Shenmue 3
As flawed as it is wonderful.
“This is a game as slow and meandering as the old man strolling through Bailu’s marketplace deciding which kind of steamed bun to have for lunch. ”
Nestled in the mist-shrouded mountains of rural China, Bailu Village is a settlement frozen in time. People live slow lives here among rice paddies, ornate Buddhist temples, quaint cottages, and fields of colourful wildflowers. There are some clues that Shenmue 3 is set in the 1980s, but otherwise life here has changed very little in the past hundred years.
It’s an ideal setting for a Shenmue game, a series famous (or perhaps infamous) for its languid, aggressively deliberate pacing. This is a game as slow and meandering as the old man strolling through Bailu’s marketplace deciding which kind of steamed bun to have for lunch.
This unlikely sequel sticks so closely to the formula of the first two games that it’s almost as if the last 18 years of game design never happened. And honestly, as a fan, I couldn’t be happier. From its earliest days the
Shenmue series has been divisive, with opinion rarely falling in the middle. You either think it’s an emotional, groundbreaking masterpiece or an indulgent, clunky mess. There’s no in-between.
It’s been 18 years since Shenmue 2 was released, but the third game picks up immediately where it left off. Japanese teenager Ryo Hazuki is desperately searching for the man who killed his father, a journey that has taken him from his hometown of Yokosuka to this mountain village. Central to Shenmue’s plot are a pair of ancient artefacts, the Phoenix Mirror and the Dragon Mirror, which are deeply connected to both Bailu and the murder of Ryo’s father.
Shenmue is, essentially, a detective game. You spend the majority of your time talking to people, asking questions, finding clues, and pulling on threads until the next piece of the puzzle reveals itself. Occasionally things turn violent and Ryo is forced to fight, either through QTEs or combobased martial arts combat. But mostly it’s just walking and talking, with some life simulation thrown in for good measure. You can chop wood or drive forklifts to earn money, eat food to restore stamina, or train at dojos to level up your skills.
Take a stroll through the wildflowers and pick some herbs. Shoot the breeze at the bridge leading into the village. Work on your capsule toy collection. Tell Shenhua about growing up in Japan. In an increasingly loud and relentless world, Shenmue 3 is an ocean of calm. Step back into 1980s China and just go with the flow. That’s when that curious, hard to define Shenmue magic emerges and you find yourself entranced by it.