If I had one word to describe the end: "nightmare"
I mean in the formal sense of "dream". Everything felt so unreal:
- The atmosphere : ghostly, desolated, bizarre.
- The plot timing. The story evolved as fast as a weird dream, plus the ultimate jump to the Great Wall. The whole segment looked something apart.
- The temple girl and the fat martial artist. What were they doing there? (Probably got the word from Bei, but still, this was unreal as f)
- The Niao Sun twist
- The magnetic presence of Lan Di
- Ryo looked instructed by the devil when he met Lan Di. I found his reaction surprisingly violent and regressive.
- Shenhua being kidnapped felt like the beginning of the nightmare as it deeply changed my perception of Niaowu then. (Great point of the plot)
- The "stronghold of the wicked" line also did pre-influence my mood.
- I'm not even mentioning the Chai's family photo that I missed in my playthrough.
A "nightmare" in the metaphorical sense as well. I mean everything suggested a design mess, a fascinating Titanic:
- QTE instead real battles while the bodyguards looked like original main characters. Horrific waste.
- The fight against backers
- Some unusual clunky animations
- Absurd difficulty (first fights insanely easy, ultimate QTE way too hard)
- Humor badly introduced
- The fear of Shenmue IV and all our long-time theories turning into average canon (non-)story.
I beat the game over my insomnia, in the middle of the night, so it made my experience even more hallucinatory!
I did love the end though. The idea of merciless Ryo entering the Chi You Men Castle to smash up the villains until he met Lan Di was cathartic as hell. The music, the filming, the Chinese architecture with the giant Bhudda in front, the fan service (finally met Niao Sun and Lan Di), that was so epic!
But I felt utterly disgusted at the same time for all the reasons we read there. So it's a very mixed feeling.
The end even led me to spend a sleepless night to keep thinking about it. Yep I'm completely shocked by what happened xD