Nope. I barely had enough patience for Shenmue and Shenmue II's meandering bullshit, I am tapping out here.

I played about three or four hours of this, maybe less. Might've just felt like I put that amount of time in, it's hard to tell when you're stuck in the Shenmue time-dilation chamber. Not that you need to play much to get a sense of what this game is going for. Shenmue III is incredibly faithful to the previous two entries, and so authentically captures the feeling of those games that you could tell me it's a cleaned-up build of an unreleased 2003 game and I might just buy it. Ryo still controls like a car, you still spend an inordinate amount of time running around asking people for information, and characters still talk in a way that feels like they're engaging in two disparate conversations at once.

"Hi there. Do you know where Shenhua is?"

"Ah, don't tell me that!"

"I am looking for Shenhua, have you seen her lately?"

"I go to bed at 7pm."

"Ok. Thank you."

That may not be line-for-line, but it should give you an idea of what I mean. Yu Suzuki's writing hasn't aged a day, and whoever the voice director is clearly still has The Touch, too. None of the actors sound like they were ever in the same room as one another, even Johnny Young Bosch is giving a performance that feels plucked from the original game. Toe to tip, this is a Shenmue!

That's not to say there haven't been any changes to the formula, however. The Virtua Fighter-style combat is much stiffer this time around, and there exists a sort of disassociation between input and action that really makes it feel crummy. Juggling a ton of enemies at once with Shenmue's lousy camera was never fun, and actually lining yourself up with a target was clumsy, but I actually felt like I embodied Ryo more than I do here.

Ryo also suffers from stamina drain now, and if he doesn't eat eight god damn pears every five minutes he'll whittle away to bone. This is the mechanic that threw me off Shenmue III, and I can't imagine anyone actually likes it. I haven't run across anyone posting apologia for it in the wild, and I'm not going to seek out stamina defenders if they even exist at all. Running around, fighting, and breathing chews away at Ryo's health at a pace I've never encountered in a video game before, the man is straight up hemorrhaging energy. I get it, Shenmue is a series that seeks to emulate the mundanity of life, so naturally Ryo needs to have himself a little snack every now and then, but if someone out there is pulling whole cloves of garlic from their pocket and eating them with half the same voracity as Ryo, I'm gonna assume they have a medical condition.

Early in the game, you have to beat up a carny to get intel, but the dude can chip off nearly a quarter of your health with every blow. Ryo practically destroyed the Kowloon Walled City with his bare hands in the last game, so this dude is just jacked, he's a genetic freak and he's not normal. Every time I lost to him, I had to restore my health before trying again, which meant going back to the store to buy more food that barely heals a pip of energy. Only now Ryo is so low on health I can't run, so I get to take an excruciating stroll up the hill, back and forth, hoping to God I don't run out of money and get forced into a shitty wood chopping minigame so I can earn a few bucks. I'm not Goku, I shouldn't be undergoing intense physical and spiritual training disguised as errands so I can defeat Shenmue's version of Cell, who is some fuckass running an illegal Lucky Hit booth.

A few hours of this and I realized I had to make a choice. I could stick with Shenmue III for another 20 hours or whatever, or accept that the likelihood of the game improving mechanically or actually going anywhere meaningful narratively is slim and that I could spend that time doing something else. Like playing Final Fantasy II. I've slogged my way through two Shenmue games, what do I have to prove at this point? I spent three dollars on this, the price of a delicious hot dog from Tom's, is it really so bad to be out that much money?

I can't imagine Yu Suzuki is ever going to make another one of these, I don't see there being a resolution to Shenmue in my lifetime, and while I do appreciate that he was so uncompromising on his vision that he didn't truncate the story, the fact that all roads out of Bailu Village lead to a dead end is a compelling reason to drop Shenmue III. Helps too that it's just a bad game.

Bruh I can't take this game anymore. There's hints of the original Shenmue spirit here but it's utterly twisted by a lack of honesty in its core component. You can tell this story in a better way if you just make a smaller, shorter game. Why delude yourself into thinking that you're an epic? I never seen a game try to pad its length out as hard as this, and I am not even the kind of person who slowly dies inside anytime a piece of entertainment media meanders in its pacing and such. Everything in the game is designed to be make the game longer, and there's barely enough rewarding moments to make it worthwhile. Having to train by learning new moves and improving your stamina is a nice idea, but the constantly meaningless prolongement of the main story is nowhere near good enough to justify the effort and time being put into said training. Not to mention the combat feels pretty unsatisfying by itself, it feels more like watching a bunch of hollow doll puppets flinging their appendages around. They did nail the nostalgic Dreamcast vibes through the environment visuals, the music is as good as always, and I like that you can call characters from the previous games and just chat for a bit. Still, as a massive enjoyer of the first two Shenmues (Shenmue 1 is very high on my list of favorite games), I can't help but be a little sad right now.

