Unplayable crappy game on PC. Why the hell would you release this game here if it can't be played on a keyboard???

Steam still won't refund my money, the only hoursI have with this game is when I launched it without playing it a few times.

One again, Shenmue III picks up right where Shenmue II ended: In search for Lan Di, the murderer of his father, 18 years old Japanese Teenager Ryo Hazuki ends up in the small chinese village of Bailu. He meets Shenhua, a local teenage girl whose father has been recently kidnapped and together they continue their journey find Shenhua's father and avenge Hazuki senior's death. There is a little summary clip of the story so far available in the main menu, but I believe you won't get much at all out of Shenmue III's plot if you haven't actually played the first two games before.

Anyways, the game has a solid presentation with decent voice acting, great music, a consistent artstyle and grafics that are definitely dated but still look nice, vibrant and colourful with a serviceable ammount of attention for detail. The landscape of Bailu is downright picturesque and later locations (without spoiling anything) don't disappoint either. Just like in the previous games, it's fun and relaxing to just explore the gameworld and soak in the atmosphere mainly due to the fitting artstyle and music.

The core gameplay is mostly unchanged from the old Shenmue games and still consists mainly of walking around, talking to NPCs and looking for clues, with the occasional karate fight or QTE-minigame inbetween, so be aware that just like Shenmue I & II, Shenmue III's slow pace and simplistic gameplay mechanics aren't for everybody. What makes it more enjoyable are the much smoother controls and more refined and challenging combat mechanics which feel almost like an actual fighting game this time around (even though mindless button mashing still works for the most part, at least on the lower difficulties ;)).
The only gameplay change that turned out to be a downright pest is that you now have to constantly eat during the day to keep your health up. Not only is it reduced in fights of course, but health keeps slowly diminishing during daytime. It is fully refilled everytime you go to sleep in your acommodation, but as soon as you get up, the healthmeter starts counting down again, so unless you constantly earn money through the job minigames to buy food with it, you'll be crawling through the game on low health at a snails pace (because low health basically takes away your ability to sprint).

But apart from that (and maybe the anticlimactic and unsatisfying ending), you'll find barely anything to complain about here if you are a seasoned oldschool Shenmue fan. Shenmue III plays almost exactly like Shenmue I & II, only that the stiff controls are mostly gone and the archaic visuals have been brought to a modern technical level. Even if the game mechanics are still somewhat superficial and simplistic, there remains something deeply soothing and satisfying in strolling through the game, just picking herbs and chopping wood (that cheesy streetfighter-like music though XD). Shenmue III still provides so much more interactivity and variety and thus feels much more like an actual game than all those other modern adventures that are mere passive and unengaging interactive movies. A must-play for Shenmue fans.
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SHENMUE III
Genre: Modern Adventure / Open-World Sandbox / Fighting
Release: Q4 2019

( ) 0/8 Simply one of the worst games ever made. Don't waste any money on this.
( ) 1/8 Bad. Seriously flawed with barely any redeeming qualities. Worth a couple of Cents at best, if at all.
( ) 2/8 Sub-par. Only for hardcore-fans of respective genre / series. Don't pay more than 5 bucks.
( ) 3/8 Meh-diocre. It‘s okay. Don't pay more than 10 bucks.
( ) 4/8 Decent, but not for everybody. Don't pay more than 15 bucks.
(X) 5/8 Good game, Must-play for genre- / series-fans. Worth 20 to 25 bucks max, if you are not a fan.
( ) 6/8 Great game, universal recommendation. 30 bucks would be a steal for this.
( ) 7/8 Outstanding game, a milestone of it‘s respective genre. Definitely worth its full prize.
( ) 8/8 Simply one of the best games ever made. Get this, the prize doesn't matter.

starts slow but gets great , without straying too far from the originals, geat game imo