If you could kill one gaming franchise what would it be?

[Slothy]

Of course, this I can understand. If it weren't for the fact that my brother and I share consoles, it would probably be impossible for me to play all of the games as well, and I can only imagine how locked-out a person that hadn't played all of them might feel. This is a valid argument. What drives me nuts is how people say how the story makes no sense or, as Pete said, it has no continuation. Because there is a continuation and a pretty good one at that (though YMMV), so IMO, saying this lack of continuation is what killed the franchise for them is a fallacy. Saying the spread between different platforms killed it for them, is not. That is a legitimate reason for someone to lose interest in a game, so if, from what I said, you were under the impression that I thought otherwise, I apologize, because that was not the meaning I had intended.

I think it might just have been a poor choice of words on his part when he said there's no continuation. Obviously there is, but continuing the main story outside of numbered entries is confusing enough. But releasing those continuations across five or more different platforms just makes it worse. And then when you try to only play the numbered entries thinking the others are just spin offs which probably aren't necessary, you get one hell of a rude awakening.

So yeah, there's continuity there, but damned if it makes any sense if you don't own multiple consoles/handhelds. And actually, that might bring up another major issue. Handheld releases and spin offs didn't used to be important to the continuity of main entries. It's fairly recent that more companies have been releasing major entries on handhelds (stuff like DQIX, the next Shin Megami Tensai, etc. But even then, they're not usually continuing the story from console franchises. When Kingdom Hearts started doing this it made some sense to not realize how important these games were because pretty much no one ever did that. The entire thing just kind of turned into this convoluted mess for most people. If they ever decide to release a Kingdom Hearts collection with every game though, I might be tempted to jump back in.