Shenmue III
PC, PS4
For so many years, Shenmue III has been associated with the concept of impossibility. At one time, it was thought that a third entry in the series would never be made. After the game’s Kickstarter campaign raised over $6.3 million, even the most positive players must have realised that making a faithful Shenmue sequel on that budget would be unfeasible, and the December 2017 target date could not be met. Yet here it is. After 18 years, we’re able to resume Ryo Hazuki’s quest for vengeance, and remarkably it feels largely as we had imagined it might a couple of generations ago – though that isn’t always to the game’s credit.
Yu Suzuki has made no secret of the fact that Shenmue III does not conclude the series – and where the creator is unhurried in his approach to reaching the story’s conclusion, the game design follows suit. Shenmue III follows directly from the events of Shenmue II’s final chapter, and inherits the languid pace of that particularly ponderous stretch of the story. As Hazuki wanders about his new surroundings, the sleepy rural village of Bailu, there is precious little in the way of urgency to be found. When questioning the villagers, Hazuki scarcely seems moved by the fact that his new friend Shenhua has no idea why her dad has disappeared, and the villagers are barely animated about the random attacks they’ve recently suffered. Though you quickly find a dojo where you can practice martial arts, it will be hours before Hazuki first encounters any actual danger, and the first QTE sequence of importance doesn’t show up until even later than that.
This relaxed pace was a defining characteristic of the previous Shenmue games, and having attracted so much funding from fans, Ys Net has been careful not to adjust the formula too greatly. To some extent, the pace is the point, too. With no pressure to tackle emergencies, you feel quite happy to spend time playing Wacky Mole at the arcade, or simply exploring the beautiful Chinese countryside – and unlike in previous games, these activities feed into your main goals. Where buying drinks and snacks was a fun but rather pointless act in past games, the drinks now serve as health-recovery items, and you can obtain move scrolls at discounted prices by trading capsule toys or other items at pawn shops. Earn high scores on the arcade games and you’ll be rewarded with tickets that you can gamble away for further items – and while the coin-ops on offer are no longer the hits upon which Yu Suzuki’s reputation was built, the tributes to the electromechanical games of old are still thoroughly enjoyable. The dense nature of Shenmue’s open-world design remains its allure almost two decades on, and this time the game design feels rather more coherent.
The game’s strength at finding the joy in mundane tasks is most apparent in its job system. Earning money is an important aspect of the game, and as in
Shenmue II, you have the freedom to approach this task as you wish. While the thrills of fishing or gambling on frog races should be apparent to everyone, even the least glamorous of occupations is enhanced with a little bit of arcade flair – chop logs with the requisite precision, for example, and you’ll be treated to some of After Burner’s music to increase the tension and excitement. Old fans of the series will also be thrilled to know that forklift driving returns, and even time spent sightseeing can be time well spent, so long as you pick up some herbs to sell to makers of medicine.
You will want to spend some time exploring the environments, too: they are frequently gorgeous, brimming with colour and packed with natural detail. Unfortunately, other aspects of the game’s visual presentation are much less alluring. Though performance problems are hardly ruinous, the uncapped framerate does introduce a level of inconsistency, though this is mitigated a little on PS4 Pro. The more troubling issue is that, while the Shenmue games have always lavished more visual detail on their main cast than their multitude of background characters, the disparity has never been this pronounced. Townsfolk and thugs range from looking reasonable to being rather cartoonish caricatures, to the point that they appear rather out of place in a game released in 2019 – especially compared to some of the better examples.
The problems go beyond the visuals. The plot is not the only slow aspect of the game, and we can’t help but feel that there are some changes Ys Net could have made that even the most passionate of fans would have embraced. For example, each morning you have the opportunity to pick up some fruit before Hazuki leaves to continue his investigations. Should you choose to do so, Hazuki will reach out, clasp his hand around it at a speed slightly slower than an actual person would, and then pick it up – an action that must be repeated for each of the pieces you wish to pick up. Is there any good reason not to offer the option to simply take all of them? There are other, similar, bugbears, too. Hazuki’s movement has been improved, but trying to get him to change direction while climbing a staircase is oddly difficult. And once a conversation has been initiated, it must always be followed to completion. These little frustrations could have been written off as idiosyncratic design decisions 20 years ago, but today they feel like wastes of time.
The biggest changes that have been made are the introduction of more traditional RPG mechanics. You now have a health gauge that carries between regular exploration and battles, and food items restore defined values of health – and you’ll need to eat regularly, since his health decreases with every action. You can
It feels largely as we had imagined it might a couple of generations ago – though that isn’t always to its credit