I think your view that most gamers lack knowledge and taste is a little elitist. Liking Shenmue doesn’t make us any better than anybody else and it’s perhaps this misguided viewpoint that makes others take joy in trashing the Shenmue series.
Video games have traditionally been seen as a form of escapism, allowing players to travel to new worlds and do things that are either impossible, unsafe or illegal in real life. In that sense, Shenmue has always gone against the grain.
As beautiful as the original Shenmue games were for their time, the world they depicted was one that was a true to life reflection of the world outside the player’s front door. Players didn’t fly around, shoot guns or travel into space, instead spending the bulk of the game walking around asking people the same questions over and over again and working a menial, repetitive job.
The game had elements from multiple genres, making it difficult to satisfy potential players who were used to being locked in to a single genre. For a player to enjoy all that Shenmue has to offer, they needed to like fighting games, adventure games and be open to the mundane tasks the game expected of players.
With all these things in mind, I don’t think it should come as a surprise that Shenmue failed to achieve commercial success. If I’d never played the game and somebody explained the gameplay loop to me, I probably wouldn’t be too excited about playing it either.
.
