General Impressions

[spud1897]

The point was there's some people on this board who respond every single time I post, and who seem to think I'm just here to troll. I will try to word my posts in a way that doesn't upset anyone but it will be difficult because I think S3 is absolute garbage.


I have played them, last fall. I also played S1 on DC in probably 2000, and S2 on XBOX when that released. I adore them. They are magical creations. For me S3 has nothing in common with them but the name.

See that term absolute garbage is only going to get peoples backs up. It's perfectly acceptable for you to say you dislike the game but done so in a manner that at least considers others may disagree. That's all I'm asking.

 

[Thomasina]

Technicially, it's a disaster.
In terms of focus, I think it's all over the place.
Storywise, it's little tiny, minuscule bits of story stretched out for faux-longevity.

I think what I said is fair.

It's been a long time since I've played a game as bad as Shenmue 3. That month long break didn't help either because I played some good games in that period, and coming back to this mess makes everything stand out even more.

I came to the realization that the only positive thing I can say about the game is it might be acceptable as a walking simulator, in the sense that it might be most interesting just as a world to walk around in and observe. I like walking sims and have played a lot of them. But, any time you're given a "mission" or goal, it's really just busy work that leads to nothing but more busy work.

And going back to the technical aspect of the game, I want to say something about the state of the ps4 version, and the alleged state of the pc version.

Go back to E3 2015 and who provided a platform for Yu to make his announcement? It was Sony. The primary platform the game was announced for, and funded by consumers on kickstarter was PS4. How did we get to this present state where the game performs as if the ps4 version is an afterthought ported by some subpar studio for as cheap as possible? I think it's unacceptable in the state it's in.

I have a pc that I built last August so if I buy this game for pc (maybe for $10) I know my rig will handle it but why is there such a discrepancy between the two versions? It's a real shame we ended up with a game that performs so poorly, and has the worst pop-in I've seen since I think Halo 2 in 2004? It's not a technically impressive game by any means so was it just a lack of polish and optimization, where performance relies solely on the capabilities of newer hardware?

 

[KiddMarine]

 

[iknifaugood]

Technicially, it's a disaster.

I'm gonna go ahead and actually defend S3 because I think that it's a far more polished and bug free game than even a lot of AAA releases (have you played Fallen Order?). Even the FF7 remake has texture and LOD issues on PS4. If you're talking about tech exclusively in terms of performance, glitches, and bugs, then I think it's pretty hard to complain about S3. Yes there's some pop in and the shadow drawing is ridiculously close to the camera, but this is pretty much the only time you'll hear me say, considering the budget they had, it's in really good shape.

3 is so consistent with 1 and 2, its hard to dislike it, if you loved the others.

No it's not. I played S1 and 2 when they were released, S2 is my favorite game ever, and I played the HD remakes days before I played S3. S3 is so fundamentally different from not only what I imagined Shenmue 3 would be, but what I love about the series, that I'm honestly curious how anyone could consider it a worthy follow up to S2. I played S3 after 20 years of waiting and I felt nothing; that's my problem with the game in a nutshell.

 

[spud1897]

Technicially, it's a disaster.
In terms of focus, I think it's all over the place.
Storywise, it's little tiny, minuscule bits of story stretched out for faux-longevity.

I think what I said is fair.

It's been a long time since I've played a game as bad as Shenmue 3. That month long break didn't help either because I played some good games in that period, and coming back to this mess makes everything stand out even more.

I came to the realization that the only positive thing I can say about the game is it might be acceptable as a walking simulator, in the sense that it might be most interesting just as a world to walk around in and observe. I like walking sims and have played a lot of them. But, any time you're given a "mission" or goal, it's really just busy work that leads to nothing but more busy work.

And going back to the technical aspect of the game, I want to say something about the state of the ps4 version, and the alleged state of the pc version.

Go back to E3 2015 and who provided a platform for Yu to make his announcement? It was Sony. The primary platform the game was announced for, and funded by consumers on kickstarter was PS4. How did we get to this present state where the game performs as if the ps4 version is an afterthought ported by some subpar studio for as cheap as possible? I think it's unacceptable in the state it's in.

