Overdue thoughts on the Shenmue Saga.
By MooseyMcMan 4 Comments
So...I don't think I've ever actually taken the time to properly write about the Shenmue games. Which is weird, right? It feels like something I should have written at length about...but unless I've completely forgotten, I haven't.
I understand why I didn't, though. Despite coming to Shenmue “late,” relative to its release, I still played it a long time ago now. I want to say it was around 2005? Nineteen years ago. And, this isn't really directly related to this, but it does remind me of a weird feeling I've gotten a lot over the years. Where, at the time, I come to something late, which makes me feel like a newcomer, but then that feeling never dissipates, no matter how long it's been. A better example would be Resident Evil. I jumped on with 4 (again, in 2005), and despite being an on and off fan ever since, part of me still feels like a newcomer.
As another way to put this into perspective, at this point, I've been a fan of both Shenmue and Resident Evil for over half of my life. Now, not to talk about Resident Evil, but of these two, one of them has gone on to have many great games, especially in the modern era, and the other, well...
I think part of it with Shenmue is that despite really enjoying it at the time, I chose not to even try playing Shenmue II back then, because I thought we would never get any more to continue, or conclude the story. Which is a little silly, because it's not like the first game's story ends in anything other than a, “see you next time for the continuing adventures of Ryo Hazuki.” It wasn't until a couple years ago, when I bought the Shenmue I & II remasters that I finally played II, after replaying the original, of course. And, as is easy to guess, it was only just recently that I finally started the now current last game in the series, unless Yu Suzuki can somehow get IV off the ground.
Before I get to that, I should at least “briefly” write about the first two games. Something I should have done when I played the remasters, but I wasn't blogging as much then. I'm sure I would have had a lot more specifics to say, but we'll have to make do with this.
Shenmue.
I really loved this game back in 2005. Now, is that me saying it's a “great” game? True to form, even if you asked me back then what my favorite part was, I'm pretty sure I would have said the voice acting. It's definitely what I would say now. I love bad voice acting, something that I think goes back to spending so much time watching Godzilla dubs as a child. Video games from the 90s and early 00s are infamous for their bad voice acting, because the games with genuinely good performances were few and far between. For every Metal Gear Solid, there were probably ten Resident Evils. Even that is too much credit, Resident Evil is another where the voice acting is at least funny bad, and that's only for the original RE. The GameCube REmake doesn't have great acting either, but it's not memorable in the ways it was in the PS1 version.
Shenmue, in my ears, has the best bad voice acting of any game I've ever played. It's a combination of things, that all come together for something that isn't quite like anything else out there. There's a particular stilted-ness to the “flow” (more accurately lack thereof) of conversations, that just, makes it feel like...it was written by robots. There's also the quality of the performances themselves. No one sticks out in my mind as being particularly good, they really just range from wooden and lifeless, to the most over the top goofy voices you'll ever hear.
Like, sure, maybe in retrospect Shenmue's depiction of (I assume?) a black person from what I would have thought was somewhere in the Caribbean (but according to the Shenmue wiki, New York) is probably...I won't use the word racist but I don't think I would think of him fondly if this was a new game released today, let's say. But also I love Tom because he's fun! He's always dancing, and talking about hot dogs. Plus, he teaches Ryo a cool move that still gets used even up through Shenmue III. And for what it's worth, his brief cameo in III is a lot more reasonable a depiction than the original (I also, of the cameos in III, think his is the best).
As much as I love Shenmue because of my ability to laugh at it, in my heart it still feels like I'm laughing with it. Sure, Mario (not Bob, despite it being Bob's Pizza) who runs the Italian restaurant is a similarly “respectful” depiction of an Italian, but I dunno, stuff like that I feel is goofy on purpose. Or maybe not, who knows, but it's something I remember fondly, even after all these years.
