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

Yeah, it also didn't help that due to the kickstarter nature the fans had some info on some of the cut content.
Publishers never share any info about their games when they are early in development: because they know that some ideas they have planned will get cut and that will disappoint the fans that were hyped for those features.

For example, Metal Gear Solid 2 was suppoased to have these features when it was early in development:
1.A Liquid Ocelot Vs Snake fight at the end of the game.
2.underwater combat and underwater stealth gameplay with sharks as enemies.
3.Ability for the main character to sweat and enemies smelling the players.
4.A multiplayer mode with Split Screen mode.
5.Codecs that don't pause the game and happen in real time.(And they were supposed to get interrupted when enemies detect you during conversations)
6.More bossfights and characters.(Old Boy, China Man)
7.An infirmary where wounded enemies visit and the players could destroy it to stop enemies from healing themselves.
8.A gameplay section of Snake escaping from the Tanker.
And all of these were cut. If MGS fans knew about these cut features before playing it then they would definitely get disappointed by MGS 2.(Similar to some Shenmue fans that are disappointed in 3 for not having Baisha village)

I don't know how Yu handled Shenmue 3's development but maybe he ended up doing majority of the story himself since they didn't have enough money to give to those writers to do work on the main story.(Since hiring a writer to write the main story might be more expensive than hiring that writer for secondary/background characters)



The thing is, Metal Gear Solid 2 was a great game. Then again, I dont feel like Shenmue III was an uncomplete game. Just that it wasnt good.
 
The CD4 of Shenmue II is even more peaceful and introspective. And yet it's a thousand time better than anything in Shenmue III. Even if Shenmue III budget was planned with that budget early on, there's still a lot of creative issues that would remain, because those were conscious decisions

CD4 remain one of the pinnacle of videogaming experiences in my opinion.
But while shenmue 3 doesn't reach that height, it's still the most similar experience, especially when I think to Bailu, the conversations with Shenhua and villagers, the familiar atmosphere of her house and the mountans etc.
I think they nailed it, and I wish they would go for an even more "videogame unfriendly" approach like shenmue 1 or the same cd4 (means less gamey features, just a full journey experience).

I think the few conscious decisions not driven by budget and development conditions, were infact the inclusion of more gamey aspects, like gambling or the arcade in the village.
But I can understand that decisions, I can only imagine what would've been the reaction if the village had only fishing, training and dialogues :D
It would've been the definitive esperience for me, but probably even more boring for other people, lol.
 
Yeah, it also didn't help that due to the kickstarter nature the fans had some info on some of the cut content.
Publishers never share any info about their games when they are early in development: because they know that some ideas they have planned will get cut and that will disappoint the fans that were hyped for those features.

For example, Metal Gear Solid 2 was suppoased to have these features when it was early in development:
1.A Liquid Ocelot Vs Snake fight at the end of the game.
2.underwater combat and underwater stealth gameplay with sharks as enemies.
3.Ability for the main character to sweat and enemies smelling the players.
4.A multiplayer mode with Split Screen mode.
5.Codecs that don't pause the game and happen in real time.(And they were supposed to get interrupted when enemies detect you during conversations)
6.More bossfights and characters.(Old Boy, China Man)
7.An infirmary where wounded enemies visit and the players could destroy it to stop enemies from healing themselves.
8.A gameplay section of Snake escaping from the Tanker.
And all of these were cut. If MGS fans knew about these cut features before playing it then they would definitely get disappointed by MGS 2.(Similar to some Shenmue fans that are disappointed in 3 for not having Baisha village)

Yeah, the public reaction would've been very negative I suppose, especially paired with the Raiden backlash...
 
MGS2 was intentionally designed to omit those many of things because they relate to the story Kojima wrote. I don’t think Shenmue 3 was intentionally designed to drop a significant portion of the story, but I do get your point about things being cut from games. That happens all the time. The question is if the things that were cut significantly alter the game.
 
Many of those features could've improved the Mgs2 experience.
Also Kojima was forced to change the story of Mgs2 for various reason, even political ones (game for example was initially set in Iraq, so it could've been a totally different game).

Rarely something in game development goes just as planned at the beginning.
 
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Let's avoid calling people who criticise the games posers.
I mean no disrespect. That's not what I'm doing. There's hundreds of articles and videos stating Shenmue 3 is bad. But yet I'm only talking about this specific video, because I do believe in what I'm saying.

