Freshly picked Tingles Rosy Rupeeland is a masterpiece and the most important game in the series, I will not hear otherwise

Partially agree. The series as a whole fully agree, game by game is iffy

XC1 can absolutely stand alone and really needs you to go in blind

XCFC doesn’t make sense without having played XC1

XC2 again can stand alone but you’ll catch some story stuff sooner if you’d played XC1

XCTTGC makes no sense without XC2

XC3 is this bizzaro mess I’m still not sure what the fuck happened but I think it does need XC1 and 2 background knowledge

XCFR retains XC3 heavy reliance on the previous games, but cranked up to levels that makes the Star Wars sequels seem almost reasonable