Your Positive Highlights of Shenmue III

I really liked bailu as a whole, the areas opening up slowly made it feel great to explore and discover. I liked sun and he was probably one of the more developed side characters in the game. I greatly enjoyed the night talks with shenhua and the new training system was also nice. One more thing, those qte fails are great! Ryo gets nailed by a fire extinguisher!
 
Playing through the game from beginning to end was a positive highlight for me. Just the simple act of playing SIII was enough for me.

But if I had to pin point one moment in specific? I'll pin point two.

-- For most of the early game, I actually had Ryo sans jacket in the white shirt only. That was until we got to the conversation with Shenhua where he specifically talks about the jacket and how it was one of the first things he bought with his own money and that's why it was so important to him. After that, the jacket stayed on. I don't know why, I just really liked that moment.

-- Discovering the face off game for the first time and watching Shenhua and Ryo make goofy faces at each other. Adorable.

The negativity towards SIII really does get tiring. But I'm still of the opinion it didn't really matter what Yu gave, there was always bound to be disappointment. You're talking about a fanbase that has built their own ideal version of Shenmue III in their own mind for near 20 years. The version that Yu gave was never truly gonna live up to that ideal version that the fanbase had made in their own head. Again, that's not me excusing III's flaws (it has them as we have discussed many times), but I do feel it ultimately didn't matter what he gave...there was always going to be a certain disappointment that it could not live up to the expectations that the fanbase has built in its own mind over the past 20 years.
 
Playing through the game from beginning to end was a positive highlight for me. Just the simple act of playing SIII was enough for me.

But if I had to pin point one moment in specific? I'll pin point two.

-- For most of the early game, I actually had Ryo sans jacket in the white shirt only. That was until we got to the conversation with Shenhua where he specifically talks about the jacket and how it was one of the first things he bought with his own money and that's why it was so important to him. After that, the jacket stayed on. I don't know why, I just really liked that moment.

-- Discovering the face off game for the first time and watching Shenhua and Ryo make goofy faces at each other. Adorable.

The negativity towards SIII really does get tiring. But I'm still of the opinion it didn't really matter what Yu gave, there was always bound to be disappointment. You're talking about a fanbase that has built their own ideal version of Shenmue III in their own mind for near 20 years. The version that Yu gave was never truly gonna live up to that ideal version that the fanbase had made in their own head. Again, that's not me excusing III's flaws (it has them as we have discussed many times), but I do feel it ultimately didn't matter what he gave...there was always going to be a certain disappointment that it could not live up to the expectations that the fanbase has built in its own mind over the past 20 years.
I agree a lot about the expectations. What do you think would have happened if Shenmue III had it been released at that time for Dreamcast?
 
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I loved the environment and visuals, I was quite impressed in the end by how great it turned out graphically.

Conversations with Shenhua in Bailu. In Niaowu, I loved the aesthetic of the hotel balcony.

I had fun playing the various mini games and leveling up/training - the in game days flew by.

Some parts felt very Shenmue - the hide and seek game and interrogating Yanglang come to mind. Scaling the bell tower had a real epic feel to it, too.

Just being able to play new Shenmue was exciting. Its easy to dwell on the negatives after the fact but I enjoyed my time with the game quite a bit.
 
I agree a lot about the expectations. What do you think would have happened if Shenmue III had it been released at that time for Dreamcast?

See that's tricky. SEGA was nearing bankruptcy before the merger with Sammy in 2003. III would have been tough even back then due to SEGA pulling the strings even tighter. I still don't know if III would have been what people would have wanted from it even back then. Sure, it would have had the original engine behind it and it would have looked and felt entirely like Shenmue, but would it be the game he envisioned it to be or would it still have cuts somewhere due to SEGA's financial status back then?

Maybe if Shenmue IIx had made a bigger impact or maybe if Shenmue had got ported to PS2 instead of Xbox it might have had a better chance. But I really don't know.

In an ideal world where SEGA was a success and Shenmue was pulling in the big bucks, I would imagine it would have been on the PS2 aping the same engine as VF4. So it would have looked a lot like VF4 graphically. It probably would be striving to do a lot of the same things that III intended to do. Whether or not they could achieve them would be another story.

But who knows, it never happened, so I don't really bother thinking about it too much. Most well just focus on what we have now.

Baisha would have been the big question mark...they probably could have done Baisha had it had solid funding behind them back then...but who knows? It didn't happen. Make do with what we have I guess.
 

This song is one of my favourites of Shenmue III

There were times when I stopped playing to listen to this song, so beautiful.
:giggle:
 
Playing through the game from beginning to end was a positive highlight for me. Just the simple act of playing SIII was enough for me.

But if I had to pin point one moment in specific? I'll pin point two.

-- For most of the early game, I actually had Ryo sans jacket in the white shirt only. That was until we got to the conversation with Shenhua where he specifically talks about the jacket and how it was one of the first things he bought with his own money and that's why it was so important to him. After that, the jacket stayed on. I don't know why, I just really liked that moment.

-- Discovering the face off game for the first time and watching Shenhua and Ryo make goofy faces at each other. Adorable.

