I can’t expect everyone to dive deep into a series and I can’t expect everyone to experience every single entry, but what annoys me about this mentality is how its obvious that the person is only interested in being on the bandwagon.

The difference between a bandwagonner and someone who legit has interest in a series is that the latter will want to put in effort and take however much time they need/want; the former won’t do that. Bandwagons only care about riding on what’s popular and new, so actually taking time to understand the ins and out of a franchise runs counter to that because they’re just gonna move on to the next “new hotness” when it drops. And since no one likes a bandwagon, these dudes get really butthurt when you call them out on it.

Skipping parts of stories you’re uninterested in, then trying to catch up with summaries on fan wikis, TVTropes, and reviews sometime afterward isn’t “keeping up with a story”.

Where are all these fuckin’ absolutely dent-headed “fandom” zombie apes coming from?

I’m sorry, I don’t step into BOOK FUCKING EIGHT of a series and then complain that I don’t understand what’s going on.

And you know what? ALL the prior games are available right now. In sets. you can buy and play them. Hell, I recommend you buy and play them, they’re great games on their own!

But if you read book 1, and book 2, and are ready to read book 3, and then it turns out the author lied to you and it’s actually book 11 and the intervening books don’t make any fucking sense and make the plot impossibly convoluted and hinge entirely on concepts that are never explained and have no consistency

then I think you have a right to be miffed and at least point that out

Maybe, this is true. But if they write book one and book two, and then write four side-stories and offshoots of which maybe… one or two is actually critical to the story that shows up in book three? Then you probably can get away with reading book three with just minimal help.

Or in other words: nothing in Re: Chain of Memories or 358/2 days really matters to the plot, it’s just character building. I’m not as sure about Re: Coded but Death by Sleep is the only side-game that’s important to the meta, and it’s a prequil.

Does the collection tell you that? Does KH3 tell you that? Is anyone upthread telling us that? All I see is “All the games are on the PS4 collection, you have no excuse not to play them!” The entire thread here is about mocking people who want to be able to read book three with just minimal help.

If they write seven side stories and nobody will tell you which one of them is the one you have to read to understand the plot, and also all the side stories are full length novels, and some of the side stories are bad and you don’t want to force your way through them but everyone tells you you have to in order to understand the later books which are a totally different fucking genre made by a different author

then that’s still a pretty big problem.

okay so. Lots to unpack but I’ll keep it simple.

People are not complaining about missing games, nobody’s arguing people shouldn’t skip games. Hell, my point is that really despite what people say a lot of the plot is pretty simple, it just SOUNDS complex.

People are complaining because they don’t want to play ANY of the prior games, and they’re confused.

As I said. It’s literally people wanting to jump in at book EIGHT and complaining that they have no idea of what’s going on.

Or in the second analogy jumping in at book three and being confused because they’ve got two prior books and a few short stories they’re mising. Of which, again, you’re not missing much. Want the story pulled down to it’s shortest?

Badguy with an X name wants the ultimate weapon for ultimate power, three kids try to stop him, kinda succeed, but one gets possessed, another’s forced to be reincarnated, the last has to train to try and stop him from returning.

Bad guy appears, tries to use evil forces to gain ultimate power. Corrupts a kid, our hero has to fight to rescue him and their mutual friend.

Another bad guy appears, ALSO tries for the same ultimate power! Has an organization where everyone has X in their name, corrupted kid comes back as hero, MC fights to save the day.

And in the new game: Surprise! Prior two bad guys were halves of bad guy X, and now he’s returned and is using time travel and possession to make an army of him to fight against prior MC’s, his friends, and former villains turned back to heroes.

There, you can skip the games if you want, nothing more than character development happens in the side games anyway.

This is the same reason people in the homestuck and jojo fandoms get pissed when you tell them you skipped to Act 5/Part 3 because you wanted to see The Trolls/The Stands, you won’t know what the fuck’s going on and yet you’re bitching about not knowing what’s going on despite being warned that you’re not gonna know what’s going on and it’s nobody’s fault but yours.