There's this concept that gets brought up over and over on the podcast Into The Aether that I hadn't considered before.
It's something that they noticed when they looked up old reviews / discussions / opinions of games from decades past. Sometimes a game in a long-running franchise will have a reputation like "Yeah, the mechanics might technically be the best they've ever been in this franchise...but it's still extremely similar to previous entries, so it's not really original. Not enough new ideas. So I'm docking it a few points. 7 out of 10."
But, funnily enough...the company might stop making games quite like that after that point. Which the reviewers and the players at the time couldn't have ever guessed. So the 7-out-of-10, not-original-enough entry is now a totally reasonable, appealing entry to jump into if you're from the future and can just choose whatever entry in the franchise to play in whatever order.
Basically, the desire for an entry in a franchise to be "original" or "novel" or "move the franchise in a new direction" is only really relevant for people who play them in order, or who were eagerly awaiting their release at the time. Once you have the advantage of years of hindsight and know that this type of game might go dormant for years (their go-to example is Final Fantasy Tactics A2), it makes the game much more appealing than those lukewarm reactions of the time made it sound.
In other words, those people at the time might have been worn out by playing entries that were similar back-to-back, but now you (with the benefit of being from the future) won't be burdened by that and can potentially appreciate the game for what it is. I guess in a way this is the appeal of retro games in general, the knowledge that "they stopped making games like this one after this."
