Discussion How Do You Prefer To Play Long Game Series?

[MegaApple]

(Inspired from posts from other forum)
So when you try to explore a long running series you have little or no experience with, how do you go about it? Do you speed run it, just visit a few highlights, or break it up over time?

I have extremely scattered mind, and I was stuck on horrible stressful job, which changed my gaming style and habits in last three years. I pick and play anything. That said.

Key Takeaway from below - If you take break due to other games or life stuff or my own scatterbrain or (now) doomscrolling, resuming back a series is difficult.
Plus keeping up with so many fiction worlds and their gameplay system also takes a toll.

• Assassin's Creed (I plan to play non-RPG ACs till Syndicate) - I finished AC1 in high school, start-finished AC2 in 2021, ACB in 2025 (started 2021). With ACB, when I stopped due to life stuff, and getting back it it was difficult, resuming back a series is difficult. I really want to get to AC4BF.
  I am hoping to upgrade my PC so I can play AC Unity to max settings.
• Yakuza/LAD - My 2019 Yakuza 0 playthrough is still pending. I got burnt out playing Yakuza 0 straight for 1 whole month. Resume during pandemic and did major progress in 2022. But I'm still stuck. This is the only game that has been on my hard drive since I bought my gaming laptop. Plan on playing till Yakuza 7 LAD.
• Nier - Both my 2017 Automata and 2021 Replicant playthroughs are left hanging. Replicant was my pandemic game before I contracted COVID myself.
• Final Fantasy - I've played bit of every FF game (except 3 and 11), got far in FFVI GBA. I plan on playing FF1 NES, FF VI, FFVII, FFIX and FFX at least. Tactics and 12 if I have the time.
• Zero Escape - Played 999 DS version in college (an all time great). Played VLR during pandemic, it was a wild ride. Will play ZTD some day (I know its reputation), started it just after VLR but I was burnt out and needed break.
• Halo series - Finished Reach in 2019, H1 and H2 Anniversary in 2020, H3 in 2024. Long gap is because of my work. Will restart ODST once I get into Halo mood.
• Legend Of Zelda - Played bit of most mainline Zelda. Finished only Minish Cap on GBA. I'll finish Link Between Worlds, then Link To The Past, then both 64 games. If Switch 2 gets available in India, I will play BOTW at least.
• God Of War - I was obsessed with GoW when I first got my PS2 in 2009. Finished GoW 2 in 2009 (series peak), GoW 1 in 2010, GoW PSP games in 2022 (when I got Vita), GoW III in 2023 (when I got PS4). Really want to play Ascension, need a PS3. GoW 2018 works less than what I hoped on my gaming laptop, and tbh I am partially interested in it.
• Devil May Cry - Finished DMC3 in 2010, DMC4 sometime before 2015, DmC Devil May Cry Reboot in 2013. My half played 2019 playthrough of DMC5 hangs on my head. I want to play DMC1 before I retry DMC5, I have an itch to play PS2 games these days.
• Resident Evil - Finished RE4 in 2010 (while listening to Linkin Park Thousand Suns), RE Revelations somewhere in 2014/15. My half 2019 playthrough of RE2make (which I remember playing shockingly really well, not getting spooked, but like an efficient hunter. I never regained that instinct again) and half 2022 of RE2 PS1 hangs over my head. I want to finish those, Re1make, Code Veronica, RE5 or RE6 in coop, RE7.
• Tomb Raider (2nd wave reboot) - Finished TR 2013 in 2014 I think. Start Rise in 2019 but my aging CPU can't play it stable at 60FPS these days. Tried Shadow TR in 2024 to stress test and it ran quite well.
• FromSoft games (after DeS) - My Dark Souls playthrough from 2015 is STILL pending. My friend helped me back then to get through early areas. Been playing on-off for years. Played DeS around 2020 to test rpcs3 and only reached till Tower Knight. DS II and DS III to stress test on PC. Defeated just the first boss in Bloodborne. Played an hour or so of Sekiro. Armored Core 6 is giving major issues on my PC (getting poor framerates regardless of settings). Elden Ring also has performance issues (weak hardware) but that game is less interesting compared to others.
  Want to finish at least DeS, DS1 and Sekiro.
• Metal Gear - Finished MGS3 in 2012 (I was mixed on it, more like baffled at how odd it was). Finished MGR in 2014. Finished MGS5 Ground Zeroes, but abandoned MGS5 Phantom Pain after couple of missions. Left MGS1 halfway through - Need to play at least MGS1 and MGS2 (latter hopefully on PS2 original hardware)
• Grand Theft Auto - Played all but finished none. Hopefully I'll finish at least GTA Vice City, because I used to roam in its sandbox a lot, on school PCs.
• Same story with franchsies like Metro, Portal, Half Life, Splinter Cell, Prince Of Persia, NFS, Burnout, Uncharted, Witcher, Mass Effect, Ys, Trails In The Sky. Few finished, most of them tried a little or half finished.

