I'm not sure how much I liked Shenmue III but I sure hope it doesn't take twenty years for us to get Shenmue IV. There've been a lot of complaints and commentary about Shenmue III that you can read anywhere, so I'll try not to beleaguer too many of the commonly heard critiques and criticisms. It's Yu Suzuki as highly distillated as possible and what his Shenmue games are considered great at, are as good as ever in Shenmue 3. And what they're worst as is as bad as ever in Shenmue 3, too.
Ryo is back, with accompanying Shenhua, to again hunt for his father's murderer, Lan Di. The game begins exactly where we left our heroes at the end of Shenmue 2. In Bailu Village, Shenhua's home, searching for her father and Lan Di. They work to uncover the secrets of the Phoenix Mirror and discover that Lan Di's Chi You Men have beaten them to the punch in finding Yuan. In Bailu Village, Ryo learns a variety of new skills and meets countless new people in this charming small village tucked away in the Chinese mountains. Eventually, a convoluted tale of feudal sordidness extends its way into the 1980s and secret Shaolin mysticism guides us to the bustling Chinese port of Niaowu.
With Shenua in tow to find her missing father, the pair arrive in Niaowu and start their search anew. Forklifts, chopped wood and pachinko games later they finally discover a gang hideout which sits as a local subsidiary of the Chi You Men. A couple of lavish kung fu fight scenes later and the moment Ryo has been after for 20 years (or maybe closer to 12 weeks) is before us. A showdown with Lan Di. Ryo winds up being no match for Lan Di but he's saved both by some clever antics by Ren and by an unlikely ally of circumstance in the usurping new leader of the Chi You Men who burns down a castle; saving Ryo from the same fate as his father at the hand of Lan Di.
Shenmue 3 is a funny little thing. All Shenmue games are, truly. It's Shenmue 2 with a fantastic new coat of paint. Despite the heaps of money raised by Suzuki's Kickstarter, Shenmue 3 is about a AA quality game. It's very pretty but many of the animations come off almost EuroJank odd. The character models looks hilariously bad when talking but do seem to otherwise look quite nice. The environments are all very well detailed and bright and inviting, in conventional Shenmue style. The voice acting is every bit as terrible as its ever been, which at this point is more part of the Shenmue experience and charm than it is a legitimate problem.
What you get is largely just an extension of Shenmue II. And, honestly, I'm good with that. Why wouldn't I be? Shenmue II is a crowning achievement in gaming even by 2022 standard. No doubt about it. So following closely in its footsteps is a great decision. The problem is that Shenmue 3 doesn't do enough to stand out from its immediate precursor and instead of improving on it much, it actually gets worse.
The narrative story of Shenmue has never been its strong suit. Shenmue I had just enough of a threadbare JJ Abrams style mystery box to keep it engaging. The mystery was there to be solved and you had to work for even miniscule story elements. Which was great because the world was lively and rife for exploration and every NPC in the game was ready to provide you color and charisma that made a 1999 release feel impossibly engaging. Shenmue II took the same formula and blew it up like a zeppelin. An immense city in Hong Kong and a flavor rich Kowloon with big characters at every turn gave Shenmue II all of the Shenmue I charm while it burst at the seams with environments and content.
So what does Shenmue III do in the evolution? Well, really not all that much. Bailu Village is quite small. The individual characters take a long time to warm up to you and while it feels natural they'd be weary of outsiders in such a remote mountain hamlet, it doesn't make for the most engaging gameplay. There's lots of backtracking through a village that frankly isn't big enough to warrant it. There are odd set design choices that feel like even Suzuki was grating at the edges of what a small village like Bailu Village should be realistically able to accommodate. Weird waterfall neighborhood with just two houses and a tucked away martial arts master in a forgotten corner of the area. Wait, make that two martial arts masters tucked away in two different forgotten corners of the same 20-person village.
The NPCs are truly as lively and as engaging as ever but unlike Dobuita in Shenmue I, Bailu Village has no timebased mysteries or NPC engagement necessary to figure out the puzzles. NPCs are more static than typical and really a couple conversations guide you right to the next step. No mysteries exist to be solved or uncovered, not in the way Shenmue I forced you to engage with the Dobuita Street community. In fact, Shenmue III seems desperate to shovel you through by ending days at 6 or 7pm if it so decides that you've advanced the main story enough. You never feel like you really got to know the Bailu Village citizens like you did the people of Yokosuka. No one other than Shenua herself leaves much of a mark.
