Despite its shortcomings, Shenmue II's core gameplay is truly beautiful.
User Rating: 8.5 | Shenmue II XBOX
Where should I begin? Well, Shenmue II is the sequel to its prequel, Shenmue. It takes place in Hong Kong circa 1987. You are Ryo Hazuki in the game, a boy coming of age in a strange land... ...now that you have some backround on the game, let me go into the gameplay. Certainly the most impressive aspect of this game is the variety of gameplay that the player may chose to engage in. You'll spend most of your time investigating the area, trying to discover the truth behind the events taking place in the original game, which mainly revolves around the death of Ryo's father, Iwao. I think this where Shenmue can be a truly fulfilling experience, because of its awesome story. However, some of the aspects of the game that require you to advance the plotline are quite tedious at best in some cases. On the other hand, you have the polar opposite kind of situations where you must fight or flee. In the end, Shenmue II's bipolar array of gameplay interests successfully creates a living, breathing type world, and adds alot to the realism, but the truth of the matter is that some aspects of reality, well, suck, so this game in the end cannot be deemed worthy of a perfect 10/10 for gameplay, in my book. To sort of seal the deal in this regard, because you might say that Shenmue II was trying to strive for a certain amount of realism, some of the aforementioned tedious tasks, in my opinion, are poorly executed. The graphics are a bit of a let down at fist, I think. But they do grow on you. I think the problem has to do with the framerate, but I'm not entirely sure. Musically, this game does better than most games in the way of developing a dramatic underscore of sorts. Overall, you might consider that I'm a bit of a quack to give my favourite game a lower score than some other games, but what you have to realize is that the Shenmue series has really struck a certain emotional chord with me, so despite a lower technical score, this game really has the heart that other games just don't even come close to having.
