I do not think thats the case, while the drama had an impact on the game metacrite is not flawless and it is hard to sell to someone that does not already loves the franchise, so an average of 7 would be quite fair by today standards.Like I said many times, the fate of this game was sealed the moment it become a laughing stock during the kickstarter. All the negative opinions of kickstarter were transformed later in a low metascore.
of course the issues were the questionable kickstarter campaign and no marketing from deep silver, but also a part of the fanbase is to blame.
It's also not a problem of general public that apart kickstarter, was generally positive/neutral toward the game when finally released, and I always read very positive opinions from the few new people who started just with Shenmue 3 (maybe if the metascore was around 80, many people would have given the game a chance).
The biggest haters of this game were some of the vocal fans that felt entitled to go around every forums on the planet spreading their negative opinions.
Let's get it straight: it's fine to have different opinions, but given the very difficult position of this series, Shenmue fans can't act like fools, they should be wiser.
Sometime it's better to just remain silent instead of being super-negative (with the excuse of being "objective") and only damage the already slim chances to continue the series.
As a matter of fact I had expected to be ranked far worse on metacritic with all the drama it had.