I have a pc that I built last August so if I buy this game for pc (maybe for $10) I know my rig will handle it but why is there such a discrepancy between the two versions? It's a real shame we ended up with a game that performs so poorly, and has the worst pop-in I've seen since I think Halo 2 in 2004? It's not a technically impressive game by any means so was it just a lack of polish and optimization, where performance relies solely on the capabilities of newer hardware?

I have to disagree on the technical aspect. Compare it to many AAA or AA releases and you will find it stands up in terms of a lack of bugs and general issues. The pop-in on PS4 (more so on base I'm told) is an issue but given that's the only real issue I fail to see the problem, other than a sometimes unsteady frame-rate which isn't that much of a problem. It's probably down to optimization/running out of time.

I'm not quite sure what your assessment of a mess of a game is but there's plenty out there with far worse technical and story aspects than Shenmue III. Hell the reviews never make comment on the technical stuff barring the animations, which we know are stiff. Plus if the game were as broken as your view suggests there's not a chance it would have averaged 6.8 on Metacritic.

I take the issues around the story, there isn't enough meat, I can also understand the grinding concerns (though personally I liked the mini-games) but technically it isn't any worse than what is on the market currently.

 

[Thomasina]

I'm gonna go ahead and actually defend S3 because I think that it's a far more polished and bug free game than even a lot of AAA releases (have you played Fallen Order?). Even the FF7 remake has texture and LOD issues on PS4. If you're talking about tech exclusively in terms of performance, glitches, and bugs, then I think it's pretty hard to complain about S3. Yes there's some pop in and the shadow drawing is ridiculously close to the camera, but this is pretty much the only time you'll hear me say, considering the budget they had, it's in really good shape.

I can't play every game. I can only go by what I've played.

When I was in Bailu, I thought it was weird that when you approach someone it takes several seconds for the interaction icons to appear. Seemed like an odd thing.

And then when I got to Niaowou it all made sense because you can't interact with someone that isn't there. In Niaowou it not only takes time for the icons to change, but it takes several seconds for npcs to load. So when you arrive to interact with someone, that person is a ghost; they aren't there yet. So I realized that the icons load slowly because the npcs load slowly, and it would be weird(er) to start a conversation with someone you can't see yet.

Niaowou is at times a ghost town. I've never seen that in a game before.

 

[Thomasina]

Hell the reviews never make comment on the technical stuff barring the animations, which we know are stiff. Plus if the game were as broken as your view suggests there's not a chance it would have averaged 6.8 on Metacritic.

A review that doesn't mention the ghost town pop-ins and the poor framerate can be disregarded, imo.

I have no issue with animations that aren't great. For me the priorities are performance and immersion. Small stuff I can overlook.

 

[spud1897]

A review that doesn't mention the ghost town pop-ins and the poor framerate can be disregarded, imo.

I have no issue with animations that aren't great. For me the priorities are performance and immersion. Small stuff I can overlook.

You'd be disregarding around 90% of the reviews then.

I'm not saying it's not odd it is and should be better than that but for me it's not a huge problem. I'd place it as relatively minor having played Fallen Order after Shenmue III.

I've not played on PC yet but I'm told it's better and also theres a mod for more NPCs to load in which is cool.

 

[Thomasina]

You'd be disregarding around 90% of the reviews then.

I base my interests more on footage than I do on reviews so I'd be willing to do that. I haven't read any S3 reviews and probably won't, but if a review makes no mention of performance, then what exactly are they reviewing?

I've also seen the npc mod for pc. Would have to try it out for myself before making any judgements. Once it hits steam it'll be interesting to see what more mods come out for it.

 

[code l name]

I'm gonna go ahead and actually defend S3 because I think that it's a far more polished and bug free game than even a lot of AAA releases (have you played Fallen Order?). Even the FF7 remake has texture and LOD issues on PS4. If you're talking about tech exclusively in terms of performance, glitches, and bugs, then I think it's pretty hard to complain about S3. Yes there's some pop in and the shadow drawing is ridiculously close to the camera, but this is pretty much the only time you'll hear me say, considering the budget they had, it's in really good shape.

