SHENMUE III - REVIEW ROUNDUP

It’s not. The owner of the site went to school with some of my friends and I was surprised to see him there. Iirc, he freelances for some other publications and so may have already reviewed it elsewhere hence why it may have been passed on to someone else. Unfortunately, this review reads like its main aim is to drive traffic to the site rather than offer any insight into the game. A little disappointing. I’m guessing traffic from this site alone has probably already doubled their monthly viewership though, so in that sense, it worked.



If they wanted to drive traffic from their site, I doubt they'd rely on Shenmue III of all the games out there.
In fact, RPG Site is already on Metacritic so yeah... They didn't waited for Shenmue 3's review to get traffic. And people are entitled to their opinions. Berating an entire publication because "it'll drop the score on metacritic" is rather lame.
 
If they wanted to drive traffic from their site, I doubt they'd rely on Shenmue III of all the games out there.
In fact, RPG Site is already on Metacritic so yeah... They didn't waited for Shenmue 3's review to get traffic. And people are entitled to their opinions. Berating an entire publication because "it'll drop the score on metacritic" is rather lame.


Don't worry too much for them.
Questioning the credibility of their review on a fans forum causes less damage than the one they are causing by giving such a low score to a game that doesn't deserve such treatment, despite not being perfect.
After all, 3/10 is the absolute lowest score registered for Shenmue 3.
 
If they wanted to drive traffic from their site, I doubt they'd rely on Shenmue III of all the games out there.
In fact, RPG Site is already on Metacritic so yeah... They didn't waited for Shenmue 3's review to get traffic. And people are entitled to their opinions. Berating an entire publication because "it'll drop the score on metacritic" is rather lame.
I really couldn’t care less bout the Metacritic rating at this point, nor do I think that many people will be going to a niche site that probably has less traffic than my dog’s instagram page for their view on a game that’s nearly two months old. I don’t much care if people criticize the game as long as it’s fair and the reviewer is able to adequately articulate and justify why they scored the game the way they did, but to this end, the reviewer failed miserably.

One of their main criticisms was that the game didn’t have a map that told them where to go. Iirc correctly, the site was set up based on a mutual love of Final Fantasy games. These games have traditionally not held the players hand with waypoints telling them where to go and what to do nor do I expect the FFVII remake to add this in (nor should it). It seems very much like they are jumping on the ‘Shenmue hasn’t learned from the last 20 years bandwagon’ and are using something trivial to justify doing so.

Anybody with even a basic understanding of the history of the series would know that exploration and finding what to do next is a big part of what makes Shenmue what it is. Criticizing the game for not completing the story when YS said from the start that that was never his intention also seems pretty unfair and something that most people would applaud rather than use to dunk on a crowdfunded project.

Then there’s this section:
You need to find what happened to Yuan and the other stonemasons, but you also need to work at the local market to earn money. There’s a woman clearly in danger from some thugs, but you need to go and pick that cinnamon in the field over there.
At no point does Ryo ‘work at the local market’ (especially not the market place on Vender Avenue as the accompanying picture suggests) nor is there ever a point when the game forces you to go and pick cinnamon while women are in danger (ignoring the fact that all side quests are optional, I can only assume that the part of the game they’re talking about is the first time that you encounter the 2 thugs, at which point in the game neither of the two Bailu herb quests are even close to available).

This (especially the latter) goes far beyond exaggeration and to me is either blatant lies to make the game sound bad or the writing of somebody who played five minutes and got bored.

Even if there was a point in the game where one of the side quests overlapped with such an event, bashing the game for it would be akin to shitting on FFVII for letting the player explore the world before going to the final battle with Sephiroth. I mean, that’s literally the whole point of sidequests and with this critique, the ‘reviewer’ is basically saying that sidequests are bad and Shenmue 3 is bad because it has them (of course it would also be bad if it didn’t have sidequests).

