It’s difficult to put into words the feeling I felt as I held, finally, my copy of the 3rd installment in the long-running, but long-dormant, Shenmue series.
Releasing nearly 20 years after the launch of Shenmue II, the advent of Kickstarter crowdfunding had finally allowed Yu Suzuki to commence development on the third installment, and, of course, as a fan from back in the day, getting to play the game was something of a surreal experience. Shenmue III was a game that was never supposed to exist, a game that its publishers had forever shunned, a resolution to a cliffhanger ending that would never be resolved.
My reaction to getting to play Shenmue III, after all this time, can only be described as a complicated one. Shenmue I and Shenmue II on the Dreamcast (and Xbox) were my favorite games at the time I played them, and though few games from that era have aged flawlessly, I still feel that way about them today. Majorly ahead of their time, the first two Shenmue games offered a fully living, fully breathing open world to explore, one where every single person you saw could be questioned and interacted with, where nearly every building could be entered, and where an in-game clock and living NPCs going about their daily business kept the world moving. It was in this world that Lan Di, the member of a Chinese cartel, murdered teenager Ryo Hazuki’s father in his dojo, stole the Dragon Mirror belonging to him, and departed into a rainy night. Ryo vowed to get revenge, his journey taking him from his small but bustling hometown in Japan, to the massive city of Hong Kong and the isolated forests of Guilin in mainland China.
Picking up immediately where Shenmue II left off, Ryo and his mysterious new companion Shenhua learn that her father had recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Shenmue III begins in the larger-than-expected Bailu Village, which gradually opens up to you and allows you to explore more and more of it as the first half of the game goes on. The second act sees Ryo and Shenhua journey to the port city of Niaowu, which offers a more exciting and vibrant setting while also exposing many of Shenmue III’s unfortunate limitations.
But first thing’s first. Shenmue III plays at its core similarly to the first two games, in which Ryo wanders through the fully-realized environments, interacting with locals, and learning clues which progress him and the story forward. Most people you see in Shenmue III can be interacted with, and though these interactions take a definite step back from Shenmue II’s, in which you were able to choose between different questions to ask them and even be walked to your destination, it’s still impressive how many people are available to converse with, and how much dialogue (nearly all of it voice acted) the developers have managed to squeeze into a far more limited budget than that of the first 2 Shenmue games. Various action sequences, such as fights or the occasional chase, show up to provide some excitement, but likely for budgetary reasons, these are an incredibly rare occurrence in Shenmue III, giving the game an even more likelihood of appealing strictly to the fans than it otherwise might have had the developers been given more money to play with. Shenmue III is slow, and without the big action sequences and fights to break things up, those who don’t find themselves wrapped up in this world and Ryo’s journey may struggle to see what the big deal is.
For fans though, the real star of the show is how at least the basics of the Shenmue series have been very well maintained. Wandering through the village and then the city, Shenmue III gives you the ability to gamble and perform part time jobs for money, the ability to play arcade games, and the ability to explore the shops and see the painstaking detail that went into giving each one its own identity. And of course, you have the ability to interact with the NPCs and learn the clues that progress the story forward. This is all still present and still the driving force behind Shenmue III. The game does feel, in many ways, like a solid sequel to the second game, even while it lacks the budget and the massive development teams awarded to its predecessors, which has, inevitably, resulted in a game that doesn’t live up to them, as much as it tries and as much as it makes the absolute most of its circumstances.
Lots of bits of fan service exist, from various items and photos to stories that Ryo recounts to Shenhua about his life in Japan and of the friends he met there. At one point you’re able to buy phone cards to call some of the characters from the previous two games, and though these conversations somehow feel non-cannon and feature (disappointingly) wildly different voice actors who mostly don’t even attempt to sound like their predecessors, there’s something wonderfully surreal and compelling about the ability to converse with these characters again. Even if, for some reason, the writers have entirely forgotten that Guizhang was supposed to eventually join Ryo in China.