So it's not hard to say goodbye when you board the ship to sail to Niaowu. And unfortunately the same thing occurs there. You even wind up meeting your best frenemy of Shenmue II, Ren, in Niaowu and somehow the game manages to suck out all the meaning in that moment. Ren seems weirdly callous even for himself the entire early portion of the game. And actively decides not to tell you anything about how Ren actually found you or what the hell he's doing there as a way to provide some humor and mystique to Ren's character. But it doesn't land, at all. Ren is always a guy who is out for himself but at the end of the day deep down cares for his friends. We saw it with Joy and Wong and of course with Ryo. But where Shenmue I & II thrived with deep engaging interpersonal character relationships, Shenmue III spends very little time with anyone other than Ryo and Shenhua.
Which, to its credit, is quite well done still. Ryo and Shenhua care deeply for each other and seem delightfully compatible with one another. They're both driven, family-loving fighters. They're also both dumb as shit. And it's great. Ryo is 17 and Shenhua is 16 and the two of them are perfect for a teen romance with one another as they matriculate through the story going from one martial arts movie trope to the next. Ryo's absolutely horrific writing and even worse voice acting is well compensated by Shenhua who is a far more well written character. But short of this, most other interactions in Shenmue III are short and shallow. Lots of characters could've been better developed but just simply aren't.
Because here's the other thing. The Shenmue games are such a powerful novelty because fundamentally the story is not very good and neither is the gameplay. It just isn't. And that's from someone who absolutely loves Shenmue II. But the gameplay has always been shoddy too. Poor, confusing and bloated combat, janky character movement, a weird obsession with the repetitive performance of terrible mundane tasks. But the Shenmue games have such rich, engaging, lively and charming environments that you enjoy being in them. In a similar way that Animal Crossing has relatively uninspired gameplay but a tremendous atmosphere, Shenmue as a series thrives from its set dressing and relationships. Yet, Shenmue III fails to replicate this.
And it doesn't improve elsewhere. Shenmue III's combat is the worst of the series. It's significantly harder but not more engaging that it had been previously. You still need to open every drawer and wait for long animations while looking for tokens in the old lady's hut in Bailu. You still have to routinely perform mundane jobs for shockingly low pay. There are also new hurdles to leap like a hunger system that requires you to eat a bizarre amount of food every day or you lose all of your health. Food you also have to buy which means you have to spend more time working silly jobs or gambling. Which may not be so bad if the atmosphere around you was as enjoyable as Shenmue I or II.
The cardinal sin of Shenmue III is how grindy it is. How very, very grindy it is. You have to spend an impressive amount of time developing your kung fu in order to level up enough to make fights not a complete pain in the ass. You need to spend a ton of time making money at two different points in the game to advance the quest. Even gambling isn't very quick. You even spend more time than that doing jobs or gambling because of how often you need to buy heaps of food. There's just always something going on that seems to take you away from just 'playing' the game. And some twisted part of me quite enjoys Suzuki's desire to put you through the mundane paces of life in these epics, Shenmue III is the least fun iteration of that design philosophy.
But still. There's just something about the Shenmue series. There's just something about our terribly written and horribly voice-aced Ryo that's still so fucking charming. And I don't know what it is. It's not nostalgia. Because he was shittily voiced and written in 1999, too. I need to know more. I need to know what happened to Zhao Sunming. I need to know exactly what the Chi You Men are. Who the fuck Chai is. Why Lan Di thinks my father killed his father. I need to know what powers the mirrors still possess that make them worth this trouble. I need to know what bizarre powers of psychological torture Shenhua seems to possess. I need to know why we're climbing the Great Wall of China. The story has given me so little and the overarching story was moved hardly at all by the entirety of Shenmue III but still I'm hooked.
When Shenmue III is good, it really still is a Yu Suzuki special. It is still the classic Shenmue experience. And I want Suzuki to get one more crack at this so we can wrap up the Shenmue experience. So we can put a bow on the story. So we can hear that delightful theme music one last time as the final credits roll and the story of Ryo Hazuki, Lan Di and Shenhua Ling can be completed. I'm excited to play more pachiko and cut more wood. Forklift more boxes. One last time. Hopefully, I'll get the opportunity.
