Yes! I was having so much fun up until that point. When collecting the 5000 yuan for the scroll I was excited thinking "now we're finally gonna get to the meat and potatoes parts of the story!" and then I get to Master Bei and realize "oh shit this game is about to end and virtually nothing has happened yet". And then the castle area made it even worse by answering no questions and ending us, story-wise, basically in the same place we were 20 years ago. The fact that it answered literally none of the burning questions and actually introduced a couple crazy new ones is baffling. Yu and Cedric better have a giant rabbit to pull out of their collective hat in the form of an amazing sequel because ending the series like this is worse than if we were eternally stuck in the cave.
I felt the same way. I just finished about 10 min ago and I am at a loss for words. I was loving, LOVING every moment of the game. I spent probably 25 hours on Bailu and a similar amount in Chobu (the Rose Garden fights were awesome to beat - I just was annoyed that I did it so early and when I had to go there for the story, the announcer acted like it was my first time). I even had the money for both the alcohol and scroll when they were introduced. However, once I saw that it was time for the castle, I got super bummed. I went to bed last night after the boat ride to save it for today. I had heard it was a short, disappointing finale, so I wanted to at least savor it a little. I guess I just still had my expectations too high.
My main issue with the game is that the story was too similar in both Bailu and Chobu. I also expected the Lan Di confrontation to be about halfway through the game, as Ryo clearly would not have the skills to beat him. We meet him shortly after arriving in Chobu, get whupped but rescue Yuan, learn a bit more, follow him to where ever, then credits. We could have had a fantastic story with just Bailu and Chobu, but it ultimately felt like the game ended halfway through. From the stories about Shenmue 1’s development, I think it’s clear that Suzuki-san is not the best with planning, so that probably had an impact.
Overall, I’d hesitate to score Shenmue 3 numerically as a whole, but I can divide it up. Bailu was such a great experience, and there’s not much I can complain about there. It was like Yokosuka 2.0, and I honestly think we could have had an entire game in that area if it were expanded a bit. Bailu was easily a 9 or 10 for me.
Chobu was definitely where the cracks started to show for me. Not enough story, too few interactions with Shenhua and especially Ren. I loved the town’s design, but the lack of NPCs was more apparent here. I also didn’t care for how things got gated off. Master Bei didn’t have the same development as Sun, and I think more time should have been spent on him, Hsu, and the shrine maiden (I forgot her name already - pretty design, though). Overall, I’d give it a 7.
Castle area was just not necessary, and I don’t even want to score it. It should not have been included.
My personal feeling is that in terms of non-story content, mechanics, and general “feel,” they nailed the game. The mini games, new training methods, the way new moves still get better animations as they level up, the dialogue options with Shenhua, etc, was all fantastic. It is the basis for an amazing game. However, I think Suzuki-san can get sidetracked easily during development, and his insistence at incorporating every possible “Shenmue-esque” feature took time away from developing the story.
I have no doubt that his original outline for the game would have blown us all away and eliminated the majority of our concerns. But have you ever been writing a paper and as the deadline/page limit approached, you realize you have to narrow the scope? And then you end up having to cut down more than just the ending because now certain elements throughout the paper make no sense within the smaller context. But you are left with have no time to flesh out the existing concepts and you end up with something that feels shallow. I think that’s what happened here. The game should have had a smaller scope from the beginning, rather than a large one that got reduced.
In conclusion, 80% of the game was a 9 or 10/10 for me, with the rest dragging the experience down. If the game aimed to just have Bailu and Chobu, it would have been fantastic. I am still overjoyed with what we got, however.
