I played the games in order. The first two have aged quite a bit, and in particular I felt 2 had some issues that I would have given up on if I wasn't aiming at

I played the games in order. The first two have aged quite a bit, and in particular I felt 2 had some issues that I would have given up on if I wasn't aiming at playing the whole corpus. But I did know all the main characters when I came into 3, and so I did understand the stakes from the beginning of the game.