About 25 hours in and still feel like there’s a lot of game left. I’ve been doing a lot of the side things though.
1 Like
I have been sidetracked by the great distraction that is hunting for Choubu-chan!
So, in Shenmue III, does Ryo have a vitamin D deficiency from staying in that cave for 18 years?
No but he did seem to have lost a lot of the money he had over those 18 years 
I’m sure SEGA feels similar remorse over the Shenmue franchise.
And maybe now Sony too but, hey as long as we get more Shenmue it doesn’t matter.
So I’ve finished the game now and I really enjoyed it! I think you have to go in with the right expectations, and, yes it’s not a AAA title but that doesn’t mean it isn’t great. I think already having that love for Shenmue and its quirks definitely helps too but most importantly it is fun in its own right.
The story moves at a good pace and keeps you interested, there’s plenty of extra things to do/see if you decide to get distracted, and the fighting is real easy to pick up and become a bad ass with.
1 Like
Just beat Shenmue 3! My thoughts:
Overall I’d give the game a 7 out of 10. Maybe a 7.5 depending how I feel. There are some things that I liked and some things I didn’t.
Graphics:
For starters the environmental graphics are nice but aside from the main characters: Ryo, Shenhua , Ren etc. all the other npc’s look extremely grotesque and deformed. For instance I went to see a man about fishing. His head was bigger than his body and his face looked overly bloated. Almost all of the npc’s don’t look human! They look like freaks of nature! This makes the game feel more like a parody of the Shenmue series. Also, most of the female npc’s look like porcelain dolls rather than real people with stiff facial animations.
Story: (No spoilers)
The story is very slow and uneventful. You learn 2 minor story points throughout the entire game! And they are incredibly vague. At the end, something is explained to you, but even then you still don’t understand what happened. There also isn’t a lot of character development with the side characters you meet.
Also, a major thing to take note: most of the supernatural or magical aspects of Shenmue 2 have been removed or retconned. For instance: The intro cutscene does not show the Seven Star Sword floating or levitating any more. They actually made the sword smaller for Shenmue 3; almost like a small knife now! And the Shenmue tree is also smaller than how it was depicted in Shenmue 2, giving it less of a magical presence, feeling more like an ordinary tree now…
Gameplay:
The fighting system is fun and almost feels like the Virtual Fighter system but without the throws. Now you have to level up all of your moves. Note: if you master all of your moves you won’t be able to level up further unless you find or buy a new fighting move to practice. This adds more time to the game and you will be spending hours leveling up your fighting skills.
Now I must mention quick time events. They feel dumbed down and the window in which you have to press them is lightning fast. Meaning, by time your brain registers the button it’s already over. And most times they are just single button presses. No complex strings of commands and certainly not as forgiving as they were in Shenmue 2.
Three are two instances where you will need a lot of money. 2000 in Bailu Village and 5000 in Niaowu. This means you will need to do a lot of gambling. In order to get real money in Shenmue 3 you have to buy tokens, use the tokens to gamble, win more tokens from gambling, take the tokens to an exchange teller and buy items like gem stones. Then you take those items you bought from the exchange teller and then find a pawnshop, where you trade in your items for real money. It’s a long convoluted process. You will spend hours doing this and it can be very frustrating. You can go to a fortune teller and get a reading which tells you your lucky color or number. Then you have a limited time to use this in the gambling games. Before you gamble you can save and reload if you lose though. But it still takes forever to get money.
I was also disappointed with the arcade games and capsule toys. There are no old Sega games to play. Just some generic arcade games, like basketball or golf. Also, the capsule toys are incredibly ordinary and boring. For example: a set of fire extinguishers, a set of keys, or a set of tennis rackets… I never got not even one of these. That’s how interested I was. Sega really needed to license some of their franchises for this game. But, that probably would have cost Yu Suzuki more money. A disappointment, but maybe we’ll get proper Sega capsule toys in Shenmue 4…
Everything else feels like standard Shenmue: talking to npc’s, picking up items, going back and forth to different locations and looking for story points.
Conclusion:
This feels like more of an extension of Shenmue 2. Apart from the starting area, Bailu, Niaowu feels almost exactly like Aberdeen. And my major problem is that you don’t get any major or meaningful story explanations for the 25 hours you will be playing this game for. Sure this game feels like Shenmue, but maybe it plays it too safe? It really makes me wonder if Yu Suzuki really does have the story planned out or not, or if he’s just making things up as he goes. Only giving us small threads to go on. At this rate, we will never see an end to the story. I guess we can only hope Shenmue 4 gets green lit!
I made all my money by becoming a herb master 
Yes it was a little slow but not as slow as gambling would’ve been!
I also had a problem with the last fight at the end of the game. No spoilers, but that cutscene before you fight a certain some one…ruined what was supposed to be a serious moment with over use of humor. If there ever was a time where you shouldn’t be using a quick joke, that was the time…
I started playing this. It feels like a direct continuation of Shenmue II in almost every sense! Same voice actors and dialogue style, similar environments. It’s almost as if the last 17 years hasn’t happened. The nostalgia…
There are some new additions such as requiring food and drink in order maintain energy which add more realistic element to Ryo’s adventures. That said, the gameplay does feel dated in many respects, and doesn’t evolve the formula much. If they continue with the current mechanics, Shenmue IV should be the final game. But if the series is going to continue on for longer it would make sense to look at modernising it.
