SEPW starts by complaining about the dialogue and, like many of his other complaints, there is some validity to this. Unfortunately, to demonstrate this point he chooses the opening dialogue between Shenhua and Ryo and then goes on to remark that 'conversations are filled with these really strange fades to black'. Whilst this remark may be true of the cut-scene he chooses to show the viewers, I can't recall another single instance of this happening anywhere else in the game. Yes; it was a poor and baffling design choice, but it is in no way representative of the game's cut-scenes as a whole. Of course, you wouldn't know that from watching this video.
While I don't have the game installed, I clearly remember awkward fades to black, weird camera resets, strange animations, and the inability to skip dialogue to varying degrees of frequency. I know that dialogue skip has since been patched in, perhaps some of the other issues have since been remedied? I believe the fades to black happen when a "cutscene" as opposed to simple "dialogue" ends, but occasionally it will fade to black and Ryo will be standing in the exact same spot, which is very weird but personally I found the jarring camera resets and strange angles far more distracting/frequent.
He then chooses two more clips to highlight how poor the game's dialogue is and, wouldn't you know it, in a game with over ten thousand lines of dialogue, he happens to choose two of maybe four or five nonsensical dialogue lines found in the game. I wouldn't have a problem with this if the clips were presented as being two of the worst examples of the dialogue/localization, but they're not. They're presented as 'the dialogue and localization are absolutely terrible throughout the game and these clips are a typical example of what the game's dialogue is like'. Again, a complaint that's grounded in reality being over-exaggerated for the purpose of justifying his click-bait title.
The translation
is poor, and there are several instances of nonsensical dialogue or Ryo simply saying "I see" to everyone. This is especially egregious when Ryo refers to a second Shenmue tree in his journal and says that the Cliff Temple is where he got the scroll. I played in Japanese because I don't consider the bad voice acting to be an asset and I still cringed at how bad much of the dialogue is (Ryo calling an old lady "gorgeous"); most of it is serviceable but it's notably bad far worse than similar games especially because of how much S3 requires you to talk to random NPCs.
While we're on the subject of the title, I've seen posters here say that the click-bait title is justified because he is (or was once) a fan or that because it's a long video it can't be considered click-bait. I'd welcome an explanation as to how either of these sentiments makes any sense whatsoever, because I fail to see how either are remotely valid.
The title is "Shenmue 3 is a Terrible Game and I've Wasted My Life", let's break it down. First "Shenmue 3 is a Terrible Game", pretty self-explanatory, he thinks S3 is a terrible game; he's hardly alone in that assessment. Second "and I've Wasted My Life", he mentions in the video that he played S1 and 2 when they came out so he's spent most of his life waiting for S3, hoping it would be good. He concludes that this has left him stuck in the past, wishing for things to be as they once were and was faced with the reality that that's not going to happen. He's made videos about the Simpsons in a similar vein; about how nostalgia can be a trap. It's clickbaity, sure, but it's attention grabbing, and sends the message that this is coming from a fan,
and it has a thoughtful analysis behind it, so I excuse it.
Moving on, anyway, and we come to his criticism of the morning routine in the game during which he focuses mainly on the Bailu section of the game. Ignoring for a moment that these sections only make up around 30-60 seconds of a one hour plus day in Shenmue 3, he states that it is the same cut-scene every day and that it can't be skipped; neither of which are true.
By developing Ryo's relationship with Shenhua, the player unlocks 2 further variations of the morning cut-scenes, meaning that for the 15-20 days that the player spends in Bailu, they probably see each cut-scene five or six times at most. Is this good game design? Maybe not; but the reality is at least somewhat better than the notion that there is no variation whatsoever.
They aren't? Every day Shenhua wakes Ryo up in a cutscene, asks if he got enough rest when he walks by her in the kitchen, and when you run near the Shenmue tree she tells him to have a good day in a cutscene. None of these could be skipped pre-patch and I don't think the fact that the phrases change slightly invalidates his criticism.
He later talks about the morning routine in Niaowu and suggests that it is more of the same, but as well as falsely stating that neither of these cut-scenes can be skipped, he neglects to mention that the cut-scene with Shenhua here serves as a recap of where the player needs to head next and instead allows the viewer to believe that it is once again the same cut-scene over and over again.
