SuperEyePatchWolf: "Shenmue III is a terrible game and I've wasted my life"

My biggest issue with Shenmue 3’s combat is that even if nothing is wrong with your technique, you will still lose unless you max out your stat increases through doing repetitive side activities. After this, you can go back to the same fight using the same technique as before, only this time your moves do more damage. I felt I wasn’t necessarily improving at the game, the game was just creating the illusion of improvement. I wasn’t playing much different than I was before.

I’ve fully maxed out in Shenmue III and have all the skill books so grinding isn’t a real issue for me when I go back to the game now but I still view it as a flawed progression system, especially compared to the first two games.

It feels like Shenmue III was going for a turn based and atb style progression system while simultaneously letting the player get hands on and perform the moves themselves instead of suggesting actions to the character like many RPG’s. I feel the progression system benefits the latter one though, mainly because players will have to actually strategize on which move they’d like the character to perform based on the enemy type, the environment, what’s in their surrounding, etc.

Shenmue 3 doesn’t have this to accommodate its progression system like a more traditional rpg would, so it ultimately feels different. I think it tried putting two and two different approaches to combat/progression systems together but they ultimately didn’t correlate with each other well.

Im sure there are games that have pulled off bringing the two together but I feel Shenmue 3 didn’t do a good job with it.
 
I'm not saying that the game should be graded on a curve. My rating for Shenmue 3 has pinged around a little as time has passed and I've played it more, so it might change again on my next playthrough (I'm thinking about starting from scratch rather than using new game plus, which will mean enduring the grinding for cash and completely retraining Ryo with the dummies), but I'd probably say that it's a 6.5 out of 10 (maybe 7 at a push). I don't give the game extra points because of the constraints the team faced, but I do understand why the game ended up being a 6.5 rather than the 9/10 I wanted it to be.
My thoughts on this game are tied directly to what follows. If we get S4 and it's amazing, and something resembling a plan manifests, then my opinion of S3 will improve. As it stands, I view it as a deeply flawed game that clearly had to make compromises during a very troubled development.

Agreed. We're not given much indication that Elder Yeh has any deeper knowledge of the mirrors than we learn for ourselves in the game and so I found it a bit strange that she suddenly became an authority on the matter. I suppose it could be argued that the mirrors themselves are a treasure of sorts, but again, this could have been a way for the team to give themselves an easy out if they're forced to wrap things up in the fourth game.
I'm not holding my breath for everything to make sense, but I hope that we can see the broad strokes of where the story was always meant to go (there's no way for the story to properly play out after a 20 year gap between installments and a massive change in writing staff/budget). Needless to say if the mirrors actually lead to a bunch of pirate gold, I will not consider that to be a very good use of everyone's time.

I think that there's always a certain degree of doubt about a game happening until it's officially announced (unless we're talking about one of the titles that gets annual updates like FIFA or Madden). I do agree that the lack of information about sales figures would suggest that the game hasn't been a rip-roaring success, but without knowing how many sales are/were needed to secure a fourth entry and how many were expected by the publisher, any suggestion as to how the game performed is pure speculation outside of what we've officially been told (that the game did 'fine').
If we get S4, that's all that matters. I wonder if SEPW will revisit this video if that happens (I'm sure he'll play it).

Again, taking a clip of Baihu at max level (a fight that can't be tackled 'in-game') and comparing it with a clip in which the player has seemingly maxed out all of Ryo's stats and is making no effort to properly engage with the game's combat engine seems a little unfair.


(9:38 just in case the time stamp isn't working)


(4:01 just in case the time stamp isn't working)

Take these two fights as an example of why your examples perhaps aren't the best here.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video of somebody beating Baihu using only one move (people don't tend to upload videos of them cheesing a system unless they're trying to make it look bad and I don't have the patience to dig through let's plays to find one if indeed one exists on Youtube) and I'm too lazy to go and record my own video and upload it, so I'll have to use this Dou Niou fight to prove my point instead (as the game's final boss, that seems fair).

Comparing these two clips, I could make the argument that it's Shenmue 2's combat that is too simplistic and I'm sure that there are probably more skilled players when it comes to Shenmue 3's combat if I really wanted to hammer this point home (I just picked one of the top results for 'shenmue 3 combat'). I wouldn't do that though, because I don't think that a video of somebody making no real effort to engage with a system is a good way of judging its depth (also, I don't think it's at all true).
The point of max level Baihu and nightmare difficulty is that the combat systems are being tested at their highest level. So ideally you wouldn't be able to win by simply button mashing or using exploits because the system is designed in such a way where that kind of behavior gets punished the higher up you go (this is where the stuff that @Rydeen was mentioning would come in to play). So saying that you can beat Dou Niu by exploiting one move isn't the same thing as truly testing the system since it's just a story fight that everyone who plays the game is supposed to be able to beat. You can defeat easy AI opponents in Street Fighter by spamming one move too, that doesn't mean the system is broken; you have to test it at a high level to do that. And so, in S2 you have ranked matches to do that and in S3 you have the Rose Garden.

