I think that the broader point being made, that NPCs have varying visual quality and conversations are rough around the edges, and, more importantly, that the conversations are devoid of substance, is a fair one. Does he cherry pick the worst examples? Yes. But he also prefaces this by saying that talking to NPCs is the breadcrumb trail Ryo must follow to progress the story, so the issues here carry more weight because of how much you need to engage with this system.
As stated; I have no issue with his broader point and am in no way trying to argue that the game's localization or dialogue was good. Where I take issue is that it is presented here as being some nonsensical mess throughout the entire game, which isn't the case.
Sure it's serviceable and you can play the game and get the jist of the story just fine. But if you've played many open world games the dialogue and localization are definitely going to strike the average person as weird. I have no idea what the takeaway for someone who hasn't played Shenmue will be but, I mean, it's not like he's recommending the game, so he's not obligated to give people the impression that they should play it.
A good review shouldn't be about whether or not the reviewer 'recommends' the game or not implicitly, but providing the audience with the information to make the choice for themselves. In this instance, the title alone has given a pretty clear indication as to what the tone of the video is going to be, so the content should be about justifying that opinion. If he needs to cherry-pick examples to back up the criticisms that form this opinion, then I'd argue that the he knows that the criticisms themselves aren't strong enough.
Take for instance my example of the food system: in this scenario they will either have had a meal together or not, or a great meal that would give Ryo a buff. Now their interaction can be a sort of "ranking" of how you did during the previous day as well as Shenhua giving Ryo a task for the day. Shenhua can tell Ryo she's disappointed that he didn't join her for dinner, or thank him for getting all the ingredients and he can compliment her cooking and say he feels great etc. This gives the conversation purpose, rather than just existing for their own sake. In S1, Ryo is scolded by Ine San if he stays up too late and gets an allowance every day, they do not exchange pleasantries every day like some Japanese version of the Room.
I liked your idea as to how the food system might have been better and it would have had the added side-effect of providing a reason for Ryo to return home so early, but if I'm honest, I have little interest in discussing how the game might have been better as that ultimately serves no purpose. Discussion on how the system could be improved in future games could be productive, but this isn't really the place for that. Just as an aside though, he does sit down and eat with Shenhua after returning home on several occasions (well, they sit around a table with food on it).
(EDIT) On the subject of ignoring patches, there are several publications that don't update their review scores to reflect patch updates. I think it's certainly worth mentioning if it's something that greatly affects one's outlook on the game (I doubt the ability to skip dialogue would suddenly make him not think the game is terrible) but I understand that if the review is one's experience of the game, patches shouldn't change that.
The vast majority of reviews are written around the launch window before patches have been released meaning that including their content in the review requires the reviewer to actively go back and replay the game and then make changes to their review. Some do it - and I think a lot of it is down to a publisher requesting that they do so if the patch is likely to alter the score given to the game - but this is an entirely different situation.
Here the reviewer does not have to go back and replay the game, nor does he have to go back and make changes to his review. He just has to be honest about the game he played. Instead we see a conscious choice to ignore the patch because doing so allows him to more easily portray the game as some terrible waste of time.
His point isn't that they're the same cutscene, he even says "it may sound like I'm being pedantic" because he's using all the gameplay interruptions that occur from simply waking up in the morning to leaving your house as an indicator of how everything in S3 is, as he puts it, "a struggle". He's looking at it from the point of view that he has an objective and in the process of trying to complete that objective there are a bunch of little annoyances nagging at him that pile up (and is his segue into talking about the stamina).
That might be his broader point, but being forced to watch 'the same cut-scene' repeatedly is one of the criticisms used to support that argument. That he again chooses to mislead viewers here suggests that he knew that the point itself was flimsy.
On this note, I find it a little funny that he bemoans Yu's failure to learn from modern games, because a lot of modern games are known for doing this sort of thing all the time. Modern game designers seem to love throwing random events and side quests into the path of the player to distract them from the main story-line - and whilst this is something we do see in Shenmue - it's usually done in an incredibly non-intrusive way. Compared to something like RDR2, I'd say that the 30 seconds or so of Shenhua each morning (most of which is skipable) is nothing.
Yes, 20 years ago. Game animation has come a long way, there's no need for everything to be done in a cutscene anymore.
You're right. Not everything
needs to be a cutscene, but I fail to see how something being presented with a cutscene makes it inherently bad.
Let's take the shoe removal cutscene as an example. The first time I saw it, it felt like a very obvious throwback to the Yokosuka section of the game and made me realize that this was the first time in months that Ryo had really been in a proper 'home' environment (I know technically he stayed with Xiuying for a few days, but I don't feel they came close to really capturing that 'home' feeling).
To me at least, them drawing attention to it through the use of a cutscene helped to evoke a reaction in me that likely would not have occurred had it played out through the game engine. It may be subjective, but I think doing so was worth it for the sake of a second or so of loading at the beginning of the cutscene.
Why is that the idea? I don't think the Plinkett reviews of the Star Wars Prequels are any less valid because they don't talk about the positive aspects. Let's not forget, these are videos that have to be entertaining first and foremost.
The issue is that the Plinkett reviews of the Star Wars prequels present the negative criticism in an honest way, whilst this review cherry-picks examples, exaggerates issues and, in some cases, straight up lies in an attempt to present the game as something that it is not. It is misleading by design.
I agree with this, you definitely won't come away from this video with an impartial impression but he never claims to offer that. That being said, neither would you if you watch the Plinkett reviews or most other critiques on YT.
It is presented as a review. In that sense I think that the reasonable expectation is that, at the very least, what he's saying is true. You could certainly make the argument that the majority of his criticism is grounded in truth (which I do believe that it is), but I think that the end result has strayed too far from that truth to still be considered 'honest'.