Yes it’s clear even though Unreal Engine 4 is extremely versatile and has some amazing built in suite of effects, it can struggle on consoles given some of the issues we’ve seen across developers and genres. I mean as you correctly pointed out two huge triple A productions in Jedi Fallen Order and FF7 remake, both of which use UE4 suffer from framerate drops, stutters, freezes and LOD issues. And in the former case lots and lots of bugs.

While I still think a stable 30FPS for consoles would have much more preferable, given that much larger studios struggled with a whole host of issues (admittedly while pushing visually much more demanding games) the fact the finished games had such few bugs, few freezes is quite an achievement despite some technical shortcomings.

 

[iknifaugood]

I can't play every game. I can only go by what I've played.

When I was in Bailu, I thought it was weird that when you approach someone it takes several seconds for the interaction icons to appear. Seemed like an odd thing.

And then when I got to Niaowou it all made sense because you can't interact with someone that isn't there. In Niaowou it not only takes time for the icons to change, but it takes several seconds for npcs to load. So when you arrive to interact with someone, that person is a ghost; they aren't there yet. So I realized that the icons load slowly because the npcs load slowly, and it would be weird(er) to start a conversation with someone you can't see yet.

Niaowou is at times a ghost town. I've never seen that in a game before.

I played it on PC and I only encountered minor "not able to interact" issues; of the videos I've seen on PS4 it seems worse but nothing too bad. Again, FF7 on PS4 suffers from delays when trying to interact with objects and NPCs as well but it's easily overlooked. Niaowu has much bigger problems than the number of NPCs, let's just put it that way.

Yes it’s clear even though Unreal Engine 4 is extremely versatile and has some amazing built in suite of effects, it can struggle on consoles given some of the issues we’ve seen across developers and genres. I mean as you correctly pointed out two huge triple A productions in Jedi Fallen Order and FF7 remake, both of which use UE4 suffer from framerate drops, stutters, freezes and LOD issues. And in the former case lots and lots of bugs.

While I still think a stable 30FPS for consoles would have much more preferable, given that much larger studios struggled with a whole host of issues (admittedly while pushing visually much more demanding games) the fact the finished games had such few bugs, few freezes is quite an achievement despite some technical shortcomings.

It's been my experience as a UE4 dev (I started around 4.3) that Epic basically only updates the engine with stuff they need. If it's not in Fortnite or Gears of War, don't expect them to update it. UE4 still has horrible 2D support, basically making Unity the de facto 2D game engine. S3 didn't really try to do anything outside the engine's limitations which is why it's so stable.

 

[Thomasina]

I finished it this morning.

A lot was crammed in to the final moments. I feel like 85% of the story was saved for the end. The end was great, I just wish the story had been more spread out throughout the entirety of the game rather than the whole game being casual meandering and padding.

The whole intrigue and mystery that captured me with S1 and S2 doesn't happen until the final moments of S3. I feel like the only consequential story elements are the discovering the history of the mirrors (even though that was disappointing and barebones) and then the ending. Everything in between was filler for me.

The most intriguing and mysterious moment of the game for me was the guy with the long silver hair standing with Landi. When I saw him, it captured me. For a moment, I felt what the previous games made me feel: Who is he? What's his story? Will I fight him now or in a future scenario? I was fascinated by him. And then he was turned out to be a joke when Ren stands in front of him, unimpressed, and then knocks him out with one kick. Well, that killed that intrigue way too fast.

The qtes ruined the other two guys at the end for me. I've still not adapted to the quickness of the qtes so everytime I've encountered one, I have to repeat and memorize. Still dumbfounded qtes were executed so poorly.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

Yeah, the ending pleasantly surprised me, especially since what I read on the forum regarding the ending was mostly negative. I actually felt the cutscene direction and character models met my expectations during that sequence. I still have no idea why you take out three henchmen with simplistic QTEs instead of actually fighting them.

 

[spud1897]

Yeah, the ending pleasantly surprised me, especially since what I read on the forum regarding the ending was mostly negative. I actually felt the cutscene direction and character models met my expectations during that sequence. I still have no idea why you take out three henchmen with simplistic QTEs instead of actually fighting them.

