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(1) There wasn't too much that happened that was directly relevant to the story (but besides resolving the entire Lan Di pursuit, what could be?) The payoff for the detective aspect of the first half of the game (finding Shenhua's father) almost feels like an afterthought, too.
(2) The most core plot arc of the game's two halves (learn a specific move to defeat one opponent) are essentially the same.
The main gameplay criticisms were:
(1) The hunger mechanic; its limitation on movement feels a little out of place and can largely be mitigated with food, but the real drawback is your stamina is also your starting health in battles, so if you meet an unexpected fight at the end of a sprint (which is realistic; you have to move to places), it'll be significantly harder in a way that doesn't feel fair.
(2) Due to budget reasons, throwing was cut from the battle system completely. This not only removed a dimension from the combat but was thematically awkward because the Hazuki style is meant to specialise in throwing.
Other aspects - like expecting it to be the finale to the series or expecting it to compete with games that had a budget of 150 million - were somewhat unrealistic expectations on the part of backers who didn't read the details of the Kickstarter campaign before backing it (they were mentioned during the original campaign period, or should have been obvious) or weren't backers at all and just looked into the game later on with that as an expectation.
There was also a large amount of hatred for the game's creation that grew VERY quickly after the announcement of Epic Games Store exclusivity. Some of those people did switch to looking for and exaggerating every available criticism they could make about the game (or its creators; Suzuki was harassed a bit despite it being a Deep Silver decision) in some weird attempt at revenge. Obviously this is less relevant today, but it was an impact around the time of the game's release.
There are some very vocal EPIC deal haters around here, that makes the noise, but the game clearly has the charm of the first two games. Solid 7-8/10 game and unique shenmue gaming experience as a whole.
Shenmue 3 being a kind of game were you relax at the end of day and do small menial tasks in beautiful settings clashed with how anxious players were to see where the story goes
Creator of Shenmue took a gamble to get series again in his words "from 0 to 1" so I can respect the effort put in the game, effort which got us Shenmue anime. Replaying with a slower pace on deck I really think 3rd game got judged too harshly.
That said things that imo should have been better were
- Ending which got cut/restructured two times i've heard
- Lack of writing for key characters
- Translation errors
- Ryos too kpop model
- Less realism (Arcade in a small rural village)
- Time per day. should have had opportunity to progress story at faster pace if I wanted
I didn't have any problem with stamina system, also picked a herb here and there so getting past the infamous money gates were a breeze (Didn't have money to buy many moves though)
The rest is mainly gameplay related.
Working boring jobs to make a stupid amount of money for something really dumb.
Annoying stamina mechanic. If the stamina bar was separate from your health it wouldn't have been as bad.
A combat system worse than the 2 games that preceded it.
No effort to bring the series up to seemingly modern standards in any way (mainly the quality of the voice acting)
I remember making it towards the end and once it was done i was like...oh, ok then. Was quite a disappointing result after waiting all this time. It wasn't even expectation either. The games mechanics/voice acting and story was just...meh compared to the first two,
The Epic store thing was another really irritating u turn at the last minute too.
Don't get me wrong though, if there was to be a part 4 (there wont be) i'd still get it.
Delivery needs to get better, but It does set up a larger conflict between two factions, not just Ryo beating up bad guy good night, but yeah, I get it's a tough sell for newcomers.
At least in authentic Shenmue spirit the game is chill as ♥♥♥♥.
I believe we get to see conclusion in some form, series having cult following and all, or maybe Yu Suzuki gets buried grasping the Shenmue saga script idk :)
sure there is things they could have done better, combat wasn't very interesting.
But overall I really loved the game.
Shenmue has always been an exploration focused open world game where you talk with NPCs most of the time and a main story that moves very slowly.(With addition of mini games such as combat,QTE scenes,arcade games,part time jobs)
Sadly it looks like that most of Shenmue fans didn't really understand the franchise(They were just interested in the main story of 1 and 2 I guess) and they thought that Shenmue 3 should be an action focused beat em up game like Yakuza and the story should end with the 3rd game.
Shenmue has always been like that . Shenmue 1's story is very minimal(It's just a intro of the story with lots of filler story content) but it is a 20 hours long game.
The game forcing you to work jobs to make money was a good decision. In Shenmue 1 and 2 most people just speedrunned the whole games without playing the mini games and exploring that much. Shenmue 3 at least forced the players to explore the world more.(Similar to how stealth games force the players to play the stealth games non aggressively)
Stamina system forced the players to actually try to earn money in order to buy food. In Shenmue 1 and 2 money is completely unimportant.(You just use that to buy some useless stuff like capsule toys)
1 and 2's combat was just some button mashing mini game. I beat the final boss of Shenmue 2 by just spamming the elbow move.Combat was never good in the Shenmue franchise.(But that's intentional because combat is just a mini game that you sometimes encounter in this franchise)
It has some flaws and some of them are really big. Like the storytelling (and not the story itself) isn't well done, at all. Hence why some people think that the game didn't progress the story. It did, in fact, as stated above, Shenmue always moved its story slowly. It's just that while S1 & 2 were really good (masterpieces even) in this area, S3 has a lot of moment were the Storytelling is just not good and the delivery of certain key elements is... Meh.
But it's still a really good game nonetheless, typically Shenmue. As stated above, some of the criticism for the game is just misplaced. Some people expected S3 to be at the level of AAA games when it's like an AA game (at best) or high budget indie game, like @Grayest said. Some wanted Shenmue to become simply Yakuza, which would be disastrous imo. And some, as stated above, just shat on the game because of the Epic exclusivity. Because 4 years ago, as soon as a game was Epic exclusive, it was very important to "destroy" this game. It's still the case today, but not as much.