 

[Le Pertti]

Im so old that most series Ive been there since day one. But some I didnt play along and had to catch up again, I think the only one I really did play the whole series in a short amount of time was Yakuza games. But I didnt really binge them, I took my time with them and sooner or later one catches up.

 

[Nebulys]

I’m currently playing the Like A Dragon series. Got through the two Kiwami games and when I feel like playing a game in the series again, I’ll move on to Yakuza 3 Remastered.

I wouldn’t binge a series like this. I want to enjoy the games as people back when it released did. So I’ll space them out and enjoy them when I’m ready to.

I’m certainly not in any rush to catch up to the latest entry. Given this series basically gets annual releases at this point, and I plan to do an average of 1-3 games in the series each year, I doubt I’ll ever catch up.

 

[Vantr]

I think it's hard to pick up a long running series or return to it. So I just play them when I can. I find it a lot easier when you don't get hung up on playing previous entries for story reasons. I just read up on what happens and if I get around to playing previous entries I just enjoy the journey. Although if it was a visual novel series like 999 or Danganronpa I'd start at the beginning.

Yakuza - Playing 0 on and off restarting it again until I finally committed and finished it 2023 then after that I finished Kiwami 1/2 and 3 Remastered.
Releases since 7 have I've finished when they came out. I guess I preferred the JRPG format and the shorter gameplay of the Gaidens.

Assassin's Creed - Played this from 1-3 and stopped when they came out. Will pick up Shadows on sale but I don't think I'll look at any of the other previous entries except for maybe Black Flag and Origins?

FromSoft - Never got far with DS1/2/3. Finished Sekiro, Elden Ring and AC6.

Kingdom Hearts - Haven't finished 3. Slowly doing a replay from beginning of the series in release order. Currently at BBS but the last time I opened that game was in Jan.

Resident Evil - Only played the 2 and 4 remakes. I do have 7/8 but whenever I think about playing them I end up going "I would rather play a non-scary game instead".

MGS - I started around PS3/PSP era with MGS4 then played MGS 1/2 on PSP and all the PSP series. Played 3 on 3DS. Played 5 on PC.

 

[Parsnip]

I tend to spread them out, and play when I have time or feel like tackling something that might be a big time investment.


This year I'm finally going to continue Ys and Yakuza for example. With Ys I've played I and II, and with Yakuza even less, just Yakuza 0.
So knowing me I guess I'll probably end up playing one game in each series and continue next year at the earliest, though who knows.

On some series I do feel compelled to play through all of them in some smart order, but not for everything.
For example I'm probably going to play the Dad of Boy 2018 this year as well, but have zero interest in going back to playing the old ones so I'll just check some of the backstory from youtube. Kratos was angry and mad, now he's just sad dad.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

For the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games I played them as they were releasing on PC so usually there was some time between them except for 3, 4 and 5 as these I played sequentially.

The only other one long series I played was the Halo one, though I gave it a break I'm still planning to come back and finish all the games in the Master Chief Collection.