Ok, thanks for the clarification. As far as I know, no footage of Baisha has ever been shown and the mechanic Suzuki was envisioning for it sounded way outside the scope of S3, so I always assumed it was cut fairly early.
I think we did see some of the team working on Baisha in one of the Kickstarter updates (tbf, I think I remember this being quite early on) and we also saw some stuff that didn’t make it into the game throughout the process (a boat ride, a fight on the Great Wall and a few other things), but it’s impossible to say how much work had been done on Baisha or when exactly they realized it wouldn’t make it into the game without hearing from somebody directly involved.
Totally agree, I'm very critical of S3 but not the team who made it; having seen first-hand how a game can just spiral out of one's hands during development.
I can’t say I’ve ever worked on a video game before but have worked on quite a few large scale projects and know that things are rarely straightforward. It’s seems pretty clear that there were quite a few pitfalls throughout development.
lol, I know you were joking, but if the Cliff Temple really is where the treasure is located, and the CYM are there with both mirrors, how much longer could we really have in the story? I was expecting to follow the light patterns in both the mirrors across China or whatever to even get to the treasure. I understand that everything is still up in the air because we're assuming that nothing is explained/elaborated on in S3 but what if is? Meaning what if we take S3 at face value and we're actually very close to the end of the story (ie: S4 will be the last game)?
Its possible that they were vague to allow the possibility of wrapping things up in a fourth game (or even a mini 1 act game if absolutely necessary), but Im’a guess that the map contained within the mirrors begins at the cliff temple and that that is why the Chi You Men are there.
Good policy in general but this seems like a genuine mistake since, as mentioned, the sentence doesn't make sense.
Let’s agree to disagree on this one.
In fairness, the KS doesn't really correspond to the sales of the game per se, moreso the budget. Especially because many contributors pledged far more than the cost of the game (I think the average was like $100 per person) and who knows how many also bought a copy?
Whilst backer copies don’t count as ‘sales’ per se, I think when talking about how many people bought the game they are pretty significant. Maybe some of the backers bought extra copies, but I don’t think that anywhere near all of the 70,000+ backers who pledged enough for a copy will have. Also, if we’re only talking about the 18,000 copies sold in Japan (which SEPW is doing here), the vast majority of backers were not included as part of the discussion - even if they did all pick up a retail copy in their respective territories.
I don't think that's true. I think that a certain number of people are tuning into SEPW (or Jim Sterling, or Yahtzee, or Dunkey) no matter what he talks about. There's definitely a percentage of those people who might have been interested in the game, but I don't think it's substantial.
I agree that a fairly significant proportion of viewers were probably regular consumers of the channel’s content, but one thing I’ve noticed recently is that YouTube are now providing more analytics to creators - and one of the key new pieces of information being given to them is the ratio of a video’s viewers who are subscribers. This obviously varies from channel to channel, but quite a few of the creators I watch have been beginning their videos by pointing out that only around 10-20% of viewers are subscribed (and then going on to request that anybody watching subscribes). With this being the case, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of non-subscribers watching SEPWs video.
I will say that S1 and 2 basically have no grinding (and S2 is about as fast-paced as the series is likely to get) and they received generally positive reviews, yet this didn't really contribute to amazing sales of the HD re-releases. I know it's not a great comparison since they're 20 year old games, but it's still worth noting, especially because those games are more or less "required playing" for S3.
The HD re-releases seem to have been played by more than half a million people, which I’d argue is pretty damn good for two 20 year old games. I’m not sure that I’d go as far as to say that they sold amazingly, but judging by Sega’s response, it certainly seems as though they sold a lot better than expected.
Shenmue is definitely a niche series (more so now than it ever has been), but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a market for it. It might not appeal to the ‘average gamer’, but I do think there are a lot of ‘average gamers’ that are getting a little fed up with the tripe being served up to them by AAA publishers who might be willing to give a game like Shenmue a fair chance.
My point was that, since S1 and 2 don't have any difficulty modes, and to get the highest challenge out of S3's opponents you have to play on Nightmare, the two systems can only really be compared at the highest level against their respective "hardest" opponents. Obviously if they were fighting games you'd be able to get two people who are really good at the game to test high-level play, but since all we have is AI, then that's as good as it's going to get. What level you are or what moves you have unlocked shouldn't really factor into that.
