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[u_neek]

I didn't really think about it when i played Shenmue for the first time back in 2000 but I'm amazed how great it's graphichs are compared to todays standards - and it still looks better than most PS2 games. Espicially on the Passport disc where the game's characters explain all kinds of stuff..

It's the atmosphere, the story, all the tiny details that make Shenmue one of my favorite games ever.

 

[DarkGiygas]

Do you know where sailors usually hang out?

 

[u_neek]

In bars.... you see?

 

[Solid]

I love the atmosphere in Shenmue, totally rockin'! That reminds me, I should play through Shenmue II on Xbox again. Easily my favorite game on the console.

 

[u_neek]

I love the atmosphere in Shenmue, totally rockin'! That reminds me, I should play through Shenmue II on Xbox again. Easily my favorite game on the console.

Same here. I've had an Xbox for two years and PDO and Shenmue II are my only games.
Fable will soon be joining them tho..

 

[Lazy8s]

There's a scope to its detail that still impresses: so many distinct-looking storefronts and individual characters each doing their own thing within a single location.

 

[shuri]

Too bad Shenmue will most likely never going to be finished. What a cursed series of games.

 

[Boogie9IGN]

The godliness that is Shenmue can only be beaten by Shenmue II.

Damn my Dreamcast's laser for dying! DAMN IT

 

[MrCheez]

I adore both Shenmue I and II. Pure gaming bliss.

Not to mention the fact that Ryo-photoshops still crack me up to this day.

 

[DarkGiygas]

In bars.... you see?

Wait...you think you can ride with us? You're just some punk-ass school boy!

 

[MC Safety]

I remember seeing a black car on the day of the incident.

And the things the sailors could tell you about the four wudu!

 

[Azih]

Where can I find somebody who can read Chinese?

Do you know anything about the 'Three Blades'?



You know overall I think I preferred Shenmue 1 to 2. There was more fighting, they actually payed attention to the RPG section of improving your moves and the game had Fuku-san. The only character in the Shenmue universe dumber than Ryo.

 

[goodcow]

There's a scope to its detail that still impresses: so many distinct-looking storefronts and individual characters each doing their own thing within a single location.

Which is what's missing from Shenmue 2, and in some ways, makes Shenmue 1 look graphically better.

 

[evilromero]

I loved Shenmue but I couldn't stand Shenmue 2. They ruined the fun of getting an allowance that you could spend on toys and arcade games. Cleaning soot off the wall of a temple to find the Wu was not fun.

 

[Boogie9IGN]

The best parts of Shenmue, in terms of dialogue:

"Look Ryo, I taught Chibi a trick! Chibi!"- Megumi
"Meow"- Chibi
"THAT'S AMAZING!"- Ryo

"Shut yo lip woman!"- Goro

"Let's get sweaty."-Ryo Hazuki

"Have you seen a schoolgirl around here?"- Ryo
"What is it with you Japanese people and schoolgirls?"- Man

 

[MrCheez]

Ahahah.

My friends and I were always yelling at Ryo for neglecting to make a move on Nozomi in Shenmue I. We just assumed he was gay, since he didn't seem to give a crap about her for the entire game, even when she seemed to offer herself to him.

So anyway, the funniest Shenmue moment for me is when you're in the cave with that girl near the end of Shenmue II, and the conversation goes (at least in the subtitled version):

Girl: *looking at Ryo's photos, one is of Nozomi* Who is this girl?

Ryo: Just some girl.

Girl: Ah... did she like you?

Ryo: I dunno

Girl: Hmm... did you like her?

Ryo: *shrug* Not really.


Ahaha, damn you Ryo!

 

[Miburou]

Replaying the first one (in Japanese) has reminded me how boring and uneventful the game is, which is a shame seeing how impressive the engine behind the game is.

 

[kitchenmotors]

 

[shibbs]

^
lmao

Anyways, great game One of my favorite games for sure.

 

[Truelize]

Yeah me too. They actually are my favorite games. I loved them both. I keep wanting to pick up the Xbox Shenmue II even though I have the DC version, but I don't see the point.
I was really impressed that this game met my expectations. I was so pumped up/hyped for this game I was worried I would totally hate it. But I loved it. That Christmas was the best gaming Christmas I have ever had so far.

