Shenmue has a great storyline and great music, and it's open world design was groundbreaking for the year it released, paving the way for open world games to come shortly thereafter like GTA 3/San Andreas/Vice City. However, in the years since the release of 1 and 2, it's design grew rapidly outdated, and for the 3rd game Yu Suzuki decided to appeal to the nostalgia of its diehard fanbase by making alot of it's design outdated too, which was a poor strategy when you want to grow the appeal of the series, which needs new players to be interested in it, rather than just appealing to old fans.
At this point I don't know if Shenmue 4 will ever be made since Shenmue 3 wasn't a big seller, but if 4 is made, Yu needs a proper budget this time and needs to modernize alot of the design so that it will appeal to most modern gamers instead of appealing to only diehard fans of Shenmue. If Sega would actually get a team at Rya Ga Gotoku studio to assist Yu's indie studio with Shenmue 4, it could be truly fantastic imo.
