Random Shenmue III Thoughts

Reprise said:
To be fair to the kid, he looked no older than 20 max and he probably thought he was just making light conversation and being friendly.

It probably didn't occur to him that telling a customer a game they enjoyed is shit is not going to create the best impression on the customer.

I didn't even mention half of it, to be fair. At one point his colleague interjected that they think "it's supposed to look and play that way because it's like a direct continuation of the first two games...[ah, this kid gets it, I think to myself] which came out, like, 12 years ago on the PS2" [my mistake, no he doesn't] I corrected the other assistant that it was 18 years ago and on the Dreamcast, but yeah, basically that's right. So the guy serving me responded with "oh so the lazy devs couldn't think of anything new to do, so basically just thought let's revive a dead series people loved and not even bother updating the graphics for a quick cash grab"
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You know, Dreamcast its older than that kid.

Makes you think about life...
 
On rllmuk, a popular UK forum I post on, Shenmue 3 came in at 24 in the top 50 of the year.

Here's the post (thanks wiper and Benny from rllmuk)

24. Shenmue III



I think we have to accept that whatever dark forces were invoked to get Shenmue III into the world have completely screwed us now for several generations. But was it worth it?



Absolutely. Shenmue III is a love letter to all those fans who had been keeping the dream alive for nearly two decades. It may have lost something of its original series magic in the process of being scaled back to meet its budget, but what has been achieved given those restrictions is nothing short of remarkable.



No other game does domesticity as well as Shenmue, and in the third instalment the pace is deliberately pared back from the second game a bit, with emphasis on pottering about and slowly improving your martial arts through repetition and graft.



On paper that sounds terrible, yet somehow this one central conceit of being gated from story progression, by having to have your own little training montages, somehow makes the process of levelling up actually feel like the gradual organic mastery of a martial art through patience and dedication. This really is the essence of what Yu Suzuki’s series is all about: the revelling in little details often at the expense of the larger picture or even concerns of narrative flow.



For what the game sets out to do, it’s very successful, quirks and all. It’s not for everyone, but then, not all art has to be.





Even Wiper loves it:



"An honest to god sequel to Shenmue II. And I don’t just mean that in the literal sense: this is a true sequel, perfectly adhering to the originals’ sense of pace, their aesthetic, their ideal of focus and depth rather than scale as the core components of an open world. Oh, and the dialogue is exactly as clunky as it ever was, as ever it must be.



Completely out of whack with modern expectations of the open world genre: no handy pop-ups to guide your steps, no omnipresent quest log, no snappy, to-the-point cutscenes; just a lot of meandering and chatting to people, relying on you actually bothering to listen to characters and learn where you can find things. It’s a true breath of fresh air, and shows just what we’ve lost in the move to ever more hand-holdy, self-guiding adventures across massive-but-vacuous environments.



A wonderful, unexpected gem."
 
Down by Law said:
On rllmuk, a popular UK forum I post on, Shenmue 3 came in at 24 in the top 50 of the year.

Here's the post (thanks wiper and Benny from rllmuk)

24. Shenmue III



I think we have to accept that whatever dark forces were invoked to get Shenmue III into the world have completely screwed us now for several generations. But was it worth it?



Absolutely. Shenmue III is a love letter to all those fans who had been keeping the dream alive for nearly two decades. It may have lost something of its original series magic in the process of being scaled back to meet its budget, but what has been achieved given those restrictions is nothing short of remarkable.



No other game does domesticity as well as Shenmue, and in the third instalment the pace is deliberately pared back from the second game a bit, with emphasis on pottering about and slowly improving your martial arts through repetition and graft.



On paper that sounds terrible, yet somehow this one central conceit of being gated from story progression, by having to have your own little training montages, somehow makes the process of levelling up actually feel like the gradual organic mastery of a martial art through patience and dedication. This really is the essence of what Yu Suzuki’s series is all about: the revelling in little details often at the expense of the larger picture or even concerns of narrative flow.



