Roberttitus: I may be one of the lone people who say this, but I thought the second game was pretty terrible by comparison to the first. As a matter of fact, the only part of the game that I actually liked was the 1st chapter... Chapter 2 & 3 were atrocious. You have that fat dude chasing you the entire 2nd chapter & Ryo is scared shitless of him.... yet he wants to fight Lan Di who is like a thousand times better of a fighter than him... yep that makes sense. Then all you do in the 3rd chapter is walk (not run) through a forest talking to Shenhua for roughly 3 LONG HOURS (at least it felt like it). I honestly don't see why some people feel it is a superior game. That being said... I'm just not sure if the third game would really live up to anybody's expectations. It has been what... 11 years now? I think it is finally time to just let the series rest in peace.
The first part of Shenmue 2 was great. I agree that the last part with Shenhua was not the greatest. The story in the middle part was a little silly, but I still liked the stealth section and some other aspects of it. The cage fighting part was cool. There were definitely issues in Shenmue 2 but I still think of it as quite good.
I think for me it helps that the first one I played was Shenmue 2, so it was my first 'Shenmue experience'. Maybe if I'd done it the other way around I would have a weaker opinion of the second one.
I suspect you're right that die-hard Shenmue fans would probably be disappointed with a third game regardless of how it's executed, because the game would inevitably be very different with gameplay trends having changed so much. Honestly, even if the gameplay was less enjoyable to me, it would be great to have closure on the story. Heck, I'd be content if they released some kind of point-and-click adventure or graphic novel or something, but I know most wouldn't like that and I doubt Sega and/or YS would want to do that.
I think you're right that regardless of what they did with it it'd be nearly impossible to live up to expectations. I guarantee I'd still buy it though, damn reviews to hell :-).