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.
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.
12 Comments
might be the worst stamina system I've ever seen. baffling implementation
@moschidae If I don't eat my weight in fruit every day I will literally die.
@curse The way it's balanced is utterly insane, it's like you're trying to keep someone from bleeding out.
@curse The way it's balanced is utterly insane, it's like you're trying to keep someone from bleeding out.
they should've made it so you can collect Tom's hot dogs and each time you eat one it gives you a permanent buff to your stamina
It is so funny to me that apparently the anime they released was pretty good and helped truncate a loooot of the tedious shit in ways that helped the story out and it pretty immediately got cancelled because this franchise is cursed. If this series ever does get another entry somehow I'm convinced Yu Suzuki made some kind of pact with some deity to get it out cause ain't no fuckin w a y.
@TransWitchSammy I wonder if the series has a future at all. An anime seemed like the perfect solution to wrapping Shenmue up, but like you said, it died. Shenmue III's sales were "fine" according to Embracer's CEO, which isn't exactly a glowing assessment but who knows, maybe they still see some value.
personally i also think i would enjoy Shenmue wildly more if it was a show/stage play/book/literally anything else. The cancelled anime is a shame cause im not so sure the games themselves have any future. What appealed to people way back when on the dreamcast is not gonna keep holding up the more years go by, especially if the gameplay isnt evolving at all. I do wanna know how mr shenmues craaazy adventure ends but idk i think ill be geriatric by the time another game comes out.
it definitely didn't help that the anime crammed the first two games into the same season. I think it was about as good as possible for how they handled it, but it had the baffling problem of being so fast it had to make a lot of major cuts and compromises. not to mention that a hypothetical season 2 would be based on... shenmue 3 which I can't imagine is a pitch anyone would be eager to greenlight
I love shenmue with all my heart but both shenmue 3 and the anime failed for pretty good reasons
I love shenmue with all my heart but both shenmue 3 and the anime failed for pretty good reasons
Your reviews plus the fact that it’s not even wrapped up yet were what made me take the first two off my backlog. Thanks for watching out for me!
@moschidae On some level I do respect Yu Suzuki for being so unwavering in his vision for this series that Shenmue III picks up as if the previous 20 years of game development never happened. But Shenmue III sold about half as many copies as the I & II collection, that niche audience probably isn't enough to sustain five more games. I'm not even sure if it can support one.
@curse Yeah that makes sense, I didn't realize they zip through it that quickly. I know that these games just aren't my kind of thing and I appreciate that people do like them very much, but it seems like in the case of III not even Shenmue fans are all that into it.
@Gare No problem, I got your back.
@curse Yeah that makes sense, I didn't realize they zip through it that quickly. I know that these games just aren't my kind of thing and I appreciate that people do like them very much, but it seems like in the case of III not even Shenmue fans are all that into it.
@Gare No problem, I got your back.
What if you could drive of forklift again later in the game, are you willing to pass up such a promising potentiality
moschidae
6 months ago