@spud1897 From where I'm standing it seems I cannot voice my suspicion about a youtuber making a video about Shenmue 3 with ill intent.

But Vasid can call forum users mad and fanatics.

This doesn't seem right.

not everyone is out to get Shenmue much less someone who's been posting on this site for years, in fact I've been on this site longer than you have.
Because people don't change their opinions over years? Why should I believe you are not a disgruntled fan? It's a possibility.

What does being on this site longer has to do with anything?

I've been a long-time lurker.
I know you want to live in denial and think Shenmue is bigger than it is but it's not.
Not at all. I know Shenmue is a niche series. But it's a niche series that broke a Kickstarter record.

Not a lot of people played a Shenmue game, but most of them have at least heard the name and have an idea what it's about. You're making it smaller than it is.
the crowd that hates it are a very small minority
The crowd of people who hate something and want to see it fail isn't as small as that. That's usually the same crowd that hates on everything with a chance of failure.
You find it everywhere as they get off on stuff like this. They are fans of Yatzhee and Jim Sterling and such other people who prey on mindless hate mongers.

They don't hate it because it's Shenmue specifically, they just want to see another “something” fail.
New ammuntion? What does that even mean? So now in addition to telling people how Shenmue sucks they now have 1 youtube video on top of a literal mountain of them. Oh no! SOMEONE STOP SUPEREYEPATCHWOLF!
You know perfectly well what I mean. If that isn't disingenuous, I don't know what is.
People can already say that, if Shenmue was any good then there wouldn't be all these negative reviews and the cherry on top is this video: "even a longtime fan hates Shenmue 3".

Try to argue reasonably with such people. These things matter, in time, this negativity will be everything any non-Shenmue fan will remember about Shenmue.
You haven't even watched the video, how do you know?
The way he presents his points, the way he distorts facts to suit his agenda, the way he makes cheap psychological/emotional tricks to make him seem like just a disappointed fan, the way he makes fun of it, the way he titled the video. There's no honesty here.

Just because he made a video about Shenmue in a more positive light before, does not mean he's being fair. You build something up and then you destroy it, it's a very common marketing technique. It works.
His channel already has 800k subs and his most popular video (which is about the Simpsons) already has 6m views.
Anything about one of the most popular cartoon ever will get such kind of views. It's not a fair comparison.
Clickbait is also a bait and switch where you put something shocking in the title and then don't deliver (hence the bait part), and SEPW explains exactly how he feels in the video and why he feels that way.
clickbait
noun
informal

Content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page.

There's no need to have a bait and switch to be called clickbait.

Hate draws views. This video is on any feed that searches for Shenmue right now.
Are people not allowed to express themselves fully anymore without it being considered clickbait?
Considering I'm not allowed to express myself without being labelled mad and fanatic, you're going on a rather hypocritical tangent.

People can express themselves all they want. Plenty of other reviewers didn’t like Shenmue 3 and explained why without resorting to underhand tactics such as making fun of it or hyperbole. They were fair in the way they presented their points.

Some years ago, no one could criticize Shenmue in these forums, the fans were quite defensive of everything negative.

This wasn't good for many reasons.

But now we're going in the extreme opposite direction.

Which isn't good either.

This is the only video I am commenting about that I disagree with and I am immediately called mad and fanatic to have my opinions dismissed.

It seems the Shenmue Dojo is going the way of so many other websites that are being infiltrated and destroyed by politically correct BS.
I just feel like Shenmue fans should be better. I wish more people would keep in mind DAN "Be brave a stay calm to make the right decision". Stay clam when you see criticism, try and see where it's coming from instead of growing enraged and lashing out. Be brave and remember that one video cannot hurt Shenmue, it won't help, but it won't hurt it either. This one video isn't going to make anyone who was going to buy/back Shenmue 4 not do so now, in fact as I said pages ago this video keeps the discussion around the title/franchise going.
All of this is simply false. I said it once and I'll say it again, Vasid's posts seem to appeal to emotion (by quoting fan stuff like DAN and saying he expects better from us) to dismiss any criticism of this video. I find it insincere. I can be wrong, but his heart doesn't seem to be in the right place.

