Sorry if this has been done many, many times before, but I thought that I would just share my experience with Shenmue II.
There were a couple people who saw my post about playing Shenmue II in the New Users topic, but I decided to finally complete Shenmue II for the first time (on the other hand, I have beaten Shenmue I three times. ).
I had played it before, but on the X360. I stopped once I got to Kowloon a few years back because I was finding the X360 controller to be waaaay too precise and hypersensitive, which made mini games and QTEs to be incredibly difficult for me and also the emulation being poor (with the music cutting out all the time) made the experience less enjoyable.
But after the FFVIIR/Shenmue III announcement and completing FFVII once again, I got myself an original Xbox and played through both games. The experience was much more enjoyable this time and you guys weren't kidding about Kowloon being awesome. That was some of the best fun I've had in a video game in a long time, especially the Yellow Head Building.
I think the tone of the game grew on me more this time around. I am a really big fan of the very detailed world of Shenmue I where we know everyone and their daily schedules and was kinda disappointed to see that kinda went away in the second game. This time around, I kinda understand now that was meant to represent a new and unknown world to Ryo and that it wasn't meant to be that detailed. At the same time, it was still as big (and even bigger) than Shenmue I in different ways and I was able to enjoy some of the open world stuff that was presented in Shenmue II in new and different ways.
Glad I was finally able to complete it this time around and I truly enjoyed it this time around. I can't wait what Shenmue III has to offer.