HazukiFCBR
"You don't play Shenmue....you live Shenmue!"
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2018
This.....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
Pretty much all. But....
- Meaningless Shenhua convos. We have had convos in Shenmue 2 that brings a lot more of Bailu, than Shenmue 3's.
- Not a single cut scene with Shenhua. Not a dinner. Not a single quest.
- We got faceoff!!! WTF!!! Horay!!
- Making the cave some sort of tutorial would be wise. I just feel that could be more in that cave to seach while giving the player the first contact with the controls. They could have used that. And give a god damn trophy for getting out of the cave!!!
- I had already said "crap oddly conversations" with Shenhua?
- I hate the way Ryo walks. Those arms breaking polygons is awful. Ryo "20 years earlier" walks better than a Ryo from a 2019 Shenmue game.
- Had fun training and combat. Until i got Shin Bone bash, and realize that as you said. Combat in this one is about having a snake bottle, lots of black garlics, starting with tiger thigh and spanning R2 with ShinBone bash when the thugh is on the floor.
- Sweet jesus.....face off.....
- Bailu is so underdeveloped that makes me wanna scalp my self.
- The best Shenmue 3 scene, not that is a really really good one, is the Bailu ending chapter. Thats is 1% of Shenmue 3 and is what makes Shenmue, Shenmue.
- The dude who became a friend with Ryo (if this is possible with such character developement) m the Hsu guy, is the dude from Bailu, who teaches tai chi to younglins, Ziuxiong, with another hair. Shame.
- I won't even go for the ending. I refused.