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.