 

[MC Safety]

Was it Shenmue II where Ryo had to shift books, punch trees, and catch leaves?

Yeah, now that's some exciting gameplay.

 

[Boogie9IGN]

Was it Shenmue II where Ryo had to shift books, punch trees, and catch leaves?

Yeah, now that's some exciting gameplay.

Yes, and I loved every moment of it.

 

[Korranator]

Yeah, now that's some exciting gameplay.

Describes the series game play to a tee.

 

[BlackClouds]

Those things were actually important to the character development of Ryu, which is why I loved doing those things. Can't really think of any other game that even attempted something like that. Ofcourse a cynic who never tried to play the game on its own terms would look down on it. Has no bearing on what I got out of the game.

 

[SKluck]

I honestly couldn't play a game like this anymore. With my off time being pretty slim these days, I need guns and action.

Same reason I only got like 5 hours into KOTOR.

 

[Boogie9IGN]

Those things were actually important to the character development of Ryu, which is why I loved doing those things. Can't really think of any other game that even attempted something like that. Ofcourse a cynic who never tried to play the game on its own terms would look down on it. Has no bearing on what I got out of the game.

Exactly.

'Punching' a tree = Jianmin teaching Ryo a new move, Iron Palm

These next two I'm a bit sketchy on, so correct me if I'm wrong:

Catching leaves = Help agility

Shift books = Agility and to be cautious?

Someone buy me a DC so I can play again

 

[BreakyBoy]

Catch leaves = Restore calm to Ryo's mind, which at the time was all fired up with revenge.
Move books = Give Ryo time to think so he can reflect on what he wants to do.

Of course neither one really worked as well as Master Tao wanted it to methinks...

 

[u_neek]

Yeah me too. They actually are my favorite games. I loved them both. I keep wanting to pick up the Xbox Shenmue II even though I have the DC version, but I don't see the point. .

I bought both versions

 

[Boogie9IGN]

Catch leaves = Restore calm to Ryo's mind, which at the time was all fired up with revenge.
Move books = Give Ryo time to think so he can reflect on what he wants to do.

Of course neither one really worked as well as Master Tao wanted it to methinks...

THAT WAS IT, thank you! I couldn't find a Shenmue II script so that works great

 

[cvxfreak]

To me, Shenmue was just pure fun gaming. The visuals, the exploration, the story, the character development... one of my favorite games ever.

 

[mosaic]

It's a shame Shenmue was all glitz and no substance, because it had a shot to become the DC's best game... I know it sold an f-ton of copies, which some would use as an argument to call the game great, but, heck, Enter the Matrix sold millions of copies too....

Disc 3, with all of the fighting, and the motorbike scene, hinted at the game's full potential. There was still plenty of plot development in that last disc, but also plenty to do.

Discs 1 and 2 were sheer torture... like following a grocery list at the local Meijer (or Safeway, or Piggly Wiggly, or Price Chopper, whatever is in your town). You know a game is getting off on the wrong foot when the most exciting moment early on involves naming a cat. (I'm not even touching the search for sailors and the comments about wrestling young boys)

In short -- 6.8

 

[SolidSnakex]

It's a shame Shenmue was all glitz and no substance, because it had a shot to become the DC's best game... I know it sold an f-ton of copies, which some would use as an argument to call the game great, but, heck, Enter the Matrix sold millions of copies too....

Disc 3, with all of the fighting, and the motorbike scene, hinted at the game's full potential. There was still plenty of plot development in that last disc, but also plenty to do.

Discs 1 and 2 were sheer torture... like following a grocery list at the local Meijer (or Safeway, or Piggly Wiggly, or Price Chopper, whatever is in your town). You know a game is getting off on the wrong foot when the most exciting moment early on involves naming a cat. (I'm not even touching the search for sailors and the comments about wrestling young boys)

In short -- 6.8

The first 2 disks were more about immersion which I thought it did a great job of doing that. You have Shenmue 2 for that description you described. The constant pacing and action.