The other thing that makes Shenmue's voice acting so good is the sheer breadth of it. Nowadays it's common for games to have enormous amounts of voice acting. Dozens of named NPCs that all have at least a few lines isn't that impressive these days. But back then? There wasn't anything else like it! So it was both legitimately impressive, but also, again, it gave it a huge variety of ridiculous voices to listen to. I'm not going to say that Goro is a compelling character, but I do think he's really funny, and a part of why Shenmue lodged its way into my heart.
Even if Shenmue laid a lot of groundwork for other games to come in and do this stuff (just much better), some aspects of it still feel...mostly unique. Most big open games go for width, not depth. They span miles and miles, but most of that space is just that, space. Not to keep bringing up much better games, but obviously empty space can be compelling in something like Shadow of the Colossus, but you get what I'm getting at.
Shenmue, however, went the opposite route. Yokosuka was far from the largest area in any game, even at the time when it was new. Yet to this day, it still feels realer than most modern games. By modern standards, the textures are blurry, the polygon counts low, but somehow...it still feels real. Maybe a lot of that is my nostalgia, and maybe to an extent it is the blurrier textures and lower poly counts that let my imagination fill in some more gaps. Modern games are so detailed that you don't need to use your imagination to fill those gaps any more. For better, or worse.
Regardless, it isn't any one thing, it's the sum of the whole. It's the attention to detail in the environment, it's the fact that the NPCs are named characters, who have their own daily schedules. Sure, it's all fake, they're all just running the same routines over and over again, unless something in the story dictates they do something else, but that's what video games are! It's all fakery. Just something about the fakery in Shenmue that...hits differently.
Some of it, even more modern, and frankly much better games don't even try to do. The Witcher III, for example, is a fantastic game. Top to bottom, a way better game than Yu Suzuki could ever hope to make. But you know what Witcher III doesn't do? You know what broke my immersion in the world when I realized it? Go to a little village in the middle of the night, and basically the whole village will still be up and about. I get that in the big city, people will still be up and doing stuff in the middle of the night, but in a tiny village? They're going to be sleeping! Sure, maybe someone will be awake, up to something, but on the whole? Nah.
Even Dragon's Dogma II, a game with a much heavier reliance on its passage of time mechanics than most these days, does this too. As far as I could tell, the merchants are open for business at all hours, which is probably “better” for ease of use, but not realistic. Shenmue, though? Shops close when they close. The Tomato convenience store will stay open later than Ryo's curfew, but that's about it. Not counting the bars, which don't open until nighttime. Again, I get why modern games typically don't do this, because it's just another point of friction. For every point of friction, that's another chance that some people might put the game down and not come back.
It's probably pretty clear that I tend to like friction in games. What fun is there to be had if it's too easy? That's a discussion for another day, though, this is about Shenmue. About the attention to detail in its spaces, and how it focuses more on depth of simulating real places, than breadth of making a big, open world. No other series really has done this, except...
The series formerly known as Yakuza. It's funny to think about how it wasn't until 2005-ish that I played Shenmue, when that was the same time the original Like a Dragon released on PS2. (Oddly, despite not playing the first two games on PS2, I don't feel like a newcomer to this series, perhaps because I got into it before it became popular outside of Japan). A series that really, truly feels like the successor to Shenmue. I don't think Like a Dragon would exist without Shenmue. It walked so Like a Dragon could run.
It was hard not to think about Like a Dragon while playing Shenmue III, and how it really took all the compelling parts of Shenmue, then stripped away the junk and replaced it with more good stuff. No more time of day, or waiting, instead it just moves with the story (this I don't think is purely a good change, but whatever). The combat, which was meant to feel like a fighting game but never really great, replaced with brawling that was simpler on the surface, though ultimately a lot more fun, and over the top. No, the NPCs don't have daily schedules they go about, but they pushed the attention to detail with the world even further. Kamurocho has grown to be a place in the hearts of many of us out there, and I have more nostalgia for that little slice of Tokyo than a lot of real places I've been to.
