Review
Platform tested: Xbox Series X
Released: 2018
Released: 2018
Original release: 2001 (Dreamcast), 2002 (Xbox)
Introduction
Continuing my journey through the Shenmue saga, Shenmue II is my next stop in this memorable series. I played it, back to back, with the first title in the remaster collection. As I mentioned in my review of the first Shenmue, read it here, I've briefly played the first couple of hours of the OG Xbox version of Shenmue II, back on the Xbox 360. Playing it entirely now, I recall a few of the opening scenes, but almost all of my, rather confusing, introduction to the series back then was forgotten.
Shenmue II is one of those sequels that stays extremely close to it's predecessor, even more so as it was co-developed in the production of the first game. Yet, it's obvious this it's a far more ambitious release in terms of scope and size. How does it play for a newcomer in our day and age and how does it stack up to my amazing experience of the first title?
Let's take a look at Shenmue II
Premise
The first game covered the beginning of the Shenmue saga, how Ryo's journey begins, ending with Ryo leaving Japan for China. The beginning of his search and revenge of his father's killer, Lan Di.
Shenmue II begins with Ryo arriving at the Aberdeen docks in Hong Kong, where he shortly after meets bubbly, red haired, Joy with a fast motorbike. Dismissing her help, Ryo's shortly after robbed and looses his money to a street gang. Slightly helpless, Joy ends up helping Ryo out, with a place to stay and getting work in a large and overwhelming city. A great way of portraying the vulnerability to Ryo, who's used to a small town, in a new and unfamiliar place of such vast size.
What becomes quickly apparent in Shenmue II, versus the slower pacing compared to the first game, is how the story is driven more directly forward. Scripted events occur more often to push the story on. It's a contrast to the first, where the player was often left wandering streets, asking around after help and figuring things out by yourself. It's a more cinematic approach and a way of aiding the player through the vast city of Hong Kong, yet a slightly unwelcome push towards linearity.
Along the way, you meet the calm and experienced martial arts expert Xiuying. She helps impatient and revengeful Ryo to learn, listen and become properly trained in order to have any chance at becoming a capable opponent to Lan Di. Ryo also meets the shady, but more comical and short tempered character Ren, a leader for the gang that robbed Ryo. At first he seems like a petty and shallow criminal, but as the story progresses you get to see more of his positive and admirable sides.
These are examples of Shenmue II's more diverse and larger cast of characters, each with more personality to them compared to Shenmue I, are a positive flip-side to the cutscene heavy linearity.
Shenmue II is set in three distinct locations: Hong Kong, Kowloon and, the ending part, the mountains of Guilin. Hong Kong is a vast city with lots of diversity in it's areas. You can visit the docks for work, it has a traditional Chinatown area, with all it's small quirky stores and food places, a soothing Temple area and even a modern area with high rise office buildings and a shopping mall.
Hong Kong is cleverly designed, utilising lots of colour and variation in buildings, packed with people walking about their daily life. It visually holds up well, even today, the sheer amount of volume and detail to the city must have been extremely impressive back in 2001.
Kowloon is the stark contrast to Hong Kong, a ghetto if you will, with gangs and worn down, decaying skyscrapers. Sadly, it becomes obvious that auto generation has been utilised for it's large indoor segments. As you start exploring the buildings, and delving into their massive structures inside, you realise nothing truly makes sense. Malfunctioning elevators force the player to take long, unnecessary routes to traverse these confusing and non-logical buildings.
For me, Kowloon was the most disappointing location, grinding the player to a tedious pace with fetch errands back and forth. At times, I wished they'd just made Hong Kong last longer and left out Kowloon. Then again, it gives a visual and atmospheric contrast between the cities.
Guilin is the end destination of Shenmue II and takes a different approach to how the game is played. Focusing on a two day walk, through thick woodlands over a mountain area, to reach a remote village. During this scenic walk you're accompanied by Shenhua, a girl you rescue from drowning in a river. At first, her simple, rural life, seems trivial, but then you discover that her place in the Shenmue saga is of great importance.
At a glance, it's a long, linear walk, but what it does for character depth, atmosphere and storytelling is incredible. This memorable part kinds of reminded me of the long staircase conversation up the Shinra tower in Final Fantasy 7.