Ryo is back, with accompanying Shenhua, to again hunt for his father's murderer, Lan Di. The game begins exactly where we left our heroes at the end of Shenmue 2. In Bailu Village, Shenhua's home, searching for her father and Lan Di. They work to uncover the secrets of the Phoenix Mirror and discover that Lan Di's Chi You Men have beaten them to the punch in finding Yuan. In Bailu Village, Ryo learns a variety of new skills and meets countless new people in this charming small village tucked away in the Chinese mountains. Eventually, a convoluted tale of feudal sordidness extends its way into the 1980s and secret Shaolin mysticism guides us to the bustling Chinese port of Niaowu.
With Shenua in tow to find her missing father, the pair arrive in Niaowu and start their search anew. Forklifts, chopped wood and pachinko games later they finally discover a gang hideout which sits as a local subsidiary of the Chi You Men. A couple of lavish kung fu fight scenes later and the moment Ryo has been after for 20 years (or maybe closer to 12 weeks) is before us. A showdown with Lan Di. Ryo winds up being no match for Lan Di but he's saved both by some clever antics by Ren and by an unlikely ally of circumstance in the usurping new leader of the Chi You Men who burns down a castle; saving Ryo from the same fate as his father at the hand of Lan Di.
Shenmue 3 is a funny little thing. All Shenmue games are, truly. It's Shenmue 2 with a fantastic new coat of paint. Despite the heaps of money raised by Suzuki's Kickstarter, Shenmue 3 is about a AA quality game. It's very pretty but many of the animations come off almost EuroJank odd. The character models looks hilariously bad when talking but do seem to otherwise look quite nice. The environments are all very well detailed and bright and inviting, in conventional Shenmue style. The voice acting is every bit as terrible as its ever been, which at this point is more part of the Shenmue experience and charm than it is a legitimate problem.
What you get is largely just an extension of Shenmue II. And, honestly, I'm good with that. Why wouldn't I be? Shenmue II is a crowning achievement in gaming even by 2022 standard. No doubt about it. So following closely in its footsteps is a great decision. The problem is that Shenmue 3 doesn't do enough to stand out from its immediate precursor and instead of improving on it much, it actually gets worse.
The narrative story of Shenmue has never been its strong suit. Shenmue I had just enough of a threadbare JJ Abrams style mystery box to keep it engaging. The mystery was there to be solved and you had to work for even miniscule story elements. Which was great because the world was lively and rife for exploration and every NPC in the game was ready to provide you color and charisma that made a 1999 release feel impossibly engaging. Shenmue II took the same formula and blew it up like a zeppelin. An immense city in Hong Kong and a flavor rich Kowloon with big characters at every turn gave Shenmue II all of the Shenmue I charm while it burst at the seams with environments and content.
So what does Shenmue III do in the evolution? Well, really not all that much. Bailu Village is quite small. The individual characters take a long time to warm up to you and while it feels natural they'd be weary of outsiders in such a remote mountain hamlet, it doesn't make for the most engaging gameplay. There's lots of backtracking through a village that frankly isn't big enough to warrant it. There are odd set design choices that feel like even Suzuki was grating at the edges of what a small village like Bailu Village should be realistically able to accommodate. Weird waterfall neighborhood with just two houses and a tucked away martial arts master in a forgotten corner of the area. Wait, make that two martial arts masters tucked away in two different forgotten corners of the same 20-person village.
The NPCs are truly as lively and as engaging as ever but unlike Dobuita in Shenmue I, Bailu Village has no timebased mysteries or NPC engagement necessary to figure out the puzzles. NPCs are more static than typical and really a couple conversations guide you right to the next step. No mysteries exist to be solved or uncovered, not in the way Shenmue I forced you to engage with the Dobuita Street community. In fact, Shenmue III seems desperate to shovel you through by ending days at 6 or 7pm if it so decides that you've advanced the main story enough. You never feel like you really got to know the Bailu Village citizens like you did the people of Yokosuka. No one other than Shenua herself leaves much of a mark.