Unfortunately this is another PS4 release with an inconsistent frame rate. Luckily a lot of Shenmue III takes place in conversations where this isn’t a problem, but when exploring the world it’s definitely a distraction. I’ve found that turning off Boost Mode in the PS4 Pro’s system settings helps. But if you own a gaming PC, the Epic Store version is almost certainly the better experience.
See I found it fine as far as performance was concerned! Maybe a few drop outs later on but the early stuff ran fine on my PS4 Slim!
Yu Suzuki said himself, the story has 11 chapters and after Shenmue 3 he would need at least 2 more games to finish the story…
Digital Foundry’s technical analysis sums up the problem, which applies to both PS4 models, well.
What’s interesting is that the PS4 version runs at Very High graphics. I’d much rather a smoother frame rate, so it’s a shame there’s no best performance/best graphics switch, as in other PS4 Pro games like God of War. In any case, I’ve already paid for the game of PS4, so I’ll see this version through until the end.
Just remember you heard it here first!
Unless the Series X is more expensive than a normal console at launch, this rumour is probably false. Consoles are sold at cost (or cheaper) to encourage software sales. If a Series X was bought for the purposes of being used exclusively as a Steam Box, Microsoft would lose money from the sale. It’s in their interest to remain the sole gatekeeper.
1 Like
For anyone who hasn’t played it yet, the Epic exclusivity ends on November 19th, which is the release date for the Steam version.
Since the PS5 is backward compatible with PS4 games, that is another good option. With Shenmue III’s framerate being variable and targeting 60fps on PS4 Pro, but falling short of that target, we can expect a consistent 60fps on the more powerful PS5 hardware.
I finished playing through the game a few months ago on PS4. While I enjoyed the game, I have to say the pace felt too slow compared to Shenmue II. But I guess they were going for a smaller game like the original Shenmue to lay the groundwork while rebuilding the new systems in UE4. With the groundwork done, I’m optimistic we’ll see a larger scale game with Shenmue IV.
Shenmue III is on GOG now as well, which is nice:
But, with Sega showing no interest in GOG, the first two games appear to still only be available on Steam and consoles.
1 Like
I am glad it is on GOG, but at this point it has been way too long for me to still retain interest in the series. I vaguely remember the plot points, but it hasn’t held up for me as much as some of the other Sega classics and will probably continue to be a pass for me.
Shenmue 3 was really a big disappointment. Both in gameplay and story. You spent most of the game earning money, which is fine if it was fun, but it was not fun in any way. And they in no way whatsoever, expanded the story in any kind of meaningful or important way. Basically, there was no continuation of the story at all.
It’s sad for me to say this but: I’m probably never going to replay this game again. I’ll just keep going back to Shenmue 2. And this is coming from a longtime Shenmue fan.
I knew I probably won’t like it based on all I’ve seen but I checked it out finally (PC). Despite a lot of amateur hour presentation (loading screens, texts, Ryo’s basic walk and run cycle, stuff like that) once you’re in-game it seems to get the Shenmue feel down pretty well as far as Ryo’s actions go. It’s a tad too guided early on (if you stall Ryo runs to catch up) but it makes sense I guess with every day having the time limit and that particular story beat having to play out right at that point instead of have the option to stall that.
It does seem like much of it is just to stall you and pad out the days though (ie how slow you open all the drawers and cupboards, yeah that’s nice and just like Shenmue but come on, make it faster and more organic like modern games with that time limit, Ryo’s so slow he can’t even check all the cupboards in the house before having to go to bed, lol, there are way too many for a two people household as well, they just put empty cupboards everywhere). Shit I’m glad you can no longer pick up and examine every random object because I’d need to do that for all of them and it’d take me a week to get out of the house.
Other than that basic gameplay feel, I don’t really like the design of the first area they chose to introduce the game with. It’s a remote village that gets few visitors but apparently everybody runs some kind of game attraction to play just to show you it has stuff like Lucky Hit to remind you of the old games? What?
And yeah NPC models are really weird, many are normal like Ryo and whatshername and others are just sad caricatures that try to be unique and special and characteristic but end up looking out of place and more cartoony than the rest of the design elements. If at least every character was stylised like that I wouldn’t have a problem. I don’t think they have attention to detail to give everything a sense of place any more and I don’t think they’re very dignified designs either, ie, okay, the obese tai chi instructor is funny and cute but anyone that obese tends to be more aware of their body and dress accordingly rather than try to fit in clothes way too small and end up looking like an obese Hulk. Why couldn’t he wear a gi or something?
I’ll probably just hate this more the more it stalls (I mean, don’t you expect the end of Shenmue 2 to lead to some crazy revelation, it clearly looks supernatural and shit (to the point I didn’t like it at the time vs all the down to earth martial arts) but, well, it doesn’t, lol, at least not right now, they just basically check the place out and go “cool, this took a lot of effort” and go off outside the temple/cave/whatever). I’ll probably play more but right now Yakuza 7 is an actually good game occupying my time (and I’m no stranger to indie games/jank, I love em actually). So far it’s just confirming my thoughts, it’s no good, and I’m not one who expected the next Sleeping Dogs out of a small studio, I’d be happy with a nice small scale adventure in the style of the original game as it was, rather than as what it signified at the time for open worlds and sandbox and whatever stuff some people expected to see expanded for true next next gen large scale AAA sequels.