This video in addition to many others, will hurt Shenmue in the long run. There's nothing of value to be gained if the only discussion going around a title/franchise is about how much it sucks.

I've said my piece. If I can't express myself without breaking the rules, then there's no need to be here.
 
I mean no disrespect. That's not what I'm doing. There's hundreds of articles and videos stating Shenmue 3 is bad. But yet I'm only talking about this specific video, because I do believe in what I'm saying.

@spud1897 From where I'm standing it seems I cannot voice my suspicion about a youtuber making a video about Shenmue 3 with ill intent.

But Vasid can call forum users mad and fanatics.

This doesn't seem right.


Because people don't change their opinions over years? Why should I believe you are not a disgruntled fan? It's a possibility.

What does being on this site longer has to do with anything?

I've been a long-time lurker.

Not at all. I know Shenmue is a niche series. But it's a niche series that broke a Kickstarter record.

Not a lot of people played a Shenmue game, but most of them have at least heard the name and have an idea what it's about. You're making it smaller than it is.

The crowd of people who hate something and want to see it fail isn't as small as that. That's usually the same crowd that hates on everything with a chance of failure.
You find it everywhere as they get off on stuff like this. They are fans of Yatzhee and Jim Sterling and such other people who prey on mindless hate mongers.

They don't hate it because it's Shenmue specifically, they just want to see another “something” fail.

You know perfectly well what I mean. If that isn't disingenuous, I don't know what is.
People can already say that, if Shenmue was any good then there wouldn't be all these negative reviews and the cherry on top is this video: "even a longtime fan hates Shenmue 3".

Try to argue reasonably with such people. These things matter, in time, this negativity will be everything any non-Shenmue fan will remember about Shenmue.

The way he presents his points, the way he distorts facts to suit his agenda, the way he makes cheap psychological/emotional tricks to make him seem like just a disappointed fan, the way he makes fun of it, the way he titled the video. There's no honesty here.

Just because he made a video about Shenmue in a more positive light before, does not mean he's being fair. You build something up and then you destroy it, it's a very common marketing technique. It works.

Anything about one of the most popular cartoon ever will get such kind of views. It's not a fair comparison.

clickbait
noun
informal

Content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page.

There's no need to have a bait and switch to be called clickbait.

Hate draws views. This video is on any feed that searches for Shenmue right now.

Considering I'm not allowed to express myself without being labelled mad and fanatic, you're going on a rather hypocritical tangent.

People can express themselves all they want. Plenty of other reviewers didn’t like Shenmue 3 and explained why without resorting to underhand tactics such as making fun of it or hyperbole. They were fair in the way they presented their points.

Some years ago, no one could criticize Shenmue in these forums, the fans were quite defensive of everything negative.

This wasn't good for many reasons.

But now we're going in the extreme opposite direction.

Which isn't good either.

This is the only video I am commenting about that I disagree with and I am immediately called mad and fanatic to have my opinions dismissed.

It seems the Shenmue Dojo is going the way of so many other websites that are being infiltrated and destroyed by politically correct BS.

All of this is simply false. I said it once and I'll say it again, Vasid's posts seem to appeal to emotion (by quoting fan stuff like DAN and saying he expects better from us) to dismiss any criticism of this video. I find it insincere. I can be wrong, but his heart doesn't seem to be in the right place.

This video in addition to many others, will hurt Shenmue in the long run. There's nothing of value to be gained if the only discussion going around a title/franchise is about how much it sucks.

I've said my piece. If I can't express myself without breaking the rules, then there's no need to be here.
What? All I'm saying is let's keep things respectful. That's it, query away and discuss whatever you want around the YouTube video.

Disgruntled? If this isn't aimed at me I apologise.... but really? If I was disgruntled why would I have taken on half of this place with another staff member?
 
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This review is along the same lines if you are fixing' for some more criticism from actual fans:


Their style might not bother some of you as much. You can't deny they're fans with a blog called Shenmue AM2 (and I think they post here too).
 
@spud1897 only this was aimed at you, everything else was for Vasid:

I mean no disrespect. That's not what I'm doing. There's hundreds of articles and videos stating Shenmue 3 is bad. But yet I'm only talking about this specific video, because I do believe in what I'm saying.

From where I'm standing it seems I cannot voice my suspicion about a youtuber making a video about Shenmue 3 with ill intent.

