Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2018Originally released: 1999 (Dreamcast)
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2018
Released: 2018
Originally released: 1999 (Dreamcast)
Introduction
The time has come to address the elephant, or behemoth if you like, in the room. It's about my love for all things Sega and my embarrassing lack of having played one of it's most beloved and famous series of all time. Born out of the master mind, Yu Suzuki, of Hang-On, Space Harrier, OutRun, Daytona USA, Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter fame. We're, of course, talking about Shenmue.
Yes, hands up, time to admit one of my biggest gaming sins: I haven't played Shenmue before! My only, rather confusing, experience with the series is watching Shenmue: The Movie DVD alongside a two hour session of the OG Xbox version of Shenmue 2, running backwards compatibility on a Xbox 360! This was way back in 2007 and I can't recall any of it.
Fast forward to 2021 and I came across the Shenmue I & II collection on sale. I decided to finally jump in and give it my all. After all, the series wasn't really that accessible anymore, prior to this Sega remaster in conjunction with the Shenmue 3 release. Open minded and remembering this is a 22 year old title, I went in with my expectations adjusted accordingly.
Let me finally take a dive into, deep breath, Shenmue I.
Premise
There's not really a spoiler tag needed for what is revealed in the first five minutes of Shenmue, the premise for the entire franchise. The main character, Ryo Hazuki, witnesses his father, Iawo Hazuki, arguing with a mysterious Kung Fu master named Lan Di. They're having a heated discussion about a Dragon Mirror artefact. The disagreement escalates to violence and ends with Ryo's dad being murdered by Lan Di, whom proceeds to grab the mirror and hastily leaves the family estate.
Thus begins Ryo's search for his fathers killer and his revenge upon him.
It's actually a simple revenge story at it's core: a bitter son avenging his fathers death. What becomes apparent though, is that the task in hand is a massive undertaking for a young man in his late teens, only familiar with his home town of Yokosuka, set in 1986.
Who was Lan Di? Why did he kill his dad? Where does Ryo even begin? Who does he ask to find more information? These, almost overwhelming, questions are indeed all you have to go by as you leave your safe haven of home.
Shenmue builds it's world in a fantastic way, allowing the player to gradually familiarise themselves with the town surrounding Ryo's home estate. Walking down from his beautiful home, complete with a lovely garden, a fish pond, a cherry blossom tree and it's own training Dojo. Down windy streets, through rows of houses in a village, down to busy town centre called Dobuita, complete with a shopping street, an arcade, bars and restaurants.
The strength of Shenmue lies within how it, not only, depicts this small open world, but also how it builds atmosphere through allowing the player to get close familiarity with these areas. Learning to live in Ryo's town and find clues. Atmosphere is further enriched by a day and night cycle, changing weather and a set time frame the player has to adjust their exploration around.
As a player you know as little as Ryo, but begin to ask around in this living town, and the story slowly unfolds. NPCs walk about their daily life, many buildings are accessible and work hours leave places open from eight to five. While bars and restaurants remain open during the evening. It's a mini, living world, that impressively immerses you, even many years after the game's release.
Gameplay and features
Shenmue is a difficult game experience to explain for those who have never played it. It's unlike most others and perhaps why people are equally intrigued, or oppositely, put off when hearing about it. The main objective is talking, exploring and finding clues to progress the story. You are always in search of information that will lead you towards Lan Di, but there are many daily life chores and events that stand before knowing the truth.
Combined with an almost detective-like adventure, are smaller mini-game encounters. Such as Kung Fu fights occurring along the way, requiring Ryo to train in his Dojo, to better stand a chance in a fight. They feel a lot like a 3D fighter, albeit in hindsight they could have needed more controller finesse.
There's also a large number of quick time events, after all, Shenmue basically invented them. Luckily, these are easy and forgiving with unlimited retries. I don't like QTEs at all, but they weren't overly annoying here. There's also daily tasks, like going to work to earn money. Driving a fork lift all through a work day, strangely enough, turned out to be is surprisingly fun.
Speaking of a work day, Shenmue has a timer and requires Ryo to explore from early morning to late in the evening, before having to go home to bed. This time schedule may sound intimidating, but it's easy to manage. Most encounters are set to various times in a day, at certain locations. Ryo has to check his watch and meet up to speak to the right people at the right time.
This encourages to spend time exploring side stories and hanging about the streets of the town, while waiting for the next encounter of the main story. It may sound like a chore, but this is what makes the experience unique, setting a relaxed pacing to the daily life. Requiring patience from the player.
Another player requirement, typical for older 3D games, is growing accustomed to their antiquated controls. Seeing past the quirks and stiffness of tank controls and accepting it for what it was. Shenmue is no different, and while there's a fairly low number of actual buttons in use, eventually you get the hang of controlling Ryo. There's a lack of finesse when wanting to do smaller precise movements, it sure would have benefited from having Lara Croft's side steps from her first series of Tomb Raider!
