SuperEyePatchWolf: "Shenmue III is a terrible game and I've wasted my life"

I don't think a "positive vibes only" attitude is going to help sell a game.

The success of the S3 kickstarter was a once in a life time opportunity and it was blown, imo. S3 being of good quality was absolutely imperative. We did not get a good product and the negativity stems from the product itself, not because the masses have targeted us. This isn't a gang or a team, it's a product. Just like all the other games on the market, it's a product to be bought and enjoyed.

I think the only thing that can turn around the perception of S4 is positive changes seen during development. People need to see that S4 will be better and that alone is what can change how people view the series. If Ys Net continues the secrecy and hides the game (S4) ike they did with S3 then the stigma will remain. Honesty and transparency are a must for S4.

Me saying S3 is a great game doesn't fool anyone and it doesn't move copies. Although it's uncomfortable for me to say it because Shenmue is my favorite series, I am completely confident in saying S3 sucks and I feel no obligation to hide it.

No one is saying that you have to sell your soul and say "S3 in great" even if you think it's bad.
Honesty is the most important thing, but there is a middle ground between costantly bashing a game on daily basis and supporting a game blindly.

For example I'm a long time Virtua Fighter player, you can imagine how I feel about the change of the fighting system...
But you probably almost never heard my complains, why?
Because there is no need to say the same thing 1000 times, also other people share my same ideas and said the same things, our feedback already reached YSnet, no need to focus on certain aspects more than necessary.

If I can avoid to bash a game 24/7 for not including my favourite fighting system, I think you can all do the same.
Focus on what you liked instead.
 
As I mentioned in a previous response, although his criticism comes from a place of truth, that truth does not extend to everything he says. For example, him stating that there are weird black dips to black in the opening moments of the game is true. Suggesting that these strange dips punctuate every conversation in the game is not. I’m genuinely curious where you draw the line here, because I think for most people it’s a pretty black and white issue.
I think he is very much misrepresenting things like that (although I confess to exaggerating my hypothetical to make that point). If we take my last example, suggesting that something that happens in 3/4 conversations (although technically it could be argued that it is a single conversation broken up by black dips) happens in each of the hundreds of other conversations throughout the game when it does not is akin to suggesting that something that happens in one episode happens in the other 83.
For the record though, I didn’t say that the fade to blacks weren’t a big issue (I think it’s a terrible and bizarre design choice), but that they were only found at the very beginning of the game rather than in ‘every conversation’ as the review implies. Again, your opinion that as this happens once it’s okay to suggest that it happens throughout the entirety of the game makes it very difficult to continue this discussion without going round in circles.
While it's true that these aren't necessarily part of every conversation per se, as he suggests, they are part of those instances at Shenhua's house (where Ryo takes his shoes off and when Shenhua stops him to say goodbye) and that is very weird since that's not how the previous games handled it and it's a large contributing factor into what makes those sequences feel so intrusive. So, again, considering this is something that is literally one line in a 40 minute review and it is indicative of a larger issue with the game, I can forgive it for not being super accurate and take it in good faith.

In what way is a scolding from Ine-san meaningful? I could stay out every night and get the same scene over and over again and nothing changes. After the cutscene plays out, Ine-san still treats me the same way afterwards and there’s nothing that Ryo can do to fundamentally change their relationship. It is completely superficial (although iirc, you might also get a scene with Fuku-san if you do it a few times).
But it is something. It requires you to sacrifice something you might be pursuing if you want to (for whatever reason) appease Ine San. S3 doesn't offer this because you're forced back to Shenhua's house where you can either talk to her or not, you don't need to be mindful of what you're doing or sacrifice anything since the game makes the choice for you.

I could argue that in that regard, the interactions with Shenhua are a lot more meaningful. Aside from learning more about both characters, there is a noticeable change in the way that Shenhua behaves around Ryo the more you interact with her. These might be restricted to a few cutscenes and some additional dialogue options, but it is a fixed change. It’s not something that just goes away if you come home on time the next night and never comes up again.

