- Joined
- Feb 7, 2019
Lots of posts since my last time here, I think Rydeen already said everything that I wanted to write :)
I enjoyed all the new posts, well apart for the accusation.
I'm sorry if I touched a delicate nerve, but I still think this is the only truth and the reactions leave me with even less doubts.
We aren't talking about a bad game here, the hate toward Shenmue 3 by some people around internet is totally exaggerated and gratuitous, and can only be explained with "unrealistic expectation not met".
If you have a better explanation for the strange ludicrous hate toward this game, you're free to tell us, I'm also genuinely curious.
My intention wasn't to offend those who have a different opinions of course, but to arrive at this point:
unless we address all the exaggerated hate that comes from the Shenmue community and spread everywhere, how can we fight for Shenmue 4?
And the first thing is to make haters realize that this kind of exaggerated, gratuitous and constant hate doesn't help in any way, it's not constructive criticism (this is mostly used as a shield), and it only hinders our chances to get Shenmue 4 and for many people to discover Shenmue 3.
I dont know, I feel like criticism has been fairly constructive and helped highlight issues most reviewers didn't talk about because they didn't care about the game.
If you were to listen to the reviews, you'd think Shenmue III's issue was bad visuals, the stamina, old UIs and animations.
What would you understand from that ?
"just upgrade the visuals ! Keep the same formula, they loved it !"
Also, then again, it's not about unrealistic expectations.
If I were to have unrealistic expectations, I would tell you: "Wow, the visuals are shit ! I expected visuals as good as most AAA games ! And have you seen those animations ??? And why are the maps so small ???".
All of my expectations was for the game to offer interesting characters, an interesting narrative structure and a good atmosphere.
Was that possible in a full Shenmue experience on a budget ? Maybe not. But then again, my expectations weren't to get a "full Shenmue experience". Based on the direction Shenmue II was taking with CD4, based on Yu Suzuki interviews during Kickstarter, I expected Shenmue III to be a game focusing on its character cast, world building and chara dev, but also to try new things, new narrative things with the Character Perspective System.
What we got in the end was a full Shenmue experience with no Shenmue soul. We got Baisha which was axed (I was sure it'd happened, I said so when we got the achievements leaks on Steam. And I was fine with that if it meant they were focusing on making the current areas good), we got Niaowu which was useless as a whole expect to offer a "Shenmue experience" that wasn't really interesting. (Even though I still think the city was stunningly good looking) and we got Bailu which was obviously heavily influenced by the wish to put classic Shenmue side activities like an arcade, gacha and dice/lucky hit and such, which made it less believable.
If anything, my initial expectations was to get a more narrative title set in Bailu, trying different things. Those aren't unrealistic. In fact, if anything, those were far more realistic than Yu Suzuki's expectations, which were to make 3 areas and one open world.
I regret his choice to focus on those side activities and open world which resulted in an average game. But I'm not here to say whenever it's a bad choice or a good choice. I'd say it had pros and cons whatever the choice was and is a choice that is wise, going forward, when it comes to establish game systems for the upcoming games.
But that was at the expense of Shenmue III. Whenever it was a good decision or not remains to be seen. But as far as I'm concerned, it's obvious that Shenmue III paid for it.
As for your explanation about the game """hate""", I'd say it's already been discussed multiple times:
Maybe Shenmue III isn't good.