I do understand what you mean (there is a clear benefit to maxing/raising endurance for exploration purposes which in turn could in turn lead to an inbalance in the game's combat). I also agree that combat is weaker in Shenmue 3 than it is in the earlier entries to the series, but I don't think that the examples that you provide prove that the system in 3 is anymore 'fundamentally broken' than the system in Shenmue 1 and 2 (as shown by the above video of Shenmue 2's final encounter).
I think that the system is broken at a very basic level (ie: it doesn't "feel" good to play) so I would like to avoid completely shitting on it since that will go nowhere. Basically everything from the animation, the input, the hit feedback, even the particles and sound design lack the snap, weight and "oomph" of a truly great fighting system. So forgive me if I don't want to get into the weeds of learning the frame data in a game that don’t consider able to even nail the basics of making a punch feel substantial.


I found that the player area and the broken ragdoll physics often cheapened the experience for me. To be honest, I'm not sure that I had a favorite fight in Shenmue 3. For the most part they all felt the same.
This was the point at which I just met the game where it was rather than where I wanted it to be and just tried to have fun with it. I tried to finish every fight with a backhand since that provided the most entertaining rag dolls.


I don't think that any of the fights encountered across the 3 games really require a player to be skilled though (apart from Izumi - which is designed to push the player to their limits and is not part of the main story) and disagree that a player can't be skilled at combat in S3.
As I said above, I don’t think it’s the goal of the story fights. Shenmue is largely a story focused game so it can be argued that it doesn’t even need the combat depth that it has which is why, if we’re going to talk about how well designed each system is, I keep harping on the highest level of difficulty. And if we are talking about simple story fights, then what system “feels” better to use?


Agreed, but then again, if Shenmue 2 had a stamina system similar to Shenmue 3, would that suddenly make the VF engine worse as a combat engine or would you attribute the negative impact it had to a poorly designed stamina system?
I think this is the fundamental problem with having all the systems be interconnected, it makes it very difficult to judge them separately and makes it very easy to attribute flaws across the board. No, I don’t think that slapping stamina makes the VF engine worse, but it would certainly make the game worse. As would hiding moves behind capsule toys and removing all the instances of learning moves during the story.


You talk about him 'signing off' as if scrapping it and starting from scratch or just cancelling the project outright were options. The combat system's flaws can likely be attributed to the teams lack of experience, budget and time - none of which Yu really had direct control over (at least not without causing problems elsewhere in the game).
I point that out because he’s the project lead and the company is named after him so surely he bears some responsibility especially for the scope of the project and some of the design decisions.


Yu is accustomed to working with some of the best programmers in the industry and so it's entirely probable that what he thought could be achieved with the time and budget available simply couldn't be achieved with a team whose inexperience and smaller numbers meant that they took longer to ultimately achieve a worse end product. In this sense, I think that Yu's lack of experience working with smaller fixed budgets and an inexperienced team to create a large scale game also played a part.
In fairness, it had been 15 years since he’d been in that position. I’m willing to grant a certain amount of forgiveness to growing pains for sure, but not enough to let him off the hook completely and blame the team for all the game’s problems.
 
Just for fun, I thought I'd see how far one could get into the Master Baihu fight by simply spamming the triangle button and then hitting him with elbow assault on parry. I hadn't expected to make it all the way to the end, but aside from my hand cramping up from repeatedly hitting the dodge button over the course of 32 rounds (hence why I didn't hit all of my elbow assaults), it was actually pretty easy. The difficulty scaling seemed to just make Ryo hit a little weaker and Baihu hit a little harder with each subsequent stage.


Does this mean that Shenmue 2's combat is too simplistic, @iknifaugood ? ;)
Let me ask you a question: do you think the only thing wrong with S3’s fighting is one broken move? Like if they nerfed Shinbone Smash do you think there would be nothing else to complain about? Furthermore, if S1 and 2 had perfectly balanced moves but controlled like S3, would that make them better?

Again, I think we both agree on the state of the combat across all 3 games so I really don’t want this to devolve into a rant on everything that’s wrong with S3’s combat because I don’t think it’s useful. S1 and 2 are not perfect, they’re 20 year old games; does that excuse S3 stepping on the same rakes and more? No. DMC 1and 2 are very similar in terms of their “features” but no one in their right minds is trying to defend DMC 2 and you know what happened? DMC 3 came out and is one of the best action games ever. I don’t see what we hope to gain by pretending that S3’s combat is actually really good when it’s obviously not.
 
