it certainly seems like a few people/publications have already made up their mind on a game that's barely three months into production. i think it only lends further to the idea that the majority of games journalists and games media publications are not very far removed from your average message board poster.
it's going to be very hard to parse personal taste, legitimate shortcomings, and confirmation bias apart when the reviews do actually come in.
but whatever. the kickstarter is triple record breaking, people showed a lot of interest in the shenmue revival, and new players to the series are very much capable of getting into it judging from the LTTP threads and posts from people in the first two kickstarter threads.
Shenmue 3 isn't for the naysayers, it's for the fans and those interested in becoming fans, so ¯\_(ツ

_/¯