There are plenty of valid criticisms of the game. I could probably write a few pages and yet the reviewer instead makes stuff up. This, the fact that the only stuff she talks about can be gleaned from the first ten minutes of play time and the complete lack of screenshots really suggests that she didn’t bother to play the game (or anywhere close to all of it).

The score being 3 (literally the lowest score given to the game by any publication) and the reviews failure to justify the low score suggests to me that it was intentionally the lowest and she made up some criticisms and threw them together with some found in other reviews because she was too lazy to play the game and find them for herself. I could be wrong, but I call em how I see em.

Edit: I can’t not comment on how bad the writing is. It’s like commas were 90% off in the January sales and she bought up every one they had in stock. This review is embarrassing and not because it’s critical of the game, but because it’s absolutely atrocious in almost every possible way.
 
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Wow, FUCK that score. I know it's just someone's opinion but 3/10 is the kind of scores givesn to broken shit games like Big Rigs.

I reluctantly update the list...

EDIT: SERIOUSLY hope that site isn't weighted heavy or our score will drop to 68. Fuck RPG Site. I wouldn't be mad at a 5/10 because I can understand it. But 3? That's not right.
 
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Can we please stop saying fuck an entire site every time 1 guy gives a score we dont agree with, they aren't the only ones that work there. And vice versa stop putting everyone that gives it a good score on a pedestal like how people here kept defending niche gamer at all times despite them being run by an actual horrible human being who just got ousted for years of plagiarizing and withholding pay for people hes commissioned.

Like for fucks sakes half a yall arent event combating anything said in the review, just saying the score and getting angry. This is a perfect example of why scores are such a bad thing for reviews, its all anyone focuses on.
 
Can we please stop saying fuck an entire site every time 1 guy gives a score we dont agree with, they aren't the only ones that work there. And vice versa stop putting everyone that gives it a good score on a pedestal like how people here kept defending niche gamer at all times despite them being run by an actual horrible human being who just got ousted for years of plagiarizing and withholding pay for people hes commissioned.

Like for fucks sakes half a yall arent event combating anything said in the review, just saying the score and getting angry. This is a perfect example of why scores are such a bad thing for reviews, its all anyone focuses on.

Well, I would agree with you normally, but a 3/10 :) it's a bit extreme, no? Everyone has its own opinion, but if you're a reviewer, we've to assume you're at least professional.
 
To be fair, I doubt a 3/10 on an obscure site will affect sales two months after release. IGN and Gamespot were much more damning.
 
Can we please stop saying fuck an entire site every time 1 guy gives a score we dont agree with, they aren't the only ones that work there. And vice versa stop putting everyone that gives it a good score on a pedestal like how people here kept defending niche gamer at all times despite them being run by an actual horrible human being who just got ousted for years of plagiarizing and withholding pay for people hes commissioned.

Like for fucks sakes half a yall arent event combating anything said in the review, just saying the score and getting angry. This is a perfect example of why scores are such a bad thing for reviews, its all anyone focuses on.

Many of the game’s design decisions, ...to the lack of a meaningful map to figuring out what to do next, are outdated and obtuse.

I did object on something said in the review. I wouldn't even care about scores. But if websites give scores to the games they do review it seems fair to me to at least be entitled to discuss it. I do agree with you about not being unfair to an entire site because of one review though.
 
Can we please stop saying fuck an entire site every time 1 guy gives a score we dont agree with, they aren't the only ones that work there. And vice versa stop putting everyone that gives it a good score on a pedestal like how people here kept defending niche gamer at all times despite them being run by an actual horrible human being who just got ousted for years of plagiarizing and withholding pay for people hes commissioned.

Like for fucks sakes half a yall arent event combating anything said in the review, just saying the score and getting angry. This is a perfect example of why scores are such a bad thing for reviews, its all anyone focuses on.
Since when are people not allowed to critique the way that somebody does their job?

As a consumer, I rely on gaming publications to give me a fair and balanced opinion in order for me to gage whether or not I might be interested in the product.

