The end was great, I just wish the story had been more spread out throughout the entirety of the game[...].
I felt like the narrative tempo was a bit uneven at times in Niaowu, as well, after finishing the game. I was easily distracted by everything else going on in the city, and had to force myself to progress the story most of the time, so it wasn't an issue for me, really. Plus I enjoyed Ren's contributions a lot.
The castle was great. It would have been awesome if the game had more infiltration missions. I think thats where the game tends to shine in terms of action and adrenaline.
Same. I had the same thought at the end of the story DLC, too. Walking into that sort of dilapidated building, and having the more tense background music kick in felt like it was something missing to an extent from Niaowu. I'm actually surprised there wasn't something similar with the Red Snake's warehouse. There were a lot of abandoned buildings around it; I would have thought that Ryo, maybe along with Ren, would have run some reconnaissance, beforehand. Maybe they'd even get spotted, and jumped.
To me, those 3 bad guys were major players. Why'd they save such unique character designs for the final minutes of the game? Were they previously planned to have a much larger role in the game? There's not many other characters I can recall that looked as elaborate as those 3. I don't feel like the Shenmue 3 we have is the full vision, so everything I see that looks cool, or has the potential to be interesting, I can't help but wonder what the original plan was.
So, this is an issue that was introduced much earlier than Shenmue III.
This was the initially planned chapter sequence for VFRPG--I'm pretty sure they are what were novelized in pre-production. You might notice that the first one (top left) is Yokosuka, the second one is Hong Kong, and the fifth one is Bailu. The third and fourth chapters were cut for Shenmue II. It's potentially the case that the fourth one was Baisha, which would make it a chapter that was cut twice. That may be part of why Baisha was cut; Because it would have been too much work to try to shove it into the game, out of sequence.
This is mostly me speculating, but if you look at the fourth chapter art, there are four portraits, and one of them appears to be Lan Di (top left). Perhaps, it's Lan Di, and three bodyguards. (The portrait in the bottom left looks a little like the silver haired, Bruce Lee impersonator.) So, I think it's possible that Akira was meant to face off against Lan Di for the first time before meeting Shenhua. At which point, he surely would have been easily dispatched, and realized that he would need considerably more training to be any match for Lan Di. It's just a theory, though.
I posted all my thoughts as I was playing on another forum. I can go back and see that on February 20, I bought 111 toys in one sitting. I know I went back and think I tried one more time but never got it.
Those are a 2 Yuan machine, so you would have put in 222 Yuan, but if you sold the doubles you had, you would have been at a net -118 Yuan. The set, with the rare toy, sells back for 105 Yuan, I believe. So, you got unlucky. The odds on the rare toy in each machine are rough (probably a 1/64 chance, if I had to guess), but it's a balancing act. If they're not uncommon enough, it kills the economy, because they'd be too easy to make money on. I've dumped a ton of time into the capsule toys, and while it can seem impossible to get the sets at times, they're common enough that you can actually make pretty good money on them, if you're not too unlucky.
I'll say this some of the capsules in Shenmue 1 are an utter bitch to get. Probably just as hard and don't get me started on the Gold Dural. I've not, in what 20 years, ever won that bugger in the Raffle
Yeah, same. I've tried really hard to get one, too. I think the Prima guide says it's a 1/256 (which is crazy) chance to get the Gold Dural, but I've played the raffle at least a thousand times in total, and never seen a Gold Dural. Have gotten tons of silvers, though.