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My thoughts on this game are tied directly to what follows. If we get S4 and it's amazing, and something resembling a plan manifests, then my opinion of S3 will improve. As it stands, I view it as a deeply flawed game that clearly had to make compromises during a very troubled development.
That's fair. I really do think that if they're able to build upon the combat engine and stamina system to the point where they are seen as assets rather than flaws, the decision to implement them in 3 rather than taking the easy way out will have been justified (especially with the combat system).
I'm not holding my breath for everything to make sense, but I hope that we can see the broad strokes of where the story was always meant to go (there's no way for the story to properly play out after a 20 year gap between installments and a massive change in writing staff/budget). Needless to say if the mirrors actually lead to a bunch of pirate gold, I will not consider that to be a very good use of everyone's time.
I just hope that they take the localization a bit more seriously next time out. At the very least, I think they need to get rid of the translation errors and mismatched responses, but if they ever want to move past the 'Shenmue has a bad English dub' label that's been stuck to the series since the first entry, I think they need to bring in a native speaker who can translate and then rewrite some of the lines to be a bit more natural. Japanese really doesn't translate very well to English.
If we get S4, that's all that matters. I wonder if SEPW will revisit this video if that happens (I'm sure he'll play it).
I expect that most fans who were put off by 3 will, especially if it is well received.
The point of max level Baihu and nightmare difficulty is that the combat systems are being tested at their highest level. So ideally you wouldn't be able to win by simply button mashing or using exploits because the system is designed in such a way where that kind of behavior gets punished the higher up you go (this is where the stuff that @Rydeen was mentioning would come in to play). So saying that you can beat Dou Niu by exploiting one move isn't the same thing as truly testing the system since it's just a story fight that everyone who plays the game is supposed to be able to beat. You can defeat easy AI opponents in Street Fighter by spamming one move too, that doesn't mean the system is broken; you have to test it at a high level to do that. And so, in S2 you have ranked matches to do that and in S3 you have the Rose Garden.
I'm guessing that you were writing this post when I edited my last one, so here...
Just for fun, I thought I'd see how far one could get into the Master Baihu fight by simply spamming the triangle button and then hitting him with elbow assault on parry. I hadn't expected to make it all the way to the end, but aside from my hand cramping up from repeatedly hitting the dodge button over the course of 32 rounds (hence why I didn't hit all of my elbow assaults), it was actually pretty easy. The difficulty scaling seemed to just make Ryo hit a little weaker and Baihu hit a little harder with each subsequent stage.

As per one of my earlier posts, that high level combat can be beaten using low-level tactics doesn't make the game inherently bad. Level 16 Master Baihu is intended to be significantly harder than any of the fights in Shenmue 3 and yet it can be be beaten just as easily as the example you posted.

I agree with a lot of your points about both combat systems; but this is one that I really don't agree with - and I think that this video somewhat proves that.

I think that the system is broken at a very basic level (ie: it doesn't "feel" good to play) so I would like to avoid completely shitting on it since that will go nowhere. Basically everything from the animation, the input, the hit feedback, even the particles and sound design lack the snap, weight and "oomph" of a truly great fighting system. So forgive me if I don't want to get into the weeds of learning the frame data in a game that don’t consider able to even nail the basics of making a punch feel substantial.
I think that broken is a strong word to use here. I found that there are times where moves have the right weight to them and really do feel as though they're landing as they should, but unfortunately you don't get this feeling anywhere near consistently enough. There is certainly a lot more depth to the new engine than one might first assume too, but again, it's held back by its limitations.

If they can tighten up the combo input speed a little, introduce grapple moves and make blocks and parries feel a bit more natural, I think its well on its way to being a perfectly serviceable engine. And who knows... if Yu can somehow pull together a decent budget for future games, it might end up a lot closer to the Shenmue 1 and 2 experience.
This was the point at which I just met the game where it was rather than where I wanted it to be and just tried to have fun with it. I tried to finish every fight with a backhand since that provided the most entertaining rag dolls.
I found that it only really bothered me in the Rose Garden to be honest. Enemies always seemed to ragdoll down into some weird position near the edge of the fighting area (kind of half on the fence that surrounds it) and would take an absolute age to get back up. Kicking them repeatedly while they were down was fun at first, but eventually the novelty of this wore off and it just ended up annoying me.
As I said above, I don’t think it’s the goal of the story fights. Shenmue is largely a story focused game so it can be argued that it doesn’t even need the combat depth that it has which is why, if we’re going to talk about how well designed each system is, I keep harping on the highest level of difficulty. And if we are talking about simple story fights, then what system “feels” better to use?
I seem to be one of the few fans here who wasn't really that fussed about the combat in Shenmue games. I enjoyed it, but more as a means of supplementing the main story than the experience of fighting itself. This is probably why I'm not so bothered about the combat system in Shenmue 3 or the lack of any real 'super-bosses' to really test it out.
I think this is the fundamental problem with having all the systems be interconnected, it makes it very difficult to judge them separately and makes it very easy to attribute flaws across the board. No, I don’t think that slapping stamina makes the VF engine worse, but it would certainly make the game worse. As would hiding moves behind capsule toys and removing all the instances of learning moves during the story.
I think in an ideal world, all of the systems within the game would be interconnected. Unfortunately for Shenmue 3, I think that the stamina system was fundamentally flawed which, as you say, had a negative impact on many other elements of the game as a result.
I point that out because he’s the project lead and the company is named after him so surely he bears some responsibility especially for the scope of the project and some of the design decisions.
I'm not saying he should bare no responsibility and I'm sure that if you were to ask him, Yu would probably have a fairly sizable list of things that he wishes he had done differently. I do think though that there was a limit to what he could achieve and in many areas, he exceeded what I thought that limit had been. In others, not so much.
In fairness, it had been 15 years since he’d been in that position. I’m willing to grant a certain amount of forgiveness to growing pains for sure, but not enough to let him off the hook completely and blame the team for all the game’s problems.
I don't 'blame' anybody for anything. They tried their best and we got the game that we got.