And the story...well, without getting into Shenmue III quite yet, I'll just say that even at its worst, lowest points, the Like a Dragon games still have way more, and more interesting stories. Again, I've not played Yakuza 1 on the PS2, only Kiwami. But knowing they didn't add much (if anything) outside Majima Everywhere and a few extra scenes with Nishikiyama, I can confidently say it still has more, and more interesting story than all three Shenmue games. Combined.
Anyway, despite all this sounding kinda negative, I still love Shenmue. It's charming! Bad in a lot of ways, sure, but it has a place in my heart. I can't see a forklift without thinking about this game. Thinking about how I made my best friend at the time play through it after I did. I don't know that he looks back as fondly on this as I do, but we had a lot of fun at the time. Sure, Like a Dragon became what Shenmue should have, but it'll never replace Shenmue, replace that little spot in my heart it's nestled in.
Shenmue II.
Now Shenmue II...I don't have nostalgia for. To be fair, a lot of what I like about the first game is true in the second. The voice acting is, well, here's a clip so good I had to put it on YouTube to make sure I always have easy access to it. Maybe my favorite non-story NPC in the whole franchise.
In addition to the really goofy NPCs, there's also some good story characters too. Joy and Ren in particular, I might not have the same nostalgia for them as Tom or Goro, but they're probably the two best characters in the series. Joy's a fun loving delinquent, and Ren is the sort of scoundrel that's oil to Ryo's water. They shouldn't mix at all, and yet somehow they work perfectly together, even as they bicker along the way. Ren returning and having more than a cameo's worth of screen time was probably my favorite part of III, while I'm talking about him. Joy is relegated to a phone cameo like Tom and the rest, sadly.
That same attention to detail to the world is back too, though II covers a lot more ground than the original did. The Hong Kong section alone feels much larger than Yokosuka and its harbor, and that's only the first half of the game! The problem is, at a point it kind of becomes too big, given how laborious traversal can be. It isn't too bad in Hong Kong, but the Kowloon portion of II...
Rarely has a game ever made me feel like I was losing my mind as much as this portion of Shenmue II. Mostly because of the way it's laid out. Outside areas are fine, it's once you plunge into its towers that it turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare of navigation. Fully functional stairs, visible but blocked off for no reason! Elevators that only access certain floors, but not in anything resembling a logical way! Like elevators that can access the first few floors of a building, and the last few, but not the ones in the middle, despite those being the floors you need to go to. Like, I could understand if an elevator only worked for the bottom or top half of a building, but why this? Why does it let you go to the floors where the elevator won't open and see where the elevator is anyway??
There's one part, and this was required to advance the game, I needed to climb the stairs to reach the fourth floor, then take an elevator down to the basement, descend three more flights of stairs, fight exactly one dude, and do the whole thing in reverse (aside from the fight) to get back out.
After navigating all these buildings, going up, down, and all around, eventually it climaxes (after another long journey up a tall building) with a fight at sunrise, and Lan Di escapes in a helicopter (the fight wasn't against him, just some other dude). And I thought, hey, this could be a really good place to end this game. It felt climactic, it felt cool, it felt like something actually happened for once. It would've been the perfect place to leave off.
So of course the game goes on for another four hours of just Ryo and Shenhua (who had previously only shown up in Ryo's dreams??) strolling along the Chinese countryside. Then it finally ended (with the reveal that this series is named after a tree for a reason that is never explained), and I needed to take another year and a half before I finally started Shenmue III.
I dunno what to say about Shenmue II. In terms of plot, and things happening, it's probably the “best” of the three? The thing is, I have no nostalgia for it, and felt like I was losing my mind far more than in the other two games, so part of me also kind of hates it, haha. I'll say this, it's one of those games that is going to haunt me for years to come. Is it good to say it occupies a similar spot in my mind as Resident Evil 6?
Shenmue III.