 

[fennec fox]

Now that the thread has evolved into an opinion board on Shenmue, I'd just like to say that if I wanted a job, I would get one that actually paid me money.

 

[The Faceless Master]

i played thru shenmue basically because it had yu's stamp of approval on it... even thugh it was boring, tedious and tired as fuck, i played thru, waiting for it to get to "the good part"...

and at the end of it all, the only good part, not counting the emulated arcade games, was the dart game...

i could never play thru again, though i did watch as my friend played thru a few years ago...

i do appreciate the scope of the game engine, the game really looks great, even now, the facial animation system is tops, the soundtrack is amazing, but seriously, i don't know how people can actually like this game...

the only time i feel like playing thru shenmue was actually worth it is times like this when people crack jokes about the cheesy lines and horrible dub job, it's like some sort of inside joke that is really funny...

 

[SolidSnakex]

Another great thing about Shenmue is its fighting engine. Shenmue battle engine > any other games engine outside of fighters. I'd love to see a beat um up with a engine like that.

 

[JackFrost2012]

Did somebody say Shenmue photoshops?!

 

[Lazy8s]

The parts that most revealed the games' potential were when different trails of clues or simply happenstance of being in the right place at the right time caused alternate events to take place. Following the leads from less obvious characters could branch the story path like, for example, having Ryo learn about the Three Blades from two guys otherwise not introduced into the story. Events such as failing to find the last Wudu at Man Mo temple in time, catching certain characters at non-designated times and having them impart secret moves, finding Nozomi in trouble at the park, learning Ryo's friends have been checking up on him after making a call to home and then meeting them there later unexpectedly, and meeting Eileen at Pigeon Park and the related scenarios made possible afterward are chance encounters set off by player decision mixed with circumstance of the games' dynamic time and weather systems.

The game also really shined in Ryo's progression as a fighter. Learning about new moves, their origin, their usage in combat, and how to perform them intuitively with each button press corresponding to a part of the motion gave it an authentic taste of martial arts culture. The kung fu fan-service was rounded out by getting the ability to modify Ryo's move list for strategy in upcoming fights.

 

[XS+]

Shenmue I was good, I just wish there were more locales to interact with than Ryo's immediate neighborhood and the docks. Guess that's why I prefer Shenmue II (among plenty other reasons).

Why oh why did Sega have to fark up this new Shenmue game..

 

[Jacobi]

Well, if you replay ShenMue you'll get to see some pop-ups and slowdowns, plus its polygon rate could be better. The loading times also suck. I'd like to see a ShenMue GC remake without loading times, pop-ups and so on, but that won't ever happen. I'm curious to see how ShenMue online will look. (but I agree with u, u-neek).

 

[Tim]

I've replayed Shenmue 1 a couple of weeks back as well. I then started replaying Shenmue 2 but I was interrupted by a holiday to Thailand, so I'll pick it up again one of these days. Shenmue 2 is in my opinion much much better than the first but I consider them both to be my favourite games ever.

 

[gunstarhero]

Too bad Shenmue will most likely never going to be finished. What a cursed series of games.

Kind of why I never bothered to finish 2 - I don't see the point if I'm just going to be left hanging forever. A shame, I really liked 1, and was getting into 2.

 

[jcjimher]

IMO, Shenmue is more an interactive movie than a videogame. I can understand some people not liking the game if they approach it as any other game wanting to have some fun with it.

I love Shenmue as much as any other person, but I admit I had no fun with it. Instead, I felt other wonderful things like a big sense of immersion, I enjoyed its immense beauty both in visuals and music, and I surely sympathysed with some of the characters. Not Ryo, because he, being the main character that the player controls, must be neutral (even dull I admit) enough not to turn off many of the players. I know he could be more *human*, but I think he'll progress as the storyline advances (the Ryo of the last chapter was much more human and talked much more than the one at the beginning of the game).

Overall, I've always thought of Shenmue as some kind of new way of telling a story, similar to a movie but where you can actually explore the surroundings and basically trigger the events at your own pace. For me, it's a really powerful technique to involve the spectator, since at least the Shenmue experience made a big impact on me without being that good of a story after all IMO.

