Shenmue: A Reflection

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I recently purchased the remastered Shenmue 1 and 2 for the PS4. I bought the game mostly because I wanted to relive the experience I had playing Shenmue 2 on my old Xbox back when I was an elementary school student. However, I had never played the first Shenmue game, and I was intrigued to play this game based on everything I had heard about it up to this point. Therefore, I gave the game a shot, and here is my reflection.

Shenmue was one of the prototypes of what I consider the modern cinematic video game. It had a massive budget at the time of $70 million (USD), and there was heavy investment in graphics, environmental detail, and various audio components such as voice acting and a soundtrack. Because of this, Shenmue was a video game that was ahead of its time on a system (Sega Dreamcast) that was also ahead of its time. Sega took the ground-breaking 3D character modelling from Virtua Fighter and expanded it to include an open world to explore, as well as some RPG elements. It is difficult for me to judge its graphics and audio for a game released in the year 2000. When comparing to today's standards, the graphics are awful, the audio sounds muffled, and the voice acting is hilariously bad (though I did sense some honest effort in the voice acting). Nonetheless, back in 2000, there was no other game that could compare to the graphics and audio of Shenmue.

The story still holds up well, but the execution of this story was poor. After witnessing the death of his father, Ryo Hazuki goes on a revenge quest to search for his father's killer. The majority of the gameplay revolves around you (Ryo) running around the open world asking various people on the streets, in buildings, and in shops about clues and obtaining new information on his travels. This was mind-numbingly tedious, and it completely took me out of the experience. The game was slow-paced in the cut-scenes (you cannot skip them), the gameplay (running around asking questions to a number of people), and in the time-sensitive events, where the game operated on a running day/night clock. Sometimes, I had to wait a long time in-game for a certain time so that an event can occur to progress the story. Shenmue is not a game for players with short attention spans.

With the laborious gameplay, there are some things within the game that can distract you in a positive way. One of my favorite things to do to pass the time is to play the old Sega video games in the arcade (I particularly liked playing Hang-On). The game has many hidden cut-scenes to discover, adding a bit of depth of the minor characters of the game. Shenmue also has enough attention to detail that you can open drawers and cabinets, as well as inspect items at shops and buildings. You can also practice your fighting as well.

Shenmue was also responsible for popularizing one of my most hated video game mechanics, which is the quick time event (or QTE). The QTE is a lazy attempt for a video game developer to insert interaction within a cut-scene or cinematic event. However, QTEs usually end up removing a player's interest in a cut-scene, as well as not provide enough variety of input in a character's actions. The QTEs have little reward if you succeed, and have large consequences if you fail. Failures normally result in a game over or a loss of a life. I will admit that there was some effective use of QTEs in this game, such as chase scenes, but most of the time, the QTEs felt like a chore to complete.

Other things to note: I found the controls frustrating. It was difficult for me to orient my character to get him to go where I want him to go. The fighting seemed a bit broken as well, in the sense that I cannot seem to block any of my opponent’s attacks.

Shenmue is the embodiment of the quote "Never meet your heroes" for me. Shenmue paved the way for the success of many open-world sandbox games, such as the Grand Theft Auto series and the Yakuza series (which I consider the spiritual successor to the Shenmue games, as Sega developed and published these games). I thought it would have been awesome to play the game that popularized the open-world genre of video games. Unfortunately, I felt disappointed, frustrated, and bored by Shenmue due to its tedious execution of its story, wonky controls, and over-use of QTEs. I will not recommend this game to younger, curious gamers.