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.
The random camera jumps were another bizarre choice, imo, but they are an entirely separate issue and nowhere near as jarring as the random dips to black in that opening sequence. Had he said something along the lines of ‘one of the opening cutscene sequences had these really weird dips to black and some of the later cutscenes have random camera jumps.’, then fair enough - but that’s not what he says.
I played through the game twice before the first patch and honestly don’t recall any instances outside of that opening sequence, but by all means, if you can show me footage that demonstrates that they occur in all of the game’s conversations, I’ll happily concede the point.
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.
We’re in complete agreement that localization and the direction of the English voice actors wasn’t up to scratch, but do you honestly think that the clips he chose to demonstrate this point are reflective of the game’s English dub as a whole? You just said that you think that most of it is serviceable, which is certainly not the impression given to viewers in this video.
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.
If he genuinely thinks that the game is terrible, I have absolutely no issue with this part of the title; but the ‘I wasted my life’ part is complete overkill. I’m glad that we can agree that it’s click-bait, but disagree that him having once been a fan or that he spent 48 minutes exaggerating problems excuses this.
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.
For starters, whether or not Shenhua wakes Ryo up depends on their relationship. The game begins with Ryo waking up alone to his alarm and later progresses to her poking her head around the door before actually entering the room to wake him. She says goodbye to him when he leaves the house, which narratively speaking makes a lot of sense. If anything, her saying absolutely nothing as Ryo left would be completely bizarre.
Either way, we’re talking about 30 seconds here of a 1 hour plus day cycle and if it is really that much of an annoyance to the player, the cutscenes can be skipped (they might not have been skippable at launch, but that patch has been out for 6 months or so now). Him saying that they are unskippable is inaccurate at the very least and dishonest if he knew about them becoming skippable post launch (which I’d be very surprised if he didn’t considering when this video was released).
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.
That is exactly his point. He says as much and then makes a point of showing the cutscene repeatedly whilst making sure to tell the viewer that they are different recordings.
It is nit-picky, but this and many other criticisms like it set the tone of the whole video and probably account for around a third of it if you remove the introduction and the fan-fiction section at the end.
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.
Has he played a Shenmue game before?
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.
The system is a mess and there are plenty of ways it could be improved (to be honest, I struggle to see how it could be made any worse), but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. I think he really overstates the impact that having to eat has on the game, but we can agree to disagree on that because it is, imo, a poorly implemented system that offers little to the game in its current state.
Having to talk to people to progress the game. Cutscenes that show Ryo removing or putting on his shoes. Poor localization. Flat voice acting. Paywalls. Poor controls. NPCs that have nothing to say. The vast majority of the things he complains about are all present in the first two games (especially the second, which many consider to be the better of the two).
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.
It might not be his job to offer suggestions on how to fix things, but when he makes vague criticisms about how the team should have learned from modern gaming, I think he should at the very least be able to explain
what the team should have learned.
This seems to be one of the go to criticisms when it comes to Shenmue 3 and yet I’m still to see any of the scores of critics who have used it offer any real examples. This guy’s more than happy to write his own ending to the game and pay someone to crudely animate it; so it’s a little surprising that he’s unwilling to back up this criticism with anything of substance (assuming he is actually able to do so, that is).
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:
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.
When critiquing something, the whole idea is to avoid exaggeration and to remain impartial - and I think he failed on both counts. His criticisms may begin in a truthful place, but most of them end up landing quite far from the truth. Does that make him dishonest? Probably not; but it certainly doesn’t give an honest reflection of the game to people who have never played it.