Thus, I would tell those of you that want a regular videogame to go and have fun with any other of them, but don't diss the Shenmue series for not meeting you wrong expectations, because they are surely valuable products of undoubted quality.

 

[dark10x]

and it still looks better than most PS2 games.

No it doesn't. Even back when it was released, the character models were all so low poly that it was often hard to look at. The game is far less impressive looking than I had originally hoped.

I enjoyed the game, though...but the hardware was simply not quite ready for this type of game. Shenmue 1 and 2 were so segmented that it really killed the feelings of being in a large, detailed world. Everything was divided by lengthy load times and it had a fairly small sense of scale. I wanted a much more detailed city, with the ability to freely explore the world. If I wanted to stand atop a large bulding and watch the city below me, I should have been able to. The problem with Shenmue is that I had built up such massive expectations that it could not POSSIBLY have met them. What I expected from the game is not what was released. Shenmue is, perhaps, my most hyped game of all time...and it was the game that taught me how dangerous hype can be. When I look back, my ideas for the game would simply have not been possible...but that doesn't mean I didn't want them.

 

[Panajev2001a]

No it doesn't. Even back when it was released, the character models were all so low poly that it was often hard to look at. The game is far less impressive looking than I had originally hoped.

I enjoyed the game, though...but the hardware was simply not quite ready for this type of game. Shenmue 1 and 2 were so segmented that it really killed the feelings of being in a large, detailed world. Everything was divided by lengthy load times and it had a fairly small sense of scale. I wanted a much more detailed city, with the ability to freely explore the world. If I wanted to stand atop a large bulding and watch the city below me, I should have been able to. The problem with Shenmue is that I had built up such massive expectations that it could not POSSIBLY have met them. What I expected from the game is not what was released. Shenmue is, perhaps, my most hyped game of all time...and it was the game that taught me how dangerous hype can be. When I look back, my ideas for the game would simply have not been possible...but that doesn't mean I didn't want them.

I am sorry, but I will disagree with you on Shenmue's engine.

Long draw distance (the harbour, with nice, curvy 3D water), lots of characters on screen, nice shadows, nice texturing, some characters were very detailed (Ryo, Lan-di, Nozomi, etc... ).

For the technology and the budget available (yeah yeah... we know the figure, but it was not meant for a one game deal, but for the whole series and development of extensible and future proof tools) Shenmue I did a great job.

Load times could have been shorter, but you know what ? I still enjoy Shenmue I and Shenmue II as two of the best gaming experiences ever.

The immersion factor, the story-line, the characters, the environments, the gameplay (yes, the gameplay), etc... more than make-up for some of the game's flaws.

 

[dark10x]

Well, like I said...it isn't that I don't like the game, it just wasn't what I expected. I set myself up for a disappointment...

One problem is that the lighting looked very poor in the game. Everything was very dull and subdued. You'd see a huge, flat street with a repeating texture...and it would be shaded the same all the way along it.

I mean, there were many times when I would just look at the horizon and be disappointed. I mean, look at the sun here...

I really hate the way that looks. Imagine the scene bathed in an orange glow with lots of nice graidents abound, long shadows cast from various objects and a massive, bright sun light effect. Kinda like the sun in ICO (very different game, I know), though perhaps a bit more subtle...

I mean, most scenes always seem to resemble this...

It just completely lacks any kind of shading or lighting.

There are plenty of scenes that are fairly detailed...

You see scenes like this that show off the buildings around you. It still just lacks any sort of lighting impact, and really, the textures aren't very detailed either.

Shenmue isn't like GTA3, where graphics are sacrificed in order to allow a massive city to be displayed. Shenmue is just a collection smallish segments divided by load points. Had the entire city been streamed, I would be less critical of the visuals.

I guess I should just accept it for what it is, but really...the world could have been so much more immersive. When I enter a new scene in Shenmue (especially SM2), I always think about how much better it COULD have looked.

Like I said, I ended up enjoying the games...but I really want to see a Shenmue 3 that properly realizes the original ideas.

