Sload Soap wrote:Personally I hope the next game doesn't lean too heavily into magic or mystical elements.
I'd say that you might want to expect it, honestly. Shenmue has always had Chinese mysticism as a major theme. It was less pronounced in the first game, especially, but it was always there. It's just unavoidable when the setting is Guilin, though.
Am I the only one who played the backer trial version? I couldn't actually play it until this past weekend, but I already went through it twice, and I keep thinking about going back for more. There's really not a lot to the story part that they included, from what I could tell. The main thing is just talking with a couple people in order to find a guy who knows someone else who can tell you about a guy, but won't tell you about any of that until you beat him in combat. So you train for a bit, and become more hulking strong than ever. It's kind of underwhelming, but everything else? Oh my god! The weird thing is that it simultaneously does, and does not, feel like Shenmue to me. I actually kind of wanted tank controls--. The visuals feel just a little uncomfortable, and Ryo just doesn't run like Ryo. (I'm not sure how I feel about the stamina system, either.) The majority of the gameplay, though? Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Shoot that shit straight into my veins! The trial version has a hard limit of 1 hour, which is really unfortunate, because when I first started playing, I used pretty much all of that time just dropping pachinko balls, playing the other minigames, and most importantly, picking flowers--. No, that last one was legit. I'm calling it now: If the herb picking is a major part of the game in any way, people who are new to Shenmue are going to fu~~~cking hate it. It was a pretty massive source of income in the demo, though.
The combat, and training stuff is all like crack to me. I don't understand how it was getting criticism from people demoing it at E3(?). Basically any resemblance to VF has been totally removed, which I'll probably miss, but it feels extremely fluid. You just dodge by moving out of the way, and moves are executed by facebutton combinations (no directions), maybe in conjunction with the L-trigger, or through a shortcut with the R-trigger. I'm not so sure how it will work with multiple enemies, though, which actually got me wondering a little bit if there will even be any battles in the game that aren't 1-on-1. It's hard for me to imagine a Shenmue game that doesn't have battles against multiple enemies, but I almost feel like it's a possibility this time.
Overall, I'm really looking forward to getting the full version in a little over a month. I got the Japanese PS4 version through my backer rewards (because of course I did), but since I ended up building a PC, instead of getting a PS4, I think I'm probably going to preorder the deluxe edition on the Epic Store.