Welcome to our review of Shenmue 1 and 2, recently ported to Playstation 4 and Xbox one, a classic series from the golden age of gaming!
Before I start my review on this title, it should be noted that I played and own the PAL games on Dreamcast. This was actually ages ago and I mostly remember getting annoyed by the loading times and the amazing graphics. My review will be from the point of view of comparing this game to modern day games and see how it compares. The second game scores an 88% average on Metacritic and is considered one of the best games of the era. So needless to say these are must-own games!
The games themselves are an amazing piece of art for the era it was released in and are widely considered to be some of the best games ahead of their time. So let me be clear, I am not reviewing the storylines for this article, but specifically how the ports of Shenmue behave against a current day game of the genre.
I do not remember the voice acting to be so tacky in Shenmue 1 and sounding like a Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer movie or a dubbed Jackie Chan movie from early on in his career. Once I changed this in the settings, which I did not manage to do on my first try. Surprisingly enough, I had to do it outside the game and continue, I had much better Japanese audio. Still a little echo, like it was an overlay, but much better. The second game did not appear to have this issue.
Obviously, modern games do not have this, but it was not disturbing in any way. It felt more comedic than anything. I did notice the voice acting did feel cold and as this is a port, this was not changed. Again, nothing that caught me off guard, we are talking a game of 2 decades ago after all.
What I actually noticed most, how much the camera viewpoint and general movement have improved over the years. Shenmue actually had a bit of a weird way to control with the PS4 controller. You need to physically walk around with your character in order to look at your surroundings in a direct way. Sure, you can pane the view a little, but that felt awfully clunky to me. Compared to other games from its era, it was mostly novel and fresh. Compared to now, clunky and old. I love how well the industry has adapted to new technologies and it is by playing this masterpiece that I got more appreciation than ever before for the work that goes into games like these.
Probably my biggest gripe with some games and Shenmue on Dreamcast was no exception, but overly long loading times are something I hate. Dreamcast was notorious for them, current gen consoles sometimes have them. Certain games do insist you wait a very long time before you get to it. But Shenmue on Ps4, damn, that was smooth. Opening doors, entering other rooms, your settings, …. Never any real delay or anything noticeable. I loved it very much.
There you have it, my comparison review of Shenmue versus current-gen software with a splash of Dreamcast nostalgia. The games themselves are great, groundbreaking titles from 2 decades ago that still shine today. If you have not picked up these games before, do grab em now. They are awesome additions to any collection and on top of it, cheap too.
As this is a review too, I also have to rate things obviously. So what I did, I looked purely at the storyline and compared it with all my previously written points. A great game (both 1 and 2) versus a dated handling mechanism. The story still took the upper hand and keeping that incredibly low price point in mind, the score I would like to give is 90% for both games together.
(88 for the first and 92 for the second, which is bigger and a little better)
Now go buy these games if you are into retro, they are among the best you can buy right now!
