There's an undeniable charm to just how boring this game is.
I am fascinated by Shenmue as a concept and its execution is bizarrely enticing, but this game is not right for this time in my life. I do not have the time currently to wait half an hour or longer for a timed event to occur, but perhaps when I am less busy I will come back to this game and digest its strangeness.
people need to realise that in 2024 Shenmue is more interesting than it is good.
Bekleme Sim
The Twin Peaks of video games.
This game made Sega one of my favorite publishers.
This is the only video game I've seen where nothing happens.
Shenmue is a cozy open world game whose traditions can be seen continued in titles like Yakuza, but not really much else. Instead of going for large world, it tries to make its world wide and interesting, with tons of named NPCs and quite a few interactions.
That said, I don't think it succeeds at all.
Shenmue is often described as mundane, and at first I could see what it was going for: the amount of interactivity is staggering, and unlike nothing else I've seen even today. However, this interactivity really only applies to your own house, and the rest of the game is fairly barebones when it comes to interacting with the world.
I suppose Shenmue is mostly a detective game of sorts, with you asking for hints and gathering clues trying to find the man who killed your father. What it boils down to is that through maybe 70% of the game you will leave your house at sunrise and start asking every random NPC pointless questions like "can you translate this?" "can you point me to the man who can translate this?" "do you know where this area is?"
Throughout the game you get no closer to figuring anything out except for what the artifact stolen by your father's killer might do, and that there are two of them. This is effectively the whole story of Shenmue.
There are a few ways to pass the time, and you will sometimes need to pass the time, but they're fairly basic: old emulated games, gacha machines, and a few side-quests that don't seem to lead anywhere important.
The game often resembles Majora's Mask with its time gimmick and a singlular main location, but aside from coziness of your hometown, there's really nothing to it. Every NPC including the main character could be replaced with a plank of wood to a better effect. The english localization is, at best, funny, but those instances are rare, and you're usually left with robots speaking to each other.
Ryo, the main character, is one of the biggest problems of this game. I never connected with him. His silly revenge quest is idiotic, and he can't be a badass in a game that features maybe 10 fights in total. He's a bumbling fool who never has any emotion and who is solely responsible for the most infamous part of the game.
Closer to the end of the game's story Ryo gets conned because he doesn't know what a receipt is, losing a whole lot of money. This forces him to look for a part-time job, which makes already tedious game even more boring. Every day you will do the same routine. This happens maybe half-way through actual game time, and your forklift adventures take up HOURS of gameplay, while the story barely progresses anywhere.
Do you remember opening hours of Twilight Princess? Link living in Ordon, doing mundane jobs, training, but his girlfriend (?) gets captured so he has to save her. This is the entirety of Shenmue, and it doesn't take mere few hours.
Shenmue is interesting. It's baffling that someone was given so much money to do a whole saga of games where first chapter is effectively you asking people for directions and driving a forklift. It's commendable, and hell, it's sometimes charming. And the music? Oh, the music is damn fantastic. Overall, the presentation of the game is on a whole other level. Yet it's so damn tedious.
No NPCs have any stories other than the few that just leave the game by the end. A few of them have pretty weird voices, but that's the extent of their character. It's just you, and a crowd of people through which you walk asking for sailors or whatever other breadcrumb Ryo has to look for.
I believe some of Shenmue's developers later became RGG Studio, and honestly, even at its worst Yakuza takes all the right lessons from the mistakes of this game.
I respect Shenmue, it's weird. However, don't expect me to play it ever again.
Shenmue is a cozy open world game whose traditions can be seen continued in titles like Yakuza, but not really much else. Instead of going for large world, it tries to make its world wide and interesting, with tons of named NPCs and quite a few interactions.
That said, I don't think it succeeds at all.
Shenmue is often described as mundane, and at first I could see what it was going for: the amount of interactivity is staggering, and unlike nothing else I've seen even today. However, this interactivity really only applies to your own house, and the rest of the game is fairly barebones when it comes to interacting with the world.
I suppose Shenmue is mostly a detective game of sorts, with you asking for hints and gathering clues trying to find the man who killed your father. What it boils down to is that through maybe 70% of the game you will leave your house at sunrise and start asking every random NPC pointless questions like "can you translate this?" "can you point me to the man who can translate this?" "do you know where this area is?"
Throughout the game you get no closer to figuring anything out except for what the artifact stolen by your father's killer might do, and that there are two of them. This is effectively the whole story of Shenmue.
There are a few ways to pass the time, and you will sometimes need to pass the time, but they're fairly basic: old emulated games, gacha machines, and a few side-quests that don't seem to lead anywhere important.
The game often resembles Majora's Mask with its time gimmick and a singlular main location, but aside from coziness of your hometown, there's really nothing to it. Every NPC including the main character could be replaced with a plank of wood to a better effect. The english localization is, at best, funny, but those instances are rare, and you're usually left with robots speaking to each other.
Ryo, the main character, is one of the biggest problems of this game. I never connected with him. His silly revenge quest is idiotic, and he can't be a badass in a game that features maybe 10 fights in total. He's a bumbling fool who never has any emotion and who is solely responsible for the most infamous part of the game.
Closer to the end of the game's story Ryo gets conned because he doesn't know what a receipt is, losing a whole lot of money. This forces him to look for a part-time job, which makes already tedious game even more boring. Every day you will do the same routine. This happens maybe half-way through actual game time, and your forklift adventures take up HOURS of gameplay, while the story barely progresses anywhere.
Do you remember opening hours of Twilight Princess? Link living in Ordon, doing mundane jobs, training, but his girlfriend (?) gets captured so he has to save her. This is the entirety of Shenmue, and it doesn't take mere few hours.
Shenmue is interesting. It's baffling that someone was given so much money to do a whole saga of games where first chapter is effectively you asking people for directions and driving a forklift. It's commendable, and hell, it's sometimes charming. And the music? Oh, the music is damn fantastic. Overall, the presentation of the game is on a whole other level. Yet it's so damn tedious.
No NPCs have any stories other than the few that just leave the game by the end. A few of them have pretty weird voices, but that's the extent of their character. It's just you, and a crowd of people through which you walk asking for sailors or whatever other breadcrumb Ryo has to look for.
I believe some of Shenmue's developers later became RGG Studio, and honestly, even at its worst Yakuza takes all the right lessons from the mistakes of this game.
I respect Shenmue, it's weird. However, don't expect me to play it ever again.