On the reverse side of dated features, there are some neat perks to playing this modern remaster. Saving and loading is super quick, basically instantaneous. You can simply save before a task you're unsure about, do a mistake, exit the game to the start screen and load yourself back in a matter of seconds. Loading is basically removed, making navigating in and out of buildings far more pleasant. I could imagine the original being really tedious with long loading screens.
There's tons of detail to explore, even by today's standards. People to talk to and observe their daily habits, every single NPC has a daily routine you can observe! There are shops to buy items in and fun time wasters like an arcade with Sega classics to play!
Speaking of items, I would've liked more management and actual use of them. It's mainly about asking people to find clues rather than using a certain item at various points, although there are a couple of these along the way. However, items like food, drinks and collecting plastic toys, cool details indeed, serve no actual purpose.
Video
I'm certain this game would have blew my mind back in 1999 with it's visuals. Being a pre-PlayStation 2 era title and all. Imagine going from sparse PS1 visuals to this on a Dreamcast!
This remaster bumps the 480p visuals from the Dreamcast, up to a healthy 1080p. A much needed improvement when moving from small CRT TVs of the 90s, to large flatscreens of current times. Aspect ratio is upped from 4:3 to 16:9, giving you a wider and more practical view of your surroundings. That said, scripted cutscenes are limited to 4:3 with black borders. You can indeed lock the whole game to 4:3, should you prefer the traditional look.
Sadly, it's been animated to work at 30fps back in the day and this remaster does not change that. A 60fps Shenmue would've been lovely, especially considering it has this beautiful Sega Model 3 arcade aesthetic to it's art direction and visuals. If you're familiar with the 3D modelling of Sega's CGI of this era, and it's 3D in-game models in their arcade titles, you instantly recognise the lovely art direction!
This version offers no upgrades for enhanced consoles and, as such, has visual parity on all consoles it's released for. I played it on my Xbox Series X, luckily receiving automatic benefits like Auto HDR, which looks fantastic on light sources and night scenes, and a 16xAF upgrade for textures into the distance. There's an added bloom effect for more vivid colours and light sources in this remaster, which works well in conjunction with the Auto HDR of Series X/S, but it can be deactivated for purists.
Overall, the original textures and artwork shine through even better in this remaster. Showcasing how incredible it looked back in the day! Texture work is well done, with lots of geometry in the surrounding town, combined with a large number of onscreen characters. It's impressively more of a 2000s era title visually, than late 90s. Then again, this was Sega's golden age in 3D graphics.
The super fast loading, when entering in and out of areas or buildings, is further enhanced with the SSD in my new Xbox Series X. But in general, across all the modern consoles, the loading times are massively upgraded from the Dreamcast.
Audio
The remaster let's you choose between English or Japanese voice overs and subtitles, giving players who imported the DC originals the best of both worlds. I mostly prefer hearing spoken English and opted for that option, even though people had warned me about cheesy sounding dialogues. However, I was pleasantly surprised that it was absolutely fine!
Although I'm quite used to voice overs from this era being varying quality, and sure, some of the less important NPC characters have awkward voices. In general though, I found the dialogue to be fine quality, it was more the odd pacing and Ryo repeating himself in conversations, that stood out.
The music score is beautiful and with names like Yuzo Koshiro, behind some of the tracks, you know it's on a good path before even hearing it. Blending traditional Asian styled music, I'm guessing from both Japan and China, and 90's electronic, midi-like, game music, gives it a unique style. A lot of the melodies are very recognisable and have a catchy and pleasant sound to them. I found myself listening to the score on Spotify a few times, outside of playing the game, which must be a good sign.
Sound effects are typical from this era, nothing standing out there.
Summary
I've indeed seen the light and really enjoyed my playthrough of Shenmue. For sure, it's a game a lot of young players could easily not enjoy and I wouldn't blindly recommend it for everyone. Although the image quality is tidied up in this remaster, the actual gameplay is not, requiring the experience of old 3D titles to accept the quirks.
The pacing of the story and gameplay requires patience to sink into, to fully appreciate the atmosphere in Ryo's little world. Once you do, you become part of this everyday town life and it's a fantastic feeling, hanging out in 80's Japan. It's a tiny window into a young persons life, surrounded by the vastness of the world he's about to step into.
Shenmue might not do all it's gameplay styles perfectly, when viewed individually, but combined, with it's variety in tasks and filmatic storytelling, through an intriguing story, it all comes together in greatness. While we don't get an ending, this was planned as a seven part series after all, this first release takes a steady pace to introduce us to a unique setting in a satisfying 20+ hour playthrough.
I loved Shenmue, but it's clearly not for everyone and it's a game you simply have to sit down with an hour or two, to see if it captivates. When it does though, you're in for a treat unlike most!
