The power button on my Dreamcast emits a glow. The warm, rosy glow of nostalgia for a time when game progress was saved on Memory Cards, a time before HD televisions, when online gaming was done with a 56k modem, and controllers still had wires. Hardcore gamers talk about the Dreamcast the way that car lovers talk about a ’57 Chevy, the way that junkies talk about that first pure high. That high was powerful, but short-lived; the Dreamcast debuted in 1999, but was already done with by 2001. The game that best represented this doomed console was Shenmue.
It’s been over a decade since I finished Shenmue. I vaguely recall it was about a quest to avenge the death of my father. It ended with a cliffhanger, but a sequel was put out in 2002 that continued the story. Alas, Shenmue II was only released for Japanese and European Dreamcasts. Eventually it was ported to the original Xbox in America, however I had lost interest in it by the time that happened. I wasn’t the only American gamer who wasn’t interested in Shenmue II on Xbox; it didn’t seem to captivate the swarms of Halo fanboys. All that changed when one day I found Shenmue II in a bargain bin for five dollars. I had intended to play it when Shenmue 3 was announced, something that seemed quite likely at the time, but increasingly less plausible over the last decade. And then, last week Shenmue’s designer Yu Suzuki indicated that he could buy the rights to the franchise. This is as close as we’ve ever come to Shenmue 3!
The time had come for me to continue my quest for vengeance!
The Xbox edition of Shenmue II includes a DVD which compiles all of the cutscenes from the first game, and boy am I glad it does. After ten years I pretty much forgot everything that happened in Shenmue except something about forklifts.
It was theoretically about Ryo Hazuki’s search for revenge against the martial arts master who killed his father, but Ryo was an easily-distracted young man. Rather than charging ahead on the path to adventure, he often stopped to race forklifts, eat snackfood, play with kittens, and shovel quarters into classic games at the local arcade. He finally tracked his father’s killers to Hong Kong and the game ended with him embarking on a journey across the sea.
Shenmue II picked up right where the first one ended and while continuing the story, looked and played almost exactly the same. It was released just a year after the Xbox launched and was graphically a step behind most of its contemporaries. It looked on par with the best of the Dreamcast’s lineup, but the graphics are just plain terrible by the standards of 2012. Principle characters like Ryo look and animate well, but passersby on the street are blocky, almost like Lego people.
I had braced myself for disappointing graphics, but I was surprised by the bad controls. The Dreamcast only had one analog stick, and it was located right above the D-Pad. Either the stick or pad could be used to control movement, and the camera would (hypothetically) follow automatically. The Xbox had two analog sticks, and most third person Xbox games use the left stick for movement and the right stick to control the camera. When Shenmue II was brought to the Xbox it would seem natural to make use of the second stick. Sadly this did not happen and players are left to the mercy of the auto-camera, with Ryo often walking into walls or fighting opponents he can’t see.
The voicework is another problem. Most of the interactions are flat and emotionless, while others are overblown. It’s a significant step down from the first game.
Those are my only complaints, though. Despite its dated controls, terrible dubbing, and bad graphics, Shenmue II remains an engrossing, epic story. It uses free roaming gameplay in which Ryo must run around Hong Kong speaking with townsfolk to find clues about the mysteries surrounding his father’s death. This gameplay set the stage for sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto, and later RPGs like Morrowind and Skyrim. Even games like Mass Effect owe big debt to the Shenmue franchise.
Although Ryo settles most of his problems by talking to people (Such a polite boy!), he must occasionally resort to just beating information out of people. When the fights start, Shenmue II switches to a 3D fighting mode that plays a lot like Dead or Alive or Virtua Fighter (In fact the Shenmue series originally started as a spin-off of Virtua Fighter). The fighting system is just as complex any such game from the same time period and fighting game fans will enjoy the (rare) opportunities to cut loose and pound away on people who get in Ryo’s way.
Despite the fact that you play a Jujitsu expert, Shenmue II is still very boring at times. It’s a paradox, but the game is both engrossing and dull. It uses a day/night cycle, and has a very conservative economy, which means that every morning Ryo has to get up, go to work, then carry out his investigations before bed time. In the first Shenmue, Ryo’s day job was driving a fork lift, which seemed mind-numbing at the time, but in the sequel the day jobs are even worse, like slowly carrying crates by hand.
But these aren’t actually complaints; Shenmue II gives players a taste of what it must feel like to be on an epic quest where each goal is earned, and nothing is just handed to you. Even learning new fighting techniques requires practising them over and over until mastered. It’s a game to be savored, not powered through in a weekend marathon session. Between his work, sleep and adventuring, Ryo has a vast city to explore and endless diversions to waste both his time and yours for days on end.
The great tragedy in playing Shenmue II so long after release is that it ends with yet another cliff hanger and the final installment is nowhere in sight despite Yu Suzuki’s hints earlier this month. There’s always talk of Shenmue 3, and Shenmue Online, there was even a short-lived Shenmue World that ended last month, but actual development isn’t happening.
The first game in the series is certainly worth buying an old Dreamcast just to play it, and Xbox 360 owners will find that Shenmue II plays fairly well using the backwards compatibility feature (There are slow-downs, graphical glitches, and it must be run in 480p resolution). Even though these games can be found used for their old platforms, Shenmue parts I and II should be at the top of Sega’s list of games that deserve HD remakes.
Check in with The Backlog next week when I take a look at the Swedish RPG Magicka and see how it has developed with the constant stream of DLC packs that appeared since it released last year.
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