Shenmue III - What Happened? ft. Super Eyepatch Wolf

It strikes me that a lot of people want 'realism', but don't want 'realistic'! Sure games are getting bigger and bigger, but it's a false economy as a lot of the world is empty. Give me smaller and more detailed areas with greater depth; this is something that Shenmue and Yakuza are good at.

I also find that gaming has reached a point where there is little innovation anymore; you still get it, but nowadays it's more of refinement than anything else. After all, you can dress up a game as much as you want, but many adventure games is a case of going from A to B with the occasional distraction to do C and D if needed. So for me, it's more about getting lost in a world and this is where games like Shenmue excel.

I'm an inpatient gamer at the best of times; i'm 78 hours into Yakuza LAD and now at a point where i'm trying to fast forward and ram my way through the last bits just to finish it, so when i'm playing a game where I don't mind not doing much and going with the flow, then I know i'm playing something special.
 
I also find that gaming has reached a point where there is little innovation anymore; you still get it, but nowadays it's more of refinement than anything else.
For innovation, you have to look at the low budget indie games sadly. But yeah, for big budget games, they don't try to innovate anymore. They just follow the trends and use mechanics people liked in previous games and that's it.
 
After watching Virtua Bros and Personal Magnus' videos on Shenmue III and contrasting them with Eyepatch Wolf's infamous video, I wonder if popularity or a large number of subscribers changes the content creator. In other words, would Personal Magnus and Virtua Bros be the same humble creators if they had Eyepatch Wolf's subscriber count? Seeing as how some people make their living off of YouTube, it's something to think about.
 
Maybe we should kindly remind them that Shenmue (which paved the way for games like Yakuza) doesn't have the luxury of a AAA budget like Yakuza ;)
 
I hate to be stereotypical, but kids don't really know how lucky they are with technology...or maybe I disagree (if I knew how damaging social media would be, i'd avoid it!) At any rate, most don't understand the history and evolution of games and it's easier to fob something off rather than take the time to learn and understand history.
 
To be fair to older Yakuza fans, most are respectful towards the impact the Shenmue series has.

I think it's generally the younger crowd online who have no clue as to what they talk about.

Or, we love Shenmue even more than RGG (I know there were a bunch of guys on Gfaqs who were bigger 'mue fans like myself).

It isn't even the younger crowd; it's the West.

Before 0 came out, everyone who knew the series (for the most part) loved it and was content with it. Once the west got their hands on 0 and what came after...
 
Or, we love Shenmue even more than RGG (I know there were a bunch of guys on Gfaqs who were bigger 'mue fans like myself).

It isn't even the younger crowd; it's the West.

Before 0 came out, everyone who knew the series (for the most part) loved it and was content with it. Once the west got their hands on 0 and what came after...
I know, right?

I'm also one of the older Yakuza fans before gamers embraced Yakuza 0.

Now, I haven't played 0, but I noticed that a lot of view whores on youtube are magically considering themselves to be gurus of this series. I'm sure the game is great, but you know how these grifters are.
 
Shenmue III is a 7/10 game in every sense of the word and the spread of reviews put it around that mark so i'm tired of these guys making out like it's a 2 or 3/10 game, ragging on low hanging fruit for easy money and dragging down the good name of this franchise with it.
This. It feels very much like they’re trying to change the narrative because ‘Shenmue 3 was a mediocre game’ doesn’t sell anywhere near as well as painting the game as a dumpster fire and it’s creator as a has been conman.

I didn’t watch the video, but I did check out OP’s response and based on the clips he used, it seems like the same disingenuous nonsense we saw in SEPW’s first video.
 
I know, right?

I'm also one of the older Yakuza fans before gamers embraced Yakuza 0.

Now, I haven't played 0, but I noticed that a lot of view whores on youtube are magically considering themselves to be gurus of this series. I'm sure the game is great, but you know how these grifters are.

Before the Dragon Engine games, I put it typically at 3rd best in the series. At this point however, I wouldn't put it above 5th and it definitely isn't in my upper-third of favourite titles either.

There's a shit-ton of side content and Real Estate Island/Nightclub Island are a ton of fun and quirky, but that's basically it for *unique* high points of the game.

- The plot is good, but not that great. Adds a love story that is completely unnecessary, but not as much so as 2.
- You get 4 fighting styles per character, but literally 2 (at the most) are actually practical per character; the rest are useless and not worth your time.
- Get used to a different Majima than what you experienced in all the games prior; he's no longer a crazy maniac, but rather an, "understood softie that is completely the opposite of the character he was established as."

Anyways, I'm getting completely OT now.

I will say that personally, I get much more satisfaction playing 'mue III, than I do 0, even if 0 is the better game on the whole.
 
It doesn't have a AAA budget
It still has more development money and more entries than Shenmue, that's what I was really getting at.
And Sega still develops it in-house.
Those are luxuries Shenmue doesn't have any more.
But yes, I shouldn't have thrown AAA in there. Apologies.
 
Yakuza doesnt get a AAA budget, for real? Even before an entire new dragon engine built from scratch, despite asset recycling, they must have AAA budget for the long storylines...?
 
The very first Yakuza costed like 21 millions dollars. I think it is safe to say that Yakuza nowadays must probably have a bigger budget than that. The opposite would be VERY surprising. Yu Suzuki stated that he believe he had approximately 20 millions dollars for Shenmue 3. To this day, we don't know how true this information really is, and if in these 20 millions, he counts the marketing as well.

So Shenmue 3 had roughly the budget of a 2006 PS2 game (remember, back then, games were cheaper and quicker to develop !). The Yakuza series reuse alot of assets from the previous entries, doesn't have full voice acting for every word for every NPC, doesn't have a day and night cycle, the map is always pretty similar from one game to another etc... etc...

It really is time that people realize that Shenmue 3 was a game with quite a LOW budget (it didn't have even half the budget Shenmue had in the 90s, when, again, games were cheaper and quicker to make). And, comparing to Yakuza, they had to assemble a team from 0, create every piece of the game from scratch (again, Yakuza can now rely one their previous entries).

Shenmue 3 is far from being perfect, and they probably could have done better even with their limited budget, but common guys, it really is time to stop comparing Shenmue 3 to AAA games or even with the same context as Shenmue 1&2, it's not the same context. Shenmue 1&2 were big AAA games, the most expensives games ever even. Shenmue 3 doesn't even have half the budget these games had.

I even saw (not here, obviously) people comparing it to RDR 2 (tbh, I believed it was a troll), RDR 2 has an estimated cost of 800 millions dollars, Shenmue is not even close to that budget.
 
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