“It begins exactly where Shenmue 2 left off by recreating that game’s final moments in this brand-new engine, which functions well as both a quick recap (a good, longer recap is available in the start menu, too) and table setting for what you can expect visually. I rarely, if ever, found myself stuck and unsure of where I needed to go next in the way I often did when playing the first two adventures. The structure of the gameplay is streamlined, combat isn’t as overcomplicated (but still remains challenging), training and improving your abilities makes more sense, and making progress is just generally better. That’s not to say there isn’t a compelling experience here – it just feels out of time and doesn’t reward the Shenmue faithful with meaningful revelations in the story.The good news is that nearly everything about Shenmue 3 improves on the two games that came before it in some way. In many ways, Shenmue 3 is a stark reminder of the leaps and bounds developers have made in the last 20 years. Time has not been kind to that original game, nor its 2001 sequel, as video game stories and performance capture tech have improved drastically. You lived Ryo Hazuki’s life, developing relationships and maintaining a day job in your Japanese hometown, all while trying to track down your father’s murderer so you could extract vengeance. Everyone else will almost certainly be baffled by what the fuss is about-and I think that's fine too.The story of Shenmue began 20 years ago, and for its time the original game was an undeniable marvel in video game storytelling and world-building. My first impression, though, is that fans of the original two games will enjoy what's here. If this ends with Lan Di getting on another helicopter and flying away, followed by a long wait for another game, I'll flip a table over. I really hope Ryo finally gets his revenge on Lan Di in this game, but Suzuki threatens that his story is only 40% over as of Shenmue 3 (opens in new tab). Developer Ys Net has now explained it'll offer refunds (opens in new tab), or a switch to another version-but it would've been easier if it'd followed Metro's route of having a limited window of preorders on Steam before moving across, so backers could've got Steam keys at launch. On PC at least, Shenmue 3 itself has been overshadowed as the game became mired in an easy-to-predict mess with its Epic Games Store exclusivity. "You can do some temporary jobs like wood chopping, and you can fish and you can sell those for cash to the store and you can earn money," Suzuki says. It wouldn't be Shenmue without part time jobs. There are two major areas in the game, with the second being much larger than the developers had originally planned for, so there'll hopefully be plenty to explore. For this system, we have more training systems, and the way you progress, the skill going up-it's going to be more of a step-by-step growing experience." This is a new battle combat engine that is made for this RPG style of game, so it's tuned for this kind of game. "One difference is that in the previous game, we used the basic fighting battle engine from Virtua Fighter, but now we made it from scratch," Suzuki says via a translator. Progression systems sound like they'll play more of a part in Shenmue 3. "I will tell you that the difficulty of the game is higher than the previous one." I get that sense at the end of the demo, when Ryo's ass is kicked in a one-on-one fight with a more powerful enemy (I won an earlier duel, so it won't all be that difficult). "I had to change the game to modernise it a little bit, and also at the same time, I want to make sure that the same feeling and the nostalgic feeling of the original games in it," says Suzuki via a translator.
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