What do you rate the game (1-10)?

[ShenGCH]

I give it a 6/10.

+ It retains the spirit of Shenmue
+ Great setpieces
+ Great visual design
+ New mini-games were enjoyable

- I found the experience very "bits and pieces" and incoherent for the most part
- The "go here, get beat up, return later" formula got boring real fast
- Character development was poor right across the board
- We learned very little about Iwao and Sunming Zhao
- 9:00pm curfew? Fucking what?!
- The fighting system felt awkward and empty
- Too much reliance on slogging tasks (e.g. finding the martial arts shops; finding the wine; and having to save and spend unreasonable amounts of money for two particular items)
- Not being able to skip gameplay dialogue became painful within a couple of hours.
- The puzzles were quite hamfisted and impractical
- Niao Sun fucking sucked, despite the hype and build-up surrounding her, and we didn't even get to fight her
- Where were the other two Chi You Men bosses we were promised?
- The entire castle section - what should have been a grand and climactic ending - felt janky, rushed, and cheap

I'm glad it exists, and I think it is a very good pitch for what Shenmue IV could be, but my god was it a let-down.

 

[I Got Sriracha In My DNA]

I went with 8.7. The gameplay kept me engaged and while a step down narratively speaking from Shenmue II, the ending nowhere near infuriated me like the first Shenmue.

Pleasant experience and I'm glad we had another game of Ryo, Shenhua, and Ren.

 

[Zhenmue]

8

 

[jsh020]

7/10, really relaxing game with a satisfying gameplay loop and constant presence of side content, the combat system while jank had alot of fun tucked away if you were willing to mess around with the moves and I'm thankful they actually let you have optional battles whenever which is a major issue I had with the previous games. I loved exploring the new locations. The talks with shenhua were by far the most memorable part of the game as it really helped ryo feel alot less 1 dimensional and talk more casually about stuff. While not as frequent, I always loved Ren and Ryo's bickering so it was a treat having him back and I got alot of solid laughs from his goofy antics.

The thing that kills this being a great game is the lack of story progression and more specifically, just how much it felt like meaningful scenes were lacking with the side cast, it really feels like there should of been more optional scenes to hammer home some sort of relationship with shenhua+ryo and the people they meet along the way, I was very bothered by how little familiarity Bailu village seemed to have with shenhua and I think a big part of that was that we never really saw her interact with any of em save for a couple moments and there was ample opportunity for them to provide just some fun relaxed scenes of people getting to know one another that we never got. Same can be said for the 2nd half with how awkward Miko girl and the kung fu guy were handled.

Its an easy game to be fustrated with what could have been, but I still at the end felt satisfied with what i was given and how easy it was to play. The finale did make me feel very empty though.

 

[gladias9]

7/10
I would've given it an 10 just for the Shenhua conversations.. but then I realized that random, disjointed conversations with an NPC shouldn't the main highlight of the game.

 

[chaikilla]

I give it a 6/10.

+ It retains the spirit of Shenmue
+ Great setpieces
+ Great visual design
+ New mini-games were enjoyable

- I found the experience very "bits and pieces" and incoherent for the most part
- The "go here, get beat up, return later" formula got boring real fast
- Character development was poor right across the board
- We learned very little about Iwao and Sunming Zhao
- 9:00pm curfew? Fucking what?!
- The fighting system felt awkward and empty
- Too much reliance on slogging tasks (e.g. finding the martial arts shops; finding the wine; and having to save and spend unreasonable amounts of money for two particular items)
- Not being able to skip gameplay dialogue became painful within a couple of hours.
- The puzzles were quite hamfisted and impractical
- Niao Sun fucking sucked, despite the hype and build-up surrounding her, and we didn't even get to fight her
- Where were the other two Chi You Men bosses we were promised?
- The entire castle section - what should have been a grand and climactic ending - felt janky, rushed, and cheap

I'm glad it exists, and I think it is a very good pitch for what Shenmue IV could be, but my god was it a let-down.

You pretty much captured everything I wanted to say.

The whack-a-mole game was so addictive and I loved the basketball one too. There's a really hilarious NPC that swears she knows Ryo from somewhere and guesses that he's the lady who owns the hotel. Ryo just screwfaces her and asks her how that is even possible. I felt like that was a nod to the guy in 2 who says that you are some Japanese guy he met in x.

 

[hyo_razuki]

7/10, just like Yu himself rated it. It seemed to start out like it was going to be a fucking masterpiece again but shitty storytelling, amateurish plot holes, lack of character development and almost zero progress on the plot bring it way down.

 

[gladias9]

7/10, just like Yu himself rated it. It seemed to start out like it was going to be a fucking masterpiece again but shitty storytelling, amateurish plot holes, lack of character development and almost zero progress on the plot bring it way down.

It really feels like Yu is smelling his own farts here.

Yeah, we want him to tell HIS story but realistically if you have literal chapters of nothing consequential happening and you know your series is lucky to have even gotten a revived sequel.. then cut the filler out man!

 

[DynamiteCop!]

I voted 6 and 7 because 6.5 is where I stand.

 

[danielmann861]

8...much better than I expected it to be.

i’m warming up to the story more on my 2nd playthrough now that my expectations story wise have been checked.

 

[Zhenmue]

I think an average of a 7 or 8 is a fair score

I do think people will think more highly of this game and forgive some.of it's flaws as time goes on especially after 4 comes out as rather than being the final say which at this point it is it will it will be a stepping stone to the next chapter

 

[stillsense]

nevermind

 

[Shenhua-Nani?]