Phew, that's a tough one to review. I liked a lot about the game, the graphics, mood and general vibes were very good and very Shemue. The way you slowly build up the relationship with Shenua and how she changes her behavior towards Ryo was very sweet. I also liked the city of Niaowu, a beautiful place with some nice quests.

However, the game has glaring weaknesses. The stamina system is a real pain. Who thought it was a good idea to use up stamina for every action (even just running), which is then no longer available in battles, in a game that actually invites you to explore? What a stupid idea! The fighting itself was also not as well implemented as in the predecessors, the Virtua Fighter license was unfortunately not available here.

Story-wise, almost nothing of relevance happens in this part. It's a mystery to me that they didn't take the opportunity to advance the story after such a long time. The ending is also totally sudden and Landi's appearance seems totally random and out of place, much like the Kickstarter fighters in the last section of the game. Overall, I had fun with the game, but came away from the experience somewhat disappointed.

All of the weirdness and jank that came from the first two releases without all of the charm and nostalgia those two had. Shenmue III leads off almost directly where 2 ended, Ryo is back on his revenge tour and there's not a sailor in sight that can stop him.

The game does feature a new coat of paint both visually and design wise. Graphically, the improvements feel still a bit dated for 2019 but the controls have been modernized and goes a long way as a great improvement compared to the original titles. Moving around and looking at things is so much easier, though moving around NPCs can still be a little weird. The game also features some laughable and clear game loading areas where running is just plain not allowed in the city, for reasons that are just not explained in game. It's not game breaking or anything too awful but it's more obvious here than in most modern games.

You will spend the game in two big locations; a small village and a bigger, bustling city. Both have been built to feel completely different from one another and fairly unique, though characters feel more placed and less organic compared to other Shenmue games. Some characters definitely are on a schedule where they come and go from certain locations but they feel fewer than in the past.

These locations, despite looking and feeling a bit different though feature pretty much the same types of things to do with very little difference between them besides places you can buy random stuff in.

Since you need to be constantly making money in order to afford various things, the biggest disappointment is the ways you go about doing that, despite the changes in location and clear differences in their settings (small, quiet village vs. busy city) don't really change how you go about making money. Your choices are fairly limited unless you want to take advantage of some tricks; you can chop wood, you can gamble, or you can fish and that's about it. It would've been nice to get some changes in these money making opportunities to reflect their setting a bit more.

The money making is a chore overall in this game too, even if you take advantage of some loopholes to speed this up. I found myself constantly having to buy food to eat to up my health, especially since your health gradually falls doing literally anything as the day progresses. Wanna train and get stronger in fighting? Your health's gonna go down. Train your stamina so you can block more? Health is gonna go down. Running? Same thing. Sitting there and just letting time go by? Somehow makes your health go down.

On top of that, the story progression will force you to buy expensive items twice in game. So you'll be forced to grind through the few paths you can take to make money over and over and over or take advantage of save scumming in gambling games, which come with their own problems (basically you can only gamble with non-money chips you have to buy. You can then take those chips to buy items that then in turn can be sold at pawn shops for money, so you can technically make money gambling but it's a tedious, multi-step process that feels unnecessary).

Most items only improve a bit of that health too so you'll either be spending more on items that improve it better, which of course costs more money, or you'll just have to hope your day ends without having to do any story focused battles, since all fights in this game start you off at whatever health you started the fight at, so if you're already low just because the day is almost over, your health will be low period and you'll just have to be really good at the fighting aspects of the game, which to me, just aren't very good.

Targeting and the fights in this game were a pretty big downgrade to me. Targeting was always a pain to me and overall fights were a bit more challenging than in previous games. Harder is not really my problem either but with the health factor being a thing, and sometimes fights happening back to back from one another, some of these fights can get really ridiculous unless you are really prepared and aware of what's coming next and stock up beforehand (which is gonna cost ya of course).

