First game has way to much time waster padding. And literally pointless interactions because 90% interactive of objects in the world dont acualy do anything. On top of having little to no actual action segments or fighting outside of practice mode. This game kinda advertised as a kungu game but its less of a kung fu game and more of one of those Japanese stile experimental Adventure game. As in you dont acualy solve puzzles as much as you just walk from point A to point B and press the interact button most of the time and as mentioned you get like super brief action segments and mandatory time wasting.
Second game manages to remove the time wasting seeing as you can skip time when neadded and even fast travel to an extent. But at the same time it kept the action to a minimum still boiling down to walk from point and to point B and press button to trigger the next walk from point A to point B segment. Only thing interesting about it is that you dont just get way-point but have to ask for direction from people on the street. Game play often just feels like a literal walking simulator. And occasionally you have to do annoying mandatory mingimes. Like having to carry book out of a shed which can take up to 10 minutes like 6 times minimum over the course of 6 days.
I am an old boy so i can kinda enjoy the game on the whole immersion and originality thing alone. But i understand why this game didn't appeal to a lot of people. Hell even if it was released on a more popular console over the DC it still would have flopped.
In short games are basically a ton of tedium and time wasting for short snippets of actual action or story.
I’m emulating this game on Dreamcast and holy shit the controls are so bad. Even just walking around feels terrible.
Asher Allen
They didn't flop, they were huge hits that sold millions. It just wasn't enough to save the failing Dreamcast. Zoomers are so fucking stupid.
Jaxon Gray
Yea the MC controlls like a Car not a human. Hell i even play the game like a Driving game as in R or trigger button for running and moving around and analog stick for turning.
Lucas Sullivan
First game sold like barely over 1 mill. Which is still impressive for its time but i imagine it still mostly because the game is a technical marvel for its time.
Samuel Carter
It had, for its time, decent sales, but also an insanely high budget, so it wasn’t able to break even.
Dominic White
yeah this series had good reasons to fail. On top of what you said, the story is slow as fuck. shenmue 1 is like the first chapter of a normal rpg. I loved it back then because playing "real life" was a dream come true, but even then i think i was more involved in Omikron.
Noah Nguyen
I'd still like to play Shenmue 3 and see how the story plays out
Adam Cooper
This is one of those games where it is honestly more fun to watch someone on Twitch play. you get to enjoy the game while not experiencing the awful controls and tedium.
That was a problem with games like these at that time, characters felt like robots. Using the run button and using the analog stick for the camera helps Ryo's controls by a lot
Still, when Shenmue 2 was released DC was in its dying days. America never got DC version either, europe got it by luck thanks to a publisher
Jacob Morales
>On top of having little to no actual action segments or fighting outside of practice mode
This is the main legitimate criticism of the first game: it has way too little actual fighting for its elaborate fighting system, especially in the first half. Instead it has QTE fake "fights": if each of these were replaced with a real fight, the game would be much better balanced.
Eli Rivera
>And literally pointless interactions because 90% interactive of objects in the world dont acualy do anything.
It would have been nice and added to the interaction if you could eat in restaurants and buy objects like in Yakuza just to make the game feels more alive. The world they created is still impressive for a dreamcast game but I hope they expand on it in Shenmue 3 and possibly future ones.
Grayson Brooks
I'll give a Gen Z perspective on the first one. It still does hold up, but spending your youth with released that derived important concepts from Shenmue makes you a little blind to how impressive the game was at the time. People cite Yakuza a lot when it comes to this topic, but I'd say Rockstar games is where this really comes to shine. The appeal of Shenmue isn't just exploring Japanese streets or playing arcade games, but having full control of a character in a detailed 3D world and doing whatever you want. When you get the forklift job in Shenmue, that changes the whole experience of the game for a while, and it's really cool. It's like real life but better. Now imagine you could choose from several jobs, all optional, and complete them alongside the main story. Imagine more sideplots and minigames and characters, and it sounds amazing. That's the sort of desire Shenmue put in me - it's a very good game, but it leaves you wanting more.
Now, this ties into why the reception to Shenmue 3 so far is a bit anticlimactic. People enjoy the story of Hazuki Ryo - they want to see it finished - but the wider public interest is gone because they're no longer pushing a new frontier. They just don't have the budget to innovate and provide a grander experience than before, so instead we're just getting a similar one.
