Open World Action-Adventure Mega Review: Shenmue II

Shenmue II was the sequel to the formerly Dreamcast-only Shenmue. It featured more locations than the previous game.

The original game took place in a single town, Yokosuka, Japan. In contrast, Shenmue II has three, including Hong Kong, Kowloon, based on the real-life Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, and Guilin, China.

The story picks up after Ryu Hazuki disembarks the ship that brought him from Japan to China at the port of Hong Kong. He almost immediately gets into trouble when a young boy steals his backpack. After managing to get it back with help from a young woman named Joy, he soon befriends the pickpocket, Xianweng "Wong" Ni, and makes a begrudging alliance with a gang member named Wuying Ren.

He will need all the help he can get to obtain more information about his father's killer, Lan Di, as well as to get more information about the mysterious mirror that his father left for him when he died. He'll find himself opposed by several people on his quest for information, including members of a gang known as Heavens, an extremely large and strong gang leader known as Dou Niu, and a transgender woman known as Yuan.

As is often the case with transgender characters in their localization from Japan to the West, especially in 2002, the character had a change of pronouns as well as voice actors. I appreciate that the translation lost the hurtful misgendering and was referred to properly as she, however, I am divided over the fact that she lost her deeper voice for a less ambiguous female voice. I wish that the character had remained obviously transgender in the translation, however, the character was portrayed with a stereotypical gay voice, so it really isn't really a loss to get rid of that voice acting in the long run.

Speaking of voice acting, like the original Shenmue, the best way to experience this game for native English speakers is with Japanese voice acting with English subtitles. The English voice acting remains wooden and not pleasant at all. The Japanese voice acting sounds more natural. This is likely not just due to the voice actors, but because of the text as the English translation is lacking nuance again and is really dry compared to the original Japanese text. It's alright reading the translation that way, but it doesn't translate well into the spoken word.

This game is a lot longer than the first and more action-packed. However, a few things let it down. Earning money through lifting and moving crates is not as fun as the forklift of the original game. Unfortunately, it is necessary to earn a lot of money, since Ryo needs to pay his way into three martial arts challenges in order to get the information he needs.

Also, this game goes way too far, in my opinion, with the button-pressing quick-time events. This is especially the case in the last fight, where it is possible to lose the fight just by not getting the quick time event correct even after properly beating the snot out of him. It's frustrating to repeat scenes like this if, like me, your fingers and brain don't cooperate well since the amount of time given to complete the QTEs is woefully small.

Shenmue II is larger and has more action than the original game. However, it is let a bit down due to the lackluster way to earn money as well as the overabundance of quick-time events. It also has poor English voice acting, but the Japanese voice acting is much better. So, the best way to experience this game, if you choose to do so, would be to avoid the original Xbox version as it only has English voice acting. The Dreamcast game only has Japanese voice acting, and the high-definition version by d3t has selectable voice acting. In the end, the story is interesting, so it is worth experiencing if you want to continue Ryo's quest to find his father's killer.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 5

Shenmue review

Shenmue I & II review coming soon

Open World Action-Adventure Demo Review: What's Shenmue?

What's Shenmue? is the Dreamcast demo for the open-world action-adventure RPG, Shenmue. Released in 1999, it's my favorite type of demo, which is one that demonstrates a game's characters, locations, and gameplay, but has its own unique storyline.

Like Shenmue, What's Shenmue? takes place in Dobuita street in the city of Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture on the island of Honshu. In the demonstration, Ryo Hazuki has to locate Hidekazu Yukawa, who was the Senior Managing Director of Sega at the time.

The demo includes all of the gameplay mechanics found in the Shenmue games, such as asking people for information, chasing suspects, and quick-time events that appear as button prompts that have to be hit at the correct time.

Ryo has to ask people from the game proper if they had seen Mr. Yukawa including Tom the hotdog vendor and Nozomi Harasaki, the granddaughter of the woman who runs the flower shop. Because Shenmue I and II were developed concurrently, Ryo also can talk to people who would not appear until Shenmue II such as Izumi Takano, the teenage Tomato store clerk who blocks an area that is only accessible in the full game.

The storyline is simple, yet it reflects an actual scene in Shenmue which will be obvious to anyone who played the full game. Even though it contains a common trope, the ending is satisfyingly wacky and works well as it does make you want to play the full game.

What's Shenmue? was only released in Japan, so it is only available in Japanese. However, fans from the Shenmue Dojo forums released a Japanese-to-English translation patch. The fan patch is well done so it is a satisfying way to experience the demo.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 5

Shenmue review

Open World Action-Adventure Mega Review: Shenmue

This review was originally posted on the McMurray Internet Channel website on February 21, 2019.

Shenmue is undoubtedly an influential title in the history of video game development but, while it still does mostly hold up decades after its original release, it's bogged down by a few things that have been refined in later titles.

Shenmue was created by Sega designer Yu Suzuki to address problems that he saw in the role-playing genre in the 1990s, in order to create a game that would feel more realistic than what came before. He coined a new term for the genre of the game he created, FREE, or Free Reactive Eyes Entertainment. It combined aspects of role-playing games, graphic adventure games, and even fighting games using the Virtua Fighter 3 engine.

