Indeed. Shenmue at its core was too Japanese in its design. I loved the original one on the DC, but even felt restricted when compared to Ocarina of Time. Gamers of the time were expecting something akin to what GTA delivered as the natural progression of big "open" world RPGs and action games. That said Shenmue at least visually and artistically was way beyond GTA III, and visually in my opinion  did do the trick of transporting me to 80s Japan. I wasn't big on GTA3 though I had the game. Shenmue was unfortunately destined to have a niche following and it's big (rumored 70 million dollar) budget at the time was a killer.

Seems it did the same thing as Yooka-Laylee. It went too old-school.

I avoided picking up the remakes of Shenmue I and II, just for this reason. Sometimes games just age badly.

Niche market providers are a thing. The game is being financed and bought by these people. By these measures, the product suceeded since it met the requirements of the demographics it aimed to satisfy. To compet for the mass market when your capital is low to begin with is... not usually a good idea.

So they're more concerned with that and not the story?

What really have me baffled is that some people is surprised that Shenmue 3 is not the ending. I mean I knew way back in 2001 that there was going to be at least 3 more games.. I mean..C'mon man.. smh. I googled that in 2001..

Suzuki’s original story outline was roughly 16 "chapters" and each game had 3-4 chapters in it. The plan was always for 4-6 games

It is well reviewed by fans, so doesn't seem like they are disapointed with what they received.

This isn't a surprise tbh because owning the original 2 games I knew that if the third game was anything like them it wouldn't be received as well today because the industry has moved on and improved on all aspects it introduced the only reason to really get the game would be to continue the story. Gameplay wise after open world games began to arrive with the likes of GTA3 and so it became hard to go back and play the original Shenmue games because the likes of the former rectified a number of issues Shenmue had with the main one being adding sandbox mechanics so you have things to actually do in the game world.

Here's the thing, though. Shenmue had its fans back then (myself included) but by being released on a dying system, it couldn't sell as well as some would have liked.

The sequel wasn't even released in America until the original Xbox--another low selling system. I couldn't even get my hands on it until I got an Xbox 360 (backwards compatiblity). By '07, it was already dated.

They're trying to sell a game in 2019 that wasn't a huge success in the first place and then alienated people who liked the first because the sequel was exclusive to hardware that didn't sell all that well. And, from the sound of things, the game hasn't really evolved much in 20 years.

It's good that we have a Shenmue 3. I personally don't think I'll ever be playing it. I wonder if there's even a future for this franchise after this one.

I recall the estimate for Shenmue was that they banked on it so much to sell units that at the time of release every DC owner would have had to buy the game twice for it to cover its costs.

Unless the game radically has changed from the original I don't see much of a future unless dedicated fans continue to crowd fund them but then the whole Epic fiasco may have hurt that prospect. The original game was like an introduction to the concept of open world games that was new back in the time of the DC but in today's industry we're in an open world golden era and have the likes of GOW, BOTW, HZD, GTAV, RDR2, Nier:A, XBC, Astral Chain, DQXI, MHW etc... The series is facing strong competition in this area to the point where even having the best story in history won't do it any favours in standing out.

I played Shenmue 2 15 years ago and Its incredible to actually be able to play Shenmue 3 after all this time. Its an honest continuation of the journey and thats all fans ever wanted.