I wonder if it was partly because, in my view, it wouldn't have done justice to their fighting styles using the fighting engine? You do get some differences in styles etc but the general feel is the same for me. Not that I minded but that might be a reason?

 

[24Nathan]

@Thomasina I can respect everything you just said, and agree with some of it. I wish the tone you just used here was more prevalent than the "I have nothing positive to say about this game" and "my views don't need to be challenged" stuff.

Regarding the baddies at the end...how is defeating them with a QTE sequence different than the black suits leading up to the Yellow Head rooftop? Because of the way they are dressed and look? We defeated Terry, Chai, Dou Niu, and Ge (Mr. Muscles) with QTEs....not to mention a ton of lesser Yellow Head thugs, the Poison Brothers, Mad Angels, sailors...it's not exactly a radical idea that we defeat three more elaborately dressed henchmen with a QTE sequence.

Keep in mind, we still don't know why Lan Di is essentially chilling in Niaowu. At the top of an old castle in what is Niao Sun's territory. These three don't necessarily pass off as elite Lan Di bodyguards to me, unlike the men in black suits in Shenmue I who were able to hold Ryo back very easily.

 

[ShenSun]

Love the end sequence with lan di. My boy, ryo just walked straight up to lan di, pointing at him and demanded a fight. Gotta respect that.

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.

 

[Dietsoap]

Glad you're enjoying the game for a 3rd time. I will experience my 3rd play on PC (1st time on PC) when I go through 1-3 back to back sometime soon. Might even crack on with some of it today. Bailu is for me the best section of Shenmue III. There's something about it that pulls you in and makes you want to spend your time there, taking part in daily life.

I try not to replay any game I really like more than once per year these days, so as to avoid burning out and ruining them for myself. It would put my second playthrough of S3 right around the Steam release with cheevos, which is super convenient. Lord knows my addict brain was sorely missing those delicious, delicious cheevos on EGS.

Still though, 7 months is a long ways away, and the game really has a way of pulling you in like you said about Bailu.

 

[Thomasina]

Regarding the baddies at the end...how is defeating them with a QTE sequence different than the black suits leading up to the Yellow Head rooftop? Because of the way they are dressed and look? We defeated Terry, Chai, Dou Niu, and Ge (Mr. Muscles) with QTEs....not to mention a ton of lesser Yellow Head thugs, the Poison Brothers, Mad Angels, sailors...it's not exactly a radical idea that we defeat three more elaborately dressed henchmen with a QTE sequence.

Sounds like you think of those 3 as more generic thugs. They were some of the coolest designs in Shenmue 3. I'd hope they're not just generic thugs like the tall skinny dork in Niaowou.

But that also leads to a concern I have. To what extent has the vision of S3 been compromised? And furthermore, to what extent is the original vision of the remainder of the story compromised to fit into this smaller budget and scope?

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.

There's also the potential for those 3 guys to accompany Landi in later games, but is Landi really going to surround himself with bodyguards that get taken down with single blows? Feels like something was disconnected there with those 3.

 

[Thomasina]

I've got a couple questions, too.

When you first get to the castle pier, you're met by a shop keeper who asks you to find 3 items. That seemed like one of the most random things in the game to me. Anyone know the relevance of it?

I'm not satisfied with the new Niao Sun design. The oversized boobs and red hair weren't really fitting. Anyone think we'll get to see her in her original form in the next game? I remember being mystified by her original design, it was way more brooding and sinister than this current iteration. I wish they'd kept the original style.

 

[Thomasina]

Another question, this one goes quite a ways back.

There's a boy at a mask shop in Niaowou. He wants Ryo to buy him a rare capsule toy outside of the Hotel. I bought upwards of 110+ capsule toys from that machine and never got the rare item the boy requested. I imagine that side quest expired over time, and I also lost interest in it.

110 capsules from that machine is no exaggeration. I think I tried again and went up to about 120 - 130, but I can't remember the final number.

How exactly was I supposed to get that rare capsule toy and complete that side mission?

Me buying so many capsules at once was a sort of test to see what kind of odds it took to get it. Looks like the I had zero chance of finding that toy without some other solution.