Were you happier with no Shenmue III? Or do you prefer living in a post-Shenmue III world?

I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't left with a 'is that it' feeling after my first playthrough, which was admittedly rushed due to getting married shortly after release. It was only after the second play, plus the varying information coming out did I really get it, for want of a better expression.

I'm 100% glad it exists. Take peoples personal views out of it for a moment, it's a symbol for gaming that you can make something happen despite being told it never will.

Reading that, for some, it's tainted the series I find heartbreaking. A game should never do that for someone IMO but it clearly has. My advice there is to cherish the first two games and just remember how they made you feel & maybe when the dust settles parts of Shenmue III will hold a small place in those hearts who are feeling down atm.

The world is better for having Shenmue III in it. 18 year expectations aside, budget, decisions, personal views etc. The game is a beacon of hope for other franchises. Lessons can be learnt, developed and improved. If Shenmue 4 happens I'm confident that this will be the case.
 
yeah... admittedly Im a snob with MGS, and i didnt particularly enjoy MGS4 as an MGS game, but i cannot sit here and lie saying it is not a great game or even still a good MGS. Does not affect my gigantic love for the first three whatsoever.

Suzuki or Kojima are literally incapable of designing a game wthout fun, addictive gameplay, at the very least.
 
xatruio said:
yeah... admittedly Im a snob with MGS, and i didnt particularly enjoy MGS4 as an MGS game, but i cannot sit here and lie saying it is not a great game or even still a good MGS. Does not affect my gigantic love for the first three whatsoever.

Suzuki or Kojima are literally incapable of designing a game wthout fun, addictive gameplay, at the very least.
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That's a very good comparison. Im also a massive Metal Gear Solid fan. I adore and love Metal Gear Solid 1,3 and peace walker. I did not enjoy Metal Gear 2 or 4 and im split on 5. I liked them for what they were but i dont think ill go back and play them.

Overall though, the Metal Gear franchise is one of my favourite series ever created and im glad those later games exist now that the series is finished.

When i think of Metal Gear 5, it reminds me of Shenmue 3. It divided the community. Some loved it and some didnt like it at all. The one thing it nailed though was gameplay. The gameplay is outstanding, but like Shenmue 3, it lacks story and character development. What was there though was the perfect foundation for Metal Gear 6 to be the greatest Metal Gear ever created. Unfortunately that konami / kojima stuff happened so the franchise died.

We are now in a similar situation with Shenmue. We'll get our star game, we just have to wait for the next entry. The foundation has been laid and my goodness is it a strong foundation

Its also ironic how i dont like metal gear 2 at all but you love it @xatruio. This is something ive seen which is common with the metal gear fandom. I should also note its the same with the Yakuza games. Some of them are amazing, some of them are borderline ok to 'im never playing this again'. The GTA series is also another example of this

I think this is the curse of long standing series. You're gonna have great entries, ok entries and not so good entries. When its all said and done though, you end up loving the franchise as a whole.

We're only getting started with Shenmue. I think Shenmue 4 is going to be epic and I reckon Shenmue 5 will split the community due to how the story unfolds. It is what it is. But as I say, when its all said and done, we'll all be able to look back with fond memories as a whole. Each of us having our own personal favorite entries, personal disliked entries and shared favorite entries.
 
Man I respet everyone's opinion but I really don't get it why some regret Shenmue 3 exists; yes the game has its flaws but it also has great Shenmue moments as well and even some better gameplay than the first two.
I never liked collecting capsule toys in the first two games, I also didn't enjoy lucky hit but that didn't stop me from enjoying them both and they will always be two of the greatest games that I ever played.
In Shenmue 3 I love collecting the Shenmue figures, I enjoy the pail toss minigame, wood chopping, whack a mole, fishing and training martial arts every morning to get stronger.
All those conversations with Shenhua at night are one of the best moments in the series, the locations in Shenmue 3 are my favourites out of all the three games. I really enjoy gathering herbs in these beautiful locations.
I also love the music and think that the music tracks fit very well the locations where they play; I even made a relaxing music compilation of the Shenmue 3 tracks to listen at night before falling a sleep.
I loved Ryo's training with Master Sun; finding out about Iwao and Zhao Sunming's past when we first meet Grandmaster Feng in that beautiful área in Bailu, finding out about the mirrors in Man Yuan Temple, the story about the Imperial envoys, the puzzles at the Bell Tower, fighting the thugs, the interrogation scene, the hide and seek quest with the kids, the npc's in Bailu made it feel a cozy and familiar location like Yamanose, Sakuragaoka and Dobuita.
Although not as great as Bailu, Niaowu also had some amazing stuff in it. First of all in my opinion it is the most beautiful town in the series and one of the best Asian locations I have ever seen in a vídeo game.
The temples are gorgeous, the food stands make the town feel alive, fighting in the Rose Garden is great, carrying all those different itens with the forklift makes it feel even more realistic than in the first one, the martial arts cutscene with master Bei, the QTE's where you go after the Red Snakes, the temple maiden cutscene, storming the castle with Ren, Kicking the door off to enter Lan Di's Room, Ryo's fighting seen with Lan Di with the room going up in flames, etc...
Yes I know that there are also a lot of negatives in Shenmue 3, but Shenmue 3 was almost certainly going to be the weackest out of the three, the expectations were put very high, compared to the first two Shenmue 3's budged was much less, the team that worked in it was a fraction of Yu Suzuki's team when he made the first two games, not to mention much more inexperienced and certainly less talented. I know they didn't made the brightest decitions along the way but to try and put Shenmue 3 in the same category and pedestal as the first two games is almost unfair in my opinion. Still they managed to gives up two amazing locations, some good story moments, some good gameplay and as I've said before the most important thing of all is that they made it feel SHENMUE, SHENMUE, SHENMUE.
 
