I have only played through Shenmue 3 once fully, but the Bailu section was my favourite part of the game. I thought it largely captured a lot of essence if the original games, especially Chapter 1.
I have to confess the map was a lot larger than I ever expected and it contained a fair amount of variety with Sunflower Grove, Abandoned Temple and Tertiary Springs amongst other locations. I loved the slow decent from Shenhua’s house to Martiall Hall, performing my morning training regime before I would cross the Verdant bridge and continue my investigation. I vividly recall running back to her house, with there being no artificial light as you rely solely on the moonlight and the colourful meadows to guide you, hoping to be back in time to have evening conversation with Shenhua. It took me back to fond memories running and crisscrossing the streets of Yamanose in the dead of the night trying to get home to the Hazuki household before Ine-san told me off!
I’ve made mention of this before but I really loved the whole training segment with Mr. Sun culminating with him teaching you the Body Check move. The ending cinematic of the chapter is also beautiful, it’s just a shame we couldn’t say goodbye to the resident ala Shenmue or in Hong Kong.
For me the two biggest missed opportunities stem from two issues as I see it-
Affinity system: In the final game the system outside a couple of superfluous touches seems to be largely omitted. It’s once aspect Suzuki spoke about in the beginning of concept and development and I think it could have been a really unique touch. Imagine performing tasks or side quests for certain NPC’s around Bailu and that rewarded the player with move scrolls, food items to increase stamina and other benefits, similar to how Yakuza Judgement had
friendship meter
Rural setting This could have been more interwoven into the rural setting. While I don’t begrudge Suzuki since the scope of the game and development was changed multiple times, I do wish in retrospect he had leaned more into the rural setting with tasks and activities. It’s been pointed out but I could have waited until Niaowu until we saw appearance of arcades. I mean they partially did it with fishing and wood chopping, but it would have been great to see Shenhua out in natural environment with animals. I vaguely recall Suzuki talking about a sidequest involving a deer and those are sort of things the game could have benefited from before entering more urban and populous location.
All in all it still was the highlight for me. The games environments are still beautiful-