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Shenmue II [Xbox] [Also available on Dreamcast]
Review by Oni-Ninja
It's always tough knowing where to start with a review. But with a game as massive and unique as Shenmue II, it's all the more difficult. So I'll start where you, as gamers, must start. Shenmue II on Xbox comes packaged with a DVD of the first game. This DVD will play on any DVD player, and is made up of all the cut-scenes and story elements from the first game. It simply must be watched before you put in the Shenmue II game disc. Knowing the first game's plot is essential to fully enjoying the second. The DVD runs for ninety minutes, and is very nearly everything from the first game. This is probably the best way to experiance the first Shenmue, as it was a very slow paced game, outlining Ryo's character and the initial storyline. Which is how all good books start.
The Shenmue story, believe it or not, was written as a book by series creator Yu Suzuki. A sisxteen-chapter book. The first Shenmue was the very beginning of the book, and only represents chapter one of the book. Shenmue II represents chapters three to six of the book. Chapter two was written, but was never meant to be included in the final game. Thus, you can already see Shenmue II is massive compared to it's predesessor.
Revenge is sweet...
The original Shenmue, is set in Yokosuka, Japan, in the year 1986. It (the DVD for the Xbox version) starts off with Ryo (the main character) returning home one day to find a strange black car parked outside his family home, he finds his father in the dojo (which is in their house) confronting a mysterious man in a dark green guilded robe, the man (named Lan Di) demands Ryo's father to give him the 'mirror'. Iwao (Ryo's father) refuses, and the two men do battle. They are clearly both martial artists, but Lan Di easily triumphs over Ryo's father.
Iwao lays broken on the floor, but still won't give the intruder the mirror. Lan Di picks up Ryo with one arm and is just about to kill him when Iwao (obviously not wanting his son to die) gives in and hands over the mirror. The mirror is a made from magnifiscant green stone, with a beautiful dragon design carved upon it. Lan Di then says to Iwoa- "Do you remember Zhao Sun Ming?" pauses for a moment then continues "That is the name of the man you killed in Munswun" pauses for one last time, and finally says "Get up, I'll alow you to die like a warrior..."
What follows is a short but dramatic kung fu scene between the two men. Lan Di quickly despatches Iwao with one swift move and fatally wounds him. With that, Lan Di and his thugs leave the dojo and the Hazuki family home. Iwoa dies in Ryo's arms.
Ryo wakes up a few days later, and vows to find his father's killer (Lan Di) and take revenge. But the things Lan Di said have made the whole situation into abit of a puzzle- What was that strange mirror? Ryo had never seen it before, Iwoa had never spoken of it. Who was Zhao Sun Ming? And did your father really kill him? Munswun?? Your father never once even mentioned that he had been to China. A letter then arrives. It is written in Chinese, it is from a man named Yuanda Zhu and is addressed to Iwoa. Unfortunatly, Ryo does not speak or read Chinese.
And that's it, the opening cut-scene of the first Shenmue game. It's your job to try and piece together the puzzle and find Lan Di. It might not sound an amazing story yet, but trust me- by the end of the second game, the storyline has taken you to some amazing places, introduced some awsome characters and the secret of the mirror is finally revealed. Their are brilliant twists and turns.
I won't spoil the rest of the story for you, watch the DVD to find out everything that happened in the first game. The end of Shenmue sees Ryo setting off on a boat to Hong Kong (China) to track down Lan Di.
(We know the story) Morning glory...
Shenmue II starts right where the first game finishes, with Ryo arriving in Hong Kong harbour. Without so much as his bag, his clothes, and a little money, the rest is up to you. The first thing that hits you when you begin to play Shemue II is the graphics. Awsome. Just awsome. The attention to detail is astounding.
Apparently the team that made the game (AM2 of SEGA) went to all the areas featured in the game (they are all real-world locales) and took thousands of photographs, made detailed diagrams, and put it into the game, more or less faithfully. It really shows. I don't know for sure (only people in Hong Kong would know), but it really does look like Hong Kong. With all the right details for the period. There's Union Jacks in the masts of a posh hotel (we owned Hong Kong back then), there's highstreets, shops, apartments, plush nice areas of the city, gritty run down areas, arcades (where you can actually play the games!!), cafe's, restaurants. You name it, it's all there.
Also, the NPC's (non-player-characters, basically every other character in the game apart from Ryo) aren't your regular kettle of fish either. They don't just stand their, doing the same thing, day and night. Every single NPC (and there are over 1,000 unique NPC's!!) has their own lives. They go to the park, they go shopping, they go to work and all that kind of stuff. If you wanted to, you could pick one NPC and stalk them, day and night for a week (a week in the game) until you knew their whole routine. So if you ever had to find them, you could look at the time of day, what day it is, and know where they probably are in Hong Kong. The invironment of the Shenmue games is like a massive clockwork village.
The weather in the game is real aswell. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it's cloudy, sometimes it's sunny, etc. Unfortunatly, you don't get to see this as much in the second game, as it is set in the spring of 1987 (it took Ryo like, six months or so to get through the first game), so it's usually just sunny in Shenmue II.
The fact that this game is actually little more than a port of a Dreamcast game, makes all this even more amazing, and is a testament to the Dreamcast's power. The graphics are generally a little better in the Xbox version. Namely a solid framerate, and better lighting effects. There are some graphical inconsistancies in the Xbox version; a few missing details and a glitch here and there that wasn't present in the Dreamcast original. Nothing that most would even notice, though. Some of the NPC's character models are a little blocky (a remnent of it's Dreamcast heretige), but other than that, it's a beautiful experiance from start to finish.