Edit: Sorry. Only just seen this.

Let me ask you a question: do you think the only thing wrong with S3’s fighting is one broken move? Like if they nerfed Shinbone Smash do you think there would be nothing else to complain about? Furthermore, if S1 and 2 had perfectly balanced moves but controlled like S3, would that make them better?

Again, I think we both agree on the state of the combat across all 3 games so I really don’t want this to devolve into a rant on everything that’s wrong with S3’s combat because I don’t think it’s useful. S1 and 2 are not perfect, they’re 20 year old games; does that excuse S3 stepping on the same takes and more? No. DMC 1and 2 are very similar in terms of their “features” but no one in their right minds is trying to defend DMC 2 and you know what happened? DMC 3 came out and is one of the best action games ever. I don’t see what we hope to gain by pretending that S3’s combat is actually really good when it’s obviously not.
I'm sorry, but when or where have I claimed that Shenmue 3's combat was good. I've agreed with a lot of your criticisms of the system and have added a few of my own to the discussion too. I think we perhaps have different views about just how bad the system is and how much that really matters in the grand scheme of things, but at no point have I tried to suggest that Shenmue 3's combat engine is a better engine than the VF engine (aside from it giving the player more control over the difficulty level).

You're the one who tried to make the argument that if the hardest content in a game could be beaten by somebody with no skill using the same move repeatedly then that game was 'fundamentally broken' - I'm merely pointing out here that Shenmue 2's hardest content can be beaten by somebody with no skill using the same move repeatedly.
 
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I really do think that if they're able to build upon the combat engine and stamina system to the point where they are seen as assets rather than flaws, the decision to implement them in 3 rather than taking the easy way out will have been justified (especially with the combat system).
I just hope that they take the localization a bit more seriously next time out. At the very least, I think they need to get rid of the translation errors and mismatched responses, but if they ever want to move past the 'Shenmue has a bad English dub' label that's been stuck to the series since the first entry, I think they need to bring in a native speaker who can translate and then rewrite some of the lines to be a bit more natural. Japanese really doesn't translate very well to English.
Right now we're seeing people not even able to agree that these things are flaws, and the combat ties into this somewhat. There are people who love the bad voice acting and cheesy dub, and may be put off from reading subtitles (even though axing the English dub is the single biggest money saver they could do).

As per one of my earlier posts, that high level combat can be beaten using low-level tactics doesn't make the game inherently bad.
It doesn't but it's definitely something that would be easily fixed in a patch if S1 and 2 were released today (meaning that it's obviously not the intended way to play the game). I will point out that your fight against Baihu demonstrates a bit more skill than simply "mash one button".

If they can tighten up the combo input speed a little, introduce grapple moves and make blocks and parries feel a bit more natural, I think its well on its way to being a perfectly serviceable engine. And who knows... if Yu can somehow pull together a decent budget for future games, it might end up a lot closer to the Shenmue 1 and 2 experience.
Imo the biggest thing they need to work on is "game feel". Throwing a punch in S1 and 2 "feels" good, it doesn't in S3 (at least not to me); S3 has so many different moves when the fundamentals just aren't there. I'm sorry but defensive options and throws are pretty crucial to a martial arts combat system, particularly one as "realistic" as Shenmue.

I seem to be one of the few fans here who wasn't really that fussed about the combat in Shenmue games. I enjoyed it, but more as a means of supplementing the main story than the experience of fighting. This is probably why I'm not so bothered about the combat system in Shenmue 3 or the lack of any real 'super-bosses'.
They're certainly not perfect, but they were really good for their time and still quite fun to mess around with today. I do not consider S1 and 2 to be the benchmark for combat systems in games though, they're mostly remarkable for being essentially RPGs with a nearly fully fleshed out fighting game engine. They were great when they came out but the same year Shenmue 2 came out we got Devil May Cry, and then action games greatly outpaced what Shenmue (or any other hybrid game) could realistically achieve. I think that S3 should have had a much simpler combat system given the budget.

I think in an ideal world, all of the systems within the game would be interconnected. Unfortunately for Shenmue 3, I think that the stamina system was fundamentally flawed which, as you say, had a negative impact on many other elements of the game as a result.
The stamina, the training, the capsule toys, and earning money are all connected to your ability to max out Ryo and get all the moves; and they all result in tedious minigame grinding. In other games (take Spider-Man PS4 for instance), you have to do a variety of side quests (which vary in quality, no doubt) but they're far more meaningful content that frequently has you engaging with the systems that you're trying progress in. If Shenmue can't offer meaningful content, then I don't think it should be replaced with shallow minigames.

