Board 8 > Which series/franchise is the toughest for newcomers?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was inspired for this thread when I figured out that Trails from Zero is not necessarily the best starting point for the series.

You mean "most convoluted"?

The Fate series isn't great

Honestly I'd say Fire Emblem.

- You kinda can't start at the beginning

- While Awakeing and Three Houses are great, playing them first can stop a lot of players from experiencing the prior games due to the change in difficulty.

- However starting before that is incredibly hard without an emulator, due to Nintendo's garbage VC practices.

Doctor Who has a lot of history and a few side specials. Funny that something that was supposed to be a children's show grew into what it is.

As someone who watched through Dragon Ball for the first time over the past couple years, it isn't difficult. It's just long. Star Wars isn't that difficult aside from the order going 4-6, 1-3, 7-9.

Trails feels like the highest barrier to entry just because each game in the series is so darn long and it's difficult (although not impossible) to start anywhere except the beginning.

Metal Gear

I say that as a newcomer who has only played a little of the series and had mostly no idea what was going on

Kingdom Hearts is convoluted but no more for a newcomer than it is for a series veteran

The hardest part of finding a watch order for Dragon Ball is finding a spot to fit in the anime-original stuff (some stuff, like most of the movies, just flat out don't fit into the continuity, it's best to treat them as alternate timelines)

Also, there's nothing complicated about the Trails order, you just play them in JP release order
(Sky FC -> Sky SC -> Sky 3rd -> Zero -> Azure -> ToCS 1 2 3 4)

The Wire

tyder21 posted...

The Fate series isn't great

this is a solid choice (speaking as someone who's journey through this went Fate/Zero -> UBW anime -> first season of Prisma Illya -> HF movies, and still doesn't really get the greater Fate universe)

discworld you can follow release, you can just also go by arc if you want but it's not remotely necessary
star trek is even more obvious about arcs
doctor who just point them at #9 unless you think they'd like some of the old ones, then i guess it'd get complex
trails is literally straight-up release order. it gets fucky because the devs got stupid around azure and mixed things up but nobody is actually going to do Zero - CS1 - Azure - CS2 or Zero - 1/2 Azure - CS1 - 1/2 Azure - CS2 so who cares
star wars just watch the original trilogy and stop lmao

kh is nonsense in any order so good luck

It's funny that you put the MCU on there when Marvel comics are infinitely tougher to get into.

Fate and Kingdom Hearts are the only ones that jump out at me as being hard to really understand the order to play things but KH took steps to remedy that with the rereleases at least (though they are kind of convoluting it again).

Fate you unfortunately can't really get around being convoluted since nearly every story takes place in its own separate timeline, but you can more or less ideally read the Fate/Stay Night VN, then watch Fate/Zero, then just kinda go wherever. Alternatively if you don't want to read the VN, do Fate/Zero first and then watch the Unlimited Blade Works anime, then Heavens Feel and THEN go wherever. The order doesn't really matter after that.

None of the others listed are hard to get into at all (barring discworld maybe as I have no experience with that). You just play/watch/read them in release order.

ASOIAF

You have to follow a series when you know the books are never going to be finished and a TV Show that everyone just feels down on the last season about

at least HotD seems good so far

Some of these (like KH) are probably easier for newcomers than they were for people who followed them from the beginning.

yeah it's probably american comics in general, particularly recently where they begin new series /creative teams every twelve issues. massive retcons that don't make any sense abound. huge event comics that feature hundreds of characters. extremely messy.

of these, I guess doctor who if you actually try to make it make sense.

I know little about most of these, but the one that, as an outsider, I've been reminded of most frequently that I know nothing about is Doctor Who because their fans seem to think that everyone knows the series as well or better than Star Trek and Star Wars.