*Your* overall impressions?

Well, what can I say, i’ve always been realist with my expectations and knew Shenmue 3 would have to have some rough edges.

But seeing the videos I have to wonder if Yu should have focused on a tighter game with less npcs, rather than trying to make a proper Shenmue game with like half the required budget.

I mean some things do look good, but the animations are way too rough, combat animations aren’t fluid at all, and if it releases in this state it’s gonna trashed to hell and beyond.

The only ways I can see it having any success are either a miracolous improvement over the next 5 months, or if it gets delayed again to like January 2020 to avoid the hard competition of November releases.
 
It looks like Shenmue. There is a bit less polish than 1 and 2, however unless I'm mistaken the budget is also considerably smaller and I'm not sure how many of the original Shenmue's assets they were able to draw upon. I'm not one to mind a bit of jank, so far it feels like Shenmue and that was all I asked. My only real concern at this point is the length of the game, I'm hoping we get an epic like Shenmue II but I'm betting on something closer to I in terms of scope. I just hope it's not short, because I want to tuck in and get comfy.
 
Great thread and discussion!

It was fantastic to see actual gameplay after such a frankly tumultuous development period. It alleviated many of my concerns, while raising others. Ultimately this whole process was going to be how much would Suzuki have to compromise, with reduced budget, staff and expertise in making Shenmue III.

Based on brief snippet we saw clearly concessions have been made, but watching fan-made footage edits with Shenmue music we all love, I can say this is the type of game many of us fans have been waiting on. When I see screens like below, prior to 2015 I never expected we could get something like this-

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Obviously a lot of work is required before release and frankly I don’t think all of the issues raised can be addressed or remedied completely. I’ve sort of made peace with that. I obviously would want Ryo’s animation cycle improved, tweaks to lightening engine and customizable HUD.

All in all, it feels like a continuation of Shenmue and that’s more than I could have hoped for.
 
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It’s really hard for me to form a proper judgment on this game right now because we all know the IGN footage was B-Roll. For all, we know the game has improved leaps and bounds since then (or maybe it hasn’t). So my opinion is bound to change when the game is released and I play it myself. So with that caveat out of the way here’s my opinion as of right now.

Like I’ve said in the past, each time more new footage is shown I am impressed with how far they’ve come on such a minimal budget. I would definitely be more critical of Shenmue 3 if Suzuki had a much bigger budget to work with but given the circumstances, I am much more forgiving. For so little, he captured the soul of Shenmue perfectly as if he’d never left. This makes me believe that if he had a much bigger budget he would’ve given a genuine AAA experience I have no doubt of that.

I mean who other than Yu Suzuki would think that things like Turtle Racing would be exciting? I loved the training segments and could see myself spending a lot of time with it. I loved the sound of nature in the background makes me think of turning off the music just so I can hear the flow of water or the birds chirping. When it comes to combat I’ll reserve judgment till I see a high-level play of it since we didn’t see Ryo’s full repertoire or combo potential.

If I had to make any complaints it would be that the Lucky Hit ball did feel floaty and the combat lacked impact. All in all, though, I am just appreciative of the fact that we’re getting another Shenmue game. I just hope it does well enough for a Shenmue IV.
 
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Beyond impressed. It truly feels Shenmue. as if it never left. I have the occasional nitpick. I think English voice acting and localization is legitimately bad and I'm thankfully I will not be forced to use it. Then there's the combat. It doesn't look bad, but I think a little tinkering here and there and with better sound effects will produce a better martial arts movie sim. :) I think aside from that, the game is a total dream game. The music, the Guilin intro with the kids doing Tai chi, the wood chopping, and a game of Lucky Hit. The wood chopping seems so relaxing despite its simplicity. I really hope that they have a bit more involved mini-games going forward, but this game looks like it won't lack things to do. :)

I'm beyond excited and this is easily my most anticipated game of the year!
 
Space Lion said:
The music, the Guilin intro with the kids doing Tai chi, the wood chopping, and a game of Lucky Hit.
Click to expand...

Was there any music officially released from the E3 build? I read some preview that mentioned music but nothing from the footage IGN released.

I see there was a pre-order theme-
Which is amazing but that’s all I could find.
 
code l name said:
Was there any music officially released from the E3 build? I read some preview that mentioned music but nothing from the footage IGN released.

I see there was a pre-order theme-
Which is amazing but that’s all I could find.
Click to expand...

Thought Shengoro's footage included music?
 
This might be me being ott but I do think some of these reviews are overly dramatic and almost jumping on a bandwagon tbh.

That said we know animations are a little rough, NPC characters are inconsistent etc.

As I've said before for me it looks amazing given the budget. Reviews wise I'll be waiting for Huber, John from DF and others in that field who will give the game a fair shout but wont let anything pass they feel is below par. Especially John in that respect.

