Restoring incremental back ups...have a question

Your description of applying the 1st and then the 2nd sounds like you are viewing the incr /full file relationship not as acronis intended.

Lets say you have a full plus a dozen incr files.
for sake of discussion lets say the full was taken Dec 1st with an incr taken every day thereafter.

For acronis to use the incr taken on the 9th it will need all the files from the 1st thru the 8th as well. however that does NOT mean you need to concern yourself with this complex relationship.
you simply point acronis at the 9th and say this my restore point. I want you (acronis) to present to me all the files as they existed at this instant. Acronis will manage all the details to ensure that the files you see available to be restored is exactly, and I mean exactly, what that drive looked like at the instant the backup was taken. behind the scenes acronis will be using all the ".tib" files of 1st thru 9th but we don't really need to know that detail.

as for doing a restore itself. acronis will let you restore any class of restore:
entire drive,
or an specific partition
or a entire folder
or a specific file

an entire drive (or partition) restore would be used if your HD crashed and you were restoring onto new hardware or if you were restoring because of some virus issue.
a folder or file restore would be typical if you brain cramped when working and need to restore to a prior point in time.

in every restore example mentioned above you do not apply the 1st copy and apply the 2nd and then the 3rd ect. instead you "open" the file taken on the 9th and let acronis work its magic with all the prior ".tib" files to present you your HD as it looked when the backup on the 9th .

The easiest way to recover a file (or folder) is to "mount" the backup .tib file as a drive letter.
you can now drag/drop files from this drive letter to your desired folder. the driver letter of course would be your HD as it looked on the 9th.

Acronis offers other gui ways to recover, those panels allow you to restore to the original folder or alternate locations.

if you need to restore an entire HD or a specific partition you probably need to boot from the recovery CD and then perform the restore from the gui panels presented from the recover cd.

I suspect the above answer did not answer all your questions but it may have helped you and/or let you focus a future question