (where the original is the most unfinished), but it kind of has the same issue as RS3 I just mentioned where it's a longer game with multiple characters although there's slightly more differences between characters than RS3 (just not as much as SF1/US), more content, some content that can only be done in ng+. There's a fair amount of missable/timed stuff though, which I know tends to give some people aneurysms to think about.