My Shenmue 3 impressions (5 hours in)

Got the game two days early. (Shopto.net is the best). All I can say is that so far I am loving this game to pieces, everything about it is interesting and beautiful! It couldn't be more Shenmue if it wanted to be, so far it's everything that a Shenmue fan could dream of. It's way to early to say what I really think of the game but this is truly 'Shenmue III' so far.

I sure hope others get to play this game early but it will be worth the wait, believe me on that one.
 
Anybody playing on regular PS4 ?

So far I'm impressed how good it looks, I was expecting far worse.

Dynamic resolution for sure (sub 1080p), but otherwise game looks better than on PC with medium settings.

my PS4 sounds like a Jet about to take off :ROFLMAO:

EDIT: Actually looks more like a "custom" setting the more I play, sometimes better than on medium (trial version) sometimes worse, looks like game uses the bokeh effect more than on trial, helps with hiding lower quality assets from a distance, pop ups are more noticeable, framerate 30-ish fps, frequent drops but overall enjoyable.

1.02 Fixed the music reseting when you take a trifoliate orange
 
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How do you guys see this reviewing with people who are not familiar or already fans of the series? Is the “craftsmanship” at least solid, in that it’s not going to get slammed for being a buggy, incoherent mess?
 
Shenhua-Nani? said:
I'll give my first impressions as well, it's nothing story related but i'll put in spoilers anyway:

Money is a non issue because you can save scum the dice game, although i couldn't for the life of me find the place to exchange tokens for prizes.
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I am not sure where you are in Bailu but eventually you will be able to visit PNda market and the pawnshop and exchange tokens shop can be found there
 
My stance has always been and will remain 4/10. Its Shenmue. It plays like Shenmue, unfortunately the average player feels like such gameplay is outdated these days.

Also apart from the intro, cutscene animation is kinda janky. Most noticable when Ryo and Shenhua are walking together but still elsewhere as well. Its like the cinematographer just up and quit after the intro lol.

Dialogue is also sometimes very stilted with NPCs or Ryo seemingly talking about things that entirely random or answering questions that werent even asked. Its weird.

Some characters have great models, others do not. Theres a lack of cohesion that can kinda break immersion. Shenmue 1 & 2 had outlier characters as well but they still looked like they came from the same world.

The 6 or so hours of the game I have seen have been great, if you are uo for Shenmue but you can still see the budget.
 
danielmann861 said:
60 fps or 30 fps on PS4/PS4 Pro? My one question.
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I’m playing on Pro and scouring menu and I don’t see any enhancements for machine. It’s 30 FPS with very occasional stutters and few framerate drops that isn’t very noticeable.

mjqjazzbar said:
How do you guys see this reviewing with people who are not familiar or already fans of the series? Is the “craftsmanship” at least solid, in that it’s not going to get slammed for being a buggy, incoherent mess?
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It’s very much a Shenmue game, it’s predecessors DNA is apparent in most aspects of the title. So I can see those looking for instant gratification and modern way points turned off but how relatively slow the games opening is. I think it can appeal to non-fans but that appeal will be limited.

Technically I have experienced a few stutters and dips but overall performance is pretty solid at 30FPS, draw-in and pop in is also kept to a minimum on PS4 Pro. It seems very polished the only issue I faced was I got stuck behind a house with bamboo trees unable to move. It forced me to reload my save which resolved the issue and I haven’t encountered any other bugs to date.

Technically I think people will be very impressed by the visuals. I think the largest criticism will be towards relatively simple facial animation. Don’t get me wrong there’s times Ryo will look surprised or his face will contort but it’s clear it doesn’t have budget to match AAA games in this space as far as facial articulation goes. It’s not really new but I can see that criticism being levelled,
 
ShenmueTree said:
My stance has always been and will remain 4/10. Its Shenmue. It plays like Shenmue, unfortunately the average player feels like such gameplay is outdated these days.