But Vasid can call forum users mad and fanatics.

This doesn't seem right.
 
This review is along the same lines if you are fixing' for some more criticism from actual fans:


Their style might not bother some of you as much. You can't deny they're fans with a blog called Shenmue AM2 (and I think they post here too).
This should be discussed in their topic tbh as the dedicated section for it.
 
@spud1897 only this was aimed at you, everything else was for Vasid:

I mean no disrespect. That's not what I'm doing. There's hundreds of articles and videos stating Shenmue 3 is bad. But yet I'm only talking about this specific video, because I do believe in what I'm saying.

From where I'm standing it seems I cannot voice my suspicion about a youtuber making a video about Shenmue 3 with ill intent.

But Vasid can call forum users mad and fanatics.

This doesn't seem right.
And Vasid has been told too. That's the end of it.
 
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Sorry, spud. Just noticed it, but saw the thread but noticed the video wasn't getting much engagement. I thought some folks might appreciate their perspective, since Super Eyepatch Wolf seems to come with his own issues (tone, popularity, etc).
I think it’s exactly because of those issues that this video is garnering so much discussion.
 
I don't see any issues at all with a fade to black into a black loading screen and could argue that it makes a lot more sense than a hard cut. As I said in my last post, I agree that it perhaps lingers a little too long - but I don't think this is at all comparable to using dips to black to connect two cutscenes together. One is pretty much an industry standard that we see regularly in both movies and videogames whilst the other is completely unnatural.
A fade to black is usually used to transition between scenes or denote the passage of time and distance. It's very weird, from a purely cinematic/editing POV, to fade in and out of black and have your character standing in the exact same place (as is the case with the Shenhua morning interruptions). I agree that this isn't as distracting as the weird camera resets, but both combine to demonstrate an overall lack of polish and pull the viewer out of the experience.

And one could again argue that he's comparing he best of one thing to the worst of another in an attempt to strengthen his argument. It wouldn't be the first example of cherry-picking that we've seen in this video.
By that definition every negative review is guilty of cherry picking. If I say that a game is unstable because it crashed twice during my playthrough, am I cherry picking those examples by not mentioning all the times the game didn't crash? Or granting out sized importance to those crashes? What if it only crashes one time but it deletes my save. My point is that picking bad examples that do, in fact, exist to strengthen your point is only a problem if you're making mountains out of molehills (which you may think SEPW is doing). I don't think he's doing that.

I feel like one of us is misremembering here, because from what I recall, Ryo always needed to be stationary to engage in conversation outside of the Guilin section of the game (where it is scripted).
Right, the conversations with Shenhua. I liked them much better in S2 and imo S3 covered much of the same ground in a far less interesting way. They just sit around her house shooting the shit as opposed to going on a journey through varied landscapes.

I never liked the sat-nav NPCs personally as it came across as completely unrealistic, but if you were able to look past that I suppose this is a fair point.
Certainly unrealistic and somewhat counter to how Hong Kong is characterized as a particularly hostile place toward Ryo but definitely welcome from a pure gameplay perspective. Nearly every NPC is useful in pointing you to your next destination and there are times in S3 where only one NPC is useful.

We know that he visited China in the past. We don't know that he spent time training in Bailu Village with Lan Di's father.
Ryo carries with him a photo of Iwao and an unknown person (who we can almost certainly surmise is Sunming Zhao after Zhu's conversation in S2) that says "at Bailu Village" on the back of it. At best S3 confirms that yes, that is Sunming Zhao and then, infuriatingly, offers up no additional information.

My point here was that if the things that you omitted from your synopsis of Shenmue 3 are unimportant to the overall narrative, the things that I omitted from both of my synopses are equally unimportant.
But they're not. Sure, you could pretty much ignore Master Chen, Guizhang, and Chai from your S1 synopsis but you'd have to at least mention that Iwao was accused of murder and has a mysterious past in China. You can't say that Xiuying, Ziming, the Shenmue tree, the poem, and Zhu's story about Iwao and Sunming are equally unimportant to S2 as Chai is to S3.

What if broom girl or fat man return later in the series? I think there is just as much likelihood (0%) of this happening than the return of Joy and Wong.
I would say that the return of Joy and Wong is significantly likelier (and far more welcome) due to the fact that they're both associates of Ren's and Joy is also related to Guizhang (who may also return, who knows?).