6/10

I enjoyed my time with the game but it didn’t deliver on most things they promised they would.

 

[Dehone]

6.5

 

[Machsi]

7.5/10 for me. Fell to pieces at the end

 

[FuK-San]

When compared to the first two titles, it’s a 6.5-7 just like Yu said in the gameinformer interview.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

Whack a Mole is really good.

 

[Machsi]

When compared to the first two titles, it’s a 6.5-7 just like Yu said in the gameinformer interview.

I appreciate his honesty.

 

[iknifaugood]

I’m at a 5. I view the story as core to the experience as well as the only reason to revive this series so for it to disappoint on this front kills the game for me. I think almost every change that was made to the gameplay systems was for the worse, the stamina system is dumb, most food is a waste because garlic and bananas are OP, the economy is horribly unbalanced with ridiculously expensive moves requiring tons of grinding for money, gambing stakes have been stupidly lowered and it requires jumping through too many hoops to actually get money, and the combat is neutered and requires you to buy moves and grind in order to get stronger. You also can’t skip dialogue making this already sluggish game painfully slow and the warp function is inconsistent, sometimes requiring you to wait IRL. The environments are too big for the amount of content in them and, combined with the stamina system, discourage exploration. It is in nearly every way a massive step backward from S2 but all of that could have been forgiven if they stuck the landing and delivered on the story.

Playing this game, I felt like Homer chasing his runaway pig constantly saying “it’s still good it’s still good” before finally admitting defeat and saying “it’s gone”. I was making excuses for the game right up until the credits rolled.

 

[shenmue3isntgood]

I gave it a 3/10 because it failed to fulfill many of the promises made by Yu and it just feels like a rush job knockoff game despite all the funding and support it has received aside from slacker backer and kickstarter campaigns. It's like they made a list of all the most basic and most memed elements of Shenmue 1 and 2 and made a game based on that checklist without any thought or creativity involved. It should serve as an example why you need proper directors and producers for big projects like this, because just getting funding and outsourcing to India is clearly not enough.

• Recycled fights, 3 times Bailu thugs, 5 times Niaowu thugs, 3 times the Red Snakes leader. That's about all the story-related fights until you get to the castle. Gotta love the variety.
• Inconsequential encounters and story, nothing feels like it matters. Ryo encounters like 10 people who knew Iwao and it doesn't even matter all that much. Niao Sun appears for 5 seconds only to serve as a plot element for the future game. Nobody mentions the loss of the Phoenix Mirror which should've been a huge deal. Lan Di gets away. All Ryo learns is that Chi You Men have a hideout somewhere else and that Lan Di is Sunming Zhao's son. Sure was worth saving Shenhua's father for all this valuable information.
• Body check and reverse body check that the script plays out to be these huge signature moves are just story-bound QTEs with no practical use.
• Final encounter with Lan Di is a joke, his elites are reduced to a one button QTE and the fight with Lan Di serves no purpose whatsoever.
• Essential VAs don't make a return - makes the phone calls really cringy and awkward since the new actors (at least the English ones) don't even try to fit into the role, for the most part. As for story characters, Ren and Lan Di are fine (even if Lan Di sounds nothing like himself) but Shenhua just sounds like a voice synthesizer.
• Too much focus given to non-essential story elements and NPCs. New characters that the game makes you interact wiht over and over are unlikable and unappealing and many of them look like generic kung fu cartoon characters.
• Fighting system is a joke, once you master some of the quicker moves that have good reach and cause knockdown like tiger thigh or hidden sandstorm and level up your attack, you can cheese every fight pressing only L2 and R2 while dodging. A lot of cool moves were lost since no more grabs, but brawling uppercut, the dumbest move imaginable, made it and it's one of the easiest moves to pull off by accident locking you into the insanely long animation.
• QTEs are way too fast and too sudden, also they make no sense. You'd think it'd be easier since Ryo knows predictive explosion, but no. The buttons no longer correspond to actual moves you gotta do in combat. In Shenmue 1 and 2 jumping over stuff was always A, balancing on stuff was always left or right etc., meanwhile here it can literally be any of the 8 buttons which is honestly just annoying. Your instinct says to press left but the game makes you press triangle instead, repeat until you have the entire sequence memorized.
• Too much walking and talking, 99 out of 100 NPCs don't know anything and you spend ages looking for that one NPC that will give you the clue that will progress the story. This never happened in Shenmue 1 and 2 despite all the "looking for sailors" memes, every NPC knew a little bit of information and even not knowing all of it you were able to progress. Here the game locks you in until you find the specific information.
• Recycled gameplay elements and pointless chores being used to extend playtime such as looking for garbage for the pawn shop before going to the old castle, having to exhaust all options before story can progress (fidning out the guy's fighting style, looking for a boat to the castle, Bei doesn't appear until you talk to all the NPCs at the dock etc.)
• The game completely ignores your kung fu level and treats you like an idiot no matter what, for instance by criticizing your kung fu or forcing you to do horse stance near the end of the game even if you have it mastered.
• Unskippable dialogue, also can't pause during dialogue or cutscenes in a 2019 game
• Horrible music choices for the most part, music that was reused from past games was seemingly picked at random and Niaowu music is extremely grating and repetitive
• Unimaginative capsule toy sets that aren't fun to collect
• Hunger system takes away from the enjoyment and is only there to put constant pressure on the player to keep making money
• Graphics are pretty ugly on a non-Pro PS4
• The UI looks like it was created in 2003