You can always choose to go straight to bed too, so I don’t think the player is forced to interact with her if they don’t want to.
This kind of opens up a whole other can of worms into how Shenhua was handled (for the record, I don't think the comparison to Ine San is a good one, just illustrative of a fundamental design philosophy shift in S3 as compared to S1 and 2) that is way outside the scope of this review. FWIW I think the conversations are fine, I wish they were woven into the actual narrative and, if S3 is supposed to be the Shenhua and Ryo show, I have no idea why the concept is abandoned in Niaowu.

We don’t know that the thugs are just sitting there waiting and I think it is far more likely that, in terms of the narrative, they have returned to the village having previously been chased off (we encounter the thugs on our second or third day).
You again seem to be under the impression that the two thugs are just standing around in the same place for two or three days straight. Why is it so hard to believe that the thugs have returned having previously been chased off by the guards?
The game never elaborates one way or the other but the fact that you can't enter that part of town, combined with the fact that they remain there until you beat them, sure gave me that impression.

The nonsense with the bookey is there to introduce the character to the game’s new combat and training systems which I think was needed in some way. Could Ryo have been beaten by the thugs and then sent to the dojo to train? Probably - but I’m sure this would have probably drawn just as much criticism and I really don’t see an issue with easing the player into the new mechanics in this way.
I fundamentally disagree with this notion that Suzuki was "damned if he did, damned if he didn't". There were choices he could have made that would have made the game better, starting with better thinking out the scenario and its implications.

Only one of the three things you mentioned takes place while the objective is to find Lishao Tao (the four wude) whilst the other two are introduced after the objective has shifted to finding Zhu.

I thought it was quite clear that that comment was meant to be a little tongue in cheek, but let’s not pretend Shenmue 2 was filled to the brim with stuff like this.

Only one of the three things you mentioned takes place while the objective is to find Lishao Tao (the four wude) whilst the other two are introduced after the objective has shifted to finding Zhu.

Shenmue 2 certainly has more stuff like this (ie, substance), but I don’t think Shenmue 3 is too far behind.
I don't see how you could possibly characterize the characters, pacing, and story developments of S3 as being not too far behind those in S2. Sure in S2 your objective of finding Lishao Tao is achieved rather quickly, I was exaggerating to point out that all of those things I mentioned are introduced in S2's equivalent of Bailu Village. And introduced in a far more rapid succession, as following the main plot of S2 can be done much faster than S3 (it's a shorter game with more substance).

If you say ‘I have to work every single day of the year’ and I point out that with weekends and holidays it’s probably more like two thirds of it, I think that is a fair correction.
Agree to disagree on this math. I will say that even if I grant you double the amount of days those cutscenes aren't an intrusion, you would still need to complete S3 in 18 in-game days in order for that to be true 1/3 of the time.

I don’t think it weakens his argument, but I do think that it paints the game in a better, more accurate light. The way that section of the video is cut together makes it seem as though the player is constantly being bombarded with cutscenes and that there is absolutely no variety and I don’t think either of those things is true.
As I just said, it’s not necessarily about the point being made and more about allowing the viewer to judge for themselves whether or not that point is valid. By failing to provide them with an accurate representation he is depriving them of the tools they need to make that assessment and forcing them to accept his point of view as being correct.
Again, it seems that we have reached a point where our differing ideas as to what a review should and should not do make it difficult for us to continue with this line of discussion, so I think I’ll have to agree to disagree with you on this one.
I understand your point that you think a review should provide an unbiased summary of the game in order to allow the audience to make up their own mind, I even think that's kind of noble but ultimately impossible. Could you point me to an overly positive or overly negative review of something that meets this criteria? Not as any sort of gotcha, just honestly curious.

Yes, he needs to articulate how he feels about the game and to do that he should give examples. I think it should go without saying that those examples should be true.
You are absolutely right that him removing or correcting the misleading lines would remove the issues that I have with the video. This whole discussion began with me bemoaning the inaccuracies present in this video and pretty much every post during our conversation has been making that same point in one shape or form.