Shenmue II covers a comprehensive amount of areas to visit, I enjoyed exploring them, but would've preferred more downtime from the main story too, making it worthwhile to work and go about daily errands, especially in Hong Kong. The Guilin mountain walk was an unexpected, and cherished, scene about a friendship growing between two complete strangers. The actual ending, though, is once again an open one with questions, but also very exciting to watch as much is revealed for the future games.
Gameplay and features
It's a sequel with little changes on the surface, yet when you get playing for an hour or two it's clear the development is bigger and bolder. Higher production quality on cutscenes and a narrative that leans pushes a cinematic and more linear approach than the open ended vibe of the first game.
Shenmue II is evidently close to the first game, in both controls and gameplay, varied slightly by new mini-game activities in each city, new arcade games to play and ways of earning money. Sadly, the forklift job is left out and sorely missed.
Shenmue II, cleverly, allows you to carry your save over from Shenmue I. A feature previously exclusive to Japanese Dreamcast owners, as the second game was never released outside of Japan on the console. This allows you to bring moves and items you've collected over, a feature new to most Shenmue players and a cool addition to this remaster.
There's some quality of life improvements too. The fighting controls are tighter and more precise, making it more entertaining to battle it out. Plus, they let you see your opponents life bar, giving you insight into how much of a beating the enemy needs before going down! I also appreciated that you can ask anybody on the street for directions and be shown the way in real time! Although, that feature kills some of the exploring aspect from the first game.
This remaster has merely seconds of loading when moving in and out of buildings, a much appreciated feature as the second game has a lot of interior locations, which I imagine made for long and frequent loading scenes back in the day.
The infamous quick time events make a return here and sadly for the worse. Not only are they far more frequent, they're also more complex. Thus ending in a ton of frustration through trial and error. I found the QTE's in Shenmue a small blast from the past in a fairly humorous way, while in Shenmue II it made me remember why I started hating them in the first place.
With the original loading times, and how frustrating these QTE segments are, they must have been a real pain back on the Dreamcast. Balancing up that wrecked building in Kowloon, on floor planks, still gives me nightmares!
Video
In the same fashion as the first game in this collection, visuals see a hefty bump in resolution. Up from 480p to 1080p, with a move from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratio. This version is based on the OG Xbox version of Shenmue II, which means you get the improved water effects, sunlight and shadows. A best of both worlds scenario. There's a 30fps lock again, although this version holds a rock solid framerate compared to the original release that really pushed the boundaries of the Dreamcast hardware.
Once again, auto HDR on my Xbox Series X does a great job at making lighting pop even more. The city night of Hong Kong is particular beautiful with HDR, with neon coloured signs and light sources everywhere! Add to this, a hardware forced 16xAF and those massive tiled open spaces keep their detail infinitely into the distance.
Visually, it's a more ambitious title than the first, featuring larger open areas, more complex street layouts and more buildings. There's far more variation in the locations, making the game show off some impressive diversity in colour and textures. Like I mentioned, Kowloon felt disappointingly random generated in it's modelling of interiors though.
Audio
We're treated to yet another fantastic soundtrack, just like the first title. Blending traditional Asian melodies with 90's electronic music from the era of midi styled gaming music. I'd recommend giving the official soundtrack a listen on Spotify if you've played through the game, to relive some of the beautiful music tracks!
Voice overs are much the same quality for the English selection as the first game. Again, it wasn't as bad as I feared, yet it sounds dated compared to modern equivalents. The flow of the conversation sounded a bit better this time around, though still retaining some of the oddness of Ryo repeating what has just been said.
Summary
More ambitious, with a larger chunk of the story told, Shenmue II is just as great as the first, though without the charming familiarisation of Ryo's small hometown. The story is paced faster, with more ground covered quickly, in larger locations than before. While I personally enjoyed the slower pace in the first game, it's understandable that the second title wants to move the plot forward in a bigger leap. Especially, when you take into consideration the massive scope of a seven part story, that Yu Suzuki originally intended this to become!
It's absolutely a must to play the first game prior to this, to fully appreciate and understand this sequel. Luckily, being so close in development it's nice to see they're so alike in gameplay dynamic, jumping from one to the next feels like swapping a CD in a long game!
Shenmue II continues the series unique magic of blending a living world with an intriguing story. While, at the same time, making the player understand the struggle of how young Ryo copes with the overwhelming task of hunting down Lan Di. Alongside the first title, they're both historic landmarks in gaming, but once again, maybe not for everyone.
On to Shenmue 3 at a later point then, until then, I can warmly recommend this HD remaster package of both Shenmue I&II!