You can't heal yourself during fights unless you've bought one specific item. You can buy multiples of these items but they aren't cheap in context to the game economy. They are a one time use item too, so if you use them once, you'll need to buy more.

There are a ton of moves you can learn and add to an auto-use list but that list has a five max limit so you'll have to memorize other moves if you want to diversify your move set or just stick to the handful of moves you've locked to your list. Buying more moves can be a pain too since that will also cost money and that spending can get quite expensive.

There are a slew of other janky things but honestly, some of that jank was expected and fairly charming. Things like the bad voice acting returns and is probably a negative in hindsight but after two games of bad voice acting, it just feels like the Shenmue way and not a major negative.

Awkward back and forth conversations with strangers is also back where the things they say back to you or the things Ryo replies with sometimes doesn't make any sense. Is it bad? Probably, but its return got a laugh from me more than anything.

Basically, Shenmue 3 is definitely a Shenmue game, good and bad. If you remember these games being janky as hell but charming in it's jank, maybe give Shenmue 3 a shot. Some of the newer annoyances may turn you off but the game still brings the janky charm you may look back on fondly. I also respect the hell out of this game ending with a tease for a 4th game. Despite my issues with this game and the continued issues this game still possesses, I'd probably dive right in to a fourth game and see what kind of himbo nonsense Ryo gets himself into.

Eu digo de boca cheia que Shenmue 3 é uma das experiências mais grotescamente massantes e decepcionantes que já tive com qualquer videogame, e olha que eu sou um fã novo, imagina quem foi fã a vida inteira e teve que esperar 18 FUCKING ANOS PRA ESSE PEDAÇO DE MERDA.

Vou começar com os elogios. A olho nu o jogo é bem bonito, os cenários são extremamente vivos, e o modelo dos protagonistas até que são bonitinhos e encaixam no meio, a OST é boa e tem momentos extremamente épicos assim como no segundo jogo. E... só.

Percebeu que pra cada elogio tinha um ?

Isso é por que tudo que esse jogo tem de elogio vem com um PORÉM ENORME, chega a der ridículo, fica impossível de gostar do jogo. Enquanto jogava, me perguntava se estava jogando um bom jogo com momentos ruins ou um jogo HORRÍVEL com momentos INCRÍVEIS. No fim, é um jogo HORROROSO com momentos "legaizinhos"... O que é frustrante pra uma franquia tão influente pra história dos video-games como Shenmue. Vou fazer uma listinha desses poréns ridículos...

1. Os cenários são bonitos, mas no geral realmente parece um template de Unreal, pra cada personagem ligeiramente bonito tem um NPC GROTESCO, que parece que saiu de um design de TITÃ do Shingeki no Kyojin, além do Ryo parecer MUITO GOOFY as vezes, tipo, MTO GOOFY (+)

2. A OST é bacana e tals, mas nem 1% TÃO APROPRIADA ao momento quanto os jogos anteriores. Os loops das músicas são torturantes, a musica falta impacto nas horas certas, além da direção das cenas serem pobres a orquestra também não ajuda em BOSTA NENHUMA.

3*. Tem momentos legais, mas eu consigo CONTAR NOS DEDOS, enquanto os jogos anteriores eu podia ficar horas e horas falando dos momentos marcantes da jornada. No fim, a história realmente parece a porra de um episódio filler, e olha que o jogo cobre 2 CAPÍTULOS...

E de resto, o jogo faz tudo errado. O passing é todo deformado, a movimentação é tediosa, tem a encheção de linguiça MAIS RIDICULA QUE JÁ VI EM QUALQUER JOGO, eu não estou nem brincando, o jogo tem a plotline mais RÍDICULA e DESNECESSÁRIA pra você aprender UM GOLPE.

Oh meu deus, os habitantes viraram reféms oq faremos, a vila tem tipo, 50 artistas marciais pra quebrar a cara deles, mas foda-se, cabe ao Ryo tomar um pau, daí passar 20 anos pra descobrir que ele tem que aprender um novo golpe (Tetsuzanko). Ah, você descobriu? Só o véio cachaceiro pode te ensinar, mas ah, só se você der coxinha e pinga pra esse bosta.

Então tá, você dá coxinha e pinga pra ele, daí ele responde uma pergunta sua... Ah, quer saber outra coisa? Tem que voltar pra vila e comprar mais coxinha e pinga. Daí tá, você volta andando naquele caminho de merda, busca mais coxinha e pinga pra esse bosta, e ele te responde outra pergunta... Ah, quer que eu te ouça sobre o problema dos habitantes? Volta outro dia, e não esquece da coxinha e pinga, por favor.

