being a yakuza fan, ive tried playing shenmue a few times and it's never really successfully managed to "grab" me. usually i'd quit because i just got bored and barely got a taste of the combat even after maybe a couple hours, and what was there, i didnt care for
thinking combat was the appeal of the game and that it's essentially a proto-yakuza was my mistake. it does share elements with yakuza, namely in its overworld approach of being this "explore-japan-and-do-stuff simulator" but make no mistake, shenmue has more in common with point n click adventure games (just without the pointing and clicking), where you talk to everyone, use what you know to figure out what you need to do, and just explore the world in general, while experiencing the story at a leisurely pace. yes theres a time limit, but its not one that really matters.
now then, there is combat, but it's pretty rare and not great. it aims to be something inbetween streets of rage and tekken and to mixed results. like most of this game, i'm sure it was revolutionary at the time, but it comes off as very clunky and sometimes special moves can be really finnicky and just wont activate when you do them. the moves are direction-based and changes with the camera direction, and you do not control the camera, so fights usually end up being pretty sloppy when they do happen. its scarcity makes a big brawl feel very out of place as it barely prepares you to fight more than a few people at a time.
the real core of the game is going around and talking to people and everyone and everything having its own schedule, right down to the weather. going around and just talking to people all day and night might not seem very engaging, but frankly i find it fascinating and only makes it feel like even more of a "japan simulator". it's not without it's problems though. namely how often it just makes you wait. yeah i get it, it wants you to explore so you can stop and smell the roses. i get that. but i already do that at my own pace. let me give you an example of when this becomes a problem. very minor spoilers for the following paragraph.
so theres a point in the game where ryo needs to travel by plane, after gathering funds, i head to the travel agency at around 4pm or so. they tell me to come back in 4 hours. but they close at 7 so i need to come back tomorrow. the next day, i get up and wait till 10 to get inside, only to find different people there. they say they'll call me tomorrow. so i have nothing to do for the rest of the day and dont really have much money to do almost anything. and you can't even go to sleep and skip a day, you need to wait until night time before you can sleep. since i went into this game blind, i expected to be on the plane by this point and had everything i intended to already done by this point, so there wasn't really much i could do but wait... so i put my controller down, went to the bathroom, let my dog out, got a drink, made something to eat, let my dog out again because he's annoying, came back and it wasn't even night time yet. after more waiting, i can finally sleep and when i wake up, i'm told to go to the arcade and have to wait until noon for it to open, where i promptly get a cutscene that makes everything i did with the travel agency worthless. immediately after this i talk to some people that tell me to go to the harbor and find a job and then at the harbor im told to come back tomorrow. it's just filler.
which brings me to the game's story. i'll be brief on this as i want to avoid spoilers so anyone reading this can go in about as blind as i did, but the game's ambition is as much it's appeal as it is a detriment. the story is the best example of this, as it does grip you, especially if you arent playing with the atrocious dub, and i do wish to see how it plays out as i go through the game, but it takes itself so slowly and meanders so much that there's very little story actually being told. and i blame this on how overly ambitious it is as a franchise, as the amount of games that were planned is ludicrous, and being the first part of some big epic only means that things only feel like they're being built up, and there's not much resolution to be found. so much of this game is exploring the same 2 locations and talking to the same people with the actual story barely inching along, any progress made rarely feels like a step forward in the plot, it often feels like a side step. and by the time it ends, it feels like everything thats happened was just the first quarter of a story stretched out as much as possible. you never feel like the story is truly out of that first act until the game's over. but at the same time, i can kind of forgive that, as for a game this ambitious and for all the detail and care put into it, and just how outright innovative it is, scaling back the scope of the story so that more can be done in the sequel does make some sense.



with all that said, shenmue is a truly unique experience unlike any other, even today, it has its fair share of problems, and dated elements, but don't let that stop you from experiencing something like this. shenmue is a dreamcast classic for a reason.

also QTEs suck