Whether or not they like it is down to their personal preference and really isn’t too important providing they’re able to accurately communicate how and why they came to that conclusion as I and other consumers are free to decide (whether or how important) those factors are to us.

When they resort to blatant lies and pad it out with the same cliches we’ve seen in a few other lazy reviews however, this rationale goes out of the window as consumers can no longer make an informed decision based on their review. They’re no longer fulfilling their end of the deal.

What makes it worse, and is arguably the peanut on top of the turd, is that their shoddy review has the potential (albeit extremely unlikely) to impact the future of Shenmue as a series (the reviewer herself acknowledges this in a way) and in turn the livelihoods and careers of those who worked on it.

As for questioning whether they played the game, I think it’s a fair question given the evidence on hand. If you entered your hotel room and found that although the ‘House Keeping Please’ sign had been taken down, the room still looked exactly as you’d left it, you’d have to conclude that either they lied about cleaning the room or that they were terrible at doing their job. Regardless of which it is, they deserve to be called out for it.
 
Since when are people not allowed to critique the way that somebody does their job?

As a consumer, I rely on gaming publications to give me a fair and balanced opinion in order for me to gage whether or not I might be interested in the product.

Whether or not they like it is down to their personal preference and really isn’t too important providing they’re able to accurately communicate how and why they came to that conclusion as I and other consumers are free to decide (whether or how important) those factors are to us.

When they resort to blatant lies and pad it out with the same cliches we’ve seen in a few other lazy reviews however, this rationale goes out of the window as consumers can no longer make an informed decision based on their review. They’re no longer fulfilling their end of the deal.

What makes it worse, and is arguably the peanut on top of the turd, is that their shoddy review has the potential (albeit extremely unlikely) to impact the future of Shenmue as a series (the reviewer herself acknowledges this in a way) and in turn the livelihoods and careers of those who worked on it.

As for questioning whether they played the game, I think it’s a fair question given the evidence on hand. If you entered your hotel room and found that although the ‘House Keeping Please’ sign had been taken down, the room still looked exactly as you’d left it, you’d have to conclude that either they lied about cleaning the room or that they were terrible at doing their job. Regardless of which it is, they deserve to be called out for it.
you just totally ignored my point, I don't care if you dislike the review itself, I care that some of you guys are like "FUCK THIS ENTIRE SITE!!!" over this single review when there's an entire staff of diverse opinions and viewpoints there. There's always going to misfires and I think unless they are outright scamming people or stealing content like nichegamer or something that shouldnt condemn the entire site of people. Rpgsite, for example, has been a site that shined alot of light on really niche games especially ones that never released in the west.
 
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Can we please stop saying fuck an entire site every time 1 guy gives a score we dont agree with, they aren't the only ones that work there. And vice versa stop putting everyone that gives it a good score on a pedestal like how people here kept defending niche gamer at all times despite them being run by an actual horrible human being who just got ousted for years of plagiarizing and withholding pay for people hes commissioned.

Like for fucks sakes half a yall arent event combating anything said in the review, just saying the score and getting angry. This is a perfect example of why scores are such a bad thing for reviews, its all anyone focuses on.

I don't think I've said "fuck that site" to any site before. Also, I never put Niche Gamer on any pedestal. At first I didn't know who they were but I found that out later. I guess I can say, fuck Niche Gamer, too! Maybe I swore a bit when I saw the IGN score.. But at least that review was better written and the score not comparable to Train My Baby Horse Mini Game Collection for Wii. I stand by what I said this time. The review was poorly written and they complain about lack of handholding. I have seen the site pop up every now and then but I haven't seen much that appeals to me. I'm sure it has its good sides. But what am I supposed to say? "Well this review was poorly written, the score is comparable to scores given to broken garbage games, worse than Chicken Shoot for Wii and the site doesn't appeal much to me personally and they hate my favorite game series but Yay RPG Site :D"

There. If you like that site, that's fine. If others do, that's fine as well. If the score given was 4, at least then it wouldn't be comparable to Plumbers Don't Wear Ties for 3DO and I'd probably let them off the hook.