I'm not saying he should bare no responsibility and I'm sure that if you were to ask him, Yu would probably have a fairly sizable list of things that he wishes he had done differently. I do think though that there was a limit to what he could achieve and in many areas, he exceeded what I thought that limit had been. In others, not so much.
I don't 'blame' anybody for anything. They tried their best and we got the game that we got.
I totally agree but there's a tendency around the forums to make it seem like Suzuki is this infallible genius that was crippled by an incompetent dev team and I really want to push back against that notion. Not to say that you're doing that or anything.

I'm sorry, but when or where have I claimed that Shenmue 3's combat was good. I've agreed with a lot of your criticisms of the system and have added a few of my own to the discussion too. I think we perhaps have different views about just how bad the system is and how much that really matters in the grand scheme of things, but at no point have I tried to suggest that Shenmue 3's combat engine is a better engine than the VF engine (aside from it giving the player more control over the difficulty level).
You haven't, which is why I said that I think we're mostly in agreement over the whole thing. I have to say that I largely agree that I don't think Shenmue having the "best fighting engine ever" should be high on their list of priorities. If they want to turn combat into a dark souls-esque game of stamina management then I'm fine with that, if they want to put moves on cooldowns I'm fine with that, hell, if they want to make it turn-based I'm open to that; I'm fine with literally any system that's good and fun to play.

You're the one who tried to make the argument that if the hardest content in a game could be beaten by somebody with no skill using the same move repeatedly then that game was 'fundamentally broken' - I'm merely pointing out here that Shenmue 2's hardest content can be beaten by somebody with no skill using the same move repeatedly.
Well no, Shenmue 3 is fundamentally broken (ie: the basics of it are bad) which is separate from " ideally you wouldn't be able to win by simply button mashing or using exploits because the system is designed in such a way where that kind of behavior gets punished the higher up you go ". So yes, I would consider being able to beat Master Baihu using the dodge and elbow assault (or any other exploit) a flaw, but not necessarily a fundamental one because you need to consider the remedy; is the issue with his AI, the move, or the underlying system? Does this exploit work on every opponent? Are there more moves like this? etc. Compare how you would fix the issue in both games and where their respective combat systems would look like on the other side of it and I think you'll get where I'm coming from in this regard.
 
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You're the one who tried to make the argument that if the hardest content in a game could be beaten by somebody with no skill using the same move repeatedly then that game was 'fundamentally broken' - I'm merely pointing out here that Shenmue 2's hardest content can be beaten by somebody with no skill using the same move repeatedly.
Tomboz is right. A.I. Can't adapt and runs on a limited set of algorithms.
So What? If you play lame the combat is automatically lame? I could do the exact same thing to beat the A.I. on hardest difficulty in Street Fighter 2 on SNES back in the day, so by that logic the combat in SF2 was automatically terrible and poorly contrived? There are holes in that argument that could sink the Titanic. If you like to get away with a cheese win in a game, that's a poor reflection on you as a player, not the game itself.
 
Right now we're seeing people not even able to agree that these things are flaws, and the combat ties into this somewhat.
And here in lies one of the biggest problems for Yu and the team. Shenmue means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, meaning that when you commit to making a Shenmue game you risk upsetting some of the fans by omitting anything that could be considered to be a part of the 'Shenmue' experience.
There are people who love the bad voice acting and cheesy dub, and may be put off from reading subtitles (even though axing the English dub is the single biggest money saver they could do).
Axing the English dub would be a terrible idea considering the bulk of the game's sales come in the west. If anything, axing the Japanese dub (which given the caliber of some of the voice actors used is likely the more expensive of the two) would make a lot more sense.
It doesn't but it's definitely something that would be easily fixed in a patch if S1 and 2 were released today (meaning that it's obviously not the intended way to play the game). I will point out that your fight against Baihu demonstrates a bit more skill than simply "mash one button".
This is something that's been present in the series since Shenmue 1. They didn't fix it for Shenmue 2, they didn't fix it for Shenmue 2X, they didn't fix it for the HD ports and they didn't fix it in any of the subsequent patches either - which would suggest to me that it's not such an easy fix (which is saying a lot considering some of the talent that worked on the first two games).