Whilst I'd probably agree with that assessment in regards to the second master, I think the Bailu master worked pretty well and quite enjoyed this section of the game. It was a little untraditional when compared to the tutelage Ryo received from Xiuying, but I think that's why I liked it. Ryo learning a very similar move later in the game might have cheapened this section a little, but taken in isolation, I don't think there was anything wrong with the first training section and calling it important to Ryo's development as a martial artist doesn't feel like an overstatement.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed aspects of this. But Shenmue was always about marital arts as a philosophy and the different masters taught Ryo different aspects of that philosophy (Jianmin teaching Ryo softness into force, Xiuying telling Ryo about clearing his mind etc.); what does the drunk guy teach Ryo? Furthermore I highly dislike the notion that Ryo can just learn a move that makes him defeat his opponent; that's not at all how the previous games handled martial arts. Ryo doesn't learn counter-elbow assault to beat Dou Niu, how lame would that have been?

I feel like you are moving the goalposts a little on this one. I posted a quote from SEPW in which he says something to the extent of "You have to watch the exact same cutscene every day", you argued that it was pretty much everyday, I demonstrated that it wasn't and now you are shifting the subject of SEPW's statement from 'that cutscene that never changes' (that actually does change) to general 'interruptions'.

On this point, I still don't really classify these cutscenes as 'interruptions'. Perhaps if they occurred randomly in the middle of the day while the player was actively doing something I could see your point, but they come at the beginning of each day before Ryo has even left Shenhua's house (or in Niaowu, the hotel). Progress has already been 'interrupted' by nighttime and the need to sleep and so I don't see how you can really say that progress is being halted by the inclusion of a 3 second cutscene at a time when Ryo and the player are doing nothing.
I watched this section of the review again and the point being made is that S3 is constantly interrupting the player both in terms of cutscenes and in terms of gameplay objectives; as he says "everything is a struggle". He says "you cannot skip it and it does not change", meaning that the cutscene itself will always be an aggrivation. Every morning, without change, you will trigger a cutscene at the exact same time. The only time the content of the cutscenes is referenced is in that on-screen text that says "I swear these are all different clips". I'm not moving the goalposts because he qualifies this part of the video by saying "it might sound like I'm being pedantic" and when he talks about Niaowu, he specifically mentions only that there are 2 unskippable cutscenes that trigger every morning, not that they're always identical--obviously emphasizing that his main issue is with the constant interruptions (again, he segues into talking about the stamina from this point). If you don't find them to be that intrusive, then that's fine, they didn't bother me as much as they appear to bother SEPW but I did get a weird 'Groundhog Day' vibe from them as the game progressed, they felt very artificial to me.

If we compare SEPW's review ("You have to watch the same cutscene every morning and it never changes.") to mine, there is a direct conflict here. One review says that the cutscene changes whilst the other implicitly states that it never changes. One review says that you have to watch it every morning whilst the other says that it happens on most days. Only one of these reviews can be correct on these points because these elements of the game are not a matter of opinion.
Yeah, that's fine; he's imprecise in that instance and he could reword it or even omit that example and it wouldn't change much about the review. I think the broader point about interruptions and daily repetition is a pretty accurate portrayal of the game. If you're not willing to repeat very similar tasks on a semi-daily basis and endure frequent, often pointless, cutscene interruptions, I would say it's a pretty safe bet that you won't like S3, which is why I take his point in good faith.

I'm glad that the fast travel is kept to a minimum in the Shenmue series as I really don't think that it fits with the style and some of the thematic elements of the games. I do think that making the maps needlessly large creates annoyance where there needn't be any though and segmented off sections of the map (specifically in Niawou) can really exacerbated this problem.
Agreed.

Without knowing what exactly these compromises were, I think it's difficult to make a call on this.
It's impossible to know without speculating. I think the emphasis on grinding for money and martial arts levels, forcing the player to engage in nearly every side activity to earn moves, and artificially gating progress are all symptoms of either having to stretch out thin resources or good design intentions poorly implemented. The compromises made to the story, quest design, and character work, however, I am far less forgiving of, as those things are more or less "free" with a decent writer at the helm.

