Hell yes, the Utah teapot is my favorite basic solid
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Good god this game loves to waste your time.
Currently I am up to the part where I have to go on a big wild goose chase looking for the secret move that can defeat the “animal moves” guy, which turns out to be in a scroll worth 5000 yuan so I have to do the repetitive ‘go to fortune teller and then bet on the colour’ grinding technique to advance the game. I thought the lead up to the climax of the Bailu village chapter with the old man and the chickens was bad enough. Can someone tell me how far from the end of the game I am? Gotta be around 3/4 right?
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at least
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Gherkin just cheat. Cheating makes it a little better.
It’s still miserable.
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You know I think I got some Alex Kidd in Hi Tech World vibes from the previous games for some reason, and this definitely feels like the Shenmue version of the ‘pray at the shrine 50 times to get the pass’ cheat
Okay I finished this. Couldn’t be bothered with the combat any more so I switched to easy and steamrolled the rest of the game.
I feel like this game really has nothing going for it besides “After 15 years it’s finally here!”
There’s no story to speak of. You’re just looking for thugs, then get beaten by the thug boss and have to go on a time wasting wild goose chase to find the special move to beat the boss, then rinse and repeat in the next region. Mostly it feels like trying to cover up the fact they had almost no content and so had to artificially extend the length of the game by making you do all the optional side stuff for hours.
Also it bugged me that when you reach the city area, all the activities are still very much ‘rural’ themed. Like, why am I still picking herbs and cutting wood and why does the fancy casino with the high class VIP area only have frog racing and lucky hit? Obviously it’s the budget, but it really sticks out to me.
Also there’s constant cat meow noises but you never see cats except in cutscenes.
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Unforgivable
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i’d said in the past that people clamoring for shenmue should just play the yakuza games because they’re better than shenmue was and apparently better than shenmue is, unfortunately. maybe they should’ve just worked with the yakuza team?
eta: (not saying og shenmue was terrible or wasn’t influential or anything)
they’re totally different games though, their appeal in mood and rhythm are like diametrically opposed and at this point the design continuity that links them is so commonplace as to be meaningless. i don’t think the world really needs more shenmue games either but it feels like a basic misunderstanding of the premise to say that what shenmue fans really want are yakuza games, as someone who loves shenmue 1 and doesn’t care for yakuza at all. what the world really needs is a new virtua fighter.
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They’re both “open” world games set in an enclosed world (city) following a stern protagonist who fight passer-bys using hand-to-hand combat, can play arcade games, help townspeople, perform errands, do random shit, et cetera. Just because the plot isn’t the same doesn’t mean they aren’t similar. They are very similar.
Like, it’s not outrageous to think if somebody likes one they’ll probably like the other.
Oh hey I should link our cast where I explained a fraction of why Shenmue 3 is a poor game and a poor sequel. The previous episode is a better discussion of why Shenmue 2 is uh…interesting.
They did Shen Hua so dirty.
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The cat noise thing drove me nuts.
@GherkinForce what’s the stupidest thing you pointlessly bought? Mine was a Red Fridgerator.
I can’t really articulate this well but I love both series and see Yakuza as jrpgs with open world and beat-em-up elements and Shenmue as “life simulators” akin to Animal Crossing/Harvest Moon where it’s more about living in and working with those more or less functional communities of awkward NPCs than following the hackneyed kung fu revenge story. They may share all those characteristics but have different priorities and structures.
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I think Shenmue and Yakuza are essentially completely different games with a bunch of superficially similar elements, however I think any new Shenmue games would benefit immensely from at least using the Yakuza engine as a rough base. Everything from just moving around to interacting with things, combat etc would feel much better.
The VF combat system always felt like a poor fit for what is basically an evolution of something like maybe Snatcher or Last Express to me. I imagine the demographic who may have been drawn to the exploration / adventure aspects doesn’t have much overlap with the demographic that enjoys mastering fighting game combos.
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Honestly I think I avoided buying too many things because it meant I’d have to interact with the mundane gambling minigames to make back the money. But I think I may have bought some alarm clock thinking Ryo would use it instead of the wristwatch?
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I think Yakuza 6 gets close to this but I might be saying that just because they went with full voice acting and seamless transitions into and out of buildings, which made me see it as a kind of merging of Yakuza and Shenmue that they kind of backed away from as they tested the limits of the engine. In Y6 you can visit a cat cafe where the only thing to do is interact with the cats as they playback hyperreal canned animations, which made me think of the early “immersion-building” things Shenmue tried, like opening drawers and holding 3D models in your hands.
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Calling out @AutomaticTiger to at least make a small post on the nature of Shenmue being an adult/mature meditation on the nature of revenge as opposed to say a recently released AAA video game.
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i thought shenume 3 did offer character progression in that ryo is willing to hand over the mirror for his friends without question which surely links directly back to the start of 1
also agree with rudie re shen hua bar the bit where she mentally waterboards people which is never mentioned again
shenmue 3 is no shenmue 1
but what could be
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Honestly I think I’d rather they finish the story in this format rather than another game, although I don’t have much faith in this actually being good
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