That was a pretty huge lack there too I think. I really loved the setting of the Harbor Lounge for instance, but there's nothing to do there besides roll gacha. It brings me back to the R* comparison actually because the hideouts in Bully for instance had things you could do like games which made them feel more alive.
anyone need shenmue 1 and 2? I can trade it for something. humble bundle gave me extra copy for some reason?
Asher Phillips
>vgchartz says 1.2mil sales >Wikipedia says budget was between $47-70mil >Dreamcast games were $49.99 If we assume vgchartz is accurate then that's about $60 mil in sales. That's also a big budget range. Considering Shenmue 2 was made and Shenmue Online was in the works, we can assume the first game at least didn't flop.
Not a zoomer but you can really see the influence in every game that came after it. I don't think other games did it better because they aren't the same kind of game and the only comparison you can meaningfully make is in the presentation and quality of life improvements to specific aspects of the gameplay.
Samuel Martinez
There are a couple of fights in 1, the problem is that are missable events. If I am not mistaking, those 2 goons you beat in qte early in the game, you can face them twice in fighting mode
You buy objects. You buy food for the cat, batteries for the walkman or for the flashlight, lamps and candles(to use in the basement), buy tapes to hear in the walkman or radio, buy things to get raffle tickets to get toys or saturn games or the radio(there are 3 places, 2 tomato shops AND THE ABE STORE), buy scrolls to get new moves, get photos that can be used in 2 to show your friends to Shenhua, get some items in the dojo basement like that old photo of Ryo's dad with another guy(probably Lan Di's father) And all of those toys? using the savefile you can pawnshop them in 2nd game to get money It seems is that in these threads people missed a lot of shit in the game
Oh yeah, the walkman, you can use that shit to hear music while waiting for the bus if you want to pass time.
But games like Shenmue dont exist the way your described, which is a disapointment that 20 years later developers still dont have much games with such life, npcs with unique dialogues and schedules for every day.
>Shenmue 3 It already pissed me off how bad the fighting engine looks since it is another thing and not a virtua fighter engine. Also, there are no grabs in the game, which was one of the most satisfying things to use in previous 2 games
Adrian Hernandez
Yeah, that's true. I thought of mentioning Persona as well, since the time management system isn't in the earlier games IIRC and Shenmue would be the obvious inspiration to try it out. There's a lot of games deriving from it that evolve certain aspects, but the formula isn't obsolete because nothing outright replaced it. Yakuza is superficially similar but it's not an immersive game, scheduling doesn't matter and environment interaction is barely a thing. I'm sure audiences still would love a Shenmue 3 on a truly modern scale but the resources aren't there and Suzuki-san is clearly more concerned with wrapping up the story than breaking new ground. Nowadays, RDR2 is probably the closest to that vision we may get.
Yeah, I understand some things with 3 have been rough lately. I hope it doens't turn into another shitshow.
Bentley Cruz
Retail and shipping used to take about 30%-40% of the profits. Anyway, how much money it made directly didn't really matter as it's main purpose was to show dreamcasts capabilities and how it's better than it's competitors.
Elijah Wright
The budget isnt right, because the development started in 94 or something. Yu already explained that, it started as some chinese or japanese tale and then he thought of Virtua Fighter RPG with Akira as main character, he eventually travelled to china to get ideas, met directors(to learn how to angle scenes), wrote the script and designed characters(Ryo, Lan Di, Ren, Chai, Xiuying are one of the earliest) and then started working on the Saturn version to later restart it on the Dreamcast. During the development of Shenmue on the Dreamcast they had a lot of unused music, some left on the discs of 2 and others saved for 3. So yeah, the typical fuckery of japanese developer business. >Shenmue 2 That was made at the same time as 1. In fact, Shenmue 1 was 1+2, but Sega said "no, 2 games" and 1 was only a prologue. All of the trailers, including the saturn trailer, had Ryo and Shenhua in the woods and Ren stuff. >Online That was way later and some stupid hope to bring the franchise back, like that mobile game. The terrible fighting kung fu engine and how Ryo looks are my main concerns. Everything else seems alright and 3 seems full of content like 2 had
Jayden Allen
These games are walking simulators. Shenmue is not a fighting game.
Shenmue is a single player story driven adventure. That makes it niche and that is fine.