It might look a bit more skillful, but I assure you that anybody could do this (unless perhaps they had arthritis in their hands - but this could be easily remedied with a turbo pad).
The stamina, the training, the capsule toys, and earning money are all connected to your ability to max out Ryo and get all the moves; and they all result in tedious minigame grinding. In other games (take Spider-Man PS4 for instance), you have to do a variety of side quests (which vary in quality, no doubt) but they're far more meaningful content that frequently has you engaging with the systems that you're trying progress in. If Shenmue can't offer meaningful content, then I don't think it should be replaced with shallow minigames.
You seem to be forgetting that in Shenmue 2, several of the move scrolls were locked behind pachinko (fwir, you had to land three shots in a row across three increasingly difficult boards multiple times) whilst many others had to be purchased for a fairly significant combined price, which again meant tedious minigame grinding unless you exploited the game's save feature. The minigames found in Shenmue 3 were more or less the same as the ones found in 2 (if anything, I'd say 3 offers a lot more variety in this regard), so I don't see how they can be tedious in one and not the other - and please don't come back with 'But I can save scum in S2', because the ability to do so does is not something that was intended to be used while the game was being designed.
I totally agree but there's a tendency around the forums to make it seem like Suzuki is this infallible genius that was crippled by an incompetent dev team and I really want to push back against that notion. Not to say that you're doing that or anything.
I don't think he's without fault, but I do think that he has shown in the past that given the right circumstances he is capable of producing what I'd consider to be some of the best games ever made. As such, I can only deduce that the circumstances weren't right during the development of Shenmue 3. Maybe he needed more money? Maybe he needed a better team? Maybe he needed somebody to keep his lofty ambitions in check? Maybe he needed to make the game twenty years ago while he was still at his creative peak? I really don't know.
Well no, Shenmue 3 is fundamentally broken (ie: the basics of it are bad) which is separate from " ideally you wouldn't be able to win by simply button mashing or using exploits because the system is designed in such a way where that kind of behavior gets punished the higher up you go ". So yes, I would consider being able to beat Master Baihu using the dodge and elbow assault (or any other exploit) a flaw, but not necessarily a fundamental one because you need to consider the remedy; is the issue with his AI, the move, or the underlying system? Does this exploit work on every opponent? Are there more moves like this? etc. Compare how you would fix the issue in both games and where their respective combat systems would look like on the other side of it and I think you'll get where I'm coming from in this regard.
Just to be clear here, I could have beaten that fight using pretty much any move (I say 'pretty much' as due to Ryo's diminishing attack power as the difficulty level increases, weaker moves may not be able to inflict damage faster than the enemies heath regenerates) and I could have used this technique on any fight during the first two games to the same end result.

The issue here is not that one move is broken, but that by binding dodge and parry to the same button, they effectively make it impossible for themselves to punish a mistimed parry attempt which allows the player to spam it at will without any consequences and never take a hit throughout their entire playthrough provided they hit the button fast enough.

Given that blocking/parrying/dodging plays such a pivotal role in the game's combat, I'd say that it's a fairly fundamental flaw if you subscribe to the idea that the ability to cheese a fight is a sign of poor design (which you seem to).
 
There are holes in that argument that could sink the Titanic.

The Titanic sank with pretty minor sized hole(s) in it actually.

In S1 I remember beating most fights with a PPPK or KKK combo... but the fighting system in those first two games were perfect because the combat felt good and had depth but casual players could beat most any fight by button mashing.

I enjoyed S3's combat even if it's not on par with S1 or S2 but the input lag really hurts it.

Why didn't Yu Suzuki have Ryo control with the D-Pad during fighting so the moves could be inputed with a d-pad and button combo and we wouldn't have to deal with the damn lag?

Also what really hurts S3 is the lack of learning moves from NPC's... a Shenmue signature. But wasn't the forklift guy going to teach you a move in S3? I couldn't meet him at 5p because of a glitch or something.... was that ever figured out?
 
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Also what really hurts S3 is the lack of learning moves from NPC's... a Shenmue signature. But wasn't the forklift guy going to teach you a move in S3? I couldn't meet him at 5p because of a glitch or something.... was that ever figured out?
Not a bug. I met him in my first playthrough and he taught Ryo the level 2 uppercut before falling into the water.
 
Not a bug. I met him in my first playthrough and he taught Ryo the level 2 uppercut before falling into the water.

No, it didn't work at all for some people. I think he was asking if the bug itself was ever sorted out.
 
And here in lies one of the biggest problems for Yu and the team. Shenmue means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, meaning that when you commit to making a Shenmue game you risk upsetting some of the fans by omitting anything that could be considered to be a part of the 'Shenmue' experience.
I think it's pretty safe to say that he can hope to do better than S3. I certainly hope so.

Axing the English dub would be a terrible idea considering the bulk of the game's sales come in the west. If anything, axing the Japanese dub (which given the caliber of some of the voice actors used is likely the more expensive of the two) would make a lot more sense.
I don't think Shenmue needs full voice acting at all (I'm perfectly fine with text only, but I think at maximum, it should only be during the cutscenes if money is as tight as it appears to be).

This is something that's been present in the series since Shenmue 1. They didn't fix it for Shenmue 2, they didn't fix it for Shenmue 2X, they didn't fix it for the HD ports and they didn't fix it in any of the subsequent patches either - which would suggest to me that it's not such an easy fix (which is saying a lot considering some of the talent that worked on the first two games).

It might look a bit more skillful, but I assure you that anybody could do this (unless perhaps they had arthritis in their hands - but this could be easily remedied with a turbo pad).
Or it's just not something they were concerned with. S1 and 2 are hardly designed for "teh hardcore" audience, just because I think something needs to be improved, doesn't mean it needs to be improved.

