Why do i see yakuza fans spreading hate on people who like shenmue 3?

You Arcade Clerk said:
Most of these I consider 'budgetary conscious' decisions; they've cut down features to a more sustainable model, while still delivering a comparable experience, at least as far as I'm concerned. And I can't blame Sega; Shenmue was a huge money sink for them that didn't do too well commercially. Accolades, breaking new ground and a cult following are nice accomplishments, but at the end of the day it's a business and it's about making money.

However, while Yakuza was scaled back compared to Shenmue, I think it also made at least one major improvement:

- Tighter storytelling and it actually finished the story it wanted to tell.
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Yes, I believe that the first game was made on a $22,000,000 budget and Nagoshi didn't think they would release it overseas, so he intentionally made it for an older Japanese audience. The first game does feel like it was intended to be "one and done" because Nagoshi banked his career on it. He told Sega if it failed, he would quit.

You Arcade Clerk said:
Having a grand, epic saga that spans over multiple releases is an awesome concept with huge *potential* pay-off, but what happens if the franchise dies halfway through? Unfortunately, we pretty much saw that play out until Shenmue's revival years later. And at this point we still don't know where/how/when and IF we'll ever see it finished. I'm fairly optimistic we'll get the ending, but obviously nobody knows for sure at this point.

I'll take certainty over that awful feeling of insecurity any day. Every Yakuza sequel ties in to and builds upon its predecessors, but the story of each game is self-contained. And they're still telling large, complex and fulfilling stories in each one.

And yeah, turning emotional attachment into expectation is something that tends to lead to disappointment. Not saying you're wrong, though. We've all been there at some point, so I can definitely sympathize.

But it's the reason some fans didn't like Shenmue III; people project 20 years of baggage into expectations that can never be met. The project could have had three times its budget and that still would have happened. I loved the game, but went into it fully aware how much of an uphill battle it was fighting and cut it some slack for the things that weren't perfect.
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Yes, and that is of course where the difference lies even more. The first Yakuza game was intended to be just one game, and Shenmue was intended to be (maybe at minimum or over?) five games. Yes, the Yakuza games do build upon each other and do a good job of telling their own self-contained stories, which is good. For example, Yakuza 0, as it relates to Majima's story, does connect to Yakuza 4 in some ways (such as why he's in Osaka and who Saejima is) but by no means are you obligated to play 4 before 0, etc.

Yes, I was initially disappointed in Yakuza, but in time, I've come to appreciate it as its own unique franchise along with its spin-offs such as Kurohyo and Judgment.

As for Shenmue 3 not being perfect, neither were the first two. They had their own distinctive flaws or qualities that need to improve, but isn't that the same with every game out there? For almost 20 years, Suzuki was very open with what Shenmue III was in concept in that it would develop inwardly as opposed to outwardly and when I played Shenmue III, I felt that. As I have said in other threads and this one before, I am satisfied with Shenmue III. It was 85% the game I was expecting it to be. I feel some people were affected by "the passage of time," etc. Some people were expecting a conclusive ending, I wasn't. I was always expecting a cliffhanger ending and I was satisfied with where it ended.
You Arcade Clerk said:
Guess I also needed to get some things off my chest. Feels good, though.
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Considering you didn't start posting until now, I don't blame you.
 
Great points, @You Arcade Clerk and you are definitely one of the good fans, as you definitely understand where the two series sit and their good/bad points.

The only thing I can really criticise is that RH84 is right; they are NOT siblings and the, "cousins," comparison is absolutely spot-on.

All texts, historically, borrow from other, earlier texts that have already existed and have been consumed to death (this goes back to the Ancient Greeks), thus it absolutely stands that RGG would have borrowed SOME things from 'mue.

But they are conceptually, design-wise and, biggest of all, genre-wise, different titles and have been from the very first game.

One has the core gameplay be AA, the other has the core gameplay be Beat-'em-Up; yes, you fight in 'mue and you travel around in RGG, but those aren't the main points of the game. They have a bunch of minigames and side things that can be done, but so do RPGs from the late 90s, GTA series, hell, even MK: Deception had sidethings and minigames and that's a FIGHTING game lol.

So to say that RGG borrowed from 'mue is false at worst and a serious grey-area at best. I can almost guarantee that RGG would exist if 'mue didn't, simply because Nagosh' was looking to make a game that would tell the story of a Yakuza, in Beat-'em-Up form. From things I've read throughout the years, he seemed content of doing a side-scroller in the spirit of a 3D SoR or FF-style game, but he was ambitious and wanted to make it as, "open world," as possible (again, not direct quotes), hence him taking a chance with the series.