His point is not that it's the same cutscene over and over. His point is that it's unskippable (at release), and wastes the player's time (something of a theme with S3) in the most archaic way possible. Why are we forced into these cutscenes? Why can't Shenhua just passively say something as you walk by? Why does the gameplay
need to be interrupted here? This may be nitpicky, and I hardly think his overall opinion hinges on it, but it's the kind of thing that gets really annoying when repeated every day, especially when those days are so devoid of meaningful progress.
In this section, he also implies that entering the raised area that triggers the shoe-removal cut-scene is something that is easy to do by mistake and something that players will likely do multiple times during their play-through because the controls are so bad (I don't recall doing this once, let alone multiple times) and then goes on to describe traversing the world of Shenmue 3 as 'a struggle' due to the poor controls. Could the controls be better? Of course they could, but at no point did I ever feel that they impeded my ability to get from point A to point B. Maybe this wasn't the case for him, but as a fan of the first few games, I find it difficult to believe that he struggled with the controls of Shenmue 3 given that they are an improved version of those found in previous games and that many of the environments the player needs to traverse in Shenmue 3 are a lot more open than some of the environments in previous entries.
Yea I agree, this was a very weak argument and not something I experienced. Again though, he's illustrating Shenmue's willingness to stop the gameplay, smash to cutscene of something innocuous, and then repeat that every time.
His initial criticism of the food/stamina system is fair (in that it makes little sense that stamina drain lowers endurance in fights), but complaining that when you're tired you can't run or that if you don't have food you have to run 'all the way back' to the village seems a little strange. Both of these mechanics are in keeping with pretty much every other game that has a food/stamina system and each area contains multiple areas at which the player can purchase food - meaning that running 'all the way back' to buy food probably never takes more than a 60 second round trip and can be easily countered by stocking up on food in advance. I am aware that I am defending a flawed system here and that me offering ways around it doesn't make it any less flawed, but it is nowhere near as big of an issue as the video makes out
The degree to which the stamina/food system bothers you is subjective, but it's definitely a very big part of the game and he outlines why it bothered him perfectly well. I had pretty much the exact same reaction to it. Here, I'll fix it right now: stamina shouldn't be a constant resource to be managed, rather it should be something that is applied as a daily buff. So Shenhua can give Ryo a list of ingredients that he can go buy or find and if he brings them all back, she makes him a meal and then he gets full health/stamina and maybe even a buff the next day. If he doesn't, then his stamina is lowered a bit (and can be replenished by buying food), that way you have to make a conscious choice to end up with really low stamina. He could also have the option of skipping meals with Shenhua and buying a meal from a vendor/restaurant, similar to getting scolded by Ine San for arriving late. He doesn't start walking after 5 minutes of physical exertion, he doesn't constantly need to eat food, he won't suddenly arrive at a story fight sequence where he'll get killed because he has no stamina,
and it encourages him to engage with Shenhua.
a lot of the things that he criticizes are things that were found earlier in the series
Such as?
What makes it worse is that a considerable amount of the things that he complains about are things that were present in the first few games and whilst he does acknowledge this, he makes no real effort to elaborate on exactly how Yu could and should have learnt from modern games
It's not his job to offer suggestions (when he "fixes" the ending he says it's arrogant and he never does it), simply to outline his thoughts/feelings. Does he exaggerate? He's a YouTuber, of course he does. But it's all rooted in truth. His breakdown of the grinding for money mirrored my exact feeling while playing the game. S3 being as bad as it is hurts fans so much more than random people wanting to see a bad game get shat on. I
could not believe what was happening when I was asked to grind out $5000. I was playing with a friend and at that moment I said that we were never gonna get S4 if this was the best we got for S3 while making this face:
This would be incredibly disingenuous and I'm sure that you and others would, rightly so, tear the video apart. When things go the other way though, it seems that it's all 'honest' criticism.
It's honest because it's coming from an honest place. All the problems he has with the game are real problems with it that I have no doubt he felt genuinely. You can disagree with the degree to which those things bothered him, but I don't think you can accuse him of being dishonest to arrive at his point. He even echoes my exact thoughts when he says that every criticism he had of the game could have been forgiven if S3 stuck the landing in terms of story. That's a willingness to forgive that few offer a game they think is "terrible" and really only comes from a fan who's invested in the mysteries and characters.
/s