I’d disagree with your assessment that they are nothing more than throwaway lines though.
If that's the case then I think you would need to cut maybe a minute of the review, so I think it's pretty fair to classify that as throwaway content.

Well looking at his channel, his two most popular videos are negative in tone, as are a lot of his other popular videos. A quick search for Shenmue videos on YouTube shows that videos bashing the series typically do fairly well and garner plenty of interaction and so I think that it’s a safe bet. That he seemingly hated the game is obviously going to have him leaning towards the negative side by default anyway.
I think this is where the "Plinkett effect" is felt. The Plinkett reviews, especially of Episode 1, are from the POV of a Star Wars fan who, the more he looks into basically everything about Episode 1, the more he hates it and realizes that everything about it was compromised in some form form including the production. I don't think that's true of most things that have drawn similar ire, so I have a problem with videos adopting the same hyper-critical tone that Plinkett uses. That being said, I can totally see a fan of Shenmue who waited 20 years for S3 being justified in adopting a that tone and it was refreshing that SEPW actually avoids criticizing the production or the team.

I don’t think any of those things are ‘good’, but I also don’t think the conversations are made up entirely of nonsensical dialogue and cutscenes repeating over and over again constantly throughout the game. I don’t think that the food system has the player constantly running backwards and forwards across the map and I strongly disagree that the game’s story is nothing but filler and that Ryo and Lan Di finish the game in exactly the same place in their arcs at which they started it.
First of all, he doesn't claim that the conversations are made up of entirely nonsensical dialogue, the food system combined with the objectives do constantly require the player to ping pong around the map, and how would you describe the story in that case? Furthermore, why was your initial impression negative?
 
No one is saying that you have to sell your soul and say "S3 in great" even if you think it's bad.
Honesty is the most important thing, but there is a middle ground between costantly bashing a game on daily basis and supporting a game blindly.

For example I'm a long time Virtua Fighter player, you can imagine how I feel about the change of the fighting system...
But you probably almost never heard my complains, why?
Because there is no need to say the same thing 1000 times, also other people share my same ideas and said the same things, our feedback already reached YSnet, no need to focus on certain aspects more than necessary.

If I can avoid to bash a game 24/7 for not including my favourite fighting system, I think you can all do the same.
Focus on what you liked instead.
This is a shenmue-dedicated forum tho. It's only natural to talk about shenmue. A forum isn't a face to face interaction so just because you've said something previously doesn't mean everyone has seen it.

If an angelic, talented soul somehow manages to make a mod for shenmue that removes the food and token systems from the game, then I'll be able to enjoy S3 and talk about what I like, but until then, there's very little I did enjoy.... This is going to be a divisive game for a very long time, and I think if we get a S4 then once again the disappointment with S3 will be revived.
 
I wonder is Shenmue III is difficult to mod? I mean it's Unreal Engine so I figured it would actually be pretty easy but I'd have figured we'd get retranslation mods (would kill for one of those focused on making the Japanese subtitles match the Japanese dialog more closely) and others by now. Is there some Shenmue III modding site I don't know about? I feel like community interest isn't the problem. Why are there so few mods? It would be amazing to see mods that let people play Shenmue III the way they want to play it, I bet there'd be fewer people sour about it. I know if I could just mod out the current combat input system for a classic one and maybe better hit reaction animations it would change the game for me.
 
I wonder is Shenmue III is difficult to mod? I mean it's Unreal Engine so I figured it would actually be pretty easy but I'd have figured we'd get retranslation mods (would kill for one of those focused on making the Japanese subtitles match the Japanese dialog more closely) and others by now. Is there some Shenmue III modding site I don't know about? I feel like community interest isn't the problem. Why are there so few mods?
Theres been a few but I know @LemonHaze who did a load of them has been working on other things.


Theres these and I know a notebook mod/OG sounds mod was being done.

We've also had Eric Kelso added in as Guizhang

 
Theres been a few but I know @LemonHaze who did a load of them has been working on other things.


Theres these and I know a notebook mod/OG sounds mod was being done.

