I thought a lot about the food system today and ways that can improve for Shenmue IV, i really love the food system i just think it needs improvements. What i love about this system is the variety of foods and drinks and that they have different effects on Ryo.
I love that when we train and level up we can see that Ryo endure more without eating, we can see Ryo getting stronger and i love that, i love that the training is really important in the game, but not all the people like training/grinding in games so here is my idea to improve this for Shenmue IV. In my opinion the only thing that needs improvements in this system is that it runs out so fast, specially in the begining of the game, but i think Yu Suzuki did this to show Ryo progress, to show that he is getting stronger, when i trained in the game i really felt i was improving in many things in the game.
I remember that Shenmue III is the first Shenmue game that we can choose difficulty levels. In the game we have 4 difficulty settings. We have Story Mode, Recommended Mode, Challenge Mode and Nightmare Mode, i remember i played in recommended mode, it is like the difficulty normal, i always play in normal when i play a game for the first time.
I think in Shenmue III this affects only in the battle, for Shenmue IV Yu Suzuki can continue with this settings but he can add one more thing. My idea is that in Story Mode the player will not need to eat, this mode will be the easy mode for the players that want to focus more on the story. Recommended mode will be the normal mode, in this mode Ryo will have to eat one meal a day or maybe two and we can focus on the story or in other things we want.
Challenge Mode will be the hard mode, things will get more hard about the food system, my idea for this mode is that it will runs out fast so we will have to train more, work more and eat more. Nightmare mode will be the very hard mode, for this mode it will runs out even faster than in Challenge mode, we will have to train, work and eat even more, it will be insane, like the name says Nightmare. It would be nice a mod like this for Shenmue III, a mod that changes more things in the difficulty modes like this.
Players that only want to see the story, enjoy the scenearios and conversations with NPCs and more can choose the Story Mode and Recommended mode, and players that likes training/grinding, work more, eat more and all that stuff can choose the Challenge mode and Nightmare mode, in my opinion this way every player can choose what is best for them, this is the way this system can improve for Shenmue IV.