 

[mr2mike]

Ah this thread reminds me of when i tried to replay through Shenmue.

During my first go at the game, I was probably too busy ooohing and aaahing at everything to notice, but during (well I say "during", but...) my second stab at it, I could not, no matter how hard I tried, even start to tolerate the game's dub.

It's so bad that I feel insulted by it, it's so bad every dialog gave me the urge to shove my DC out the window, it's so bad that I vowed I would never play Shenmue II in an effort to shield me against such atrocious dialog. Yes, Insulting, I think that was the right word, It felt like they told me: "Your 80 bucks wasn't worth enough that we'd bother doing a pleasing dub for you, go to hell and suck sailor dick"

So I said fuck it and gave up on a second playthrough at about an hour into it.

I mean, what the fuck, how can someone at the studio not notice? How the hell can those VAs even sleep at night knowing they participated in such a horrific act against humanity?

 

[dark10x]

Ah this thread reminds me of when i tried to replay through Shenmue.

During my first go at the game, I was probably too busy ooohing and aaahing at everything to notice, but during (well I say "during", but...) my second stab at it, I could not, no matter how hard I tried, even start to tolerate the game's dub.

It's so bad that I feel insulted by it, it's so bad every dialog gave me the urge to shove my DC out the window, it's so bad that I vowed I would never play Shenmue II in an effort to shield me against such atrocious dialog. Yes, Insulting, I think that was the right word, It felt like they told me: "Your 80 bucks wasn't worth enough that we'd bother doing a pleasing dub for you, go to hell and suck sailor dick"

So I said fuck it and gave up on a second playthrough at about an hour into it.

I mean, what the fuck, how can someone at the studio not notice? How the hell can those VAs even sleep at night knowing they participated in such a horrific act against humanity?

Well, you could try not playing the US versions.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Whoa, you are fighting back with awful screenshots from Gamespot... I guess that about wraps it up for my argument .

One problem is that the lighting looked very poor in the game

I did not feel that in Shenmue I (the LanDi dream scene for example) or in Shenmue II Xbox.

You see scenes like this that show off the buildings around you. It still just lacks any sort of lighting impact, and really, the textures aren't very detailed either.

Most textures were detailed enough especially given the high variety in the texturing.

Shenmue isn't like GTA3, where graphics are sacrificed in order to allow a massive city to be displayed. Shenmue is just a collection smallish segments divided by load points. Had the entire city been streamed, I would be less critical of the visuals.

Considering that at the end GTA3 has much less to do governing the city: few people walking down the streets, most of them just randomly walking without purpose, considering that the city is much more generically detailed, the texturing is of a considerable worse quality and

I mean, if you at least used The Getaway as an example, I would have understood you better .

Even in that game you have loading from one level to the next (to prepare the inside spaces you will be visiting for your mission probably and to update the game's logic).

Shenmue keeps track of far more stuff than GTA3 does and the engine being developeed originally for a machine with 16 MB of main RAM (the Xbox port was just that, a port with some graphical improovements) is doing a good job at that: if you keep track of the number of characters displayable on the screen, their animation, the fact that the engine has to keep track of where several of them go, if you take into account the much greater than GTA3 detail present in the environments... then you can see why Shenmue was forced to divide bigger areas into sections: they might have tried to stream geometry for the city, but even if it were possible you might hit the limitations of what the Dreamcast could do.

Still, the harbour area is not exactly small.

GTA: Vice City also did use that trick when you travelled into a different area of the city, entered into certain parts of some buildings, etc...

 

[Tsubaki]

IMO, Shenmue is more an interactive movie than a videogame. I can understand some people not liking the game if they approach it as any other game wanting to have some fun with it. <Snip>

Finally someone who gets it. For those who like RPGs solely for story and likes Shenmue outside of the Suzuki Yu arcade games, the overall question has to be asked: "What is a video game?" It seems like nowadays, a video game is now a generic format and not so much a pure hand-eye coordination stimulus or thinking-man's strategy vehicle.

I'll let you decide whether or not that's a good thing, but it's the broadening of the format that made me bow out of gaming.

 

[Panajev2001a]