On that bright note, time to finally get to Shenmue III. I went into this game knowing that very little happens in terms of the overall plot, and knowing that since it was a Kickstarter game, it'll naturally feel like a lower budget affair in many ways than the previous two. At the time, I believe Shenmue was the most expensive game ever produced; Wikipedia says it was between $47 and $70 million dollars, which is dwarfed by big productions these days. My point being, I knew to keep my expectations in check, and I did the best I could in that regard while playing. I did also buy all the DLC, because it was similarly price dropped, and I wanted the fullest experience of Shenmue III that the game had to offer.
I want to start with the positives. One thing that's apparent from basically the start of the game is that it can actually look pretty beautiful at times. Right outside Bailu village (the first half of the game), there are these fields of flowers beside a stream, and this area is easily the most visually striking, and beautiful thing in the series. Especially at sunrise and sunset, the majesty of nature combined with the nice Unreal lighting just looks beautiful. The rest of the areas around Bailu look nice too, to varying degrees, but this area is particularly so.
Niaowu, the city in the back half, doesn't have nearly as much natural beauty, though there is still some. But it also, by being a more urban environment, feels more true to Shenmue to me. Either way, both areas have that attention to detail that I want from Shenmue, and both are striking in their own ways. They're also a lot easier to navigate than the areas in Shenmue II, partly because there's far fewer loading screens. Only really when entering certain buildings, otherwise they're pretty seamless.
It is frustrating, especially in the opening hours, how Ryo will just stop himself from going to areas too early by saying, “I should look around here first.” And later in Niaowu, he does this a little, but also frustrating are the obvious shortcuts connecting the different parts of town that don't open up until later than they should. Also the few areas where Ryo refuses to run, for some reason (one of them has “No Running” signs up, and Ryo will obey any sign he sees, I guess).
That said, I ended up more or less committing both Bailu and Niaowu to memory. I know my way around those spaces in a way that only happens if you really spend a lot of time in them. That's always a neat feeling to have, even when the games aren't...the best.
The other brightest spot in this game is the music. Like those flowery fields, at times it's beautiful too. Nothing revolutionary, but it gets the job done. A decent variety too, ranging from the aforementioned beauty, to goofier songs to accentuate the moments when the game is trying to be funny. To paraphrase something my friend Ajay said, “the composer is the only person who showed up and did the assignment.” Which is maybe getting ahead of myself, but trust me, the music is really good.
Those are...kind of the only two things about the game that I think are genuinely, consistently good. That's not me saying the rest of the game is entirely bad, but... Well, let me get to it bit by bit, because there's a lot I need to get through.
One thing that is impossible not to notice, from the very start, is the shift in art style. I'm specifically talking about the faces. The first two were going for realism at every turn, but obviously for budget reasons, Shenmue III was never going to be able to render this many NPCs realistically by modern standards. So, instead, they took a rather...interesting decision, and instead decided to create more stylized faces based on the old models from the original two games.
Which is such a...strange choice? Like I said, at the time, those games were trying to be realistic, but doing so under the constraints of the Dreamcast. It was by far the most powerful console when it launched, but even then it was outclassed by the PS2 a year later. My point being that outside of fighting games that were only rendering two people at a time, Shenmue had the most realistic people that console could handle. But compared to modern games, that can just scan people's faces and render them with effectively infinite polygons (I guess if Shenmue IV is ever made, and on Unreal 5, maybe they could just generate infinite realistic faces? (I don't know how that stuff works, haha)), the faces of Shenmue I & II are big, exaggerated, and stylized.
So, for III, they opted to use a style that takes those faces, and basically renders them at a higher detail? It's...weird?? But, not necessarily bad. I guess it ranges from person to person, and to be honest, it grew on me as I spent more time with the game. It was really off-putting at first. Like Alita's eyes in Alita Battle Angel, I thought it was disconcerting, but got used to it. By the end, I was actually into it. If by some miracle Shenmue IV is ever made, I think at this point they should probably keep going with this more stylized look, rather than trying to use more Unreal trickery to go for realism (that I'm sure they wouldn't have the budget for anyway).
