After more than 18 years, Deep Silver and YsNet have finally released the third part in the Shenmue series. Shenmue 3 uses Unreal Engine 4 so it’s time to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.

For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, GTX980Ti and GTX690. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce driver 441.20 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.11.3 drivers. NVIDIA has not included any SLI profile for this title, meaning that our GTX690 performed similarly to a single GTX680.

YsNet has not added any graphics settings to tweak, other than a generic quality Preset. PC gamers can choose between Low, Medium, High and Very High. And that’s it. You can also select your resolution and we experienced some crashes when changing resolutions.

Shenmue 3 does not come with any built-in benchmark tool. As such, we’ve decided to benchmark the village area for both our CPU and GPU tests.

The game does not require a high-end CPU. In order to find out how the game scales on multiple CPU threads, we simulated a dual-core, a quad-core and a hexa-core CPU. Even without Hyper Threading, our simulated dual-core system was able to provide a smooth gaming experience.

Our older Intel i7 4930K was also able to provide a 60fps experience. However, this particular CPU was severely limiting our NVIDIA RTX2080Ti at both 1080p and 1440p. Nevertheless, owners of older CPUs will be able to enjoy this game with more than 60fps at all times.

Shenmue 3 also does not require a high-end GPU. At 1080p, most of our graphics cards were able to provide a smooth gaming experience. There were some drops to mid-50s on our AMD Radeon RX580, however it was able to offer an average of 64fps.

Shenmue 3 is also one of those Unreal Engine 4 games that runs better on NVIDIA’s hardware. After all, the performance difference between the GTX980Ti and the RX Vega 64 is not that big. At 1440p, all three of our main graphics cards were able to provide a smooth gaming experience. And as for 4K, our NVIDIA RTX2080Ti was able to offer a constant 60fps experience.

Graphics wise, Shenmue 3 looks cool, mainly due to its art style. The main characters have that CG-Dreamcast look to them which is great (at least in our opinion). They are not the best in-game models, and some NPCs look like dolls, however most of them look good. However, the lip syncing is awful. Furthermore, their animations are a mix bag; some look cool while others are really stiff. On the other hand, the environments are full of details, though we did notice some pop-in issues. Generally speaking, Shenmue 3 is pleasing to the eye. It does not look as great or advanced as Red Dead Redemption 2, however, it’s not atrocious.

In conclusion, Shenmue 3 runs incredibly well on the PC platform. The game does not require a high-end CPU or GPU in order to be enjoyed. However, it suffers from some porting issues. For instance, the default keyboard layout is awful. You also can’t use your mouse in the menus and there aren’t any graphics settings. There is also no way to go back to the main menu or to change your settings once you’ve started playing. Thankfully, there are proper keyboard on-screen prompts, however we strongly suggest using a gamepad.

Enjoy!