We've also had Eric Kelso added in as Guizhang

Ah nice, it looks like they can do in game menus so modding it must not be too bad. I'll have to see if I can add something.
 
Theres been a few but I know @LemonHaze who did a load of them has been working on other things.


Theres these and I know a notebook mod/OG sounds mod was being done.

We've also had Eric Kelso added in as Guizhang


Actually one that note I never asked @LemonHaze if there’s anyway they can edit the QTE timing window to give players an 0.5-1 second to react. I know I sound like a broken record but it’s only aspect that still feels broken to me.
 
Last edited:
Actually one that note I never asked @LemonHaze if there’s anyway they can edit the QTE timing window to give players an 0.5-1 second to react. I know I sound like a broken record but it’s only aspect that still feels broken to me.

It's possible for sure, but it's something that will take at least an hour or maybe two to do some research/prep work, but for the most part pretty much everything you need to know should be in the SDK I released. This'll cover the base classes and majority of variable/function/struct/enumerator names used in the game, which we can interface with directly, almost in the exact same way that the developers had access to them. Custom content (meaning completely new content) is always going to be a bit of a pain, but certainly not impossible.

I can take a look and see if there's anything that sticks out, but I'm more than likely going to need a tester or two to verify stuff.
 
It's possible for sure, but it's something that will take at least an hour or maybe two to do some research/prep work, but for the most part pretty much everything you need to know should be in the SDK I released. This'll cover the base classes and majority of variable/function/struct/enumerator names used in the game, which we can interface with directly, almost in the exact same way that the developers had access to them. Custom content (meaning completely new content) is always going to be a bit of a pain, but certainly not impossible.

I can take a look and see if there's anything that sticks out, but I'm more than likely going to need a tester or two to verify stuff.

Thank you for your reply.

I don’t have a powerful PC to run the game otherwise I would volunteer but I will be watching from sidelines hoping this can be achieved as it will help the playability of the game tremendously.
 
Thank you for your reply.

I don’t have a powerful PC to run the game otherwise I would volunteer but I will be watching from sidelines hoping this can be achieved as it will help the playability of the game tremendously.

There's a lot of good stuff here tbh:

C++:
    struct FName                                       SuccessAction;                                            // 0x0138(0x0008) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
    class UWBP_QTETiming_C*                            QTEWidget;                                                // 0x0140(0x0008) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, InstancedReference, IsPlainOldData)
    float                                              JustTimingStartRate;                                      // 0x0148(0x0004) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
    float                                              JustTimingEndRate;                                        // 0x014C(0x0004) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
    bool                                               IsEarlyFailedFlag;                                        // 0x0150(0x0001) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
    unsigned char                                      UnknownData00[0x3];                                       // 0x0151(0x0003) MISSED OFFSET
    float                                              SuccessInputLimitTimeLength;                              // 0x0154(0x0004) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
    float                                              SuccessInputLimitStartTime;                               // 0x0158(0x0004) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
    float                                              SuccessInputLimitEndTime;                                 // 0x015C(0x0004) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
    bool                                               IsReadyActionAnimationFlag;                               // 0x0160(0x0001) (Edit, BlueprintVisible, ZeroConstructor, DisableEditOnInstance, IsPlainOldData)
 
While it's true that these aren't necessarily part of every conversation per se, as he suggests, they are part of those instances at Shenhua's house (where Ryo takes his shoes off and when Shenhua stops him to say goodbye) and that is very weird since that's not how the previous games handled it and it's a large contributing factor into what makes those sequences feel so intrusive. So, again, considering this is something that is literally one line in a 40 minute review and it is indicative of a larger issue with the game, I can forgive it for not being super accurate and take it in good faith.
The transitions in and out of the shoe removal scenes are loading screens, which as I recall, is exactly how the original games handled pretty much every transition.

Whilst it's true that these small, niggling complaints do build to form part of a much larger complaint, I think that in overstating the frequency and severity of them, he in turn presents that larger complaint as being much more serious than it actually is.