Truthfully I don't think it's possible to make a game like S1 and 2 on a shoestring budget without massive compromises, they had too many expensive luxuries that the player could ignore. Those games had a combat system worthy of an action game for a handful of fight scenes. They had unique NPCs and shops, 99% of which the player never needed to interact with. Almost all the side content existed solely for its own sake, nothing fed into a larger incentive system. S2 had duck racing. Shenmue will need to make compromises that will certainly alter what someone's vision of Shenmue is but I don't think S3 is the best we can hope for.
 
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CD4 remain one of the pinnacle of videogaming experiences in my opinion.
But while shenmue 3 doesn't reach that height, it's still the most similar experience, especially when I think to Bailu, the conversations with Shenhua and villagers, the familiar atmosphere of her house and the mountans etc.
I think they nailed it, and I wish they would go for an even more "videogame unfriendly" approach like shenmue 1 or the same cd4 (means less gamey features, just a full journey experience).

I think the few conscious decisions not driven by budget and development conditions, were infact the inclusion of more gamey aspects, like gambling or the arcade in the village.
But I can understand that decisions, I can only imagine what would've been the reaction if the village had only fishing, training and dialogues :D
It would've been the definitive esperience for me, but probably even more boring for other people, lol.


I agree for CD4. But Shenmue III is REAAAALLY far from it. First of all, Shenhua lost a lot of mystery and of her personnality. She feels like a different character altogether. Bailu just feels too artificial and lost its mystical aspect. It's just your average chinese countryside village. They completly dropped the ball on that aspect for the sake of fan service and mini games.
As for the village, they could've made different activities. When you think of it, nearly 20% of the villagers' job is related to gambling. That makes literally no sense.
 
Having Ryo help out with more agricultural activities and working that into his training regimen would've made the most sense...maybe helping keep different villagers safe as the thugs continue to attack Bailu, culminating in some kind of stand-off with the martial arts masters, Ryo and the Red Snakes.

RDR2's epilogue sort of goes into what I would've hoped Shenmue 3 would do in Bailu.
 