Its previewed well through IGN which is bigger than these French sites that are getting all uppity so that's a positive and I'd put Esra in that category of fan but being critically fair.
 
let's be fair it won't be enough if the game just feels like shenmue but is technically unstable. it won't be a pleasure to play the game constantly hunted by the feeling it could crash in any minute. that is my biggest fear.
 
plinsky said:
let's be fair it won't be enough if the game just feels like shenmue but is technically unstable. it won't be a pleasure to play the game constantly hunted by the feeling it could crash in any minute. that is my biggest fear.
Click to expand...

At least it'll be consistent with the re-releases.
 
Okay, just to put my view in context: I first saw Shenmue in the "Project Berkley" video that came on an additional disc with the Japanese copy of Virtua Fighter 3TB I imported back in 1998. I followed Shenmue closely, eagerly anticipating every update in Official Dreamcast magazine from then until release. I got Shenmue on release, and it has been my absolute favourite video game of all time ever since. I got Shenmue II a couple months after release, a year later.

I was initially disappointed in Shenmue II. I didn't like that there were no English voice-overs (lol). I didn't like the changes to the HUD that made it feel more "gamey." I hated that you could no longer train your moves alone in parks. I felt like while the world had expanded in size, it had shrunk in character and the handcrafted detail had been lost. Obviously I got over those things in time, and I absolutely adore Shenmue II as of today, although I still do have some of those misgivings about it.

When Shenmue III was announced, I immediately went to the kickstarter and put down $500. I was always going to back Shenmue 3 as much as I could possibly afford. I ended up backing it with far more than I could afford, and eventually upped my pledge to a ridiculous $1,500. I did this fully expecting a budget version of Shenmue with missing features, a much smaller world, poor graphics, dodgy voice-acting, etc. etc. I don't regret it at all.

Here's what I think of what we've seen of Shenmue III so far.

Pros:
  • The graphics are of a much higher quality than I ever anticipated
  • They seem to have somehow perfectly recaptured that "Shenmue feel"
  • The environments look absolutely captivating
  • Estimated 400-500 NPCs in the game (!!!)
  • There seems to be a really good amount of side activities both new & old
  • Better life-cycle for activities (chop wood to earn money, rent fishing rod, sell fish to market etc.)
  • New masters teaching Ryo new techniques!
  • The scripted kung fu / fighting sequences look incredible
  • What I assume are going to be the QTEs look just like classic Shenmue QTEs
  • The tiny glimpse of character interactions and story we've seen so far looks great
  • The forklifting looks perfect!
  • New and more varied, interesting ways to train
  • Tiny attention to detail in very mundane things is absolutely there (toy capsule machines fully animating)
  • Ryo having to eat/drink and the new stamina system are interesting
  • The training/levelling of kung fu through fighting and beating higher ranked fighters sounds cool
Cons:
  • The animations are very wonky, especially facial animations and lip sync
  • Not every NPC can be interacted with and not every NPC is fully voiced
  • Items Ryo can pick up are now circled for the player which sounds like there's much less to interact w/
  • "Gamification" of Ryo's training and literally "leveling" up his kung fu
  • No throw moves. No. Throw. Moves. Fuck this one sucks so bad.
  • Store now works like every other store in a video game, just buy/sell from a menu
  • Some of the minigames seem boring/very shallow (wood chopping)
  • The combat looks poorly animated and still in a very rough state
  • The UI is absolutely hideous
  • Inconsistent design of NPCs, some look great, some look bad, also too many caricature NPCs
  • No save transfer from Shenmue I & II HD (was never realistic, but I'm still gutted)
I think that covers my major thoughts. The two main cons for me are:

1) The way that Ryo's martial arts training has been turned into a slap-dash "RPG" system of literally leveling up elements of your kung fu. What was an ambiguous, slow burn-rewarding part of Ryo's growth in the first 2 games where-in you'd learn new moves and slowly get the impression that Ryo was "leveling up" his kung fu in a very natural way has become a cheap game-y system of bashing up a dummy again and again and watching your exp bars fill up. I'll try to go in with an open mind but from the outset I just can't help but hate it.

2) No throw moves. This is almost unforgivable to me, and I was devastated to hear this. I would be happy to see the game delayed another year or even longer if it meant not having to exclude these.

Overall I am cautiously optimistic, and am absolutely praying for another delay to give them more time to work on the game.
 
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Am I crazy or something? I love the IGN footage, but Huber says its an older build and what he saw looks better. Okay. Then we have a bunch of European journalists saying that what they saw looks broken and terrible etc., but I didn't see anything like that in the supposedly older build footage at all. Are they making shit up for clicks? Are they crazy or am I?
 
