- Joined
- Jul 28, 2018
- Favourite title
- Shenmue IIx
- Currently playing
- Ghost of Tsushima
- PSN
- mjqjazzbar
My problem with Shenmue 3, which Eyepatch Wolf also seems to agree with, is that you’re not rewarded for enduring these slow systems. You can train and train, but the combat is subpar by most standards even when you’re fully leveled. There are hardly any challenging fights as far as the main story goes. Sure you can fight in the Rose Garden, but why? You can win some money that gets you what exactly? Items that do nothing, can be displayed nowhere, and function as little more than tokens that’ll get you more money at the pawn shop. Training was extremely tedious and never evolved; I got to watch the same cutscene over and over again as I hit a wooden dummy, to learn a move I never actually got to use in a fight. What is the motivation here? To level up, yes, but they wrapped training up in tedious mini games that hardly have any gameplay.
You can take as long as you want in Bailu and Niaowu, but little changes in the environment, conversations with NPCs are little more than signposts, and the story goes nowhere. I didn’t want to talk to NPCs because I knew they had nothing interesting to tell me. I guess the weather changes slightly from day to day, but it felt like everything around me played out exactly the same no matter the day. The same pedestrians occupied the same parts of town, followed the same paths, etc. whether it was Sunday or Friday. Frankly, there was little in either area that made me feel like exploring.
In 2019, I just didn’t find the options available in this open world particularly compelling and only the satisfaction of continuing Ryo’s story kept my going. Unfortunately, we all know how that aspect of the game goes...We can blame some of these limitations on the budget, but I just think the issue is they should’ve never tried to make Shenmue 3 into an open world-like game. They couldn’t pull it off and compete with other modern games. If the writing had been stellar, all could’ve been forgiven; but it felt like writing was the biggest after thought of all.
You can take as long as you want in Bailu and Niaowu, but little changes in the environment, conversations with NPCs are little more than signposts, and the story goes nowhere. I didn’t want to talk to NPCs because I knew they had nothing interesting to tell me. I guess the weather changes slightly from day to day, but it felt like everything around me played out exactly the same no matter the day. The same pedestrians occupied the same parts of town, followed the same paths, etc. whether it was Sunday or Friday. Frankly, there was little in either area that made me feel like exploring.
In 2019, I just didn’t find the options available in this open world particularly compelling and only the satisfaction of continuing Ryo’s story kept my going. Unfortunately, we all know how that aspect of the game goes...We can blame some of these limitations on the budget, but I just think the issue is they should’ve never tried to make Shenmue 3 into an open world-like game. They couldn’t pull it off and compete with other modern games. If the writing had been stellar, all could’ve been forgiven; but it felt like writing was the biggest after thought of all.
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