Then there's the voice acting. For the English dub, I think Corey Marshall is the only returning voice, as Ryo himself. He is...putting in exactly the same performance he did in the first two. Which, as someone who likes bad voice acting and is nostalgic for Shenmue, I appreciate. The weird thing is, despite it being an otherwise entirely new cast, and frequently featuring recognizable, really good voice actors who are in everything these days, it feels like it's trying to be bad in the ways the only games were? Or rather, it's attempting to go for a similar style of kinda goofy and weird?
Not always though, Ren is voiced by Greg Chun (who I know as Yagami and Nanba in the English dubs of RGG Studio's games), and putting in the same level of good work I expect from him. Everyone else either feels goofy and in on the “joke,” or just stilted and awkward.
I don't want to call out the actress who plays Shenhua, largely because I think the writing and presentation is as much to blame, but I am amazed they found someone who is capable of being even more stilted and awkward than Ryo. Especially given the number of conversations these two have, it's just bizarre. It genuinely feels like their conversations were written by aliens from a civilization that doesn't have the concept of verbal conversation any more.
And it's kind of a shame because a lot of them are cute, and fun conversations, or rather they should be. The two of them talking about their childhoods, their lived experiences, comparing and contrasting them. There's even some choices for Ryo's dialog, to determine things like whether he likes carrots or not. It's still charming, even if these two combined have the all the charisma and personality of a carrot.
Then there's the ways these conversations are edited, it can just feel like the game is trying to drive you mad at times. Like...just watch this clip. It's not the first thing you see, but it's from the beginning of the game. I don't even know how to describe it.
Shenmue wouldn't be Shenmue without martial arts, so of course there's combat but it...might be genuinely the most baffling change from the previous games? The combat in those games was never great, but it was still decent enough, and I understood what it was going for. It was trying to be like a fighting game, but in a larger, more open ended adventure. Despite coming from Yu Suzuki, of Virtua Fighter fame, it never actually felt like Virtua Fighter, but it still felt fighting game adjacent. Ryo had basic attack buttons, and could do special moves with specific directional inputs prior to hitting the correct attacks. It felt stilted and awkward like the rest of the game, but it also felt unique for this style of game, and it was fun. A lot of those directional inputs made sense too, as they were trying to mimic the movements Ryo had to make in the move, which was a neat touch.
Shenmue III, however, throws all of that out the window for an entirely different combat system. The face buttons are all still basic attacks (two punches and two kicks, though not mapped how I wish they were), but there's no more directional inputs for special moves. Instead, specials are done with different combinations of the face buttons. Now, I know what you're thinking, and no, it doesn't work like that. Plenty of games do combos with sequences of the face buttons, and I cannot emphasize enough, this is not that. Some of the special moves are a sequence of attacks, but again, it does not work like how it should.
Take Hi-Fi Rush, a game I interrupted my playthrough of Shenmue III to experience, as an example. In Hi-Fi Rush (an excellent game), every time you hit the attack button, Chai attacks. There might be a short delay if you're off enough from the beat, but the beats are fast enough that it still feels great even just doing the most basic strings of attacks. It's snappy, responsive, and looks great to boot. More advanced combos are done with a specific series of inputs, and each input is...put in after the previous attack animates.
In Shenmue III, let's say you want to use Tom's Tornado Kick, which is one of Ryo's starting moves. It's two big spinning kicks in a row, both to the head, and it's a good, versatile attack. You do this by pressing X X Square Square. Yes, four inputs to do one move that is kicking twice. The fundamental issue with this game's combat is that this is how all the special moves work. They're a series of face button presses that need to be done quickly. That means there's a noticeable delay between pushing the buttons and seeing any attack. There needs to be, how else could you do the moves that require pressing four buttons in rapid succession? They don't all require four, some are two or three, and I don't remember if any require five.
On top of these buttons frequently having little to do with what the moves are (for example, a move that's just punches might include a kick button, or vice versa), it just feels terrible. If all you want to do is a single attack, there's an awkward delay before it comes out, because the game is waiting to see if you're doing a full move.