I also feel like alot of nostalgia for S1&2 came into play. There are some things that S1&2 did that are, IMO, over-hyped. Like the combat system : as stated by @dprog1995, S1&2 combat isn't nearly as deep as people make it out to be. I went through both games by button mashing completely randomly and had absolutely no problem. All you have to learn is when to dodge. That's just an example, but yeah.
The game felt like a fanmade instead of a High quality game like Shenmue I & II were.
Shenmue was a high quality AAA game during its release, and now is a kickstarted so its to be expected with a limited budget.
1) No Sega capsule toys or posters. ( I blame segaSAMMY for this)
2) Battle system was greatly degraded, no throw moves. As well many moves from both games were removed from the game.
3) No continually from Shenmue II to III. In Shenmue II you could continue with your items from Shenmue I. Instead we got new inventory where most items were eliminated from the game, items that you had since Shenmue I. The move you got in the end of Shenmue II was removed from the game Demon Triangle.
4) By the end of Shenmue II you were OP, but then some random punk gang leader beat you up.
I do see there's already mods like the Kiwami mod, that does improve some things. Would be nice to add some throws though...
For me the biggest problem, which is being downplayed like crazy on this thread by people who have no idea what they're talking about, is how bad the combat system is. It's a MASSIVE downgrade from 1 & 2 and not just because of the lack of throws (though that is a huge issue given how much depth that alone removes). My main issue with combat is the lag due to the new input system, it may be more casual friendly (note: this is not a good thing) but making it so you enter a sequence of face button presses instead of the traditional movement sequence followed by an attack button/s is not only bad, it makes it so the game waits to see what sequence you're inputting even if you're just pressing a single face button. Want just a standard punch? Well you're gonna have to wait because the game needs to double check to see if you're only pressing a single face button for a punch or if you're pressing more for something else. Meanwhile in Shenmue 1 & 2 you press a button and your punch comes right out. This massively changes the frame data of the game and as such guts any quick reactions the player could make. It's just a bad design.
And to the person who said "the combat system in 1 & 2 isn't deep! I beat it by mashing!"... So because you played in a shallow and boring way without any knowledge of the game, the game it's self isn't deep? Lmao sounds like you're the one lacking depth my dude. Those of us who actually put in the time to get good at 1 & 2 know first hand how deep it's system is, and if you want you could spend like 5 minutes looking up youtube Shenmue 1&2 combo videos to see for yourself. This is like rolling through the pokemon games with just your starter, over leveling that one mon and facerolling everything, and then saying competitive pokemon play doesn't actually exist because you beat the game in the easiest way. Being accessible and easy to beat does not mean something doesn't have depth
At the time, Shenmue 1 was the most expensive game ever made. It came with a ton of hype, and ended up being one of the most immersive, memorable games of all time - let alone on the Dreamcast.
After S2, which suffered from living in the shadow of S1, the story ended on a cliffhanger, and the core fans spent years lobbying for not just a sequel - but the completion of the story and the trilogy.
Because S3 was crowdfunded - it didn't have the comparative budget of S1. It was also written in the same way as the first two - to be an ongoing story, rather than a trilogy-contained arc. It was always written as a slice of life, rather than a one-shot.
Epic exclusivity aside, the complaints were basically "it's not S1 the way I remember S1," or "It's not the updated, similar, spiritual successor system from the Yakuza series."
The overarching legend of Shenmue 1 - the game itself - casts a long shadow over anything after it. It's one of the rare cases where the story of the story - the development and release of the game itself - is just about as interesting as the game's story. You can't really overstate how groundbreaking S1 was, in its day. It's influenced a lot that has come after - and most notably, the Yakuza series.
The combat wasn't finished (for budget reasons - that was mentioned upthread) - not that it was that great to begin with. At its best, Shenmue's combat was serviceable. There's a reason nobody really used the same system after S1. It's jank, it's fiddly, and it's a decent enough concept - but it's messy to execute.
The bulk of why the game cost so much - was fully voicing and mo-capping the NPCs, and intricately constructing the environments (see also RGG's budget use for the Yakuza games).
Because S3 couldn't deliver that level of experience - yeah, comparatively, it was disappointing for people who expected a modern release of Shenmue-that-was. How reasonable that expectation was (and it wasn't) not withstanding.
In context of the series - yes, it was disappointing.
In context of being an excellent game - no. Frankly, it's outstanding, considering what they had to work with.
But all that, the budget shortfalls (vs. expectations of the devs and the backers), and the drama with Epic - that was the disappointing part.
As a game, it's fine. It's arguably still one of the best series out there ever made.
It's just living in a very, very long shadow that it just can't live up to - especially when RGG can churn out consistently good -> great games that are spiritual successors to the series much more regularly. Are they the exact same, or to the same level? No. They're not meant to be. They're excellent in their own right - but they share the soul of the series.
And when the knockoff can produce high quality regularly (because of a much larger budget)? The expectations for the original get higher.
Apples:apples, if this had the same kind of budget RGG has for any given Yakuza title - let alone what the original had - it would be, for my money, every bit as groundbreaking as the original. But that wasn't the case - and isn't for any future foreseeable release, unless it gets picked up by much deeper-pocketed backers.
But as a game unto itself? No, it doesn't deserve all the dragging it got. That it kept the same magic of the original after all these years, on a fraction of the comparative budget? That's something very, very special.