The only thing that can ever be considered a direct 1:1 comparison, are the inclusion of older, Sega Arcade games.

That's it.

And I'm a GARGANTUAN fan of both series (they are also my 2 favourite); 'mue II is my 3rd favourite game ever and RGG3 is my 4th favourite game ever, plus I have a massive Ryo tattooed on my leg (with the Phoenix Mirror behind him), Majima's eyepatch and Kiryu as well (in the pose of the cover of 3), plus I've beaten every RGG game (including the Kurohyos, Kenzan! and Ishin!, save for 7 and LJ) at least twice (3 I've beaten 4 times, 5 and 0 I've beaten 3 times) and I've beaten both 'mues 11 times and 'mue III once. So yeah, I'm not blowing hot air out my ass ;)
 
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Thanks for welcoming me, guys!

We're all just expressing personal takes and interpretations here and there's no objective truth to any of them.

While I definitely think it's possible a Yakuza game would have eventually seen the light of day, I don't buy that it would been the same experience we ultimately ended up with, had Shenmue never existed.

Both franchises scratch a similar itch I have and for that alone they'll always be siblings to me. I couldn't care less about genres not matching. They both are so much more than just the sum of their parts and I don't think either one can be pigeonholed into just one specific genre anyway.

With all of that said, whether we consider them fruits growing on adjacent trees at a farm, cousins or siblings, ultimately it feels like we're splitting hairs. I think we - the fans of both, that is - can agree on the umbrella term 'family'. At least I can. 🙂
 
Yes, Yakuza has opportunities to grow and evolve in its own way. Yakuza has been going non-stop since the end of 2005 (in Japan). While Yakuza outside of Japan has faced its own unique obstacles (for example, the fifth game came out in 2012 while it didn't get an international release until 2015 but not without a physical release), Sega fans had to wait 17-to-18 years for Shenmue 3, so Shenmue 3 never got those same opportunities, but Suzuki always had a concept on how he wanted the games to develop.

As I think about it, how would Yakuza benefit from world exploring like in Shenmue. Kiryu doesn't necessarily have to go inside every room and look at every object. I like how in Shenmue, you can ask people how to find a certain place. Can Yakuza benefit from interacting with NPCs who can tell you where you can find a ramen restaurant? IMHO, I think so. Considering the stories each game tells, maybe they don't require each other's qualities after all.

Was a Yakuza game inevitable regardless of Shenmue's existence? I wouldn't rule it out. In that time, games were starting to become more cinematic. Would open world still be inevitable without Shenmue? Maybe, but I doubt it would reach the same level of detail Shenmue offers because a lot of open world games since then haven't.
 
in my personal opinion, it comes down to the modern Like A Dragon fans being incredibly insecure because of our enjoyment of a series they despise. And not understanding that their opinion isn't the loudest in the room and just because they think Shenmue is boring means that we have to find it boring as well.
 
I didn't start playing the Yakuza games until Yakuza 0, so I didn't see why Yakuza fans dumped on Shenmue at the beginning, but perhaps, in a way, Shenmue had the slower luxury meal vibe that took itself quite seriously compared to the fast food, less-than-serious, immediate gratification sugar rush image of Yakuza, so in some kind of tribal way people could see themselves on one team or the other?

A bit like action film fans crapping on an arty or conceptual films for being different.
 
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It's pretty simple really. They parrot what they hear elsewhere without ever forming an opinion of their own. They hear it on a YT/Twitch stream from someone who has no clue what they're talking about or has an axe to grind...and they repeat it.

Because anyone who's actually played both games can tell you they're not the same in the slightest outside of a few slight common similarities. They're completely different beasts doing different things and the comparison is wildly unfair to make.

Honestly, the new Yakuza bandwagon fans can fuck off for all I care. It's a bit of a blessing and a curse that the franchise did become popular. On the one hand, it's great for SEGA as they have a commercial success at long last with the franchise (at least here in the west) but on the other hand? It brought with it a lot of parrots repeating opinions they've heard elsewhere without ever actually forming one of their own.
 
Roundhouse Ryo said:
I didn't start playing the Yakuza games until Yakuza 0, so I didn't see why Yakuza fans dumped on Shenmue at the beginning, but perhaps, in a way, Shenmue had the slower luxury meal vibe that took itself quite seriously compared to the fast food, less-than-serious, immediate gratification sugar rush image of Yakuza, so in some kind of tribal way people could see themselves on one team or the other?
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Agreed.

