I love Shenmue but I think it won't be received well by new players and those who weren't impressed by it on Dreamcast.
When Shenmue came out, like the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo disc (and later just Metal Gear Solid 2), I was blown away by the jump in graphics and detail, but after that, those kind of graphics just seemed normal (Anyone else just skip Shenmue II for "some reason"?). I think new players will see two games where you walk around and "do nothing", with bad voice acting. Back then, it was cool to buy a soda from a vending machine because of the detail of the graphics; and that amount of voice acting was crazy, but not today.
I also remember Game Informer gave Shenmue a "6" when it came out on Dreamcast, and they didn't even give it a full page. PlayStation 2 also came out that same month in the U.S., so really... how excited could people be for a game that showed off what the Dreamcast was going to be capable of doing when they were already thinking about owning their first DVD player? There's a lot of us fans, but I think there's a lot more non-fans and never-fans who won't be able to enjoy it now.
Shenmue III as well... because retailers won't see any of that money from the Kickstarter, it's probably not even on their radar, so they might not put it in front of people. I just checked a few retailers online and there's zero results for Shenmue where other games are available for pre-order.
I think we're just going to have to cling together when this comes out lol.