It's not a requirement, but it's what it is. It's like people who only like up to Act 4 and want to ignore the rest of it. There are people who do that and make their own fanworks about it/groups for it and have a wonderful time talking about it. But you're going to have a bad time if you don't want to follow it but still try to force yourself to 'like' it. That's just the truth of it as the story progresses.

HS2 was fumbling around a bit, but combined with HSBC they've been really making use of what's been set up in the Epilogues. The HSBC team had to work with the choices the HS2 team made and adjusted them slightly (like Jane/Jake being on the ship now), but they're clearly on board with the Epilogues as a whole. It is a direct continuation. It's only "moving on" from the Epilogues in that the format has changed back to the usual style and is keeping the story actually moving.

It's like skipping the Intermission (im mostly referring to @noble here). Like yeah, sure, whatever, but you're going to be Very confused later on, and it'll be hard to have actual conversations about the story at certain points. There are parts of the Epilogues even I didn't enjoy reading (just like there are parts in mainline Homestuck I dislike) but you just gotta focus on what you do enjoy out of Homestuck and what you want out of it, or decide to move on if its just torturing yourself.