[kaybe]

Yes, if you cannot follow review papers you need to read up some more. (Look for review papers if you're new to the area.)

[traverseda]

Sure, where do I get review papers without having an affiliation with an academic institution?

[rmcpherson]

Scihub has made virtually all academic papers freely accessible.

[togelius]

Use Google Scholar. Most technical researchers these days put all their papers on their webpage for free, and these days also on ArXiv.

[kaybe]

Write an email to the author and ask for a PDF, plus what the sibling comments say.

[deepnet]

make a request on the scholar subreddit