There have been various new features added to Shenmue III, ranging from a brand new fighting system to the need for Ryo to eat food to recharge his stamina (HP) throughout the day. A fun conversation system with Shenhua exists in the first half of the game, which gives Ryo some much-needed development and arguably fleshes him out more than both Shenmue 1 and 2 managed to do. The battle system is under-explained and does take some time to get used to, but manages to satisfy in its own way as the game goes on despite its fairly unforgiving nature. The actual need to train and level up to increase your stats is a cool addition to the series, while the food system unfortunately isn’t, making getting around an outright chore when Ryo runs low on health and is then only able to run for short distances at a time. These types of “running systems” are rarely ever fun in video games, and Shenmue III’s is no different. I’d have happily taken the game without it, and it would have been much better for it. The sidequest system however is very much improved, feeling in some ways similar to how it does in the Yakuza series, and though it’s still sometimes tough to keep track of your various sidequests, Shenmue III represents a big step forward in this regard over its predecessors.
Where Shenmue III lands on most fans’ lists will ultimately depend on how forgiving they are of its more limited nature. Though the environments to explore in Shenmue III are very large and detailed (though, it has to be said, not on the level of Shenmue II’s) evidence of its crowdfunded nature are evident in other aspects. It’s important to bear in mind that Shenmue III shouldn’t exist at all; in its final form, we have a game funded with a very small budget, with a very small development team. Shenmue I and II were given enormous amounts of money and the development support of Sega, who was (at the time) a major console manufacturer. I’m happy that Shenmue III exists, and am 100% sure that its existence as an indie game is a far better fate for it than alternatives, such as Yu Suzuki finishing its story through some sort of movie or comic book, or through the ill-fated Shenmue Online. It’s in this nature that Shenmue III’s definitely successful at what it attempts to do, which is to provide a quality sequel to Shenmue II that delivers a similar experience and brings at least some closure to what fans were expecting.
It's the story, however, where Shenmue III surprisingly disappoints the most. Cutscenes are very rare, with much of the plot progressing through in-game conversations with other characters. When cutscenes do show up, they feel low-budget and amateurish. The villains all fail to generate any sense of presence, ranging from laughably un-threatening gang members (frustratingly referred to as “thugs” for the entirety of the game, a word that feels like it’s said hundreds of times and quickly becomes cringeworthy) to Chi You Men characters who spend almost the entire game off screen. Chai returns from Shenmue I but fails to justify his reappearance and definitely doesn’t live up to the iconic villain’s role in that game. Despite a shockingly anti-climactic introduction, Ren from Shenmue II is handled a bit better as Ryo’s partner in crime while in the big city, though he too isn’t allowed to leave the same lasting impression that he and other previous Shenmue main characters have had. Shenmue was certainly never something like Final Fantasy, but its characters in the past managed to elicit real emotions and leave a mark; for whatever reason, their adventures with Ryo in Shenmue III almost all feel hollow and forgettable. Things progress very little in the “grand scheme of things” by the time the credits roll, with a true howler of a cliffhanger ending that even as far as cliffhanger endings go doesn’t come close to the beautiful ways Shenmue’s I and II wrapped up their stories. It’s a horrible ending by almost any standard, and I’m really hoping for a Shenmue IV, if for no other reason than to have III’s terrible ending not be the last we see of the Shenmue world. QTE action scenes (where button prompts come up in the middle of cinematic chases or fights) happen only a small handful of times over the course of Shenmue III, though this turns out to be a blessing, as they’re all nearly impossible to pull off on the first attempt, with failing-and-memorization seemingly the only way to pass them. It’s disappointing, as the fights and QTEs were some of the best aspects of the previous installments, and they provided much-needed excitement and shook things up gameplay-wise. Here the fights are often where the game gets most of its challenge, and though leveling up makes sense as a way to progress through them in an RPG sense, it’s hard not to feel a sense of dread, rather than excitement, as a result when a fight does show up. Similarly, the less that’s said about the (thankfully only) two puzzles that make their way into Shenmue III, the better. They aren’t good.
