Shenmue 1 & 2 as a whole IS my favourite game of all time and has been since I played them. I'm wondering is that due to nostalgia? Am I so stubborn that I can't possibly see any other game taking it's place as my favourite? I don't think so, if a game came out today and managed to immerse me into it's world the same way Shenmue did then that game would take it's place as my favourite but I do understand the fact that I played Shenmue when I was 14 years old and it was a helluva lot easier to impress me back then, I am a cynical, desensitised 28 year old now and I wonder if it's possible a video game could touch me like Shenmue did back when I was 14. Looking at The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild maybe this could be the game to do it? But I highly doubt it. Shenmue had a uniqueness that made that world feel alive and I don't know if that uniqueness can be replaced.
My question is could a game come out and top Shenmue 1 & 2 being your favourite game of all time? This is a question to those on this forum that consider the franchise their favourite of course.
I started playing Yakuza to fill the void of Shenmue just because someone said they were similar. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you get a bit of a Shenmue moment.. but I quickly found that I was enjoying the game on its own merit. I got Yakuza 2, completed that and went out and bought a PS3 just for Yakuza 3,4 & 5. I purchased a PS4 just for Yakuza 0. Shenmue gave me a reason to try these games out but I never expected to fall in love with them in the same way. I now look forward to Yakuza 6 just as much as Shenmue 3.
It's entirely possible for something to come along that could top Shenmue for me, but it won't be easy, nor do I see it happening any time soon. Shenmue has been my favourite game since completing it back in 2000, and while I've played an awful lot of games since then - Braid, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, BioShock, Tales of Vesperia, Fallout 3, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne sticking out as some absolutely incredible titles - simply nothing has even come close to topping it.
I've gushed about my adoration for the game on here many times before, but the one thing I think all Shenmue fans will agree on is the seemingly unexplainable 'magic' running through the game, and that is one of the most important aspects in our love for it.
There are already games in my list that at times rivals and surpasses Shenmue at the top spot, but in the long run I ended up treading back to Shenmue. And that's mainly due to how much I remember genuinely loving it when I first layed eyes on the game and over the years I thought a lot about it, collecting memorabilia and watching any Yu Suzuki video or reading any interview at the chance that it would shed light on the plot and fates of Ryo & company. So it has been a long metagame relationship going on growing old with this game, and one I would not replace that easily with another game.
Sentimentality aside, Shenmue IS one of the best games ever made (and not just for the time it was released) and I could argue that opinion with anyone in a critical way without relying on nostalgia.
sand4fish wrote: Sentimentality aside, Shenmue IS one of the best games ever made (and not just for the time it was released) and I could argue that opinion with anyone in a critical way without relying on nostalgia.
I'm not gonna argue - I agree with you - but I'd love to hear your argument/opinion regardless
ShenGCH wrote: I'm not gonna argue - I agree with you - but I'd love to hear your argument/opinion regardless
Sure, I'll not do a complete in depth analysis as I might ended up writing an essay but I'll try to give you an overall critical opinion.
First Shenmue is an evolution of its peers of the adventure genre, the one Shenmue belongs to and not action RPG, in terms of complexity and scope. Adventure games like the Monkey Island series were pretty much collections of static screens with pixel hunting and often out of context puzzels as their primary play mechanics, while the extra dimension in Shenmue along with its free roaming aspect allowed us to explore a close to life town sized world. In Shenmue the simple act of meeting different NPCs at different times of the day, time flow and the variety of mechanics (QTE, fighting, racing) present far more complexity than not just the adventure games of old but the modern ones as well, now mostly dubbed simply as walking simulators for a reason. Even comparing the "Open World" aspect to games of different genres, Shenmue is often ahead of the curve. Ryo reaches "quest" destinations and navigate the world through looking at directory map posts spread across town and asking npcs for directions, just like how a real person living in the 80s would do, while most avatars of modern open world games seem to be equipped with some kind of Terminator brain chip that can track and point to every interactable item, npc and objective with arrows on screen, indicating distance to target and displaying names even before getting to meet such npcs for the first time. And not only that feature is not good enough, these games also have a built-in tracking GPS mini-map on its UI even if it might border on SciFi rather than a prehistoric or fantasy setting (I'm looking at you The Witcher 3 and Far Cry Primal). Players ended spending so much time looking at a GPS when they could really focus the attention to its world's surroundings (one of the joys for gaming at all), so there you are a good reason why Shenmue may look so much more memorable than other games. In the end, it may seem plodding to some, but which game of this kind really has the more elegant design and it is the most immersive? I say Shenmue.