If I had to rate the game's cutscenes on a one to ten scale, I'd probably give them a four or a five and I'd say the dialogue is a five or a six. If I hadn't played the game and had to go solely on what I'd been shown in this video (which are suggested to be illustrative of the game's cutscenes and dialogue as a whole), I'd be scoring both of them as a one or a two.

Making the point that all of the progress the player makes in the game is constantly being broken up by these elements (a point that I don't entirely agree with in itself) becomes a much bigger problem when the dialogue is shown to be nonsensical and the cutscenes are portrayed as being utterly broken. Him throwing in additional ridiculous criticisms like the shoe removal scene only serves to exacerbate this.

It might be one line here and one line there, but these lines are instrumental in shaping his portrayal of a problem that covers nearly a third of the video (once the intro, outro and fanfiction sections have been taken out) and, according to him, is present throughout the entirety of the game.

The game never elaborates one way or the other but the fact that you can't enter that part of town, combined with the fact that they remain there until you beat them, sure gave me that impression.

I fundamentally disagree with this notion that Suzuki was "damned if he did, damned if he didn't". There were choices he could have made that would have made the game better, starting with better thinking out the scenario and its implications.
This argument could be made of elements of not only the original Shenmue games, but any book, movie, tv show or game that happens to feature a chance encounter.

We're told that the thugs had been chased out of town and we know that their mission is to capture stone-masons, so them returning to go after another one of the stone-masons makes perfect sense to me. It shouldn't need to be implicitly stated. Losing the fight effectively triggers a reset to checkpoint, which is how pretty much every modern game handles stuff like this, so I don't think it's fair to suggest they are just waiting for Ryo to defeat them.
I don't see how you could possibly characterize the characters, pacing, and story developments of S3 as being not too far behind those in S2. Sure in S2 your objective of finding Lishao Tao is achieved rather quickly, I was exaggerating to point out that all of those things I mentioned are introduced in S2's equivalent of Bailu Village. And introduced in a far more rapid succession, as following the main plot of S2 can be done much faster than S3 (it's a shorter game with more substance).
I'm not referring to the characters and pacing here, but instead the story beats and revelations that punctuate the main quest. Some of the things found in Shenmue 2 were fantastic and I don't think that Shenmue 3 came close to matching them (the wude in particular), but I don't see how finding the Wulinshu for example (something that in an earlier post you suggested was one of the beats that made Shenmue 2 so much better than 3) is any more interesting than finding out about the history of the mirrors.

I think that Shenmue 3 had plenty of these little moments and revelations scattered throughout the game (almost as many as in S2) and had they been developed to the extent that the beats in Shenmue 2 were, it would have been a much better game.

Agree to disagree on this math. I will say that even if I grant you double the amount of days those cutscenes aren't an intrusion, you would still need to complete S3 in 18 in-game days in order for that to be true 1/3 of the time.
The cutscenes in question are only present in the Bailu section of the game which can very easily be completed in 18 in-game days (and do also bare in mind that the first in game day starts in the cave and so does not contain the cutscene).

I understand your point that you think a review should provide an unbiased summary of the game in order to allow the audience to make up their own mind, I even think that's kind of noble but ultimately impossible. Could you point me to an overly positive or overly negative review of something that meets this criteria? Not as any sort of gotcha, just honestly curious.
Good reviews are hard to come by and I'm not about to sift through reviews to find one. This isn't me deflecting, more not wanting to waste the time it would take to find one.

As you point out, it is very difficult to remain completely unbiased (although I don't quite agree that it is impossible), but trying to remain unbiased and not stating things that you know to be false are fairly easy and I'm sure you yourself could find plenty of reviews that do these things with relative ease.
If that's the case then I think you would need to cut maybe a minute of the review, so I think it's pretty fair to classify that as throwaway content.
Referring to them as throwaway content implies that their inclusion has no real impact on the overall takeaway of the video, but I don't think that's the case (as per my earlier response).
First of all, he doesn't claim that the conversations are made up of entirely nonsensical dialogue, the food system combined with the objectives do constantly require the player to ping pong around the map,

The objectives have you going to different areas of the map? What poor game design. Have they learned nothing from modern games like Five Nights at Freddy's?

