What did you like about the story? What did you learn? The gameplay was good for the most part but what about the thrilling set pieces from shenmue 2? Walking planks, escaping Beverly hills wharf? Fighting yellow head thugs around wan chai, mysterious xuiying, izumi, Eileen, joy wong, then kowloon, building the relationship with ren, going on buddy cop adventures with ren who is the most charismatic character in the franchise so far. Fighting 3 of the toughest warriors in epic locations in kowloon for money and testing ryos skills, master baihu, yellow head building. And the long cool down journey with Shenhua. Where was all of that in shenmue 3? The biggest story beats was getting good at Kung fu and overcoming random thugs we had no connection to and couldn't hold a candle to dou niu or master baihu or eve. Chunyun tbh we had no story with niao sun at all, ren is cool but we barely do anything with him (could've been a few missions we could've done with him) and we had no cool interesting interactions with characters apart from learning moves and sparring and a couple static conversations. I think I had more of a connection with the master at the dojo next to the arcade than I did with master Bei
How could you not see why people would be dissapointed when you are coming from Shenmue 2 to this. And don't give me the excuse of budget, once you have the assets and mechanics down you tell whatever story you want, eveb if you have to limit the cutscenes to gameplay, how about a chase gameplay scene that leads to a fight if you can't afford another qte chase segment? How about some fun missions where you have to go to all the hangouts of the red snakes, beat them up and make them talk? Not just the 1. How about some Shenhua, Ryo and Ren Co op missions? Not just the last one. How about Ryo and Shenhua hang out at the arcade, maybe you could teach her to play games? Teach her the modem life. I just feel these things can be done without needing to break the budget if you are clever. No need for fancy cutscenes, just dialogue.