Ok, velho fodido. Pera, você quer que eu te ensine o golpe? Como assim???? isso é mto difícil pra um velho fodido de merda que nem eu, vai precisar de muita coxinha e pinga, ah, mas ele não quer qualquer pinga, ele quer a pinga pica banhada pelas bolas do Yu Suzuki. Depois de 20 anos procurando onde fica a merda da loja da pinga banhada à bolas, fica na casa do krl, e custa 2000 kwanzas...

Pode não parecer, mas 2000 kwanzas nesse jogo, no começo do jogo, É UM NÚMERO RIDÍCULO, você vai ter no MÁXIMO 100 à essa altura do jogo. Cortar madeira, ou coletar maconha não dá nem 1% DO QUE VOCÊ PRECISA, tem que ter uma maneira mais rápida né? E tem, apostando. NESSE JOGO DE MERDA DA BOLINHA QUE NÃO É NEM 0,0000001% TÃO DIVERTIDO COMO O LUCKY DOS ULTIMOS JOGOS, E PRATICAMENTE NUNCA ACERTA. Ok, tem que ter uma maneira melhor, E TEM, a vidente, a vadia da vidente. Que olha que legal, ELA SÓ AUMENTA A >>PROBABILIDADE<< DA COR QUE ELA FALAR CAIR, NÃO É CERTEZA, e se você for CUZUDO de ganhar, é um rolo DO KRL pra você resgatar o prêmio em dinheiro... Diferente dos jogos antigos, você só pode apostar com tokens, então você compra esses tokens, aposta, tenha o cu virado pra lua pra ganhar, ganhe mais tokens, troca esses tokens por prêmios lá na puta que pariu, daí FINALMENTE você vende esses prêmios por dinheiro. E você não tem noção do quanto isso demora, demora muito, demora praticamente umas 6 horas PRA CIMA por causa da VADIA DA VIDENTE QUE DÁ O RESULTADO ERRADO, e soma com esse processo lento do caralho.

Então tá, você pega a pinga pica banhada pelas bolas do Yu Suzuki. E o véio?

"Ah, vlw, mas só vou te ensinar o golpe do Virtua Fighter quando você pegar galinha hoje, amanhã, depois de amanhã e depois de amanhã, então depois de amanhã de novo, pra variar depois de amanhã de novo, e depois disso pegar mais galinha amanhã, e amanha já sabe né?"
-Véio bafo de coxinha, (2019)

No meio disso tudo você obviamente tem que fazer o caminho inteiro pra chegar na casa do krl, que é onde esse bosta fica, e fazer o mini-game de mario party horroroso que esse jogo chama de treinamento:

1.Pose de chavalo
2.Soco de uma pedalada
3.Gira gira jequiti

E O PIOR DE TODOS:

4. COMBATE.

De todas as coisas desse pedaço de bosta que chamam de jogo, acho que o combate é a gota d'gua. Ele não faz sentido, e eu nem tô brincando, ele simplesmente

NÃO
FAZ
SENTIDO

Não só visivelmente parece dois bonecos Max Steel se batendo,

Como na prática ele literalmente NÃO É FUNCIONAL, não tem lógica por trás de nada, é literalmente um esmaga botão, você nunca sabe quando um golpe conecta pois os efeitos são tão presentes quanto a porra do Mortal Kombat, tem horas que o jogo realmente parece um RTS, E ELE É A PORRA DE UM RTS, por que toda vez que você perde pra um rola bosta, ele fala "hehe, vai pro dojo treinar lixo", PQ IR PRO DOJO JOGAR AQUELES MINI-GAMES DE MARIO PARTY É O QUE AUMENTA OS SEUS ATRIBUTOS DE HP E ATAQUE. SHENMUE VIROU A PORRA DE UM FARM HELL.

...

Enfim.

Depois de derrotar todos os putões daquele dojo de merda, você volta pro bafo de coxinha e ele FINALMENTE TE ENSINA A MERDA DO GOLPE DO VIRTUA FIGHTER (é um dos poucos momentos legaizinhos que eu citei anteriormente).