Music is a surprising shortcoming in Shenmue III as well, as it’s an area where the series has always excelled. The vast majority of the songs here are re-used from Shenmue II. Though of course these are still great songs, and my heart actually ached when certain ones unexpectedly made an appearance, it takes away much of Shenmue III’s individuality, and reminded me of how incredible its predecessor was at almost every given turn. The handful of new songs created for Shenmue III on the other hand are the least memorable the series has seen, and all prove to be incredibly short and loop irritatingly frequently. It’s undoubtedly for budgetary reasons, which is why it hurts me to be tough on the game for this aspect, but given what a huge role music played in the first 2 installments, I couldn’t help but wish that some of the money that was spent on allowing you to open almost every drawer you see could have instead been spent on creating a full new soundtrack. Debuting in the early 2000s, Shenmue I and II understandably suffered from uneven, at times laughably poor, English voice acting. Shenmue III’s doesn’t reach those lows, though many of the performances do feel flat. Corey Marshall returns as Ryo, which is a great thing for posterity if nothing else. It’d have been nice if other English voice actors (some of whom were very vocal about wanting to return for Shenmue III) were included, or if the new actors had at least attempted to sound like the characters they were voicing. Japanese voices are also available, for those who prefer that.
There are a few other flaws that (similar to the QTE implementation) aren’t due to budgetary issues that I wish had been resolved or handled differently. You can’t skip through the dialogue when talking to NPC characters, which makes asking around occasionally feel like a chore. This is especially true in the city, where many of the NPCs you see wandering around actually can’t be talked to, which is a first for the series. Instead, you’re limited to interacting only with Niaowu’s many shopkeepers, forcing you to sit through their sales pitches before getting any info from them. The new gambling system, which requires you to use “tokens” which are exchanged for prizes, which have to then be sold at pawn shops for cash, feels unwieldy and unsatisfying, as the amount of money you ultimately take home from this 3-step process never feels like as much as I thought it was, taking a lot of the fun out of the gambling mini-games. The game doesn’t tell you whether you already own an item before purchasing it, causing me a ton of frustration when I spent over $1000 on a “new move” only to see that I already had it in my inventory. I wish food had either been less expensive or the exhaustion system had been more forgiving, and the final battle is disappointing, to say the least. The fact that you have to grind for money and win a series of tournament fights, not once but twice, over the course of the adventure is also a shame and feels very uninventive. As I type this, a patch has just been released (2 months after Shenmue III’s launch) which may or may not address a couple of these issues, but as usual, I’ve already long finished the game by this point, so it’s hard to see this as anything but too little, too late.
Moving back away from the negatives, though, Shenmue III does certainly look the part. Developed using Unreal Engine 4, the vistas and scenery are always beautiful. Though the environments ultimately don’t reach the level of detail and activity that Shenmue has previously featured, they still manage to impress, in a huge way, and it’s very hard not to feel the “Shenmue vibes” as you wander around. I did find the design mechanism in which Bailu Village slowly reveals itself to you to be jarring in a series that had previously offered complete freedom almost immediately, but it ends up working well, with the ability to explore more of the village always an exciting thing when it does pop up as the story goes on. In general, despite its flaws, which are plainly evident throughout, Shenmue III is a lot of fun. Progressing the story through detective work remains as satisfying as it did in the first 2 games, and the beautiful and bustling environments are still great to explore. The day and night system returns, albeit with a 9:00 PM curfew (why?) giving many, though not all, of the areas a cool scene when day changes to night.
Shenmue III is in the end a very tough game to review. It’s definitely no Shenmue II….that much is ultimately clear. It isn’t even Shenmue I, in many ways. These two games were made with very different resources and development teams, resulting in gaming experiences that were simply never going to be replicated in an independently-developed, Kickstarter-funded game. At what it is, however, Shenmue III exceeds expectations in many ways, and it’s incredibly surprising what Yu Suzuki and his small team managed to accomplish here. Though it has major shortcomings, including a disappointing story and soundtrack, along with botched QTEs and new features that feel determined to detract from the fun, there’s no denying that Shenmue III provides a beautiful, atmospheric, and in many ways satisfying sequel that manages to at least come close to living up to the nearly impossible expectations that were set upon it.
It’s hard not to wish that Shenmue III could have been the big budget, AAA follow-up that the first two entries deserved. But for what the game is, it delivers beyond what I think anyone could have reasonably expected. It’s far from perfect, but what we have here is a fun, polished, and epic adventure. It’s Shenmue, without a doubt. And that’s something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
3.5/5
Note; this review is based on the PS4 version
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