It was certainly a tragically romantic state of affairs to end with Shenmue 2 and letting Shenmue 3 be the dream.
 
ShenSun said:
Its also ironic how i dont like metal gear 2 at all but you love it @xatruio. This is something ive seen which is common with the metal gear fandom. I should also note its the same with the Yakuza games. Some of them are amazing, some of them are borderline ok to 'im never playing this again'. The GTA series is also another example of this
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Always thought Raiden was criminally underrated and hated by a toxic gamer culture stil rampant now and even more horribly unchecked back then in 2001. Literally the biggest complaint about him was f*ggot :rolleyes: Therefor, I love the story of him being in
a real-life VR experiment to create a new Solid Snake through meme (gosh i sorta hate how internet ruined the word...) project rather than the les enfant terrible gene project.

If you didn't like Raiden, you didnt give a shit about the story. If you didn't mind Raiden, it'd be perfectly understandble if you still didn't appreciate Kojima's decision to make the game
not-a-remake-but-actually-a-remake.
Classic "aha!, gotcha!" moment of Hideo laughing in our faces. In most media, though especially video games, people essentially only want a carbon copy as a sequel, but somehow with a different story--which doesn't really compute. Then, on top of it, here's a new character as the biggest difference, which was the antithesis of what everyone wanted: MOAR SNAKE.

Genius. MGS4 I have a similar theory of Kojima essentially making the joke on us the player, except I feel he did not hit the mark quite as well and so I'm in the neutral camp. Fantastic gameplay, decent story first half and ending (ending saved it for me, tbh, great twist); overall great game, good MGS rather than all around amazing MGS game, if you catch what I mean.

/off topic (and @Sput made a thread I've still been meaning to write an essay on all my Metal Gear thoughts into...)

Also, I love Peace Walker and my pie in sky pipedream is Sony or Sega buying the rights then letting Kojima executive produce instead of direct (which he wanted since MGS3, but Konami never gave him a damn break) a retcon of MGS4 being PW+GZ and finishing MGS5 proper.
 
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I don't think MGS2 was a good game neither but it has arguably the most brilliant fan service of all time lol.
 
i mean, technically the joke was exactly what the masses wanted like most sequels: more of the same. We essentially got MGS on PS2 with gameplay/graphical engine improvements. Worthwhile in and of itself haha
 
xatruio said:
Always thought Raiden was criminally underrated and hated by a toxic gamer culture stil rampant now and even more horribly unchecked back then in 2001. Literally the biggest complaint about him was f*ggot :rolleyes: Therefor, I love the story of him being in
a real-life VR experiment to create a new Solid Snake through meme (gosh i sorta hate how internet ruined the word...) project rather than the les enfant terrible gene project.

If you didn't like Raiden, you didnt give a shit about the story. If you didn't mind Raiden, it'd be perfectly understandble if you still didn't appreciate Kojima's decision to make the game
not-a-remake-but-actually-a-remake.
Classic "aha!, gotcha!" moment of Hideo laughing in our faces. In most media, though especially video games, people essentially only want a carbon copy as a sequel, but somehow with a different story--which doesn't really compute. Then, on top of it, here's a new character as the biggest difference, which was the antithesis of what everyone wanted: MOAR SNAKE.

Genius. MGS4 I have a similar theory of Kojima essentially making the joke on us the player, except I feel he did not hit the mark quite as well and so I'm in the neutral camp. Fantastic gameplay, decent story first half and ending (ending saved it for me, tbh, great twist); overall great game, good MGS rather than all around amazing MGS game, if you catch what I mean.