The game follows a seventeen-year-old Japanese boy named Ryo Hazuki, who witnesses the murder of his father by a mysterious man named Lan Di, who claims that he was seeking vengeance, as the elder Hazuki had murdered his own father. Not believing that his father could be a killer, and wishing to seek vengeance himself for his father's death, Ryo begins asking around his home city of Yokosuka, Japan, in an attempt to discover where Lan Di was from, and where he had headed after he murdered Ryo's dad.

The painstaking detail in the recreation of 1986-era Yokosuka is Shenmue's greatest strength. Even the weather patterns match up with the real weather in the city in 1986. The attention to detail extends to the characters as well.  Every non-player character can talk to Ryo. Every business with an hour of operation sign can be entered when the business is open. The city even includes an arcade that contains the classic 1980s arcade games created by Yu Suzuki, Hang-On, and Space Harrier. Bars, stores, and other buildings also let Ryo collect gatcha capsule toys, play billiards and darts, and try his luck at pachinko. These are side activities that Ryo can play when not furthering the main story, however, there are also scrolls that can be purchased to give Ryo new moves that he can use in the fighting sections of the game.

The game has a lot going for it, as it has an interesting cast of characters, an interesting story, and wonderful music, and it contains an interesting combination of adventure and fighting mechanics. It looked fantastic when it first released in 1999 and still looks decent today, especially in the recent Shenmue I+II compilation.

However, its biggest drawback has always been the English voice acting. It is dreadfully wooden and is a bear to drudge through. Luckily, the aforementioned Shenmue I+II collection includes the ability to combine the Japanese voice actors with the English script. This makes the game quite enjoyable and well worth playing, as long as you don't mind the outdated tank controls and the slow-paced gameplay in comparison to modern open-world games.

Final Verdict:
4½ out of 5

What's Shenmue? review

Shenmue II review

Shenmue I & II is Out Now

Shenmue I & II, the compilation disc of enhanced ports of Shenmue and Shenmue II, is out now for Windows on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Shenmue I now has improved camera control due to the addition of the second thumbstick. Shenmue II has the additional features of the Xbox port but does not have the excessive motion blur. Both games render at 1920x1080 resolution at 30 frames per second, and the resolution can be increased on the Windows version. The game can be rendered at a 16:9 or 4:3 screen ratio, although the cutscenes are still rendered at a 4:3 ratio.

Both English and Japanese voices are available, as are modern graphics features such as anti-aliasing, bloom lighting, better texture filtering, and warmer colors due to the increased bit-depth from the original 16-bit depth on the Dreamcast.

Shenmue III Delayed Until 2019

The much-anticipated continuation of the saga of Shenmue by series creator Yu Suzuki's Ys Net has been postponed until 2019.

Shenmue began on the Dreamcast in 1999 and Shenmue II will be released on the Dreamcast and Xbox a few years later. Both of the original two games will be released in high definition on Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year.

Shenmue III has been postponed, according to publisher Deep Silver, to give the project extra time which will be "used to polish the quality of the game even further, to the high standards it deserves and release the product in the best possible timeframe".

Sony Is Providing Marketing and Publishing For Shenmue 3

Update: The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter has posted an update explaining the outside funding the game will have. Shibuya Productions is also helping with Shenmue 3. Sony will also be providing some publishing support, which makes sense as, alongside PC, Shenmue 3 is also slated for a PlayStation 4 release.

Sony revealed that they teamed up with Ys Net to help make Shenmue 3 a reality and then stated that they wanted to gauge fan support of Kickstarter to gauge the interest in the game.  At face value, that seems like an unethical use of Kickstarter.  It has been revealed, however, that Sony's role in the project isn't quite what it seemed.

The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter was updated on the second day of the campaign with an entry on their frequently asked questions section that stated that there are multiple sources of outside funding available to the team, but Ys Net can't reveal them due to contractual obligations.  It seemed that one of these multiple investors was Sony, since they showcased Shenmue 3 on their stage at E3 and confirmed that they are helping with the game.

However, according to Sony Vice President Adam Boyes, their involvement in this game was simply to provide a platform to advertise the game at E3 and to help with marketing.  So, their comments about wanting to gauge fan reaction to the Kickstarter aren't unethical, as they simply have to do with how they market the game for Ys Net, and that's a perfectly reasonable approach toward the Kickstarter campaign when your role in the project at that point is simply as a marketing firm. Sony is not even contributing money towards actual development costs of Shenmue 3 at this point.

Shenmue 3 Is Now On Kickstarter

Shenmue 3, the long awaited sequel to Yu Suzuki's Dreamcast saga Shenmue and Shenmue II, the latter of which was also released on Xbox, is now on Kickstarter. It has already made it's goal of 2 million dollars, and still has 30 days to go.  It has support from Sony as well, who apparently requested a 2 million dollar goal from fans as they wanted to be sure the fan support was there.  It will be released on PlayStation 4 and Windows. If you're one of the many people who have been hoping this game would be announced, head over to the Kickstarter and pick a pledge tier.