So it's not hard to say goodbye when you board the ship to sail to Niaowu. And unfortunately the same thing occurs there. You even wind up meeting your best frenemy of Shenmue II, Ren, in Niaowu and somehow the game manages to suck out all the meaning in that moment. Ren seems weirdly callous even for himself the entire early portion of the game. And actively decides not to tell you anything about how Ren actually found you or what the hell he's doing there as a way to provide some humor and mystique to Ren's character. But it doesn't land, at all. Ren is always a guy who is out for himself but at the end of the day deep down cares for his friends. We saw it with Joy and Wong and of course with Ryo. But where Shenmue I & II thrived with deep engaging interpersonal character relationships, Shenmue III spends very little time with anyone other than Ryo and Shenhua.
Which, to its credit, is quite well done still. Ryo and Shenhua care deeply for each other and seem delightfully compatible with one another. They're both driven, family-loving fighters. They're also both dumb as shit. And it's great. Ryo is 17 and Shenhua is 16 and the two of them are perfect for a teen romance with one another as they matriculate through the story going from one martial arts movie trope to the next. Ryo's absolutely horrific writing and even worse voice acting is well compensated by Shenhua who is a far more well written character. But short of this, most other interactions in Shenmue III are short and shallow. Lots of characters could've been better developed but just simply aren't.
Because here's the other thing. The Shenmue games are such a powerful novelty because fundamentally the story is not very good and neither is the gameplay. It just isn't. And that's from someone who absolutely loves Shenmue II. But the gameplay has always been shoddy too. Poor, confusing and bloated combat, janky character movement, a weird obsession with the repetitive performance of terrible mundane tasks. But the Shenmue games have such rich, engaging, lively and charming environments that you enjoy being in them. In a similar way that Animal Crossing has relatively uninspired gameplay but a tremendous atmosphere, Shenmue as a series thrives from its set dressing and relationships. Yet, Shenmue III fails to replicate this.
And it doesn't improve elsewhere. Shenmue III's combat is the worst of the series. It's significantly harder but not more engaging that it had been previously. You still need to open every drawer and wait for long animations while looking for tokens in the old lady's hut in Bailu. You still have to routinely perform mundane jobs for shockingly low pay. There are also new hurdles to leap like a hunger system that requires you to eat a bizarre amount of food every day or you lose all of your health. Food you also have to buy which means you have to spend more time working silly jobs or gambling. Which may not be so bad if the atmosphere around you was as enjoyable as Shenmue I or II.
The cardinal sin of Shenmue III is how grindy it is. How very, very grindy it is. You have to spend an impressive amount of time developing your kung fu in order to level up enough to make fights not a complete pain in the ass. You need to spend a ton of time making money at two different points in the game to advance the quest. Even gambling isn't very quick. You even spend more time than that doing jobs or gambling because of how often you need to buy heaps of food. There's just always something going on that seems to take you away from just 'playing' the game. And some twisted part of me quite enjoys Suzuki's desire to put you through the mundane paces of life in these epics, Shenmue III is the least fun iteration of that design philosophy.
But still. There's just something about the Shenmue series. There's just something about our terribly written and horribly voice-aced Ryo that's still so fucking charming. And I don't know what it is. It's not nostalgia. Because he was shittily voiced and written in 1999, too. I need to know more. I need to know what happened to Zhao Sunming. I need to know exactly what the Chi You Men are. Who the fuck Chai is. Why Lan Di thinks my father killed his father. I need to know what powers the mirrors still possess that make them worth this trouble. I need to know what bizarre powers of psychological torture Shenhua seems to possess. I need to know why we're climbing the Great Wall of China. The story has given me so little and the overarching story was moved hardly at all by the entirety of Shenmue III but still I'm hooked.
When Shenmue III is good, it really still is a Yu Suzuki special. It is still the classic Shenmue experience. And I want Suzuki to get one more crack at this so we can wrap up the Shenmue experience. So we can put a bow on the story. So we can hear that delightful theme music one last time as the final credits roll and the story of Ryo Hazuki, Lan Di and Shenhua Ling can be completed. I'm excited to play more pachiko and cut more wood. Forklift more boxes. One last time. Hopefully, I'll get the opportunity.