I think there's always been a perception problem with Shenmue. From the beginning, people have assumed that if you're spending a record amount of money on a game and pushing for realism (which was every gamer's dream in the 90s/2000s), it must be for everyone. It has to be a mainstream action game that everyone will enjoy, right? What else could it be?

As we all know, it was never striving to be an action-adventure/RPG game, and is a lot closer to its PC adventure game inspirations, with a slower, exploratory pace, and a focus on investigation and dialogue. It was always about living in and interacting with a detailed world, first and foremost. They then layered a cinematic framework over the top, providing a simple yet compelling narrative.

I think the English VO and dialogue undermined the tonal intent of Shenmue, unfortunately. It's hard to deny that some of the characters just kinda ruin the atmosphere sometimes, and it was enough for the haters to use indefinitely to discredit Shenmue as something that shouldn't be taken seriously.

But just to return to the "simple yet compelling narrative" thing -- this is also one of the biggest differences between Shenmue and Yakuza. Yakuza is literally a serious, complex crime novel (cut up and dropped into a hyper-violent, ridiculous video game). There are dozens and dozens of characters, affiliations, motivations, and politics to keep track of. Shenmue, on the other hand, is as simple as it gets: finding X will get me one step closer to Lan Di. This simple narrative is bolstered by subtle, personal connections and observations that you can make by spending time with side characters. The series are at complete opposite ends of the narrative spectrum.
 
I think at one point the idea Sega would pull resources from Yakuza to make another Shenmue upset certain fans. As we know that seems increasingly unlikely at this point. The best case is an RGG-AM2-Ys Net collaboration. Everyone wins. :)

Yakuza was on pretty precarious ground for a while.
 
"Yakuza is like shenmue but its good"

Why?

"Because a youtuber said so and hmmm well i never played shenmue but i dont have to in order to form an opinion, the youtuber already said its bad, so im gonna play yakuza instead !!!"

Its like somebody never trying on a dish for themselves and just taking the word of somebody else that it doesnt taste good so you say its a bad dish. And even worse some of them never even tasted the dish but insist its bad because somebody else also said its bad. Long story short the reason people compare and most of the time negatively shenmue to yakuza is due to stupidity and bandwagon/group thinking.
 
ShenmueWushu said:
"Yakuza is like shenmue but its good"

Why?

"Because a youtuber said so and hmmm well i never played shenmue but i dont have to in order to form an opinion, the youtuber already said its bad, so im gonna play yakuza instead !!!"

Its like somebody never trying on a dish for themselves and just taking the word of somebody else that it doesnt taste good so you say its a bad dish. And even worse some of them never even tasted the dish but insist its bad because somebody else also said its bad. Long story short the reason people compare and most of the time negatively shenmue to yakuza is due to stupidity and bandwagon/group thinking.
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Right. And Yakuza isn’t bad because it isn’t like Shenmue. They’re different beasts but we can’t deny Shenmue’s influence on Yakuza.

Now, a super slow paced Japanese yakuza sim sounds awesome to me as well…
 
Whenever I see ‘Shenmue bad, go play Yakuza’ or something similar, the more I’m put off from properly checking out that other series.
 
Don’t let it. It’s a ton of fun. Just go in expecting something a lot faster paced. The combat is like a few evolutions of Spikeout, which Nagoshi and his team also created. I still haven’t gotten to the turn based series so that’s something else entirely. It’s hard to keep up with tbh.

I bought Yakuza when it came out and was very disappointed it wasn’t like Shenmue, so I have my own perspective about the series. Liked it enough to finish and recommend to my other Shenmue-obsessed friends, but with the caveat it wasn’t a third as good as Shenmue. It didn’t do what I expected it to do. I’ve changed my mind since then, of course… it’s just its own thing.

Still think RGG could make a great Shenmue in spite of the differences. I wouldn’t trust any other developer tbh…
 
orient said:
I think there's always been a perception problem with Shenmue. From the beginning, people have assumed that if you're spending a record amount of money on a game and pushing for realism (which was every gamer's dream in the 90s/2000s), it must be for everyone. It has to be a mainstream action game that everyone will enjoy, right? What else could it be?
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Shouldn't it be for everyone though? We take it for granted now, but at the time we didn't know that "action/adventure game" was the genre with the most mass appeal. That it failed doesn't mean that Shenmue wasn't trying to appeal to everyone.