Also apart from the intro, cutscene animation is kinda janky. Most noticable when Ryo and Shenhua are walking together but still elsewhere as well. Its like the cinematographer just up and quit after the intro lol.

Dialogue is also sometimes very stilted with NPCs or Ryo seemingly talking about things that entirely random or answering questions that werent even asked. Its weird.
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Strange, i didn’t notice that at all, and while cutscenes aren’t AAA they still feel good.

What bothers me more and is Kinda breaking the flow of the game is how you can’t skip dialogue even with random npcs.

Or to be more accurate, the game will let you skip dialogue only after you’ve talked to that npc at least once, with the counter resetting every day (or any time you have to ask something new).

Having to listen every day to the whole dialogue even with a random shop owner gets boring pretty quickly, i hope they patch it soon.
 
That doesn’t sound like a 4/10 to me. Like I said, 4 and below is for mechanically broken games.
 
Shenhua-Nani? said:
Or to be more accurate, the game will let you skip dialogue only after you’ve talked to that npc at least once, with the counter resetting every day (or any time you have to ask something new).

Having to listen every day to the whole dialogue even with a random shop owner gets boring pretty quickly, i hope they patch it soon.
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Yes this is something that definitely bothered me too. When I wanted to quickly spar, fight or chop wood having to listen to the same dialogue was a little inconvenient. As you said it’s odd as you have the option to skip it once you’ve spoken to character once but it appears to reset daily.
 
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Some characters have great models, others do not. Theres a lack of cohesion.

[/QUOTE]

It might be because a subcontractant company was hired to create a part of these NPC. The females and old folks look very good, very Shenmuish and Chinese, whereas many of the male characters look very lame and not even Chinese, rather Nepalese or Indians (This company is actually based in India)...
 
I think the ones that are not that good are probably the ones done in house, but whatever.
They have improved quite a bit from the beginning (I still hate muscle guy, looks like an anabolic filled drag queen that also likes to inject botox in his spare time).
 
i just had a quick look on youtube, somone is posting a walkthrough. one task made me laugh.. it was pretty good

gotta say im not 100%% impressed with the fighting though.. do character models really just slowly lay down when they are defeated? imo they should fix this in an update asap.

clip
 
Question for those playing: how is the dialogue quality (writing) compared to S1/S2?
The backer trial had some nonsensical dialogue with some of the NPCs, I wonder if it's prevalent in the full game?
 
Rikitatsu said:
Question for those playing: how is the dialogue quality (writing) compared to S1/S2?
The backer trial had some nonsensical dialogue with some of the NPCs, I wonder if it's prevalent in the full game?
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At least one line of dialogue was altered, when you first speak to Guanzhong in his shop, Ryo reacts saying this :

"Did you say snake... tonic ?"

Now Ryo says something different, but it might be because I already have the 3 Snake Tonic from the Day 1 edition.
 
Dietsoap said:
UK is like the most pro-Shenmue country on the planet, so it would definitely be a bit silly. At this point though, I'm wondering if even the UK embargo is false. Is he our only source on this? He says he didn't sign anything at least, so I wonder if it's possible he took a suggestion to take his time with the review as an embargo.
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Q
mjqjazzbar said:
4/10 for me is something that’s mechanically broken. That’s not what that sounds like to me.
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When Death Stranding, one of the mpst technically impressive games this gen can get 3/10 or 4.5/10 then Shenmue has no chance.
 
Shenhua-Nani? said:
Strange, i didn’t notice that at all, and while cutscenes aren’t AAA they still feel good.

What bothers me more and is Kinda breaking the flow of the game is how you can’t skip dialogue even with random npcs.

Or to be more accurate, the game will let you skip dialogue only after you’ve talked to that npc at least once, with the counter resetting every day (or any time you have to ask something new).

Having to listen every day to the whole dialogue even with a random shop owner gets boring pretty quickly, i hope they patch it soon.
Click to expand...


Ouch, yea I could see that getting annoying real fast, especially if it resets it every day rather or not NPCs have anything new to say.
 
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