So, because it's awkward, and unintuitive to remember so many different moves, the game has one of the strangest inclusions, which is the ability to save a list of moves that can be done with one pull of R2. Now, original Shenmue had something similar, a single move could be mapped to one of the triggers, to be done quickly. Here, you can have four or five, and L1/R1 cycle between them (L2 is block, and Ryo has a block meter that drains when hit). This also has the side effect of not being able to run in combat, unlike the older games. Trying to avoid hits is, like everything else, awkward.
In other words, rather than trying to remember all these different moves, and dealing with the sluggish controls, the way to play is to just set the special moves you like, and use those with R2. That, or mash the punch buttons to do basic combos, which don't feel good but usually get the job done. Early on, the game is also weirdly hard at times?
Part of that is story related, Ryo keeps getting beaten up by these thugs, and he needs to learn a special move to deal with them (rather than asking the four or five other martial artists around, or the two town guards that want to deal with the thugs to help him). Eventually I got Ryo's kung fu to max, and was doing enough damage and had enough health that none of the fights posed any challenge, but even before then, the combat is never really fun. Enemies tend to either block all of Ryo's hits like they're nothing, or just get knocked down repeatedly. Which means unless you're fighting multiple enemies, just waiting for them to get back up so you can keep knocking them down until they're knocked out.
It's also frustrating because I truly don't understand why they would make such a fundamental change to the combat. When Like a Dragon came into being, they went for something simpler, snappier, and more arcade-y, which worked. And when they decided to make drastic changes, they changed it all the way into a turn based JRPG, and miraculously, that also worked.
But this change? It makes no sense, and it also just feels...wrong? Ryo is young, and if not yet as the peak of his physical ability, he's still on the upswing. So then why does he feel slower and more awkward than the previous games? As disappointing as Yakuza 6 was, I can sort of understand why they made you have to upgrade Kiryu's attack speed. It was because he was getting older, and had just spent a year in prison, so he was rusty. Ryo has no excuse, and there's no way to upgrade him to feel any better to fight with.
Despite this, possibly the actual worst change is that Ryo needs to eat now. I can see why they might think they should do that, these games are trying to simulate realism, and real people need to eat. The problem is what happens when you don't. Instead of a separate hunger or stamina meter, Ryo's health just drains. Constantly. Early on, before his health is upgraded much, it feels like it takes no time at all before he needs to eat again. Ryo won't starve to death, but when he gets down to his last three orbs of health, sprinting drains his health down to nothing in a couple seconds, and then he can't run again until it fills the three orbs back up.
So, unless you want to walk everywhere, Ryo needs to stay fed (there's also bonuses to the training minigames if he isn't hungry). The game will give you a chance to eat if a fight is about to start, at least, but this all just makes the game even more tedious. On top of everything else, now I need to make sure Ryo has food on him. Which means buying it, since the one banana and apple Shenhua leaves out in her house isn't enough to last the day (neither are the four apples in the hotel room in Niaowu). Of course different foods refill different amounts of health, and have different costs, so early on, garlic ends up being the most cost effective/readily available item.
Ryo just subsisting on garlic, constantly on the verge of starving to death despite being young and in perfect health. Maybe he's just ravenously hungry, he is still a teen, after all. So, as one might expect, it becomes even more tedious because Ryo is not only suffering from unending hunger, but also is completely broke. No longer is Ine-san giving him a daily allowance, now he needs to work for his cash. Chopping wood (with Afterburner music???) is an honest way to make cash, but gambling is far faster. By which I mean, save scumming to cheat at gambling, because even when you use a fortune teller to find your lucky color for Flower, Bird, Wind, & Moon, it only lasts so long, and doesn't even 100% guarantee hits during its effect.
