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An original game that has some good ideas, but definately isn't for everyone.

User Rating: 7 | Shenmue: Isshou Yokosuka DC

By stevencompton | Review Date: July 29, 2009

In Shenmue you are Ryo Hazuki. Basically, your father gets killed by a Lan Di for a stone mirror. Ryo decides to get revenge on Lan Di and goes after him. From there you are free to wander around and investigate, mostly by asking the locals and beating up thugs and finding items. There is a Virtua Fighter style fighting system in the game, QTE (quick time events) that are action sequences that require you to quickly press a certain button to make something happen in the clip, and the main mode is the free quest that you interact with the game world and investigate to progress through the game. In the game you can go shopping to buy music, fighting moves and a selection of other things. You can also go and play some old Sega arcade games in the arcade, like Space Harrier and Hang On, collect items and practice your fighting skills to make Ryo stronger and even phone people like the weather forecast.

Whilst there is this freedom in the game the actual plot is very linear. The plot is interesting and paced reasonibly well, but lacks strong characters. The main issue with Shenmue is that the style of the game can become boring when there isn't much to do, like when you are waiting for something to happen and sometimes you end up just randomly running around untill you bump into a senario. Even though it is a 4 disc game it is still a quite short that first time through will probably around 10 hours if you just follow the story without wandering around (as I did) and if you know what you are doing you can get through it in much less time, and once you have completed it and know the story there isn't much insentive to play through it again.

The controls can be clumsy in tighter situations as it uses the d pad for walking and turning and the L trigger for walking and running, but once you learn to live with it it isn't much of an issue. The fighting in the game is good; there is a decent set of moves and it plays well, though the camera can sometimes become confusing as it sweeps around to the other side of Ryo, but overall the fighting works well.

Graphically, the game is very good for the Dreamcast. The main charcters are well detailed, and generally the enviroments are just as good. But there is a lot of fading in, the local people that wander around just appear in front of you and sometimes you can't avoid bumping into them, the framerate is also inconsistant and drops significantly whilst running around where there is a lot of people, luckly it doesn't affect the fighting sequences.

The sound quality overall is good; the music works very well to set the feel to the game and sound effects are ok. But the voice acting can be terrible; whilst some of the more important charaters aren't too bad the general public are slow and the way the sentences are delivered is lacking.

If you can accept its flaws and enjoy adventure/rpgs, then you are sure to enjoy this game. It has some great original ideas which are definately worth experiencing if you enjoy the genre.

PAL Review

>1 Player
>Uses 80 memory card blocks
>VGA compatible

>Age rating: 11+

Shenmue

An original game that has some good ideas, but definately isn't for everyone.

worth buying a dreamcast !

Calling this a Revolutionary is a understatment