I'm replaying Shenmue 3 now, slowly. In the past 2 years I've since replayed both S1 and S2. Unfortunately, despite my changed approach toward the game, I'm finding that all my original criticisms still hold true.
I find Bailu to be massively disconnected and not at all what one would expect from a small village. Many of the residents are rude. The rudeness makes sense in all the other places in the series, but Bailu is a small village with a small community. It feels like no one knows each other in Bailu. Bailu feels like it should flow more and that everyone should be helpful towards the main cause of solving the problems. Instead you find that no one knows anything! No one knows each other, no one has any information.
Things like the Pail Toss Guy is treated as a significant roadblock and a major event in the game. You come across him, he whoops your ass, you have to go train, which requires food for stamina, which requires money from jobs and gambling, these things throw you into the systems of the game and all for the sake of fighting him, and in the end, all you get from him is "they went that way". If something terrible was happening in your village, why would you need me to fight you just so you can say "they went that way"? Why does no one want to help?
I'm only 5 hours in to the game and the beginning of the game is horribly structured and has horrible pacing, and it's all for the sake of finding some ingsignificant, forgettable, nameless and faceless bad guys in a very small village, and I cannot grasp why everyone is so disconnected and unwilling to solve the problems of the village.
Also, the sunflower patch again is treated as some major event or destination and it's literally just past the town square. The game restricts you to the town square for the first several days but no one there is at all helpful in any capacity. And once you get to the sunflower patch, you need to talk to the kids but the kids are only available in the morning? But don't they live there? Aren't the houses right beside the patch where they live? Their own parents can't direct me to where the children might be? The grown ups in the sunflower patch are like... completely oblivious of the happenings in their own small village.
I think Shenmue 3 got Bailu village all wrong. It's wrong in every way. It doesn't feel homey, it doesn't feel like a community, it doesn't feel alive or connected in any way. It's just a bunch of random people who don't know each other and they don't know anything that is going on in their small part of the world. It's not like in the other areas where they are busy at work and disappear; they are all present and visible within this small space but they are so detached from one another and disconnected from their space. Bailu village should be organic and connected. Here the story should flow naturally and everyone should be helping one another. There should be interesting and friendly characters that have relationships. None of that is found in this version of Bailu.
I went to talk to the fat guy at the pond and he was rude for no reason, telling Ryo to "don't talk to me if you don't know...". Like, why is this guy so rude for no reason? He's not a drunk guy in Dobuita on his way to the bar after a long day. He's not a gang member hanging around being bothered by Ryo. In the other areas, there's reasons for people to be rude and standoff-ish. That's the big city. In Bailu, it just doesn't make sense to me.