A fade to black is usually used to transition between scenes or denote the passage of time and distance. It's very weird, from a purely cinematic/editing POV, to fade in and out of black and have your character standing in the exact same place (as is the case with the Shenhua morning interruptions). I agree that this isn't as distracting as the weird camera resets, but both combine to demonstrate an overall lack of polish and pull the viewer out of the experience.
I agree with pretty much all of this, but still disagree that the decision to employ a fade to black in and out of the shoe removal scenes is in any way problematic. If there wasn’t a black loading screen either side of the cutscenes then I absolutely agree that it would be a strange choice, but as there is, I think it plays out just as naturally as a hard cut would have (if not more).
By that definition every negative review is guilty of cherry picking. If I say that a game is unstable because it crashed twice during my playthrough, am I cherry picking those examples by not mentioning all the times the game didn't crash? Or granting out sized importance to those crashes? What if it only crashes one time but it deletes my save. My point is that picking bad examples that do, in fact, exist to strengthen your point is only a problem if you're making mountains out of molehills (which you may think SEPW is doing). I don't think he's doing that.
I‘m not really sure that that’s the best example to illustrate the point you’re trying to make. Mentioning that a game crashed x number of times is very different to selecting one or two examples that are incredibly different to the other 99.99% of similar instances and suggesting that they are representative of them all.
Ryo carries with him a photo of Iwao and an unknown person (who we can almost certainly surmise is Sunming Zhao after Zhu's conversation in S2) that says "at Bailu Village" on the back of it. At best S3 confirms that yes, that is Sunming Zhao and then, infuriatingly, offers up no additional information.
I’d never actually looked up what the kanji on the back of the photograph said. Does Ryo ever mention this in game? It’s possible that I was aware of this as a child and completely forgot - but as I no longer explore every tiny element of the games like I did when I first played them, I genuinely thought this was new information when I heard it in S3.
But they're not. Sure, you could pretty much ignore Master Chen, Guizhang, and Chai from your S1 synopsis but you'd have to at least mention that Iwao was accused of murder and has a mysterious past in China. You can't say that Xiuying, Ziming, the Shenmue tree, the poem, and Zhu's story about Iwao and Sunming are equally unimportant to S2 as Chai is to S3.
Without having seen the complete Shenmue story, I’m not sure how you can write these elements off as being unimportant or insignificant. There’s every chance that some of these elements will pay off in future entries - just as there’s every chance that some of the elements from the first few games that seem important to the story won’t.
I would say that the return of Joy and Wong is significantly likelier (and far more welcome) due to the fact that they're both associates of Ren's and Joy is also related to Guizhang (who may also return, who knows?).
If you told me that one of these pairs were going to make a return, then I suppose I’d assume that it would be Joy and Wong, but I really don’t see any of them returning (although for some reason I have a feeling that we might see Guizhang make an appearance towards the story’s climax). Joy and Wong are without doubt the better characters, but I think they’ve all already played their part.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed aspects of this. But Shenmue was always about marital arts as a philosophy and the different masters taught Ryo different aspects of that philosophy (Jianmin teaching Ryo softness into force, Xiuying telling Ryo about clearing his mind etc.); what does the drunk guy teach Ryo? Furthermore I highly dislike the notion that Ryo can just learn a move that makes him defeat his opponent; that's not at all how the previous games handled martial arts. Ryo doesn't learn counter-elbow assault to beat Dou Niu, how lame would that have been?
The drunk master teaches Ryo patience. I’m not particularly well versed in martial arts, but I can see how adapting one’s style in order to combat an opponents style would make sense.
The point being made is that S3 is constantly interrupting the player both in terms of cutscenes and in terms of gameplay objectives; as he says "everything is a struggle". He says "you cannot skip it and it does not change", meaning that the cutscene itself will always be an aggrivation. Every morning, without change, you will trigger a cutscene at the exact same time. The only time the content of the cutscenes is referenced is in that on-screen text that says "I swear these are all different clips". I'm not moving the goalposts because he qualifies this part of the video by saying "it might sound like I'm being pedantic" and when he talks about Niaowu, he specifically mentions only that there are 2 unskippable cutscenes that trigger every morning, not that they're always identical--obviously emphasizing that his main issue is with the constant interruptions (again, he segues into talking about the stamina from this point). If you don't find them to be that intrusive, then that's fine, they didn't bother me as much as they appear to bother SEPW but I did get a weird 'Groundhog Day' vibe from them as the game progressed, they felt very artificial to me.
I’m sorry, but the point being made (by me) was that what SEPW said (the section of the video that I quoted) was inaccurate.

You keep trying to bring this back to his larger point (which I’ve already given my thoughts on), but can we just agree that when SEPW states that every morning, the same unskippable cutscene is played - he is wrong. He’s wrong that it happens every day (it’s more like 2/3), he is wrong that it is unskippable and he is wrong that it is the exact same cutscene (even if the different variations of it are pretty similar).

Him acknowledging that his complaints in this section are pedantic does not change the fact that one of the main criticisms used to back up his argument that the game is full of interruptions that make playing the game some massive chore is wrong on all three counts.

Whether or not this weakens that argument is certainly up for debate, but it’s a debate that viewers of the video who haven’t played the game wont be able to take part in because they haven’t been given an accurate portrayal of what these ‘interruptions’ are nor how often they occur.
Yeah, that's fine; he's imprecise in that instance and he could reword it or even omit that example and it wouldn't change much about the review. I think the broader point about interruptions and daily repetition is a pretty accurate portrayal of the game. If you're not willing to repeat very similar tasks on a semi-daily basis and endure frequent, often pointless, cutscene interruptions, I would say it's a pretty safe bet that you won't like S3, which is why I take his point in good faith.
As I mentioned earlier, it might just be one line here and one line there, but they quickly add up. I agree with most of the broader points made in the video, but think that the many inaccuracies and misrepresentations throughout it present these issues as being much more impactful than they actually are.

I feel like we’re reaching a point where we’re both beginning to repeat ourselves, so I think it might be best that we wrap this discussion here. It’s been interesting, but I’m not sure there’s much more to gain from going round in circles.

It's impossible to know without speculating. I think the emphasis on grinding for money and martial arts levels, forcing the player to engage in nearly every side activity to earn moves, and artificially gating progress are all symptoms of either having to stretch out thin resources or good design intentions poorly implemented. The compromises made to the story, quest design, and character work, however, I am far less forgiving of, as those things are more or less "free" with a decent writer at the helm.
It feels like a mixture of them wanting to stretch out the game’s story whilst also encouraging the player to take in everything that the game has to offer. Personally, I’d rather they’d left the choice in the players hands (if they want to burn through the game in 10-15 hours, let them) as I feel like most fans would have naturally gravitated towards the side activities as they played.

