Shenmue is a quirk. What a wild little time. In 1999, Shenmue was groundbreaking. Graphics were fairly top notch, the expansive dialogue and individual character patterns and behaviors were all remarkable for a console game of the last millennia. And honestly, a lot of it still holds up today.
Even by modern standards, it's impressive that you can open every door and closet in the Hazuki household and that each one has modeled items in them that you'd expect for that room. And for no purpose other than simple interactivity. The lightly guided hints in a big expansive breathing lively world is so Morrowind-y it's funny this precedes Morrowind by 2 years. And looks better to boot.
It's seriously hard to undersell how good Shenmue is from 1999. The gameplay has a bit of jank but nothing that would've been out of place in the late nineties. The story is engaging but very threadbare. Full of mystery and little details. An extremely JJ Abrams style mystery box with mcguffins and no substance, all puzzle and no meat. But it's still quite pleasant to trek down the mystery. Asking every NPC in Dobuita and filling out your journal. Waiting for time to pass. Collecting capsule toys. Shenmue is stunningly fun to just exist in for a game that by most quantifiable measures has shockingly little content.
The forklifts are cool. They're always a bugaboo to people who play this. And yeah sure, I loved it but even I think it's probably one day too long. The whole game is just so charming. The characters have so much life to them. Such strong personalities. All of them having names and little new things to say everyday and all of them being so invested in Ryo just makes me care so much about them. I feel like each NPC at each shop in Dobuita gave me so much immersion despite being 99% useless 90% of the time.
The fights in the game have weird and inconsistent difficulty spikes, the inability to skip time, the lack of detail on several game mechanics (like training), the weird story pacing. There's lots of complaints. But honestly, Shenmue is so much better than the sum of its parts. And if it was 1999 and I was reviewing this I'm sure I'd give it a full 5/5. Just a game teeming with life and charm.
Even by modern standards, it's impressive that you can open every door and closet in the Hazuki household and that each one has modeled items in them that you'd expect for that room. And for no purpose other than simple interactivity. The lightly guided hints in a big expansive breathing lively world is so Morrowind-y it's funny this precedes Morrowind by 2 years. And looks better to boot.
It's seriously hard to undersell how good Shenmue is from 1999. The gameplay has a bit of jank but nothing that would've been out of place in the late nineties. The story is engaging but very threadbare. Full of mystery and little details. An extremely JJ Abrams style mystery box with mcguffins and no substance, all puzzle and no meat. But it's still quite pleasant to trek down the mystery. Asking every NPC in Dobuita and filling out your journal. Waiting for time to pass. Collecting capsule toys. Shenmue is stunningly fun to just exist in for a game that by most quantifiable measures has shockingly little content.
The forklifts are cool. They're always a bugaboo to people who play this. And yeah sure, I loved it but even I think it's probably one day too long. The whole game is just so charming. The characters have so much life to them. Such strong personalities. All of them having names and little new things to say everyday and all of them being so invested in Ryo just makes me care so much about them. I feel like each NPC at each shop in Dobuita gave me so much immersion despite being 99% useless 90% of the time.
The fights in the game have weird and inconsistent difficulty spikes, the inability to skip time, the lack of detail on several game mechanics (like training), the weird story pacing. There's lots of complaints. But honestly, Shenmue is so much better than the sum of its parts. And if it was 1999 and I was reviewing this I'm sure I'd give it a full 5/5. Just a game teeming with life and charm.