I get your point - and if you absolutely need to compare the two engines this way - then yes, Izumi and the final red snakes boss fight are probably the hardest fights in their respective games, but I’m not sure it’s the best comparison as Izumi is designed to push the player to their limits whilst Mr Muscles is a story fight. I think a better comparison would be made using master Baihu rather than Izumi.
Except one of those stats is tied directly to your ability to explore the world, so the game more than incentivizes you to max out your health. And really? You're supposed to try a fight after each level you gain just to find the sweet spot? You get absolutely melted as you work your way up the dojo with no training (implying that you're quite far off your level).
This is a fair point, but you don’t
need to increase Ryo’s endurance to explore the game’s world and you certainly don’t need to max his endurance stat.
I also don’t think you need to raise your level one level at a time. On my first playthrough, I raised a few levels as and when I needed to and it worked out pretty well.
If I lost, I had a choice of either improving at the game or training more, but I don’t think the game ever felt too difficult or too easy whilst working within those options. Once I got to my second playthrough and maxed out my stats, then yes, pretty much all of the challenge had been taken out of the game.
This isn't really an apples to apples comparison because many JRPGs take different strategies into account so if you're over-leveled, you still need to exploit and punish an enemy weakness and deal with their strengths. It takes a long time to level up to the degree that you can just brute force most fights. In S3, 1. I would argue that grinding is even more of a chore since it's done outside of combat, and 2. there is no real strategy at play, nearly every enemy can be beaten in the same way (S2 had lots of opponents that incentivized different tactics, rudimentary though they may have been, to defeat) so their difficulty comes exclusively from how much damage they can deal/sustain.
I don’t think there is an apples to apples comparison to be made here, so that’s the best I can do I’m afraid.
For the record though ‘grinding’ in Shenmue 3 is done both in and out of combat.
The lack of different combat styles in Shenmue 3 was a bit of a let down, but then again, I think that they somewhat made up for this by incorporating significantly more one vs many fights, which in their own rudimentary way required different tactics and strategies.
In theory this is true, and likely the thought process behind the systems. In practice, most players will max out or nearly max out their health in order to better facilitate exploration and, if you're good at the game, combat just becomes tedious if your attack power is too low as it just takes longer to defeat enemies.
I agree that the stamina system does encourage the player to increase endurance (even if it isn’t absolutely required) and that this in turn can create an imbalance in the game’s combat. I put this down to just another fault in the game’s stamina system rather than a fault with the combat.
If a player were to avoid training endurance though, I think the challenge of surviving long enough to deal enough damage to the enemy is very much in keeping with some of the most challenging fights found in other series’.
I just meant that training is more or less not optional for the vast majority of players. When Ryo has to work his way up the ranks at the dojos, he will encounter opponents that can melt his health if he's untrained and take a crazy amount of punishment--most players will not simply try to brute force their way through this in the same way that most players of a JRPG will not run away from every battle and then brute force their way through boss fights.
I don’t think you can have it both ways. You can’t complain that the game is too easy when fully trained and too difficult when you’re not. The solution is quite simple (find a middle ground).
There were plenty of fights in the first two games in which the opponent could absolutely melt Ryo’s health if you let your guard down and a fair few bosses that could take one hell of a beating before they dropped.
It seems pretty simple to me. If your health is draining too quickly- learn how to dodge better in order to take fewer hits, train Ryo’s endurance up a little or lower the difficulty. If your attacks aren’t doing enough damage, switch up your play style to throw in some more powerful moves / combos, train your moves up a little, increase Ryo’s Kung Fu stat a little or again, lower the difficulty.
I think I’ve made my thoughts on the game’s combat system pretty clear throughout these forums, but one criticism that I don’t think that can be thrown at it is that it’s too easy.
I definitely cut some slack due to the budget, but the combat is way too janky to be "from the creator of Virtua Fighter". I would be similarly disappointed if Hideku Kamiya delivered such an under baked system, especially for a sequel. In my view, Shenmue needs to have basically 2 things: NPCs to talk to and fighting. Nothing else matters as much as those 2 elements and, unfortunately, those 2 elements suffer the most in S3.
But Yu wasn’t the sole creator of Virtua Fighter, was he? He had a huge team working beneath him, many of whom were some of the best in the industry at that time. Budget is very important when managing a large scale project, but no more so than the people you’re working with.