But even this can't be simple. I don't mean the save scumming, thankfully you can save and reload anywhere, any time (though it took me a bit to realize the pause button is R1 of all things; Options and the Touchpad do nothing (well I guess Options will end some minigames early (also meaning you can't pause during fights))). No, I mean that gambling doesn't just give you money. It gives you tokens. Tokens can be redeemed for prizes (usually at separate locations from the gambling). These prizes are mostly useless (though I guess you could redeem them directly for food in some cases). Sets of the right ones can be exchanged for skill books (to learn more skills to map to R2 instead of doing the button inputs), but mostly they're there to be sold at pawn shops. Also separate locations from where the prizes are gotten. Though the prize vendors are quick to remind you that you can sell the prizes at pawn shops, because even they know this junk is useless!
So, to reiterate, you need to buy tokens to gamble, win more tokens by luck (or fortune telling/save scumming), travel to a prize vendor, exchange the tokens for prizes, go to a pawn shop, and finally sell them. To make it even WORSE, the number of tokens for each prize changes every day. So you need to keep an eye on their cost, and try to learn what they sell for (which I think that is consistent?) so you don't get ripped off in the process.
But, once I was stocked up on garlic, I wasn't going to need to engage with this any more, right? Just clear sailing, move the story forward...right?
Remember that special move Ryo needed to deal with the thugs because he wouldn't ask any of the martial artists or town guards (who again, WANT TO DEAL WITH THE THUGS!) to help him fight? Well, he has to learn it from this old guy (another martial artists who could help fight), but that old guy won't teach Ryo unless he gets a huge jug of a specifically aged liquor. After finding the liquor, Ryo realizes it costs...2000 Yuan. Which, for context, early on, is a lot.
So...back to gambling, redeeming prizes, selling them...
Now, in the story, Ryo eventually realizes the nonsense the old guy puts him through (like catching chickens) is all part of the training. So, you could argue, the tedium is part of the training, as it's trying to teach Ryo resolve, and patience. Shenmue II tried to do this too, except that did a better job with it, as annoying as catching those leaves was.
Really all it taught me is this game is so weird that even the guides on how to make money quick can't definitively tell you what to do, because of the fluctuating prices.
Of course, I've completely neglected to mention the actual, core mechanic of every Shenmue game, which is walking around town asking people questions. You do that here too. It's stonemasons he needs to find instead of sailors this time, which isn't nearly as funny. I will admit, there were a few times when I felt like I actually figured something out, and thought of who to ask, and it felt like...almost good? Like I solved a puzzle in an adventure game?
See, here's the thing. This game sounds terrible. And in a lot of ways, it is bad. BUT...once I got to Niaowu, I was actually enjoying it? I got into a better rhythm with it, I'd leveled up my kung fu enough that the fights at least weren't hard (even when Ryo is supposed to lose), Ren showed up, and I dunno. I was having fun.
There's even forklift driving! And the guy you talk to for it is Delin's brother. If I'm being honest, it feels like it was probably a stretch goal, and something just added in, rather than being a core part, like in the original. I even tried to look up if that was the case, but did not have the fortitude to search through 130+ pages of Kickstarter updates.
I did drive that forklift a bunch of times, though. It's really just two variations of one route. Either moving items from a small warehouse to a ship, or vice versa. There's more variety in the objects than the original game, now there's arcade cabinets, statues, even refrigerators! First and third person view, and now the forklift keeps the items at a normal height when driving, instead of always at max height. Even though that often makes the first person view unusable.
The one annoying thing is that when moving the stackable objects (like the generic crates), upon reaching their destination, the forklift automatically raises to max height, as if you are going to stack it onto something else. Which is fine if there's something there to put it on. It's aggravating when there isn't, and the minigame has a time limit. More cargo you move, the more you're paid, so you want to get as many done as possible. Genuinely I ran out of time once because of this, and I was mashing the button to lower the box...but the minigame ended.
Should have just clocked out early instead.