I agree on your points regarding the story, but do believe there were circumstances that contributed towards the story feeling so thin that we’re not aware of.

Truthfully I don't think it's possible to make a game like S1 and 2 on a shoestring budget without massive compromises, they had too many expensive luxuries that the player could ignore. Those games had a combat system worthy of an action game for a handful of fight scenes. They had unique NPCs and shops, 99% of which the player never needed to interact with. Almost all the side content existed solely for its own sake, nothing fed into a larger incentive system. S2 had duck racing. Shenmue will need to make compromises that will certainly alter what someone's vision of Shenmue is but I don't think S3 is the best we can hope for.
I agree that their vision for Shenmue 3 was not in line with the budget available to them and that they should have refined the experience a little more by focusing on a few key areas rather than trying to cram everything in.

That said, I think this is an incredibly difficult (if not impossible) task and that no matter what they did they were always destined to disappoint a section of the fan base. Unfortunately, I feel as though by neglecting the story, they disappointed a much larger section of the fan base than they needed to - and to a much greater degree.
 
Because people don't change their opinions over years? Why should I believe you are not a disgruntled fan? It's a possibility.
Because that's taking arguments in bad faith. It's pretty paranoid to assume people posting on the Shenmue Dojo aren't fans. Assuming everyone is against the series because they're talking negative about one game in it is paranoid. Period.
You know perfectly well what I mean. If that isn't disingenuous, I don't know what is.
People can already say that, if Shenmue was any good then there wouldn't be all these negative reviews and the cherry on top is this video: "even a longtime fan hates Shenmue 3".

Try to argue reasonably with such people. These things matter, in time, this negativity will be everything any non-Shenmue fan will remember about Shenmue.
Again, assuming everyone is disingenuous is acting in bad faith. And if these people are so unreasonable and just want to hate the game then why does it matter? You're not going to convince them Shenmue III was a good game, if there are people who just want to hate the game they will. Why does it matter if now they can say "well here's one video from one fan who hated it!"? Who cares? Why does this offend you so much?
Anything about one of the most popular cartoon ever will get such kind of views. It's not a fair comparison.
I cited it as a way of showing that his channel doesn't need to clickbait titles to get views and that this Shenmue video he made was actually going to underperform for him. So if it's clickbait, it's bad clickbait that isn't doing what clickbait should do which is get views. I mean he also makes videos about fairly obscure anime that gets him 1.5m views or so per video, and as a reminder this video only got 716k views as of this post (and it's past the period where it was going to see it's highest bump in views). Again: clickbait and Shenmue don't really go together. I mean Jim Sterling's way more hyperbolic videos about Shenmue III have less views than SEPW's video, and Jim has a larger subscriber count. A lot of people don't care about Shenmue one way or the other, that's a fact, posting a video about how Assassin's Creed is bad will get you more views than one about how Shenmue is bad.
It seems the Shenmue Dojo is going the way of so many other websites that are being infiltrated and destroyed by politically correct BS.
Oh, you're one of those. Because expecting people to be calm and actually watch and debate a video instead of attacking it's author's legitimacy is PC culture. Riiiiiight.
Vasid's posts seem to appeal to emotion (by quoting fan stuff like DAN and saying he expects better from us) to dismiss any criticism of this video.
That's funny, I see a lot of criticism of the video that I'm not dismissing, hell even some I'm putting likes on. Pretty sure I'm only asking people who are attacking the video's author without having even watched the video to calm down.
 
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Really you guys are bashing screen fading to black before some cutscenes ?

You have gone into the realms of nitpicking. DMC 4 and RE 5 and RE 6 had loading screens before each cutscene and no one bashed them for it at all.
 
Really you guys are bashing screen fading to black before some cutscenes ?

You have gone into the realms of nitpicking. DMC 4 and RE 5 and RE 6 had loading screens before each cutscene and no one bashed them for it at all.
I think people aren't talking about it fading to black before cutscenes, I think they're talking about it fading to black during cutscenes, like in the middle of them. I could be wrong though.
 
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