Random Shenmue III Thoughts

I was randomly watching Dojo’s play-through of Shenmue 3 and it reminded me of probably the series most clunky quest to date; attempting to guess Mr. Muscles martial art style.


@Peter I would be lying I said if I didn’t find some dark humour as you became more and more exasperated as you continued to fail picking the correct animals. If it’s any consolation I failed 4 times and had to go back to same stores and try process again. I’m curious if you’d think you’d eventually have got it without resorting to looking it up?
 
I failed it 5 times, but wasn't frustrating by it, surprisingly. Just wasn't paying attention to my wrong answers haha.

Once i actually kept track of which got the best respsonse, it was easy. Biggest issue was some of the answers were sort of interchangeable.
 
@Peter I would be lying I said if I didn’t find some dark humour as you became more and more exasperated as you continued to fail picking the correct animals. If it’s any consolation I failed 4 times and had to go back to same stores and try process again. I’m curious if you’d think you’d eventually have got it without resorting to looking it up?

I get the idea, but I dunno. Was it my own stupidity, and needed to sit and think about it all? Not lose my patience? I actually don't mind in game puzzles. Or, was it not telegraphed well? With the lower end performance capture? If I was working on that sequence, I wouldn't have been too worried about not doing an absolute perfect job of mimicking the animal/style, but making sure it doesn't conflict with any other animal. This then confuses the player, since what they could be guessing is potentially correct, but it just isn't.

Again, another issue that would come down to QA and feedback, which may have slacked towards the end of the game (given the other examples such as the Cave comment).
 
I only failed once and it was... Mantis, I think, that I got wrong? (was Mantis even a choice?).

Had I failed a few more times, I would remembered lol. I enjoy in-game puzzles like that as well!
 
Again, another issue that would come down to QA and feedback, which may have slacked towards the end of the game (given the other examples such as the Cave comment).

I liked the concept behind the segment but it failed on execution on multiple fronts. First some of the animation and movements look much more like the wrong animal, in addition some of the wrong answers are legitimate forms themselves i.e. Mantis style.

You combine that with depending on what shop you are in, you don’t get a clear impression when giving the wrong answer (In your case you kept choosing Leopard but had no indication it was completely wrong unlike if you chose Panda and get a condescending answer ) and that results in a lot of trial and error.

Cave comment? Are you referring to the Cliff Temple mistranslation at the end? I’m still shocked QTE’s were rubber stamped in its current state, with timing windows being ridiculously broken.
 
I've found the QTEs more forgiving with each new play through. In retrospect, they alwasy were probably too short, but after doing the same ones for 20 years, we;ve revised memories a bit haha. In fact, the CQTEs in Shen2 DEFINITELY gave me fits as a 13 year old.


Also, the 3 shops with older, more knowledgeable owners were quite obvious to be the right ones to be asking fighting styles. Still asked all 5 for completion's sake :p
 
I've found the QTEs more forgiving with each new play through. In retrospect, they alwasy were probably too short, but after doing the same ones for 20 years, we;ve revised memories a bit haha. In fact, the CQTEs in Shen2 DEFINITELY gave me fits as a 13 year old.

Don’t get me wrong I failed QTE’s in original games but outside of getting confused once or twice with the CQTE’s in Shenmue 2, it always felt fair. Think about sequences like Jimmy chase in Shenmue or Dou Jiang diner in Shenmue 2, you could miss a few QTE’s but still successfully complete the sequence. Then compare that with chase of Red Snakes and outside the broken timing window, the game had instant fail states thus you had no room to complete sequence if simply one error was made.

More to the point, I think Shenmue 3 missed the whole point of QTE’s and what they represent. Instead of providing nicely choreographed moments, showing Ryo’s proficiency as a fighter/martial artist, based on animations made for failing they seemed more interested in turning him into a bumbling, inefficient clutz.
 
The QTEs also don't seem to register an immediate input. How many times have you missed even though you pressed RIGHT as the QTE popped up? It's happened to me many times. They're buggy.

Oddly enough, I had no issue with the animal style thing. I didn't really know what I was doing, but it seems I got lucky and accidentally figured out what to do.
 
The QTEs also don't seem to register an immediate input. How many times have you missed even though you pressed RIGHT as the QTE popped up? It's happened to me many times. They're buggy.

I can concur this also happening to me. I think it’s abundantly clear it wasn’t play tested thoroughly enough because I can’t imagine this issue along with brutally short timing window not being highlighted.
 
I can concur this also happening to me. I think it’s abundantly clear it wasn’t play tested thoroughly enough because I can’t imagine this issue along with brutally short timing window not being highlighted.
The thing I didn't understand is why the QTEs for QTE Title and Excite QTE work exactly the way they always did, but the actual in-game QTEs were butchered like that.
 
The thing I didn't understand is why the QTEs for QTE Title and Excite QTE work exactly the way they always did, but the actual in-game QTEs were butchered like that.

Exactly! When I first pointed out the QTE timing window was broken, handful of people said it was a product of us getting old and slower reaction time and I would always highlight that I had no such similar problems with Excite QTE. It doesn’t make sense you could get high score on super expert, yet not execute single button press on time, even on lowest difficulty (I understand the timing window is same irrespective of difficulty selected).

It’s the one element of the game that bitterly disappointed me.
 
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