Shenmue III - 3/10

Shenmue3-Win64-Shipping Screenshot 2019.12.29 - 17.44.20.70.png

Chicken Shoot - 3/10

70995-chicken-shoot-screenshot.jpg

In conclusion: I agree scores are stupid. But I also say fuck RPG site for putting such a score on it. If you like them though, more power to you. Ignore this whole post if you do. Also, fuck Niche Gamer. Their review was good but they seem to be awful people, so fuck them too.
 
you just totally ignored my point, I don't care if you dislike the review itself, I care that some of you guys are like "FUCK THIS ENTIRE SITE!!!" over this single review when there's an entire staff of diverse opinions and viewpoints there. There's always going to misfires and I think unless they are outright scamming people or stealing content like nichegamer or something that shouldnt condemn the entire site of people. Rpgsite, for example, has been a site that shined alot of light on really niche games especially ones that never released in the west.
Haha. Quick edit. As you obviously realized shortly after posting, I have to this point only criticized the review and reviewer and I agree with you that ‘Fuck these guys’ is pretty OTT.

That said, having worked as an editor in the past, I’d have been mortified if somebody working beneath me had published something so ham-fisted and ill informed, especially given the access given to the publication by DS and YS.

Any news organization is only as good as the relationship it has with those who provide it with its information. In the case of gaming journalism. publications are just as reliant on devs and publishers as the publishers and devs are on the publications (especially given the vast number of gaming websites these days).

I’m not saying that they should have looked past the very obvious flaws or given the game favorable treatment just because they got a free trip to Monaco, but going into the playthrough with an open mind, an understanding of what the game aimed to accomplish and the circumstances surrounding development should have been a given.

That instead we ended up with a reviewer who clearly had little interest in playing or reviewing the game and seemed to have little to no understanding of the series or development and a review that overlooked many key areas that one would expect to find discussed in a review and replaced them with cliche, spelling mistakes, poor grammar and lies is a bit of a slap in the face.

The editor is responsible for everything his journalists post. I’m not saying ‘fuck him’, nor am I suggesting that any of the staff should ‘get fucked’ (not unless it’s consensual), but I do think this is a textbook example of shitty journalism for which several of the staff are responsible.

Let’s not even get started on the fact that their review is almost two months late. I bet they were on time for their free trip to Monaco though!
 
I was actually surprised by how cheap that site looks. It’s covered in banner ads. I don’t remember it looking like a Geocities page in the past.
 
I was actually surprised by how cheap that site looks. It’s covered in banner ads. I don’t remember it looking like a Geocities page in the past.
One thing RPG Site fails to do is learn from the websites that released in the last 20 years. Many of the site’s design decisions, from the aforementioned banner ads to the lack of a meaningful drop-down menu system to figuring out what to read next, are outdated and obtuse. There is no modernization of mechanics here, which can make RPG Site more frustrating and tedious to browse than it needs to be.
 
Just as I expected, the reviewer who reviewed Shenmue 3 for RPG Site barely touched the game. They picked up a grand total of 3 trophies (‘Babysitter’, ‘Verdant Bridge’s Secret’ and ‘Regular Shopper’) during their time with the game. I’m sorry, but that’s an absolute fucking embarrassment.

Edit: Slow day at work and so I thought I’d do some more digging and this seems to be a pattern with all of her poor reviews. All of the games she reviews badly have 0-10% of trophies unlocked. Whilst I’m not familiar with many of the games, the bulk of the trophy descriptions would indicate that she rarely (if ever) makes it out of the tutorial phase of games she doesn’t like. To her credit (what very little is owed to her), she does actually seem to complete the games that she reviews well (for the most part). It’s sad that this is what passes for journalism these days.
 
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