ShenGCH wrote: I'm not gonna argue - I agree with you - but I'd love to hear your argument/opinion regardless
Sure, I'll not do a complete in depth analysis as I might ended up writing an essay but I'll try to give you an overall critical opinion.
First Shenmue is an evolution of its peers of the adventure genre, the one Shenmue belongs to and not action RPG, in terms of complexity and scope. Adventure games like the Monkey Island series were pretty much collections of static screens with pixel hunting and often out of context puzzels as their primary play mechanics, while the extra dimension in Shenmue along with its free roaming aspect allowed us to explore a close to life town sized world. In Shenmue the simple act of meeting different NPCs at different times of the day, time flow and the variety of mechanics (QTE, fighting, racing) present far more complexity than not just the adventure games of old but the modern ones as well, now mostly dubbed simply as walking simulators for a reason. Even comparing the "Open World" aspect to games of different genres, Shenmue is often ahead of the curve. Ryo reaches "quest" destinations and navigate the world through looking at directory map posts spread across town and asking npcs for directions, just like how a real person living in the 80s would do, while most avatars of modern open world games seem to be equipped with some kind of Terminator brain chip that can track and point to every interactable item, npc and objective with arrows on screen, indicating distance to target and displaying names even before getting to meet such npcs for the first time. And not only that feature is not good enough, these games also have a built-in tracking GPS mini-map on its UI even if it might border on SciFi rather than a prehistoric or fantasy setting (I'm looking at you The Witcher 3 and Far Cry Primal). Players ended spending so much time looking at a GPS when they could really focus the attention to its world's surroundings (one of the joys for gaming at all), so there you are a good reason why Shenmue may look so much more memorable than other games. In the end, it may seem plodding to some, but which game of this kind really has the more elegant design and it is the most immersive? I say Shenmue.
Excellent write-up, man! Completely agree with Shenmue being an evolution of the adventure genre; unlike the games of that genre with obtuse, abstract, and quite frankly silly puzzles you'll find plastered throughout the likes of Monkey Island and Discworld - very few of which make any logical sense; it's simply a case of the puzzles' creator(s) not being able to separate what's going on in their own heads from how players will view them, which is pretty ignorant, I've always found - Shenmue's puzzles (the progression from finding the key in Iwao's room to working out how to access the basement, for example) make perfect sense and gel seamlessly with the flow.
Same goes for the bare-bones HUD and lack of a mini-map. I remember ranting some time ago about how implementing a mini-map in a remaster of the first game would be deeply flawed and go completely against what the game stands for; instead of relying on the intelligence of players, as well as respecting their freedom to explore and put the pieces together for themselves, it would become a completely watered-down A-to-B affair. I sincerely hope they don't implement many contemporary open-world elements into Shenmue III.
Thank you . I'm not against all mini-maps style features in gaming, but they have to be implemented in a way that improves immersion rather than detract me from it for the sake of convenience. Great examples would be Dead Space and Far Cry 2. Anyway, Shenmue doesn't require GPS tracking mini-maps because it would render the npcs useless of their main design function (that is to point the player to the right direction) and as an adventure game Ryo doesn't have the necessity to back track from one major area/city to another as once he is done with that hub, he moves on and never looks back as seen in the player's progression of Shenmue 2. So those features would be simply useless.
My hopes for Shenmue 3 are quite high as I'm glad Yu Suzuki does not keep up with gaming convention trends as he doesn't even play games at all, so I'm somewhat confident we will not see such features for his games.