I'm a devout Shenmue fan so without question there was no way I wasn't gonna like Shenmue 3. Allow me to put that aside for the moment and speak objectively. I give Shenmue 3 a 6/10. Even though I scored the game low I am satisfied with the end product. There are just elements that I'm not fond of and quite frankly don't understand why they are in the game.
I'll start with what I like about the game.
The visuals are quite good. There are some NPCs that look a little rough but overall the visuals are impressive.
Immersion, thos game is very immersive but at this point we should never expect anything less from a Shenmue game. The arcade games are fantastic, finding the Chobu chan figures are very satisfying, the king fu training sessions are nice, the jobs are fun as well.
Now for the things I didn't like. The combat IMO is not enjoyable. I would've preferred if all fight were QTEs instead of the new combat system.
QTEs, the QTEs are difficult to execute. Most the time I had to fail a QTE sequence several times just to memorize the inputs.
Repetitiveness, one of the things I always appreciated about the Shenmue games was that as a small scale game it never felt repetitive. I was surprised to see Shenmue 3 use some repetitive story progression. There is some bad guys that Ryo can't beat but if he spends alot of money and learns one move he can now beat them. The first time it happened wasn't a problem but to do it a second time and have to spend even more money was just frustrating and made me for a certain part of the game not even care.
Gambling, earning tokens instead of money and then buying random prizes and then taking those prizes to a pawn shop to finally get cash was annoying. Just give me money. The money you receive from working is way to low.
Rock, paper, scissors face was just dumb. Please never do this again.
I dont like the stamina/ health system.
I know you'll read this and think that I didn't enjoy the game but that's not true. Overall I had a great time and in many ways Shenmue 3 could've been my favorite but there were some elements I didnt like. This game was made on a budget so it's hard to be very critical. Looking at what we for 10 million I'm very happy.
SIDENOTE
After finally beating the game this game felt rushed and incomplete. I was under the impression that Niao Sun was the main bad guy of the game and we would be facing off against her. We didnt see her till the end, we gave her the mirror, she burnt down the castle and that's that.
Also we fight Lan Di for 15 sec, get beat easily, Ren throws fake Phoenix mirror out the window, Lan Di stares very long out the window and Ren and Ryo escape burning castle slowly.
Is this really the full story that Yu Suzuki wanted to tell. It feels rushed and incomplete. If Shenmue came out back in 04- 05 is this the game we would've recieved?