To be fair, I think Ryo's line is supposed to be "that's the place shown on the scroll" or something to that effect.
I think that is the assumption we’re going with, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if this turned out to be a remnant from an older version of the script where Ryo had already visited the temple (maybe that’s where they rescued Shenhua’s father from?). We know that recording of the English dub wrapped nearly a full year before the game’s release and that during the period between these two events the decision to cut out the largest area of the game was made, so anything’s possible!
I agree and I hope, but atm there's not a ton of reason to believe that will be the case since Elder Yeh interpreted the scroll. It would be interesting if it tied into Ryo and Shenhua's destiny, since Niaowu is on there for no reason, but, again, that's not even hinted at. As far as S3 tells us, it was hidden in order to protect the location of the mirrors (even though it doesn't specifically tell the location of the mirrors). It's kind of a mess.
I’m not sure that a blind woman is really the best person to interpret a map, but whatevs.
I agree about this part being messy and am still not entirely sure what Niaowu’s significance to the story was or why it was on the map. I’d also thought that the cliff temple was the place where the mirrors were originally stored before Sunming and Iwao retrieved them - and so again - I really don’t see why the cliff temple holds any more importance to the story given that the mirrors are no longer there.
There seems to be some speculation that the cliff temple might be where the treasure is stored, but given that the mirrors themselves are maps, it makes little sense that they would be maps that lead to the location that they themselves are already stored in. I dunno. Maybe they serve as the starting point for the map(s) contained within the mirrors?
Anyway, my point was, why would they hide the map to protect the location of the mirrors when they have already taken the mirrors from the temple? Even if somebody found the map - and even if they somehow deduced that they needed to go to the cliff temple (which I’m not sure is even mentioned on the map because they focused on Niaowu) - the mirrors are no longer at the temple.
With that being the case, if the map serves solely as a means to find the mirrors at the cliff temple, it became useless the moment Sunming and Iwao took the mirrors and so keeping it or returning it to the bell tower would make no real sense.
I don't really see what Ryo could learn about Lan Di that would lead to more introspection on his part apart from simply being told that Lan Di was lied to about Iwao and the whole thing was one big misunderstanding (which I would absolutely hate). That being said, Lan Di certainly still has room to grow, which is far more interesting imo.
Well I guess Ryo could learn that Lan Di was right when he claimed that Iwao killed Sunming? If this is really what happened, I think he’d have to at the very least re-evaluate the situation which might help him to see that Lan Di was only doing what he himself has sworn to do.
I really can’t decide if I want Iwao to have killed Sunming or not, as both could provide some interesting consequences in terms of how Ryo and Lan Di’s arcs progress.
I deliberately didn't follow a lot of pre-release stuff but I distinctly remember hearing that S3 would cover the most "chapters" of any of the games. Now it seems as though the whole "chapter" structure has been all but abandoned.
I guess they were just very short chapters.
In fairness it seems as though he left out the "in Japan" part since he says that the results have been similar all over the world.
Iirc, the results being similar was referencing the game’s poor chart position in the UK, but I could be wrong. Either way, it definitely implies that the game only sold around 18,000 copies worldwide.
Again, in fairness, he shows the article he's referencing and it supports what he's saying.
True, but this article was based on a report that was not published by Deep Silver and was shown to be innacurate not long after it was published. The estimates in it were seemingly based solely on figures from gamstat, which, by their own account, are inaccurate.
It’s entirely possible that this was an honest mistake, but that he failed to find the actual comments from Embracer (which were much more widely reported) seems fairly unlikely.
Again again, in fairness, he does mention this elsewhere in the review.
He did? I would’ve thought that if he were going to mention it it would have been during the section where he talks about how many copies of the game are in circulation.
I'm not sure your proposed edits would increase the viewer's perception that much. If he thinks the game is terrible and that's the POV he's arguing from, a few examples here and there aren't going to change that. It would definitely paint a less terrible picture in the micro sense because he definitely makes it seem as if there's something wrong with every aspect of the game, but if at the end of the day, his conclusion is "Shenmue 3 is terrible and I've wasted my life", it would take a lot of good examples to counter that, not merely "not that bad" examples.
With all due respect, I think I can say with some certainty that a more honest representation of the game would have made a fairly significant difference to the overall take away.
If his aim was to convince the audience that Shenmue 3 is a terrible game, I think that he did a fantastic job. As you say, he tears apart pretty much every aspect of the game whilst praising next to nothing; to the point where I don’t think that anybody watching who hadn’t played the game for themselves would have any doubt that he is right. If you watched this video without playing the game for yourself, you’d think that it was a terrible game.
The issue here is that we can clearly see that Shenmue 3 being terrible is
not the takeaway for the average person who plays the game for themselves. Without the hyperbole, misleading examples and lies, we see that the average person seems to think that Shenmue 3 is an average / pretty good game.
We can see this not only through critic ratings, but also through user ratings from a variety of places. Admittedly these user ratings are a little less reliable as they’re susceptible to manipulation, but given how far from terrible they are and taking into account the review bombings from the anti-epic brigade, I think there’s enough there to show that to most people who play Shenmue 3, it isn’t some 1 or 2 out of ten game with no redeeming qualities.