But that’s not even the worst thing about the dialogue. It’s just so bloody tedious and leads to a phenomenally slow pace as you trudge through endless streams of poorly written and woefully delivered dialogue. NPC: “The monks have trained here for centuries.” Ryo himself is the worst culprit – 90% of his dialogue is just repeating what someone else just said back at them with a question mark on the end. Characters take forever to say nothing – there are entire conversations that could be condensed into a single sentence. It’s a Japanese game, made by a small Japanese team, so you have to allow some leeway for imperfect translations and cultural differences, but, even so, the writing is shocking. Shenmue 3 is faithful to its Dreamcast roots in both its gameplay and mechanics – which is either a blessing or a curse depending on your nostalgiaīut even the best voice actors in the world couldn’t save the atrocious dialogue in play. At least in previous titles the voice acting was entertainingly awful, here it’s just sub-par. Ryo and Shenhua’s returning voice actors are the worst, while the rest of the cast offer spirited attempts to save the material they’re working with. The series’ almost legendarily terrible voice acting has been supplanted with something much worse – merely below-average voice acting. This is where Shenmue 3 falls at the first hurdle. This leads into the classic Shenmue experience of talking to random NPCs until you find the one who will advance the plot. It’s not so much that your princess is in another castle, and more that she’s been to about 400 castles on the way and left you a breadcrumb trail to follow. As with previous titles, the story advances at an utterly glacial pace thanks to its constant goal-post moving. From here, you must investigate the kidnapping of Shenhua’s father and seek out clues to his whereabouts. The story picks up right where Shenmue 2 left off, with Ryo and Shenhua in Bailu village. But if you’re looking for a good video game then I’ve got bad news for you. If you’ve had your nostalgia goggles surgically implanted into your face and you’re just looking for a continuation of the story, then Shenmue 3 will scratch that 18-year itch. Now it’s here… well, nightmare would be hyperbolic, but it’s certainly a disappointment. Neither of these problems were present in the Dreamcast versions.A threequel nearly two decades in the making, Shenmue 3 once seemed like an impossible dream. The only way I can describe this is that it's like the skybox is on some sort of swivel and when Ryo moves the skybox moves unnaturally. 2) The skybox made me dizzy and this is coming from someone who doesn't have motion sickness issues with any other game. 1) When trying to sneak into the warehouse at Yokosuka Harbor, the game was comically dark to the point of it being almost unplayable. With that said, I did have two major issues with the remasters. Some of the improvements I liked: near elimination of slow down, near elimination of pop up and pop in, load times are now almost nonexistent, widescreen support, the ability to play in Japanese audio, and the ability to transfer capsule toys from the first game to the second. I last beat Shenmue and Shenmue II on the PS4 and I walked away thinking that the remasters were well done. I think it mostly has to do with the season the game takes place in and the weather effects. Once the weather starts to get colder, I get nostalgic about the series. I'm about to start up Shenmue again for the first time in three or four years.
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