It takes only a very basic understanding of the food system (we're talking 'I should keep food in my inventory because I need to eat from time to time' here) to avoid it having any meaningful impact on the game in terms of map traversal. There are at least 3 or 4 places the player can buy food in Bailu distributed fairly evenly across the map, meaning that the player will constantly be passing them as they explore. Taking a moment to stock up on food is hardly the inconvenience it is portrayed to be in this video.

You could certainly make the argument that it is and inconvenience, but no more so than having to stock up on healing items in FFVIIR or deposit your money in to your bank account when your wallet is full in ACNH. It is quite far from the 'ping ponging around the map' that you and SEPW seem to suggest that it is.

As for the conversations, he implies it by cherry-picking examples that paint the dialogue in the absolute worst way possible without making it at all clear that these are the worst examples. There is no distinction made between them and the 99.999% of dialogue that is not absolute nonsense.
and how would you describe the story in that case?
Underdeveloped.
Furthermore, why was your initial impression negative?
My initial impression was negative for many of the same reasons mentioned in this video.

I distinctly remember losing my first encounter with the thugs, going to train at the dojo and then returning to fight the thugs - only to find after triggering the start of the fight that I had no stamina (and as such, health). I also remember thinking 'what an absolutely terrible design choice to put stamina, hunger and health together in this way.' as I made the 20-30 second round trip to stock up on food.

Where SEPW and I perhaps differ is that after that, I made a point of stocking up on food every now and again (we're talking 3 or 4 times in a play-through here) when I walked past one of the game's many food vendors and the issue never really bothered me again. I still think that it is a poorly implemented system, but is a minor inconvenience and not something that's going to completely sour my view of the game.

I also remember reaching Niaowu on my second play through and making a point of going to speak to fat man and broom girl as often as possible because I was convinced that I had missed some massively important event(s) that made them a significant part of the story - as suggested by their decision to bring them along for the game's climax - only to be left disappointed when I realized that what I'd experienced on my first play through really was all there was to these characters and Ryo's relationship with them. Shenhua aside, I think this game did a terrible job at developing the newly introduced cast of characters.

Generally, my biggest disappointments with this game were (and still are) the many moments where I found myself asking 'so what?' (like the Niao-Sun reveal) and the times where I was waiting for Ryo to ask a question that was simply never asked (like 'tell me about my father?') - all of which I think comes back to the game's writing. These things could have really landed if written well, but the depth required for them to pay off simply wasn't there.

All that being said, after taking some time to reflect, I asked myself three questions....
Did this feel like a Shenmue game? Absolutely. The combat system is a little weak, but many of the other elements that make up the gameplay elements that I most associate with the series are better than they have ever been.
Did the story continue? Yes. It might have lacked depth in a lot of places, but it moved the story forwards, answered some of the questions I'd had for the past eighteen years and introduced some interesting new information that lead to new questions as to how that information might impact the story moving forwards.
Did I enjoy my time playing the game? Certainly. There were a few minor annoyances here and there, but on the whole, I had a lot of fun with Shenmue 3.

I think when I looked past the expectations that I had for what Shenmue 3 would be like as a game and what might happen in terms of the game's story, those are the three things that I wanted most from a third Shenmue game and I consider myself lucky to have gotten them after nearly two decades of waiting. I feel genuinely bad for the members of the fanbase who feel otherwise.
 
Honestly, if Shenmue 4 turns out to be a good to great game no one will care that Shenmue 3 was just "ok". They won't balk at buying a good Shenmue 4 because there are youtubers who are making videos that put Shenmue 3 in a negative light. And maybe the tide changes on youtube and you get a lot of videos in support of Shenmue 4 if it's awesome. It's not uncommon to have a weaker entry in a series and it doesn't mean that the series is dead. People still bought Devil May Cry games after DMC2, for instance.