/off topic (and @Sput made a thread I've still been meaning to write an essay on all my Metal Gear thoughts into...)

Also, I love Peace Walker and my pie in sky pipedream is Sony or Sega buying the rights then letting Kojima executive produce instead of direct (which he wanted since MGS3, but Konami never gave him a damn break) a retcon of MGS4 being PW+GZ and finishing MGS5 proper.
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I like Raiden but i think the switch in Metal Gear 2 was silly. Metal Gear Solid 1 built up snake to be this bada$$ character and alot of us wanted more of that. The issue was the marketing for MGS2 promoted that you were going to control snake for the entire game and always showed the tanker section, at least in UK/EU. When we finally played MGS2, and it switched to Raiden with no warning, it kinda ruined the experience. Admittedly, if I was to go back and play it now, id probably enjoy it much more as im older and can appreciate the decision and game design more. But as a little teenage kid, heck nah, i wanted more solid snake. To this day, he is probably in my top 3 characters of all time in videogames. Its kinda like if we had Shenmue 4 and they promoted Ryo in all the trailers. When we finally get the game, it switches to Fuku-san and we control him for the entire duration of the journey with Ryo being a side character.

I do like Raiden overall but nowhere near as much as Snake. Still need to play MGS Rising. Fortunately, in the follow up to MGS2, Metal Gear Solid 3, Kojima outdid himself massively and created the best Metal Gear game ever with big boss (snake)

Here's an unpopular opinion, i'm one of the those MGS fans who loved MGS Twin Snakes on the gamecube. Really enjoyed it, even with all the goofiness and over the top cutscenes.

It's also strange how we can draw comparisons from Metal Gear and relate it to Shenmue. Both series created by absolute madmen, but thats why these series are special and stand out from the crowd
 
ShenSun said:
Here's an unpopular opinion, i'm one of the those MGS fans who loved MGS Twin Snakes on the gamecube. Really enjoyed it, even with all the goofiness and over the top cutscenes.
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Nope, i do too! Complaints about TTS are fucking asinine. Different director--no shit it is directed different. Love me some Twin Snakes and Bleem MGS pretty equal
 
Skyrim might be worth the analogy too. Criticized to be soulless, repetitive, too easy, archaic and tiny. It was a downgrade in everything the series was used to do well.

But the game had enchanting atmosphere and the mechanics followed the classic DNA (dynamic economy, autonomous NPCs, accessible houses, etc.).

I rate my experience on Skyrim higher than S3 but I'm not sure I would feel more comfortable if Shenmue 3 was a Skyrim bis i.e. a fantastic game in the first ten hours before the interest drops completely without modding.

S3 was lackluster from the beginning to the end but at least, the combat system and item hunting kept my interest alive over the whole game.
 
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Maybe MGS2 and Shenmue 3 are more similar than we think. Kojima essentially trolled us in 2001 by intentionally giving us a bad MGS game to subvert our high expectations.... did Yu Suzuki do the same thing with S3?

Maybe his statement with the game was meant to be "You gamers who have waited the majority of your existence on Earth for Shenmue 3, no game can possibly live up to those expectations let alone a modest 'lil kickstarter game. I'll SHOW you a bad Shenmue game just to prove my point."

At least Kojima redeemed himself and apologized to the fans by giving them the masterpiece which is MGS3.

I'm sure Yu Suzuki will do the same with S4.
 
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SMDzero said:
"I'll SHOW you a bad Shenmue game just to prove my point."
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Isn't this subjective though?
I mean I personally didn't feel that Shenmue 3 was a "bad" game at all.
It felt like a Shenmue game. The only issue for myself and mostly everyone else was lack of real story progression and character development. These will come with Shenmue 4 I have no doubts.
 
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Sonoshee said:
Isn't this subjective though?
I mean I personally didn't feel that Shenmue 3 was a "bad" game at all.
It felt like a Shenmue game. The only issue for myself and mostly everyone else was lack of real story progression and character development. These will come with Shenmue 4 I have no doubts.
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Pretty much. I like Shenmue 3 alot. I find myself randomly booting it up and just running around engaging with world all the time.

Shenmue 3 is solid in the gameplay department. I think the gameplay is much better than shenmue 1 and 2. The lack of story, character development, padding and unpolish areas is what holds it back from reaching its potential. The foundation is very strong though and will make shenmue 4 a masterpiece if those flaws are addressed.

I think the best comparison for Shenmue 3 is Metal gear solid 5. Both have very similar issues but the gameplay is solid
 
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