The negativity towards SIII really does get tiring. But I'm still of the opinion it didn't really matter what Yu gave, there was always bound to be disappointment. You're talking about a fanbase that has built their own ideal version of Shenmue III in their own mind for near 20 years. The version that Yu gave was never truly gonna live up to that ideal version that the fanbase had made in their own head. Again, that's not me excusing III's flaws (it has them as we have discussed many times), but I do feel it ultimately didn't matter what he gave...there was always going to be a certain disappointment that it could not live up to the expectations that the fanbase has built in its own mind over the past 20 years.

Agree

I don't remember that particular dialogue about the jacket, I thought I had seen all the dialogues since I talked to Shenhua a lot.
Amazing!.The amount of details in this game is what made it a real Shenmue game.
 
Well, my opinion is mostly positive, and if anyone can understand Spanish please let me now to send them a link with my full mindset about the game. But, that said, positive things I can say about the game.

- My first run was like going back to a happier time and it felt totally a Shenmue game for me.
- Bailu is my second favourite location in the whole franchise
- The story develop in Bailu is great
- I love almost all the minigames, ways to make money and jobs. Jobs are much better than in previous entries
- It is the second time in my life I enjoy a fishing minigame in my life
- Shenhua conversations are great, much better developed than in II
- The feeling of being in a living world were your routine matters
- The scene with the second Shenmue tree
- Niao Sun potential
- The fighting system can be very interesting when mastered
- I love the Batlle Rally DLC. It is the 70 Man Battle all over again but better, also the Bailu Chan hunt is funnier than the Chobu Chan one
 
Lan Di's character model and the way he grabs Ryo's punch, nearly breaking his arm. Whoever modeled and animated him should be heading the art direction. I liked the look of him in the trailer and I liked it even more playing through it; a perfect update of the Dreamcast model. I also liked the fact that he was essentially kidnapped in his youth by the CYM furthering my hope that he's not just a mustache twirling villain... more of that please!
 
-New music fit right in with the old tracks
-Being able to spar with more people
-The training mini games and how that system works i.e. one inch punch
-Most of the mini games in general were at least decent even if they were on the simpler side. the jobs are much improved from previous games. I liked the turtle racing and the "mechanical" games
-The setting. This is where Shenmue excels. I thought Bailu was a little weak compared to others in the series but still good compared to most games
-Talking with Shenhua at night
-The Yanlang interrogation scene
-The scene with Lan Di at the end
-Training with Sun (minus getting the wine)
-Quality of life improvements like notebook, mini-map, warp feature, streamlined shopping etc.
-The way the main characters looked
-The phone calls surprised me, they were tastefully done
-The environments in general were pretty good, I liked how the Shenmue tree turned out
-Finding Choubu Chan
-While I didn't find most of the side quests compelling, I liked having them in general. Some of them were good though.
-Good fan service, I liked the tomato mart in Niaowu for example
 
My highlights are the combat, the forklift driving, and the fishing . Yu Suzuki is actually a martial artist, so he is a conosiuer of combat. You can tell with the plethera of moves in this game. The wall combos are really fun.
The forklift driving is completely unchanged, and it brings back that perfect amount of nostalgia. I'm glad they had the wisdom.
not to screw with the controls. The fishing is a great example of Ys Net genius: it blends conventional gameplay with the quick timer events.

Very fun and the new game plus option is a Godsend. Findings so many things in return playthroughs.

 
What a fantastic topic - lovely to see something like this amongst all the current negativity sweeping the forum.

Here's some of my personal highlights from the game:

- Visuals - I really feel like YSNet made a modern looking Dreamcast game with S3. A rainy Bailu and Niaowu port at night were a couple of my favourites.
- Character Models - Ryo, Shenhua, Lan Di and Ren I thought the team had really nailed. Niao Sun also looked wonderful despite being slightly different to her concept art.
- Music - especially Hotel Niaowu. Even most of the newer stuff harkened back to the theraputic, Shenmue-esque vibe of the previous titles.
- Combat - I actually enjoyed the combat, being able to switch up move sets on the fly and combo the enemies into the ground or over a railing felt really good!
- Dialogue - Some of the dialogue was really well written. One moment that springs to mind is visiting the duck restaurant all dressed up smart with Shenhua, only for Ryo to say how uncomfortable he is at it! lol Definitely reminded me of the Ryo of old!
- Fishing - So theraputic, I'd often just go stand at one of the fishing spots at Bailu and chill out, to the point where I would actually start to nod off until the controller vibrated to let me know I'd got a catch! Just like real fishing!
- Forklift Job - I was so happy to see this return as it's absolutely my favourite time waster in the series. The controls/animation felt exactly equal to those of the first game.

I'm sure there's some more I've forgotten at this point but those are certainly what spring to mind for me now :)
 
Fishing and Herb collection - Peaceful fun side activities
Some of the Side quests that were interesting and not fetch quests
Gambling/Mini-games
Rose Garden
Music like always
Forklift
Training mini-games
Choubu and Bailiu chans
Battle Rally
 
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