For years, the original Shenmue was my favourite game of all time. I grew tired of having to go home every night when all I wanted to do was explore the world and get that feeling back that the originals gave me.
Ryo is a dull and stoic individual with as much personality as a lobotomised sloth. You’re still expected to spend a lot of time talking to everyone in the hopes that someone will spill a tidbit of information, forcing you to listen to the poor voice acting until your next clue is revealed.įrom the second I started playing, The pace of Shenmue 3 was grating, causing frustration due to the lack of any feeling of progression, whether from the story or the character. Combat still lacks any feeling of real impact movement is still clunky, and every kind of progression feels slow. There are literally no technical improvements to the series. There’s something so familiar about Suzuki’s long awaited follow-up, so much so that it feels as if you’ve been transported back to the early 2000s as if everything that followed never happened. Sure, Shenmue I and II were remarkable, and unquestionably ahead of their time, but is there a place for a sequel almost two decades since the last game in the story was released? So much has changed for game developers, with advancements being made with every new year. In many ways, Yu Suzuki’s revenge story set the benchmark in what video games could be, how we could live a life through them, and inspired those that came after to create an immersive, living and breathing world.
#Shenmue 3 mode series#
I even made Ryo phone his old housekeeper, Ine-san, back in Dobuita before a particularly dangerous part of the story, which brought an actual lump to my throat.Shenmue came out before Rockstar Games were making world class open-world games like GTA V and Red Dead Redemption, before Bethesda released fantasy life sims like Skyrim and Fallout 3, and before the Yakuza series became as successful as it did. And so when the few big story beats come in, they have much more impact. But that just gives it something few other games can match a game world you’re properly invested in. There’s a real sense of ‘coming home’, which is then taken away with the culture shock of leaving Shenhua’s house in Bailu village for the hotel room in Niaowu. Details reveal themselves only when you stop and look, like the in-jokes on the books in the bookshop, or the way Ryo’s One-Inch Punch goes from sloppy Joe to looking exactly like Bruce Lee in tiny increments.(Image credit: Ys Net)Similarly, the way Shenhua will sit and talk to you about Japan and her childhood until it just gets too late to stay up any more is exactly the sort of thing that made the first game so great. But it’s all wrapped up in this astonishingly rich world that consistently shows itself to be both beautifully balanced and consistently deeper than you expect. No other single element of the game is particularly fun. What out for that ouch(Image credit: Ys Net)From a game design point of view, it’s simultaneously facepalm-inducing and a masterclass. Maybe it’s because it still feels like a Dreamcast game, even emulating some haze filters typical of first-party Sega titles back in the day, making you feel impressed that Shenmue could look this good. Somehow Shenmue still impresses even though it’s not really up to the highest modern standards. Given that the game holds up to such scrutiny, the few technical hiccups are entirely forgivable. You can run across the city in one go and then examine individual fruit skewers on a market stall, all without a loading screen. Even so, there are many moments of obvious beauty, with gorgeous lighting and phenomenal detail, and all despite the impressive scale.
Textures load in after a second or two, water reflections actually ‘reflect’ any 3D object above it on the screen space, shadows and details visibly pop in in the distance, and materials look just a little more ‘matte’ compared to real life.
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