Summary
We have a fair few long-running franchises these days, whether they be behemoths of the industry likeFinal FantasyandThe Legend of Zelda, or more niche and technical, like Flight Simulator and Shin Megami Tensei. Most gamers can relate to seeing one of these massive franchises, becoming interested in trying them, but being intimidated about starting.
Sometimes, a franchise is so massive and convoluted that it can put someone off entirely, and those are the franchises thatusers on ResetEra started discussing earlier today. In a thread set up by a user called Tounsi_Tag, they ask fellow gamers to share the series they think are too difficult to properly invest themselves in and catch up with more recent entries.
So Many Games, Too Little Time
Unsurprisingly,The Legend of Heroesis mentioned by an awful lot of people, which is more commonly known as Trails by the fanbase. For those that do enjoy the series (hello my fellow Trails enthusiast), you’ll know that it’s essentially one long-running story that shares characters between games. There are currently twelve games to get through,the most recent being Trails Through Daybreak 2, not counting spinoffs and those released in just Japan.
They’re JRPGs too, so you’re looking at a minimum of around 60 hours per game. That’s a time sink so vast that one ResetEra user called Ry claims is “so much I’ve never even considered starting it”. Another user called Dreambourn makes a valid point too, claiming that Falcom “makes games faster than I can blink”. Add these things together, and you could spend years trying to catch up with Trails games.
The Like A Dragon/Yakuza series is another that gets a shoutout by a lot of people, as, just like Trails, it’s a series with a single running story, capped off by the recently released Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. A user called PallasKitten explains that they have to take regular breaks from the series as “there’s only so much I can take of Kamurocho”, while others admit to watching the events of the older Yakuza games on YouTube to avoid the time investment.
“Kingdom Hearts because even the makers don’t know what the f*** is going on”
Finally, Kingdom Hearts is another series that is mentioned quite a lot, though for a different reason. There aren’t that many games in the series, and some of them are quite short, but the story is the most convoluted of the bunch and is spread across mobile games, spinoffs, and mainline titles. Tounsi_Tag puts it best when they say that piecing all the story together with every game is a “massive task”, and probably one that some believe just isn’t worth it.