You seem to be forgetting that in Shenmue 2, several of the move scrolls were locked behind pachinko (fwir, you had to land three shots in a row across three increasingly difficult boards multiple times) whilst many others had to be purchased for a fairly significant combined price, which again meant tedious minigame grinding unless you exploited the game's save feature. The minigames found in Shenmue 3 were more or less the same as the ones found in 2 (if anything, I'd say 3 offers a lot more variety in this regard), so I don't see how they can be tedious in one and not the other - and please don't come back with 'But I can save scum in S2', because the ability to do so does is not something that was intended to be used while the game was being designed.
Almost everything that's bad about Shenmue 2 revolves around earning money, something that S3, like, quintuples down on. For the umpteenth time, Shenmue 3 does not get an automatic pass for stepping on the same rakes as the first two games. Anyone who enjoys that part of S2 is free to argue why it's amazing design. I would be more than happy without it (which is why I save scum through it). There are 20 years worth of game design to draw on that handle these things better. To be clear, without save scumming, Shenmue 2 is a notably less enjoyable game. I somewhat forgive the emphasis on earning money because it's justified in the story (something S3 never bothers to do) BUT, in the original design of Shenmue, save games were meant to continue, so I don't see how anyone could think that earning money was ever supposed to be a huge part of the series, especially as Ryo ventures into rural China in the 1980s.

The issue here is not that one move is broken, but that by binding dodge and parry to the same button, they effectively make it impossible for themselves to punish a mistimed parry attempt which allows the player to spam it at will without any consequences and never take a hit throughout their entire playthrough provided they hit the button fast enough.

Given that blocking/parrying/dodging plays such a pivotal role in the game's combat, I'd say that it's a fairly fundamental flaw if you subscribe to the idea that the ability to cheese a fight is a sign of poor design (which you seem to).
That is indeed a flaw (among many) with the combat design of S1 and 2, though I wouldn't necessarily say that it's with the input layout, but rather the fact that they didn't design around it (the Dead or Alive series, for example, similarly only uses one input for both).

I think that things are going in circles at this point and arguing point by point is going nowhere. I'm not saying that cheap tactics in high-level fights is the only thing that makes a system bad (my only real point is that S1 and 2 have better combat than S3, something I don't think anyone is even arguing against), nor am I saying that S1 and 2 are perfect systems.

I think that the combat in Shenmue, like many things about the game, suffers from the fact that they had so few limitations during the shift from VFRPG. S1 has like 50+ moves even though there are only around a dozen fights. The combat is never properly tutorialized, the system offers depth if you want to experiment/get good at the game but nowhere to actually face difficult opponents, and there isn't enough variety in the enemy design to make the player consider tactics (I beat both games by essentially button mashing my first time out). S2 addresses some of these issues by adding the gambling fights and the ranked matches (but those are a very basic extra feature) as well as more/more frequent fights in general, and more variety to enemy types, as well as ring outs. The block/parry is, as you and @Rydeen have mentioned, basically a push to win button, the fast moves are way more useful than moves with a slower wind up time (unless you just want the fight to be flashy), and all of this suffers from the main flaw which I alluded to earlier, which is that these games are essentially trying to be fighting games (primarily designed around being multiplayer games), instead of having proper single-player oriented combat. The system scales well to accommodate new players who want to button mash as well as more skilled players who want to be flashy (SEPW goes over this in detail) but, imo, fails to properly incentivize high level play.

S1 and 2 are old, they were released before the time where games figured a lot of things out, and they were instrumental in the process of figuring those things out. If they were released today, combat system unchanged, they would not be considered to have well designed combat. Good combat systems keep the player engaged, where you're constantly in the process of reacting to enemy behavior and thinking about your next moves. A game like Dark Souls forces you to react to and learn enemy move-sets (it's basically just Punch-Out), a game like DMC incentivizes stylish play and using a variety of moves, a game like Doom Eternal essentially forces you to engage with every aspect of the combat system, the Arkham games combined simple inputs with flashy contextual animations; there was a lot for S3 to learn from other games depending on what they wanted to do.

That being said, even though combat seems super important to Shenmue, maybe it isn't. Maybe it was always just supposed to give the feeling of technical fighting game mechanics. In that case, I really think moving forward Shenmue needs to decide what it is and what it wants the player to get out of it. Is Shenmue combat essentially a fighting game solo mode? Is it closer to a beat-em-up? A character action game? Not necessarily in terms of the mechanics (I think we're stuck with the system that we have), but in terms of how everything is designed around those mechanics. Imagine if Ryo had to learn counter play to all of Mr. Muscles' different animal styles (he'll block certain moves when he uses certain stances or whatever), then during the fight, you'd have to pay attention to his stance to figure out which style he was using and vary up your attacks accordingly--because remember, a big part of Shenmue is learning new moves/styles from NPCs, something missing almost entirely from S3.

Also just as an aside, yes I consider any exploit in the combat system a flaw and you should too (especially if you're going to comment about save scumming) and I think that if games are going to have high-level play, the system should scale up and hold its own accordingly otherwise, don't even bother including it. I hate games that have "ultra hardcore mode" and it's just enemies with more health and more damage.
 
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I don't think Shenmue needs full voice acting at all

Not everyone else will agree on that, though.
Omitting one thing to make another thing better is subjective.
I'm pretty sure this is why Yu tried to please everyone by doing a bit of everything in Shenmue 3, despite budget and time concerns.
 
