I still disagree; I'm not watching a review to get an impartial summary of the game, especially not a 40+ minute review that spoils the whole game. Most of these are "reviews" in name only anyway; the Plinkett reviews and Lindsay Ellis' review of Game of Thrones Season 8 are damn near documentaries.
I really don't think he needs to misrepresent the game to make his point and feel that he's doing his viewers who haven't played the game a massive disservice by presenting it in the way that he does.
I guess that's fair, I didn't really view it as him misrepresenting the game since everything he talks about
is in the game, just to varying degrees of severity.
The game does a lot to encourage interaction with Shenhua; from forcing the player to return home early every night to having her wander around Niaowu for Ryo to bump into during the day. Perhaps more could have been done to reward the player for interacting with her (although I personally loved the subtle changes to the morning routine that come as a result of Ryo's relationship with her growing), but I disagree that a Shenmue game should really force the player to do anything outside of the main story line (and even then, they should be free to move at their own pace). I think they found a good balance in this regard, but I can see how others might disagree with that.
Well that's just it isn't it? The game "encourages" interaction with Shenhua by
forcing the player to return home early. In S1, it's a choice whether you return home early and the game reacts accordingly. I love things that exist in Shenmue for their own sake, like thanking the four wude masters in S2, I think it adds a lot but it's also a
choice. S3 doesn't offer much in the way of meaningful choices.
he mentions having played through the game twice
He did? That's surprising. I must've missed that. If that's the case then he should have at least mentioned that the dialogue skip was patched in.
The 'roadblocks' you speak of here are actually designed to keep the player on course rather than to drag them away from the main story. I can't say that I was a big fan of the way they segmented off both areas like that, but it did help make it clear where the player should be searching in instances where the next objective wasn't implicitly stated and I'd argue that it probably saved a lot of players a lot of time (although this time is probably lost later in Niawou when you try to get from point A to point B only to find that one of the pathways is still blocked off).
They help keep the player oriented but that's only needed because, as SEPW points out, the scenario is so absurd. Most games don't write themselves into corners where the only option is to set up invisible walls that leave the player scratching their head. Ryo needs to find Shenhua's
missing father; there is urgency to that scenario that is completely at odds with Ryo casually strolling around a small part of the town refusing to go past a certain point until he talks to random locals.
I see your point about checklists, but this isn't too dissimilar from the 'objectives' lists we find in modern games and I'd argue that in most instances, Shenmue 3 cycles between objectives fairly organically and in much the same way that the first two games did. It might seem a little archaic by virtue of them being similar to a 20 year old game, but I'd be curious as to how one might improve it given that in most instances, it follows what a person would likely do if faced with that situation in real life (Person has disappeared - > I should ask if anybody has seen them. Told that thugs have been seen in the area -> I should ask people about the thugs. Told that person A had a run in with the thugs - I should speak to person A. etc, etc).
The scenario itself should be changed. Maybe you go to Bailu Village and it's been ransacked, the thugs are gone and you have no idea where they went. Ryo wants to waste no time and wants to chase after them into the mountains but Shenhua wants to help the villagers and figure out what happened. That way you can now start the game at a slower pace, helping the villagers fix Bailu Village. Maybe Grandmaster Feng knows where they took Yuan but won't tell Ryo because he knows that he's too reckless or something, similar to Xiuying and the Wulinshu, so he tries to train Ryo, teaching him about his father. Then Shenhua can get kidnapped by Chai or Red Snakes or Niao Sun or whoever and that's when Feng either tells Ryo where to go or Ryo just finds out from one of the kidnappers and now we're off to Niaowu/Castle area with a real purpose.
I know it's more fanfic but it's just to illustrate the point that S3 didn't
need to be this way; it didn't need to be any way. If Suzuki wanted it to be slow paced, he should have written that into the story and ramped up the tension when he wanted to.
Outside of the optional side-quests (which the game avoids forcing down the player's throat), the only things that break up the flow of the game's story that I can think of are the morning scenes with Shenhua (which can be skipped), the shoe removal cutscene (which can be avoided all together by not entering the raised area) and the night time animation (which I believe can also be skipped).
Each of these things last between five and ten seconds and happen at most once a day (there are several times where Shenhua accompanies you into Bailu and one day where she heads to Ternary Springs before you wake up and the nighttime animation sometimes doesn't trigger depending on what you're doing at 7PM). That's 30 seconds at most out of every 60 minute day.
I suppose there are also things like training (which for the most part is optional) and eating (which... yeah, this one sucks a bit) too, but I don't think these disrupt the flow too much.
The things that break up the flow are definitely, as you say, training and eating but also the fact that such a simple objective (go beat up some thugs in a small village) gets stretched out with a bunch of busywork. So it doesn't feel like progress, it feels like you're being held back. In S2, all the things that serve to stretch out the story are interesting, we learn about the four wude, the Chawan sign, the Wulinshu, and meet the Ren, Joy and Wong all while the objective is "Find Lishao Tao".
That he dislikes the game is clear to see and easy to understand, but his hatred for the game coming from an honest place doesn't mean that he can say whatever he likes and still have that criticism be considered 'honest'. I mean, I hate my neighbor and have a lot of valid reasons for feeling that way - but that doesn't mean that I can say whatever I like about her and have it all be true, does it?
That's true but I don't see him saying whatever he wants about the game. He doesn't outright make shit up. He exaggerates a little and maybe makes a few things seem worse than they are to make a point. But then again maybe he
really hated that shoe cutscene, who knows?
I think you're comparing apples to garlic here. Plinkett's criticisms are clearly subjective and regardless of whether they are expressed in an objective or subjective way, his audience know that they are subjective because it is impossible for these things to be objective. We know that he thinks that the fight is too long and he thinks the characters are thin whilst also knowing that we might think otherwise. Perhaps if he said "The fight is too long. It's 45 minutes.", we would have a fair comparison.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, that I really like Phantom Menace and I say "well, I timed the fight in Episode 1 and Empire Strikes Back and Episode 1 is maybe 2 minutes longer therefore Plinkett is lying about Episode 1". It's like, no, he's not lying, he's taking that instance and combining it with all the other problems (following too many characters, jarring tonal shifts, weird logic leaps) to come to the conclusion that the ending doesn't work, not
just that the fight is too long. Plus there's the fact that Empire has the "I am your father" line and is an amazing movie leading up to that point..
SEPWs video presents false statements as objective truths on several occasions and in others intentionally misrepresents the game in such a way as to make the viewer think they are being given what they need to form an opinion when in reality they are only being shown a small piece of the picture whilst being told that it's the finished piece.
I don't think that's a fair assessment. It's true that he advises his viewers not to play the game, but he never claims "just watch this video instead of playing the game, it's the same difference really". To me, it's no different than the take downs of Batman v Superman, Game of Thrones Season 8, or the Star Wars Prequels (and sequels); he's not obligated to be fair and balanced (and, in fact, SEPW is far more respectful than those other reviews, compare the way he treats Suzuki to the way Plinkett treats Lucas, or most people treat the writers of Game of Thrones).
I don't like S3, this review echoes my feelings pretty closely, but I'm willing to grant Suzuki the benefit of the doubt that these are growing pains; but he's not
entitled to that benefit of the doubt.