STATUS

Even the original Breath Of Fire compared to the 2nd? Even the first Lufia game before Lufia II (which is technically a prequel story wise)? Even the first Final Fantasy for the NES over IV, V, VI or VII???

I mean, there has to be certain exceptions to the rule, I believe.

Me? I just play whatever whenever, sequel, side story, spinoff, prequel or not (unless it's absolutely required to know what the hell is going on in the first place, i.e: Kingdom Hearts 2).

I've played games out-of-order. The earliest example of this was the Might and Magic series. I played the first two games in sequence. I had no clue what was going on in either game, but, whatever. I was seven/eight years old at the time. The next one I got my hands on was the fifth game for various reasons. First off, the copies of the first two games were for our Commodore 64, and the third game, was, like, PC/Mac only. Or something. I forget. I only knew our humble C-64 couldn't run it.

Anyway, yeah, the next game we picked up was M&M5. Which, story-wise, might have been a mistake. There's this plot-dump in 5 where I was just like, "What? Is that what happened in the previous games?" Though, in a way, it re-ignited my desire to go back to those games, to see how the story played out (pun somewhat intended) in the original context.

Fun fact: to this day, I've beaten all all the Might and Magic games except for 10 (I'm in the midst of playing it now), 9 (Darigaaz, that game sucked hard) and... the original title.