Not everyone else will agree on that, though.
Omitting one thing to make another thing better is subjective.
First of all, not everyone needs to agree on everything, not that anyone needs to agree with what I'm saying either. I'm primarily concerned with the story in Shenmue and have no desire to play another installment that covers as little ground as S3 does (assuming there is substantially more ground to be covered). We know the original outline for the story covers at least twice as many chapters as we've seen so far and several more locations; in the interest of seeing all that content realized, it's clear that things are going to need to be sacrificed to get there and VO (especially full VO for every NPC in two languages) is a no brainer. BUT, that's assuming that telling a story of such a huge scope is still on the table, I fully acknowledge that it may not be, in which case Shenmue loses a lot of its initial appeal for me personally.

I'm pretty sure this is why Yu tried to please everyone by doing a bit of everything in Shenmue 3, despite budget and time concerns.
Totally agree, it's obvious he tried his best to include as much from the original game's "formula", such that one even exists, in S3. He has expressed a desire to make S4 more appealing to newcomers though, so who knows what he'll change to achieve that.
 
Yeah. Shenmue doesn't need any voice acting imo.

If it doesn't have any voice acting it will improve the game since then people will imagine the voices instead of hearing bad or mediocre voice acting.
 
First of all, not everyone needs to agree on everything

I didn't say that they did?
All I meant was that people have different opinions of where resources should go.
What you think is right, may not be to somebody else.
Getting a perfect balance is going to be difficult.

I'm primarily concerned with the story in Shenmue

The story isn't the issue. It's more about how it's written and executed.
I think that was a lot of people's primary issue with 3.

it's clear that things are going to need to be sacrificed to get there and VO (especially full VO for every NPC in two languages) is a no brainer.

Personally, I can get onboard with either the Japanese or English VO being omitted, but not both.
And as I've said in the past - I'd be okay with the English dub taking the hit.
This may not sit well with other people though, as some are very fond/prefer the English dub's.

Shenmue was one of the first games to usher in fully voiced NPCs and I think a part of the essence of Shenmue is having voice work, at the very least for those who Ryo converses with in the story and for side quests.
 
Some of you people really don't get the style of game Shenmue is or the spirit of Shenmue. To suggest Us Net cut fully voiced NPCs just so the story can race to the finish line would completely tank the franchise and not be a true sequel to Shenmue. Niaowu's biggest weakness was the amount of non-voiced NPCs. If an even further cut back version of Niaowu became the standard, Shenmue would be dead. Completely unacceptable. If you want a game like that , go play Assassin's Creed.
 
Voiced dialogue is essential for Shenmue experience (and I think we already got too much compromises in that regard, with the non-voiced NPC in Niaowu).
Also Shenmue without voice acting would feel like a Yakuza game.
 
After doing some digging, I have to concede the point to @Rydeen that the combat system in Shenmue III has the fundamentals needed for a good combat system. Ignoring videos such as these would be completely dishonest and ignorant of me.


With that being said, I am still not a fan of how the Counter Elbow Assault was done. I am not a fan of the dial-a-combos and prefer the freeform combos of the original games. Also, I want to see more launcher types of moves for air juggling, better animations, throws, and an advanced parry and dodge system. In other words, as I said before, this new combat system has potential, but I still prefer the combat of the first two games.

@iknifaugood

Pokes in fighting games and beat-em-ups will always be valuable tools in combat. In my experience, Shenmue (at least the first two games) comes across as a defensive-oriented game that rewards proper punishing of your opponents. If you go running in blind you'll be constantly poked out of any move you do.

While I think this would be an expensive endeavor, I'd like to see Shenmue adopt a hybrid combat system of Godhand for multiple enemy encounters (albeit more grounded) and Virtua Fighter for boss-type enemies. The logistics of implementing such a system would be difficult but if executed well, it would make for a magnificent combat system in my opinion.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but Shenmue's combat is one of my favorite elements of the series.
 
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Those are some pretty glorious videos. Great finds.

With that being said, I am still not a fan of how the Counter Elbow Assault was done. I am not a fan of the dial-a-combos and prefer the freeform combos of the original games. Also, I want to see more launcher types of moves for air juggling, better animations, throws, and an advanced parry and dodge system. In other words, as I said before, this new combat system has potential, but I still prefer the combat of the first two games.
That's certainly fair. The combat in Shenmue III is not quite as complete or polished as the VF combat from the first two games. There are some things I like better about it, though. In particular, the footsies, dodging and general movement feel a lot better to me in III. I can't imagine that it would have really been possible to have that kind of movement, and directional inputs for entering moves. So the trade off of face-button combinations for somewhat realistic movement is something I'm happy to live with, and it didn't detract from the combat at all, in my experience. At any rate, I agree that there is room for improvements to be made, I just don't think they're starting from the basement, the way some seem to suggest.


I cannot speak for anyone else, but Shenmue's combat is one of my favorite elements of the series.
Same. It's a big part of the series marrying gameplay with the story, for me, and giving players agency within Ryo's quest to become a more capable martial artist. Without it, I'd just be a step closer to sitting through a story, which I don't need a game in order to do.
 
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