Shenmue III

Shenmue III is an action-adventure game developed by Ys Net, led by SEGA AM2's founder and former CEO Yu Suzuki, and published by Deep Silver. It was released on November 19, 2019, 18 years after the second game, after Sega gave up all rights to the Shenmue franchise to Suzuki and a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game doesn't improve much from the older Shenmue titles, repeating many of the same archaic design choices that those games had, which have aged poorly. A lot of the mechanics that made Shenmue unique in the early 2000s are now common practices in modern gaming. As a result, Shenmue III is too similar to the older games without much improvements, making the game feel outdated when its once-"unique" selling points are now unimpressive.
 * 2) The art style and graphics are inconsistent, badly contrasting between realistic and cartoony designs, similar to Sonic '06 and Jump Force. At times, the visuals look almost like a Sega Dreamcast game with HD graphics, but yeah, it's running with Unreal Engine 4.
 * 3) * Character animations and lip-synching feel a lot stiffer than in the prequels.
 * 4) * The Moon looks awfully huge when seen at night.
 * 5) The English dub is terrible, with most characters giving very monotonous deadpan performances possibly to replicate the acting from the original games. This is worse with the game being very reliant on unskippable dialogue.
 * 6) * Due to poor translation, Ryo Hazuki's habit of constantly saying "I see" in response to almost everything is once again carried over.
 * 7) Ryo Hazuki's noticeably weaker in this game than in the prequels as he gets beaten up frequently by the Chinese thugs until he learns new moves.
 * 8) Large portions of the game involve doing nothing but talking to bland NPCs and waiting for the 24-hour clock system to let you progress. Even with the ability to skip forward until the required hour, this system still wastes a lot of time from the player.
 * 9) Permanently Missable Content:
 * 10) *Aside from the many side activities Ryo can partake in, the game now features "Requests" in which a character may need a favor from Ryo. These may range from finding or winning a particular toy or item, or hunting down someone and winning in a fight against them, and Ryo will usually be rewarded with clothes, rare items, or access to a new fishing location. These requests have limited availability and once they're gone, they're gone.
 * 11) *As with the previous games, once you leave Bailu Village, you cannot return. Any herbs you missed or any unfinished requests are gone. However, the game warns you when this occurs and gives you the chance to proceed with the story or turn back. Similarly, you cannot return to Niaowu after you depart for the Old Castle.
 * 12) The SEGA Arcade games are removed as a result of the game not being published by SEGA (Although there is a sound taken directly from After Burner in the log chopping mini-game).
 * 13) A lot of missions have you travelling back and forth Bailu, the starter town, and Niaowu, made worse by the game's lack of fast travel and proper modes of transportation. As a result, it makes completing objectives feel extremely tedious even by mh:awesomegames:Shenmue I ' s standards.
 * 14) You need to do a lot of grinding just to earn enough money to collect unlockable items and open up new missions.
 * 15) 0:mh:allthetropes:Artificial Difficulty: The thugs frequently spam their blocks to prevent you from attacking them, making them more difficult to defeat even with new fighting skills. Despite this, however, their AI is very poor and can be cheesed with simple button mashing.
 * 16) Recycling:
 * 17) * It becomes apparent in Niaowu that the gameplay objective is identical to what it was in Bailu: Ryo fights against a strong opponent all by himself, loses, fights them again with a supporting character nearby, loses again, finds a master who refuses to train him, has to purchase an expensive item before being trained with a special move, and defeats the strong opponent with it.
 * 18) * Much of the game's soundtrack is comprised of many of the songs heard in the previous games, particularly Shenmue II, but are the original arrangements as opposed to the ones rearranged for the Dreamcast's sound chip. Many unused songs including those found on the first game's soundtrack album also finally make their way into the series.
 * 19) You can't replenish your health using food in the middle of the fight and the thugs will automatically start unprovoked fights with you when they make eye contact with you.
 * 20) The mini-games used for increasing your stats are very boring and repetitive, as it mostly consists of normal exercises like performing squats and walking in circles.
 * 21) There is no penalty for failing QTEs. Instead, the game lets you go on, making them come off as afterthoughts.
 * 22) Despite the game being heavily story-driven, the plot itself is very uneventful and as mentioned, recycles the premise of Shenmue II. In fact, nothing that happens in the game really matters until you get to the end, at which point you face off against Lan Di and the game ends, not having advanced the overall series plot in any meaningful way, if at all. The ending also leaves off on a blatant hint at a Shenmue IV.
 * 23) * According to Ys Net, the overall Shenmue story is only about 40% complete after Shenmue III and Yu Suzuki has revealed in interviews that he wants to finish the story with 11 more games in the series.
 * 24) The game has a very steep learning curve for newcomers to the series.
 * 25) The Chobu-Chan figurines spread throughout Niaowu can be very difficult to find as some are hidden in very tight areas and are textured to blend in with the environment. The Bailu Chan figurines in the Bailu Chan Hunt DLC are even more difficult to find despite having a detector handy.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Bailu and Niaowu look visually stunning.
 * 2) There are nice hidden object mini-games that you can play to collect items and unlock new missions.
 * 3) Unlike most open-world games nowadays, Ryo can interact with practically everyone in the game.

Reception
Shenmue III received mixed reviews. While fans of the first two Shenmue games were positive towards it, critics were harsher, criticizing the game's outdated mechanics and poor pacing when compared to other modern games.

On Metacritic, the PlayStation 4 version received a 67/100 and the PC version a 69/100.

Angry Joe's friend, Delrith, gave Shenmue III a 4/10, pointing out that the game is too similar to the old Shenmue games to a fault.

Controversy
Months before the release, Ys Net and Deep Silver announced that the game will be sold exclusively on Epic Store for an year, claiming that Epic would help with the game's development. Most of the Kickstarter backers were expecting Steam keys for financially supporting the game, but instead they got screwed over, angering them as a result. In response to the outrage, it was announced that the backers not happy with that decision would able to get refunds.

Videos
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