The most important thing about Shenmue 3 is simply the fact it was released and got Ryo out of that cave. For me, any bit of "Shenmue-ness" in that game made it worth it for me. I didn't expect it to be on par with Shenmue 2, that's just an impossible standard. The only purpose for Shenmue 3's existence is to show the series is viable and get Shenmue 4 greenlit, so if Shenmue 4 is released, then it was a success. Obviously, a better reception and higher sales improve those odds, but YsNet was up against a lot so all in all I'm happy with Shenmue 3. I think most of the shortcomings have been talked to death, so yeah, I just hope they have the opportunity to make those improvements in Shenmue 4.
 
Honestly, if Shenmue 4 turns out to be a good to great game no one will care that Shenmue 3 was just "ok". They won't balk at buying a good Shenmue 4 because there are youtubers who are making videos that put Shenmue 3 in a negative light. And maybe the tide changes on youtube and you get a lot of videos in support of Shenmue 4 if it's awesome. It's not uncommon to have a weaker entry in a series and it doesn't mean that the series is dead. People still bought Devil May Cry games after DMC2, for instance.

The most important thing about Shenmue 3 is simply the fact it was released and got Ryo out of that cave. For me, any bit of "Shenmue-ness" in that game made it worth it for me. I didn't expect it to be on par with Shenmue 2, that's just an impossible standard. The only purpose for Shenmue 3's existence is to show the series is viable and get Shenmue 4 greenlit, so if Shenmue 4 is released, then it was a success. Obviously, a better reception and higher sales improve those odds, but YsNet was up against a lot so all in all I'm happy with Shenmue 3. I think most of the shortcomings have been talked to death, so yeah, I just hope they have the opportunity to make those improvements in Shenmue 4.



Well yes, Shenmue 4 being good will put the serie back on track. The problem right now is that it's hard to be confident on that point after 3. You took DMC2 as an exemple. At least 3 managed to put things back on track because it was a really good game. (Although DMC2 had a really troubled developpement). But that's the thing here, what lessons are taken from their previous mistakes.

And there's something even more complicated for Shenmue: These are story driven games. The fact that DMC2 sucks doesnt matter because those arent really story driven games, and on top of that, they could pretend it didn't happened. Those games are pretty self contained.

But for Shenmue III ? It'll be hard to correct the story missteps. Even though the story felt like a complete filler, you cant correct the depiction of Bailu. You cant correct what happened in the boat scene with Shenhua's father nor what happened in the castle.
 
Well yes, Shenmue 4 being good will put the serie back on track. The problem right now is that it's hard to be confident on that point after 3. You took DMC2 as an exemple. At least 3 managed to put things back on track because it was a really good game. (Although DMC2 had a really troubled developpement). But that's the thing here, what lessons are taken from their previous mistakes.

And there's something even more complicated for Shenmue: These are story driven games. The fact that DMC2 sucks doesnt matter because those arent really story driven games, and on top of that, they could pretend it didn't happened. Those games are pretty self contained.

But for Shenmue III ? It'll be hard to correct the story missteps. Even though the story felt like a complete filler, you cant correct the depiction of Bailu. You cant correct what happened in the boat scene with Shenhua's father nor what happened in the castle.
I think it would be fair to say that Shenmue 3 also had a troubled development and it’s worth remembering that the developers were facing a much greater task. Furthermore, they likely had to contend with 4 or 5 rewrites of the story and just as many budget revisions to boot over a five year development cycle.

I disagree that the story of Shenmue 3 has the potential to cause problems when it comes to developing the story of a fourth game and think that there are plenty of things introduced in three in which they can build. Moreover, I don’t think Yu would have included anything that would later be at odds with the overall story that he wants to tell.

On a side note, I think it’s pretty interesting that there seem to be five or six different opinions of Shenmue 3’s story amongst fans (‘It was good’, ‘It was good, but there wasn’t enough.’, ‘The story itself was fine, but it was poorly told.’, ‘The story was okay.’, ‘The story was bad.’, ‘There was no story.’, etc) rather than it being a simple ‘good’ or ‘bad’ situation as tends to be the case with stuff like this.
 
Back
Top