orient said:
It was always about living in and interacting with a detailed world, first and foremost.
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Interacting? Really? Shenmue's world is hardly interactive, even by the standards of the time. Deus Ex came out the same year. To play devil's advocate for a second, Shenmue was, first and foremost, a tech demo to showcase the power of the Dreamcast: that's where most of the development budget went, that's what most of the marketing focused on, and that's what the game itself wants the player to focus on. You can literally just pick up items to marvel at the graphics. We've kind of retroactively made that about "interactivity" but at the time it was 100% about showing off the graphics.

orient said:
They then layered a cinematic framework over the top, providing a simple yet compelling narrative.
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This is also a core focus of Shenmue, tied to the graphics: the presentation at the time was unrivaled. There's that bombastic score that's basically only ever heard in the cutscenes, the highly detailed character models that are designed to be shown off in cutscenes, crazy motion capture etc. Again, these are taken for granted now but were in and of themselves big draws at the time. It's no different than other "system sellers" that get sold on their graphics first and foremost.

orient said:
I think the English VO and dialogue undermined the tonal intent of Shenmue, unfortunately. It's hard to deny that some of the characters just kinda ruin the atmosphere sometimes, and it was enough for the haters to use indefinitely to discredit Shenmue as something that shouldn't be taken seriously.
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I think this ended up being one of the core inspirations for Yakuza: rather than running away from the inherent goofiness of the NPC interactions, they decided to lean into them. You can already see them heading in this direction with stuff like duck racing in Shenmue 2.

orient said:
But just to return to the "simple yet compelling narrative" thing -- this is also one of the biggest differences between Shenmue and Yakuza. Yakuza is literally a serious, complex crime novel (cut up and dropped into a hyper-violent, ridiculous video game). There are dozens and dozens of characters, affiliations, motivations, and politics to keep track of. Shenmue, on the other hand, is as simple as it gets: finding X will get me one step closer to Lan Di. This simple narrative is bolstered by subtle, personal connections and observations that you can make by spending time with side characters. The series are at complete opposite ends of the narrative spectrum.
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You're bang on here. In fairness, Shenmue (and Suzuki) certainly alludes to a much larger narrative with complex character relationships and I think it's failure to focus on that is one of the central failures of S3. I did find S3 to be much more light-hearted in tone overall but rather than being isolated to the gameplay with deadly-serious cutscenes, I found that it just had a more humorous/Saturday morning cartoon vibe to the whole production. I'm not the biggest Yakuza fan but it does tow this line much better by oscillating between wild extremes similar to what Metal Gear Solid used to do.

To answer the question of the thread: they hate because they think that S3 is a bad game and Yakuza is not only better, but essentially a replacement for Shenmue. It's actually a pretty unique relationship and I'm hard pressed to think of a similar example. If anything I find Shenmue fans more insecure about the popularity of the Yakuza series, after all, it's not like Yakuza has anything to fear from Shenmue, but to each their own.
 
ATAedan said:
This game looks amazing
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In its context it does, so now what look should be Shenmue with higher polycounts and textures... Anyways my point is that saying this game pioneered modern open-worlds games before Shenmue its a stretch and just trying to get on people's nerves. Its like if you say Steinway & Sons invented the modern piano and I go "neh, the lyre dates back to 2700BC mee-mee-mee-mee".

To keep it under videogames topic, what game is the father of survival horror? Resident Evil or Alone in The Dark, not Project Firestarter for C64 no matter how much the latter released long before.
 
Seaman said:
In its context it does, so now what look should be Shenmue with higher polycounts and textures... Anyways my point is that saying this game pioneered modern open-worlds games before Shenmue its a stretch and just trying to get on people's nerves. Its like if you say Steinway & Sons invented the modern piano and I go "neh, the lyre dates back to 2700BC mee-mee-mee-mee".

To keep it under videogames topic, what game is the father of survival horror? Resident Evil or Alone in The Dark, not Project Firestarter for C64 no matter how much the latter released long before.
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Alone in the Dark. Resident Evil controls and looks like it, just better and more stylish in most ways.

I think the combat in AitD is kind of quirky too, now that I think about it. I remember having to hold a button and press a directional arrow/command to shoot a gun or fight. Similar gameplay in Twinsen’s Odyssey (Little Big Adventure) and Time Commando. Twinsen was another series that gave me some real Shenmue-esque warm and fuzzies for a while but I lost interest. That’s another dev that had been a bit ahead of their time but never got that platinum selling game they had within them… They were working on a horror game for the DC that had a really interesting look to it.



Didn’t they have exclusivity with Sega on the Dreamcast? Truly the system of shattered dreams for some of us…
 
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