If Shenmue 3 manages to be faithful to the original episodes as the last hands-on impressions suggest, they have no other choice to give it good reviews, it's as simple as that.
So if I were to develop a sequel to ‘Big Riggs’ that had fewer courses and fewer trucks but faithfully recreated all of the same flaws, it would deserve acclaim?
The real problem here is that from what we have been shown, a lot of the things that made the first two games great are worse now than they were in the first two games, a lot of the things that made the first two games innovative and unique have become standard with many of those elements being refined or improved by other games and a lot of the things that people didn’t like about the first two games have been faithfully recreated.
Environments: At the time of release, Shenmue’s environments were some of the most realistic around. While passable in the new game, they are no longer cutting edge.
Characters: The original games had a huge cast of fully voiced NPCs that looked amazing for the time. The NPCs all had daily cycles too which helped bring an air of realism to the world they inhabited. The new game has a smaller cast that is only partially voiced (although those that are suffer from the same poor dub). Many of the models look like nightmare fuel and although we’ve been told they will all have their own daily cycles, we’ve been told by reviewers that many just stand around like mannequins.
Day / Night Cycle: At the time, it wasn’t common place, but now it is pretty much a standard in all games of this type and has been for some time.
Real Time Weather: While this was a pretty cool feature, it didn’t really add much to the experience and I’d wager many didn’t even know about it. From what we’ve seen of Shenmue 3, there’s no guarantee that it even features dynamic weather.
Mini Games: At the time, it was really amazing to be able to play other games within the game. This is now a lot more common and the mini games in Shenmue 3 now seem to be pretty much luck based games with no real skill required. They did bring back forklifts though (something many people disliked about the original game). There are some ‘skill’ based games, but they simply require a button press at the right time (similar to a rhythm game). Hardly groundbreaking.
Music: The original games had a great score. We know very little about the score for the new game although I recall reading that they would be reusing old assets.
Story: The original games had great stories that really captivated players and got them emotionally invested in the characters. We know very little about the next part of the story, but jumping in a third of the way through will be off-putting for new players.
Combat: The original games had fantastic combat for the time, but from what we’ve seen, combat doesn’t look as good this time and from what we’ve been told, there will be fewer moves and it doesn’t feel right to control.
Animation: Great for the time of release in the original games. Far superior to what we’ve seen so far. I’d go as far as to say that some of the animation is bad. Lip-syncing is a mess too.
Capsule Toys: It was really cool to be able to pick up capsule toys of SEGA characters. Not sure how hyped I am for bananas and fishing lures this time around though.
Interaction: Being able to pick stuff up in a shop before buying it was really cool. Now we’ll be selecting items from a list like every other game out there.
I could go on all day here.
From what we have been shown, Shenmue 3 is at best a replication of the original games and at worst, a poor attempt to recreate the style of a game that is two decades old.
Until it’s released and we get to experience the story and see how much polish they’ve been able to apply, we won’t really know which it is.
Whichever it turns out to be though doesn’t make it ‘good’. From the perspective of a gaming journalist, what’s ‘good’ is a game that is fun to play and can draw and maintain the attention of gamers. I don’t know if any amount of polish can achieve that looking at the game’s current state.