Daí você volta pra história principal. Você vai e derrota o titã do shingeki, e o jogo começa a andar novamente... E o jogo até que fica tolerável, a nova cidade é linda e tals, mas como eu disse antes, pra toda coisa REMOTAMENTE >LEGALZINHA< tem um adendo DE MERDA, mas eu vou ser curto e grosso. Depois do jogo dar um traço de esperança com >>UM CERTO PERSONAGEM PICA VOLTANDO<<, um quick time muito bem feito de perseguição que parece que saiu de um filme do Jackie-chan de TÃO BEM coreografado... a gente encontra outro titã do shingeki, que destrói o Ryo... Soa familiar? É o por que é a mesma plotline. Você revira a cidade inteira pra achar um pergaminho, e é 5000 KWANZAS. Então você já sabe.

EU NÃO AGUENTO MAIS

>Vidente
>Aposta
>Token
>Gira gira
>Cu virado pra lua
>Mais token
>Retorna o token
>Prêmio
>Vende prêmio
>Dinheiro
>Repete...

Ah mas o pergaminho que custou tudo isso tá com uma página faltando kk, mas um véio num barco fala "ah, te ensino o golpe, foda-se" kk, e olha que daora, É O MESMO GOLPE 2™️ :D (vou me matar). É literalmente o mesmo golpe, mesma animação, só que com prefixo reverse. Essa plotline me faz perguntar se Shenmue era um jogo bom pra início de conversa, e isso é horripilante de se pensar.

E sobre o desfecho... ah o desfecho. Eu não vou entrar em detalhes pois é "spoiler", mas novamente, novamente... eu vou ser curto e grosso. É inconclusívo. Simplesmente faz com que o jogo seja um episódio filler na história, eu bato palma, por que isso é impressionante, parabéns Ys Net, seus pedaços de merda, vocês conseguiram dar um tiro num cavalo que tava em COMA por fucking 18 anos, 18 FUCKING ANOS. Falo novamente, eu não consigo NEM IMAGINAR O DESGOSTO DESSES FÃS QUE AMARAM SHENMUE A VIDA INTEIRA, ESPERARAM A VIDA INTEIRA PRA VER SHENMUE SER JOGADO NO LIXO, VER UM EPISÓDIO FILLER.

Agora chega, vou terminar essa review por que eu não aguento mais, esse jogo foi torturante, cada segundo dele, a Ys Net só precisava fazer o MÍNIMO, e eles fizeram tudo que devia fazer SÓ QUE AO CONTRÁRIO com esse pedaço de barro com o nome de Shenmue.

Que nojo.

Shenmue III spans two slow chapters past Ryu's journey through Guilin, with sights and characters to behold constricted by a more modest budget and story direction.

The Bailu chapter hits it fine and plays it slow on the mysteries from the series while adding on a couple more, the chemistry between Ryu and Shenhua is fun and there is a lot of different dialogues to dig up even through several playthroughs, meanwhile Niawou is a majour pitstop doing very little to progress the story, even leaving shenhua almost completely for dust.

Sadly towards the end of the game, the budget final strings starts to show, as there's so much padding through forced backtracking and longwinded requisites right before the finale that almost sinks the ship and when at last the cutscenes while wonderfully displayed appears, go by so fast before the sudden - the story goes on- shamelessly dances on the screen cue credits.

There was intended to be one more area in the game for the climax which apparently was cut, and sadly it does leave a stain on the game,
hopefully if the 4th game ever comes out Shenmue III might get more recognised for being the middle bridge that it is, into whatever Yu Suzuki has in store for his next chapters..

For what it is now, Shenmue III is for its better half a faithful adaption of the prior entries formulaic gameplay despite being more narrow with its line of progression.

Both Bailu and Niawou are beautifully crafted locales with lots to see and a few decent minigames.
The places you visit are filled to the brim with details, throwbacks and fun nudges to all the backers which is definitely the strongest aspect of Shenmue III.
Throughout Shenmue III there are namedrops, models, quotes and pictures to be found of backers that gives the game a very unique touch of care for its community.

It is in benefit for its slow nature a very relaxing game to play with excellent ambience and a great soundtrack mostly remixing or recomposed tracks of songs from prior entries while the few new ones are absolutely earmelting. Helping out locales with sidequests, going fishing, picking up herbs all over the place, searching for hidden choobus or other side activities are all comfort addictions good for weary old bones.