For what the game sets out to do, it’s very successful, quirks and all. It’s not for everyone, but then, not all art has to be.





Even Wiper loves it:



"An honest to god sequel to Shenmue II. And I don’t just mean that in the literal sense: this is a true sequel, perfectly adhering to the originals’ sense of pace, their aesthetic, their ideal of focus and depth rather than scale as the core components of an open world. Oh, and the dialogue is exactly as clunky as it ever was, as ever it must be.



Completely out of whack with modern expectations of the open world genre: no handy pop-ups to guide your steps, no omnipresent quest log, no snappy, to-the-point cutscenes; just a lot of meandering and chatting to people, relying on you actually bothering to listen to characters and learn where you can find things. It’s a true breath of fresh air, and shows just what we’ve lost in the move to ever more hand-holdy, self-guiding adventures across massive-but-vacuous environments.



A wonderful, unexpected gem."
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That last paragraph is everything about a gaming age gone by. Taking the time to get immersed in a game and not have your hand held. Lots of us were privileged to grow up in a gaming era with such creativity and innovation
 
spud1897 said:
That last paragraph is everything about a gaming age gone by. Taking the time to get immersed in a game and not have your hand held. Lots of us were privileged to grow up in a gaming era with such creativity and innovation
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I dont think you can say this is truly gone in a generation where Dark Souls is praised af for the very same reasons and Breath of the Wild getting critical success for dropping the hand holding and such.
 
GhostTrick said:
I dont think you can say this is truly gone in a generation where Dark Souls is praised af for the very same reasons and Breath of the Wild getting critical success for dropping the hand holding and such.
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Agreed but it's certainly not the norm like back in the day. I look back and think (on a personal level) I've been lucky to see games move from 2d to 3d, innovation galore and so many classic games.
 
spud1897 said:
Agreed but it's certainly not the norm like back in the day. I look back and think (on a personal level) I've been lucky to see games move from 2d to 3d, innovation galore and so many classic games.
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I've also been lucky to see that, but let's be honest, for kids like me who grew up with a Sega Megadrive (Yeah, it's Megadrive, not Genesis) and a SNES, I dont spit on more accessibility for younger people. Some shit... Was tough as fuck.
 
GhostTrick said:
I've also been lucky to see that, but let's be honest, for kids like me who grew up with a Sega Megadrive (Yeah, it's Megadrive, not Genesis) and a SNES, I dont spit on more accessibility for younger people. Some shit... Was tough as fuck.
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No save function and having to start the whole damn game over for a hundredth time when you died in the final boss fight... :astonished:
 
In addition to earlier finds of Epic advertising pretty well, a youngin at my work--whom is the prototypical gen Z gamer--says he noticed an ad for Shenmue while he was watching fortnite a few days ago.

He knows about Shenmue because i've been talking him up on Shenmue 3 for my new twitch channel and he stopped by once or twice to see what I was babbling about all the time.
 
You guys are probably seeing these ads a lot more because you're talking about Shenmue often. Having said that, they're still out there and targeting gamers. I wonder if they'll convert people to the game?
 
Tsukuyomimagi99 said:
I swear at this point in Shenmue III, Chobu-chan needs to become Shenmue's official mascot. Also, we need an official Chobu-chan spinoff game with forklift racing. Or take a page from the Sonic Adventure series and raise your own personal Chobu-chan's.
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Eh, I prefer him as a tourist gimmick for Niaowu. I don't want to see him permeate every aspect of the game, it really would take me out of the immersion and doesn't fit Shenmue IMO.
 
If any Rocket League player there, a new free arena has been released to celebrate the Chinese New Year and is quite reminiscent of Shenmue 3 environments. I could even hear a sound specific of Bailu Village.

20200122193344_1s.jpg

20200122192355_1s.jpg

Pro tip: At the game type selection, press Triangle/Y to set the arena as favorite so you have more chance to play inside for random online matches.
 
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