I know the forklift minigame in Shenmue III is the sort of thing that most normal people wouldn't dedicate several paragraphs of text to, but it made me genuinely really happy that it was in III at all. I'll clown on the goofy parts of this series as much as anyone else, but I do genuinely love that first game, and the forklift driving is part of it. Even if it's small, even if it's barebones, it hits the nostalgia right. It was almost twenty years ago when I played the first Shenmue, and the older I get, the more sentimental I get over silly stuff like this. I'm not even old yet! I'm in my early thirties, for crying out loud, so imagine how obnoxious about it I'll be in another ten or twenty years?
Like I was saying, despite it all, I was enjoying Shenmue III. None of the DLC was that great (though I did get a cute shirt from the Battle Rally one), but I'm glad I did it anyway. Just for the sake of it. It was neat to do the Chawan signs from Shenmue II again in the story DLC, but even that I'd say is skippable. In typical fashion, not much actually happens, but yet, I enjoyed it well enough.
Here's what happened though, that really just drove me up a wall. Again, Ryo needs to learn a special move to deal with a particular thug (though at least this time he asked Ren for help, and even the two of them couldn't get it done). The weird old martial artist of the moment won't teach it to Ryo because his “kung fu was lacking” (again, I had reached MAX KUNG FU by this point), so instead I had to go searching around town for a skill book to learn it on my own. And when I eventually did...
It cost 5000 Yuan.
BACK TO GAMBLING THEN I GUESS.
I don't even know what else to say at this point, so I'm just going to spoil the ending. Not that anyone who cares hasn't already played this, but hey, all warning does it take up a little more time. And it's only fitting that a blog about Shenmue waste everyone's time, right?
So, we all know the deal, Ryo wants revenge on Lan Di. Lan Di, however, has had basically nothing to do with the events of the game, until suddenly he's at this castle at the end of the game. I gasped when I saw him, at this point I really wasn't expecting to see him at all, so I was really surprised when I got to actually fight him!
Then he just blocks all of Ryo's attacks and the fight ends in a cutscene. The last thing you do in this game is get easily blocked by the guy, and the game has a potentially interesting revelation that there's another villain who might be also working against Lan Di?
But then it just ends with Ryo, Shenhua, and Ren walking along the mediocre wall of China (I don't think it was the Great Wall but it was a similar wall) and...
I'm just exhausted at this point. They're never going to make Shenmue IV, and I wish Yu Suzuki had realized that and just wrapped up the story. It's been five years since III released, and as far as I know, no inklings of IV entering anything resembling development. I know it was longer than that between II and III's Kickstarter, but I dunno. I never thought III was going to be made either, so who knows.
They did make that animated series after III, right? Maybe things with the franchise are still in the works, just behind the scenes. I never actually watched that anime, honestly. When I looked into it, I couldn't be bothered to even do the Crunchyroll free trial. Do think it's funny that, from what I can tell, they retold the stories of both Shenmue I & II in just thirteen episodes. Goes to show just how little actually happens in them!
Maybe the worst part of all this? After all the tedium, and annoyances? After all the frustration with the lack of story? After the obviously padded filler? After how much they ruined the combat?
I'd still play Shenmue IV.
I wouldn't buy it at full price, not unless by some miracle it both is legitimately good, AND finishes the story. But I'm not even holding my breath on the game existing, let alone doing either of those. But at some point, when it's cheap enough, and I had the time, I would still play Shenmue IV.
That, more than anything else, is the real power of nostalgia. So long as Ryo is walking about asking people inane questions, and I get to drive a forklift, a part of me will be happy. Thinking about when I was a teen, playing that first game with my friend. Both of us laughing, rolling our eyes at this game. But also marveling at its attention to detail. Finding the charm where it was, and enjoying it for what it was.
Nothing wrong in finding joy in the things that remind us of younger, and at least in our hearts, better days. Just so long as we're realistic about it.
Even if I enjoyed parts of Shenmue III, it's still a bad game.
Thanks for reading, and indulging my rambling. Indulge your own nostalgia as a treat, maybe it'll make your day.
Log in to comment