Shenmue III does retain the same spirit as its predecessors, following the core formula faithfully to a tee (outside of the combat), and while budget constraints definitely rears its ugly head, there's still good moments of care and detail within the game with fun and heartwarming discoveries to be made. Just don't expect much more than a stretched out resort trip.

I didn't want to drop it but I'm not going to force myself through a game I'm not big on just because of the series it's from. Shenmue III is unfortunately stuck in a spot where it's desperately trying to recapture the soul of the original which it simply can't because it's not a dreamcast game. Shenmue I and II had an intrinsic soul thanks to their pushing the limits of the dreamcast's power with a semi-realistic artstyle and lovingly crafted environments. Shenmue III retains all of the clunky aspects of the original games but lacks the soul that would have made up for the more shoddy aspects and even turn them around and make them endearing. The artstyle has an uncanny cartoon-y look to it that is generally unpleasant to look at for every character but shenhua, and the environments are reminiscent of unreal engine tech demos. The combat somehow feels worse than the original games with a serious lack of impact on the hits like every opponent is a human-shaped sandbag. Also for some reason you lose health for running which is a very annoying design decision. What really pushed me to finally drop it was learning that the game does not even conclude the Shenmue story which is ridiculous even if the series was initially stated to have like 6 parts, because Yu Suzuki and his team should've known that managing to put out this game was a miracle in and of itself. I doubt that conclusion will ever come now. If I can praise the game for one thing, it's that they managed to get Ryo's original voice back and he somehow sounds exactly the same which is a nice walk down memory lane.

I had known of Shenmue 3's reputation before going in. I thought maybe it was overblown as just an average game after an 18 year wait of expecting something incredible.

I was wrong, they were exactly right Shenmue 3 is horrible.

The story is cute enough but really, really slow. I knew the walk with Shenhua in Shenmue 2 was slow, but this feels like more of that. Not even much action right away as a lot of it is walking around asking people about thugs to get details you already knew about the thugs several times before encountering them, rarely learning anything new beyond where they've been in an attempt to tutorial the game's locations without allowing for player discovery. Then on the occasions you do get into fights, they will mop the floor with you multiple times because you expect Shenmue 1 and 2 difficulty but no 3 wants to kick your ass with its worse combat system without any grabs (which is baffling as 2's story has Ryo specifically learn some grabs), then nope hit the dojo back to square one for you!

The graphics are "improved" but they have that standard Unity lighting that makes it feel clay-like and take away its identity. The music is very Shenmue with nothing more to say about it. The gameplay is incredibly Shenmue, to much of a fault. Video Games have developed much in the years between Shenmue 2 and 3, most notably in Sega's own Yakuza series that feels like an evolution of Shenmue, but Shenmue stays in 2002 and it only hurts it. Even worse, they added a new stamina system, that is the crux of a lot of the game. You walk, your health drains. You run, your health drains absurdly fast. How dare you want to navigate the world quicker. You need food to recover your stamina. You need money to buy the food. You do jobs to get the money for the food. Unlike Shenmue where working was something you could get into a flow with, these jobs are Warioware micro games that go on for way too long. Same goes with how you train Ryo's Horse Stance/One Inch Punch. It's all a cycle that slows the game down to a crawl in a way that was not present in Shenmue or Shenmue 2 where you had an area to practice your moves, but you never had to grind to play Shenmue. Now that grind is the bulk of the game. There are mods to remove it, but said mods crash the game when I inspect certain elements so I have to constantly add and remove them.

I hadn't completed the story but I hear the plot hasn't advanced much in any notable way. Maybe with the recap movie in Shenmue 4 (assuming 3 didn't just obliterate 4's chances of existing) will fill in the details, but Shenmue 3 needs a complete overhaul before I'd ever give it a shot again.

A pretty big disappointment unfortunately, which isn't entirely surprising given this game had a fraction of the budget afforded to the two previous installments. It actually starts off pretty decently, but as things progress, you gradually notice all the corners that have been cut. There's barely an advancement in the overarching story, which is borderline unforgivable quite frankly, given how long fans have had to wait. The events of Shenmue 3 feel like a stopgap between 2 and the next mainline entry. And the combat is shockingly poor. It's honestly a major regression compared to I & II, and those are nearly 20 year old games. There's no excuse for how bad the fighting is in this.

At least it manages to do a fairly good job of replicating the original Shenmue atmosphere and 'vibe' on a shoestring budget. But yeah, definitely not a worthy sequel. And it makes me worried about how 4 will turn out.