Shenmue 3: First Impressions

I went into Shenmue 3 without any expectations. I have a lot of love for the original Shenmue games – despite their flaws – but given the mixed reception Shenmue 3 had at release, I honestly wasn’t sure if I even wanted to play it. But how could I not? It’s Shenmue 3. It’s real and it’s here. Part of me still doesn’t quite believe it.

Shenmue 3 picks up exactly where Shenmue 2 ended – with Ryo and Shenhua standing in that cave. It doesn’t waste time trying to explain who these people are, why they’re here or what they’re doing – there’s an optional recap video for that. No, Shenmue 3 continues on as if the last 20 years never happened – and not just from a story perspective.

You could play Shenmue 1 and 2 and then go straight into 3 and everything would feel consistent. The only difference, obviously, being the visual upgrade in 3. But in terms of gameplay – how Ryo moves, the pacing of the experience, the awkward and stilted dialogue – nothing has really changed. Shenmue 3 captures the . . . spirit (?) I guess you can call it, of the original Shenmue games in a way that’s both impressive and . . . disappointing, to a degree?

It certainly feels like Shenmue, whatever the hell that means. I guess the question is – was replicating the originals in ways that we now consider dated and . . . kind of bad . . . a smart design decision? I’m pretty torn on the issue. On one hand, I kind of love how Shenmue 3 emulates the style and pacing of the original games in a way that makes it connect almost seamlessly with those titles. As I said, you could play all three games in a row and there’d be no jarring transition from 2 to 3 at all.

On the other hand, Shenmue 3 is incredibly dated in so many ways that might make someone who had never played Shenmue before look at it and say ‘what the f**k is this sh*t?’ But if the developers had overhauled the Shenmue experience with a modern twist – would it still feel like Shenmue? Or would it feel like just another modern third person open world game?

And that’s why I’m actually pretty okay with Shenmue 3 being designed in the way it is. It just feels right. It just feels like Shenmue should. That said, I don’t think I could recommend Shenmue 3 to anyone that hadn’t played and wasn’t a fan of the originals. I suppose the question now is: do I like it?

At the time of writing I’ve played Shenmue 3 for just over 10 hours and I have to say, I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. Exploring Bailu is very reminiscent of exploring Dobuita in Shenmue 1 – the slow paced progression as you become familiar with the village and its inhabitants as you conduct an investigation.

Each day you’ll depart Shenhua’s house promising to find her missing father, and each day you’ll waste your time playing arcade games, collecting capsule toys, gambling and . . . fishing. That’s new in Shenmue 3. To be honest, it’s not a very good mini-game and it’s pretty annoying how you have to keep renting your equipment, but it is a good way to earn some extra cash.

You’ll talk to people and learn new clues that will lead you to talk to other people and you’ll slowly unlock more locations within the village so you can talk to even more people. The attention to detail of the world and the daily routines of the characters is as impressive here as it was in the original games – right down to the endless drawers and cupboards you can open filled with completely useless objects.

The combat, sadly, isn’t as good as it was in the original games though. The original combat system was similar in style to that in the Virtua Fighter games. It took time to learn but became very rewarding once you got the hang of it. Shenmue 3 has a far more accessible system, but not a particularly rewarding one.

Whereas learning to fight in the original Shenmue games felt like you were also learning alongside Ryo – such as the correct timing for a particular move – in Shenmue 3 you can just assign various combo attacks to a single button and then spam that in combat. Fights can still prove tricky if you’ve not upgraded your attack / endurance, but there’s nothing very interesting about the way Shenmue 3 handles combat.

QTEs make a return, although I’ve only seen one so far and I’m kind of glad they haven’t been very frequent given how unforgiving it was. It’s so fast that it didn’t always seem to register my button presses even when I tried spamming the button prior to the prompt appearing.

And I have to say, it’s kind of weird how Ryo’s power level has essentially been reset in Shenmue 3. He (and you) learnt to face off against some pretty tough opponents in Shenmue 2 – a big step up from the common street thugs of Shenmue 1. And yet now, in Shenmue 3, Ryo is struggling to deal with a couple of incompetent hooligans. I really hope the game ramps up the threat, because this just feels silly.

And I hope the game’s pacing picks up, too. I’m okay with this slow start, but like Shenmue 2 really ramped up the action in the latter half, Shenmue 3 needs to do the same. I already know that Shenmue 3 won’t conclude this story, but I hope the ending at least moves the story forward. So far, everything I’ve discovered has really just been confirming things I already knew or suspected from the ending of Shenmue 2. But as I said – I have no expectations. We’ll see how it goes.