The sound of music, and bad acting...
The soundtrack to the game is truly beautiful. Some of the best music I've ever heard in a game, it suits the mood (at any given point) perfectly. It's mostly a sweeping orchestral sountracks, with a few other bits and pieces.
Sadly, the same can't be said about the english dubbing in the game, it sounds kinda cheap. It sounds like the dubbing in one of those old kung fu movies. Some like it, I prefer the original japanese voices of the Dreamcast version (I played with subtitles on). Frankly the acting just sounded a whole lot better, and alot more like you where in the far east. But whatever, it certainly doesn't ruin the experiance. Though I must say, the actor who voices Ren has done a sterling job. Ren's english voice is superb. It's a shame the rest of the voices just do there job, nothing special.
Definitely maybe...
The gameplay basically involves you going around asking the locals questions. So say you're asking people where something is, they might say (this is an example) "I don't know, but Mr. Wiyung does" so the next time you speak to someone, Ryo won't ask where the place is, he'll ask where he can find Mr. Wiyung. Eventually you will find the person you're looking for, they'll give you some information, then you're back to asking people about that information. Ryo always asks about his latest lead.
To put it simply, half of the gameplay is detective work. The other half is working (Ryo needs money for lodgings since he's not at home in Japan anymore), performing tasks for people, fighting, QTE and other bits and pieces.
The fighting in the game is great. It's been taken straight from Virtua Fighter and modified slighly. It was modofied because often you're facing multiple foes at once (not often one on one like in Virtua Fighter). It works quite well, but the camera can sometimes be annoying. It tends to focus in Ryu to much and doesn't follow your enemies very well. But you'll get over that. Fighting is still a blast, you'll love it. You get better at your moves the more you do them too (this is an RPG, you know!).
It's not all fighting, being a detective and working, though. There's lots of great little extras! Like toy capsule machines (which get very addictive) for one. There are hundreds of unique toys to collect (if you desire to do so, you don't have to). Each of them are characters or objects from past Sega games! Some of them are extremely rare and hard to find. The Super Sonic toy is a bastard to get hold of! There's fruit machines to have a go on, their's gambling, street fighting (fighting for money, not just fighting), darts and even arcade machines to play on! Mosey on down to the Pine Arcade in the Golden Qr. of Wan Chai (in Shenmue II) and you'll find some arcade classics. All are genuine Sega arcade games from the period. You've got Hang On, Space Harrier, Afterburner II and OutRun. There are other ones like a boxing game.
QTE stands for Quick Timer Event. They are basically scripted evens in which all you have to do is press a button when it flashes up on the screen. They are usually part of the storyline. One part in Shenmue II (don't worry I'm not telling you much) sees you chasing a thief who has stolen your bag. It turns into a QTE. So, he might knock over a stack of crates in an effort to stop you running after him. You might have to press A to jump over the crates. It'll only flash on the screen for a split second, and you have to press it before it dissapears. It's all about timing. If you fail then you will have to track the thief down (which will waste alot of time). If you complete the QTE you will catch him and take your bag back. They're not that difficult to begin with, but QTE's later on in the game are rock hard!
Which brings me to the time in the game. The game is real time. Night turns to day, monday to tuesday, so on and so forth. It is actually speeded up real time. An hour on the game clock (which is always in the top right of the screen) equals about five or ten minutes in the real world. So progressing a day in the game won't actually take you a day, it'll take you an hour or so. Not wasting too much time is important. If you take too long to complete the game you get a bad ending.
As I've already mentioned, Shenmue II is massive. It took me two weeks to finish, and I was playing it constantly, every day, day and night. Stopping only to eat and sleep. You go to other parts of China, aswell. It's not all set in Hong Kong. I'm not telling you where though! You'll have to find out for yourself...
Insignificant to millions...
Skip this part if you must, as the review is finished. This is just something that needs to be said.
There are fears about the future of the series. Shenmue is the most expensive game ever created (at over $70,000,000, including Shenmue II), and took eight years to make!! You even get a video of a Saturn version of Shenmue (it was originally meant for the Saturn, but was moved to Dreamcast because it was taking so long to make) when you complete the game! Despite costing so much money, and more to the point- being one of the greatest games ever, Shenmue bombed at retail.
The game was a commercial flop. People had never played a game like this before. Shenmue is totally unique. The only game that even comes close to it is Morrowind (but even that's twice removed). It doesn't even fit into the genre of RPG, really. This has been cited as the reason for it's downfall. It recieved rave reviews, but to no avail. Narrow-minded punters just weren't prepared to spend money on the game, it was just too unique.
Sega then pinned their hopes on the second game, because by then the public was more familier with Shenmue. But it was not to be. Sega have said that the future of Shenmue (Shenmue III) lies on how well the XBox version of Shenmue II sells. To date, sales have been dissapointing. So as things are right now, a third game (to finish off the storyline) is unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. Which is a damn shame. Gaming pieces of shit like the once-a-year 'update' of FIFA set the charts alight, while epic gaming masterpieces like Shenmue get overlooked.
Get Shenmue II. By the time you finish it, you will consider it to be one of the greatest games you've ever played.
Score - 10/10
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That's a review that I did some time ago, when I was staff at AlternativeGamer.co.uk (that site died a while ago now), and I reproduce it here, with some alterations. Firstly, on AG I had to use the out of 100% ratings system, which I hate, so I've gone for the superior 'out of ten' system, here. That's about the only change, though. I stand by the review. I think it's one of my best reviews, ever.