Being a Shenmue fan is hard. It is a niche franchise that routinely is the punching bag in the media. If you look at Kotaku you'll have Jason Schreier calling you "crazy." If you look at Vice you will be met with the pronouncement that your favorite franchise "was always bad." Go to YouTube and you will be met with Sterling, Yahtzee, Dunkey, and former-fan-turned-rabid-hater SuperEyepatchWolf bashing it. The media, and gaming community in general, loves to hate Shenmue. So why do I love it? What is it about this niche franchise that has held my heart all these years? 1) It is a love letter to martial arts, especially Chinese martial arts. 2) It makes every experience a memorable one, especially with regards to NPCs. 3) It allows you total freedom to explore every nook and cranny of a map lovingly crafted for exploration. 4) It demands that you slow down and savor it. 5) It ultimately is a game series with heart, earnestly and humbly offering you an experience unlike any other franchise. So, all that said, what about the much-maligned third installment? Honestly, having played through multiple times, it is everything I wanted. Is every part of the game perfect? No, but especially when you consider how this game almost never came to exist, that it took 18 years and so much love to create, it is a crowning achievement. This game is scrappy, it doesn't have the major budget like the first two. That makes it even more impressive. I love that Yu Suzuki, a visionary of the medium, stuck to his guns. This game, storywise, is ultimately about Ryo and Shenhua. It is about what binds them. The story was never supposed to be completed in 3 installments, so I feel heightened expectations caused some of the sour notes among fans. Those that say there is no story missed the story play out each day. There is a story to see, you just need to be open to it's presence. It rewards patience and curiousity. This game? It is a third Shenmue. And that is a wonderful thing.
I am struggling to come up with how I feel about this game. I struggle because, ultimately, the first Talos Principle is one of my all time favorite games. I had never experienced anything quite like it, and I was eagerly anticipating this sequel. I do not think it is a bad game, but I'm wondering why all of the reviews are so overwhelmingly positive as well. The game world is simply too large and devoid of any real value other than pretty vistas. You have to run large distances to complete the game, and it gets old really quick. The puzzles are... fine. Some are really difficult, but the main issue I had was that each area introduces a new puzzle mechanic. A lot of really cool new puzzle "toys" were given to the player to play with, but they never really explore the large swath of capabilities that they could be used for. Now, onto the story. I obviously cannot get too in depth without spoiling, so I will be as vague as I can. What I liked were the various characters and their various quirks. I genuinely liked exploring the hub world and seeing this posthuman society. But... as the larger narrative plays out, this is where I started to get frustrated. TTP1 was brilliant because I loved being challenged on every point of every argument I posed via dialogue with Milton. In this game, however, discussions are not nearly as thought-provoking. Often times I felt like the writers were creating an illusion of choice with their flimsy logic. The story as a whole is set up this way. There are choices, but it is clear which ones the writers want you to pick, oftentimes portraying other views as a straw man. This is a fundamental failure, and makes it hard to look at this game with the same deep love that I had for the first. Croteam created a masterpiece with reused assets in 1, but when given a proper budget, they fumbled the bag. This game is high on style, but lower on substance. I don't hate it, but don't love it either. Consider on sale, and taper expectations.
Pros: Great story, characters, worldbuilding. I genuinely was excited everyday I got to play. Cons: All saves corrupted in Act 3 and cannot advance. They clearly learned nothing from Kingmaker's botched release. I am currently trying to get a refund. Shame on Owlcat Games for releasing another game in this sorry state.
Have about 600 hours in Vanilla Warband, while this clearly improves the visuals of the prior game, this feels like an alpha rather than a beta. Even with all the patches, the game system is flat out broken in many areas, and the rest of this feels like Warband with a graphics mod. I realize it is EA, but the price they want for this and the 8 years it took to make the game, feel a little empty. The core system of having a dynasty is totally borked and that is what they really tried to sell this game on. The main quest is garbage, which wouldn't be a problem with the regular sandbox mode implemented (which it isn't). I imagine this will be great a couple years from now with mods, for now just play Warband with mods.
I was going to give it 5 stars. It was a great improvement from Returns and I enjoyed every second. Then I got to the second to last mission "APEX RISING", a well-known game breaking bug occurred. I checked Steam forums, and they too have this issue. The dev stopped patching a long time ago, more or less every patch they tried it seems could not fix this bug. I will never support this company again, to code something so poorly and let it stay that way is unacceptable. Do not let them take your money. I foolishly bought Returns, this, and Hong Kong on sale. All of the time invested is rendered pointless in this game. I cannot describe how upset I am. I wanted to see how everything ended, but that is impossible. I wish I could refund.
