Great story, great concept, bad gameplay. Shenmu 2 could have been so much more if they developed the game better
Story wise is as gripping as a top notch anime movie, you step in the shoes of Ryo Hazuki, a young martial artist who comes to Hong Kong seeking revenge against the man who murdered his father, playing this the first time will keep you guessing at every twist of the plot, the problem though lies on the repetitiveness of the tasks you'll have to do and the lack of action, what you'll be doing is running around, a lot! and moving Ryo around is bad as it is with its clunky controls, mostly you'll be talking to someone, be sent somewhere to talk to someone else who'll send you somewhere else, and so on, the few times you actually get to fight, the clunkyness of the controls will be even more evident, there's also a lot of qtes and command qtes that are as clunky as the rest of the gameplay, lets just say that you'll be retrying battles and levels a lot, not for your mistake, but because the game didn't register your input command in time, or right, which is insanely frustrating.
After the last fight you'll have in kowloon on a roof top, you might as well quit the game cause the rest of it is just walking around with a girl doing qtes and watching a lot of cutscenes, you even learn a move after that fight that you don't even get to use in the rest of the story, what they should have done was a long but concise cut scene explaining the story and the prequel of what should be Shenmue III, instead of dragging you along for hours in a boring trial and error find a path bush walk.
On the upside there is a lot to do in this game, beside getting part time jobs managing lucky hit stands or moving crates ( that can be a bit dull ) there's gambling, arm wrestling, street fighting and playing different games such as darts, afterburn, hang on, ect. you'll also be able to do all the street fights you have participated in, in the shenmue collection mode in the main menu, they are a nice addition but it would have been better if they were actual free battles, as most of them are more like a quest game, meaning you'll have to grab the opponent in one, or escape throws in another, or just hit the opponent down in five moves or less within a time limit, with the bad controls in this game it can be irritating playing them, also some sort of proper training mode would have been appreciated from newcomers to this series like myself.
In the end, Shenmue 2 is a concept game that paved the way for a masterpiece like the Yakuza series ( yes Yakuza got nothing to do with GTA ) that alone should be enough to get anybody who is interested in action adventure games attention, or even just to see what the fuss is all about with this Shenmue series and why fans want a sequel that bad, in my opinion Shenmue 2 was ahead of its time but could have been developed in a better way,
now the time is right for Shenmue 3 on a next gen console, Yu Suzuki, Sega or whomever for them should just go ahead and do it, but PLEASE ! do it right.