I must say, reading some journalistic impressions, the statement that it doesn't look like a PS4 game is inherently stupid to me.

It certainly does to me, looking at the screenshots so far. It looks quite nice for a AA title; definitely better than some other Kickstarter offerings, such as Kingdom Come, which was a great game but not very visually appealing. Another half a year(or more) of polish, it'll be respectable.

No, it doesn't hold a candle to AAA offerings. But come on---only a select number of studios with teams in the hundreds can do that.

It was never going to match FFVII, Uncharted, GoW or RE2. To think it would even get close is insanity.
 
I am excited for it, but we have to accept that this will review, on average, at 4 or 5/10 at best. I know they will improve a lot over the next 5 months, but considering we see the rhetoric online that the game looks no better than it did years ago (which is false), it clearly won’t make a difference to most reviewers.
 
@DarksideHazuki

The way that Ryo's martial arts training has been turned into a slap-dash "RPG" system of literally leveling up elements of your kung fu.
Click to expand...

There is nothing subtle about leveling up Ryo’s kung fu in past games.

In both 1 and 2 you literally have a bar for your moves experience. I see no difference except now we don’t have to mindlessly do the same move over and over to level them. But ultimately it’s the same principle.

Pics:

[3192

3193

In the past it said learning, moderate, advanced. This is the opposite of subtle. Gameification has been a part of Shenmue’s training since the outset. It includes a full on xp bar. How is this any different than what they’re doing now?

In I it takes a long time to level up a move but not that much. In II they made leveling up moves considerably faster. I can get some moves to advanced in like two sessions with Jianmin.

I like what they’re doing in III.

For one, doing the same move over and over and over is boring. Two, the training in III is much more closer to actual martial art training. Yes in martial arts you train the same move over and over but you also practice fundamentals like break falls, horse stance, depending on the art. I think separating Ryo’s various training into different training methods, and including a dojo where you have to crawl from the bottom to the top is far superior to what we had in I and II training wise, which tells a much larger story for Ryo. In those games, aside from beating Chai, you can neglect your training in a meaningful way and still get by. III forcing you to train to continue the game is nothing short of extraordinary.

The only issue I have with it now is that the game now treats Ryo as if he’s some martial arts noob. He’s not Lan Di, but he’s pretty good. And now he can’t beat mooks that look like Yellow Head extras? They nerfed Ryo. I don’t like that but it ultimately works as telling a larger story of Ryo’s martial arts growth so it’s a welcome compromise.
 
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I saw one or two people mention and I Liked the posts, but feel is need repeating: The fighting was set to AT for the B Roll. I'm assuming based on descriptions of demo, they didn't switch to MT.

Also repeating something I said before: in a similar delay time, Whats Shenmue to Shenmue was pretty nice polishing with everything from sound to polygons and textures. Shenmue 2 was made in around onlya yar after in same engine (although technically began development way back in 1997/8) with even more beautiful color, polygon and texture improvements.

My overall impressions; first time showing anything substantial, it'll improve. If need be, delay again til Feb/March ebfore Cyberpunk drops. Although, personally, I'd rather have black friday and holiday sales if at all possible and am confident going up again Star Wars (most likely a broken game per EA/SW Battlefront norm) and Death Stranding.

Deep Silver/Koch being European, I'm thinking they care more about Paris and Gamescomm for showing the best stuff, especially since E3 is in a downward slide like back in 2009(?) when it began to simply be an exclusive hotel event without shows. TGS, too, I'm sure Yu will attend and want to wow us.
 
Space Lion said:
@DarksideHazuki



There is nothing subtle about leveling up Ryo’s kung fu in past games.

In both 1 and 2 you literally have a bar for your moves experience. I see no difference except now we don’t have to mindlessly do the same move over and over to level them. But ultimately it’s the same principle.

In the past it said learning, moderate, advanced. This is the opposite of subtle. Gameification has been a part of Shenmue’s training since the outset. It includes a full on xp bar. How is this any different than what they’re doing now?

In I it takes a long time to level up a move but not that much. In II they made leveling up moves considerably faster. I can get some moves to advanced in like two sessions with Jianmin.
Click to expand...

Sure there's progress bars for your individual moves in I & II, but that's the extent of it. It's even cooler that when you hit the moderate level a lot of the moves transform and become more useful / have additional effects/combos. Ultimately though, in the world it feels like Ryo is leveling up through finding/purchasing/winning ancient move scrolls, meeting new masters, learning new styles and techniques and honing his skill through practicing what he's learnt alone and sparring other martial artists.

To me that is much more subtle and rewarding than "play this mini-game and watch your exp bars fill up." That's lame.

So we'll have to agree to disagree on it being exactly the same.
 
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