Shenmue 3 first thoughts:

Finally, Ryo stepped out of the cave... it feels odd yet, familiar. Corey Marshall still has it as Ryo-san.
The game starts where the last one left off and 18 years in the cave have depowered Ryo.
While it's obvious that it is not a Triple A game, it does capture like 87% of the Shenmue charm.

Sadly, some of the charm is lost due to aesthetic changes:
Now a circle icon appears over things you can interact with. And the level of interaction is look at it/take it. You no longer can hold the item in your hand and spin it around to look at it. There is an eating mechanic that I find extremely annoying. Your HP decrease naturally as time passes on and in order to refill it you have to eat. Problem is that getting from point A to point B decreases your HP.
Of course later on we'll find a way that the food system becomes less annoying by probably raising the endurance stat.

I did manage to get into a couple of fights endgame so I got to try the fighting system... it feels a bit more Tekken-ish than Shenmue-ish. It'll take some more time to get used to this.

 The differences between this game and previous Shenmue games is more noticeable than save the difference between the original Shenmue and Shenmue 2.  despite the differences the hour and couple of odd minutes that I have played feel very Shenmue. So far it has met all my expectations. Sure there are a couple of things that I'm not exactly fun. But they are the minority.

 Since this is a Shenmue game; it's not a game for everyone. It's very likely that players who play board games like Call of Duty, fork knife and those type of high-octane action games will not like the slow pace of Shenmue 3.

Once I beat the game I will be able to do a full Shenmue review and that includes ratings. I'm going to be honest and unbiased as I could possibly be.  This is very important since I am a bit biased in favor of this game series. Also I was one of the backers in order to get this game made... I donated enough to get my name in the end credits.  so I point this out in order to avoid any criticisms of possible biases that I may have.