One of the best games of all time, no, make that THE best game of all time.
There are a couple of reasons why this game stands out. Firstly, the setting; anything that's set in Japan gets an instant mark in my good books. The very detailed and varied environment that was made for Shenmue was just perfect and really did create an immensly beautiful and picturesque world set in Japan. You'll never play a game with an environment this beautiful and brilliant.
It has a brilliant story, Ryo's dad gets killed at the beginning of the game by a man named "Lan Di" and basically the story revolves around Ryo's quest to hunt Lan Di down and take revenge for his father. Yes, you might be thinking this is a generic story but it isn't. This is the backbone, on the way through the game you'll encounter a million different stories involving Ryo's semi-girlfriend "Nozomi" and their relationship between the two as well as a couple more things that I won't mention here. The variety of story's and sub-stories are all so strong in this game that this stands out to be one of the game's most striking features.
Now the gameplay, it feels like a real world. You can walk down a street and there are people walking about going about their daily lives; going into convinience stores, buying some clothes..going back to their house, buying soda from vending machines. And these people are not merely scripted to do one thing. The AI within every single model of this game is pure perfection and it really does make you feel like you're in a living breathing world; and again that is what I love about this game. It makes the story ever so more believable and the environment too. I've never seen another game like this with this amount of detail into other characters; not even in next-gen systems.
The graphics are classic for the Dreamcast, when the game first came out the graphics were something else; and even today they still bare well for people to play it. It's not like you're playing some 2d based sprite game or some low resolution Final Fantasy game on the PS1. The graphics are nice, crisp and really match in with the environment that the team has created. Quickly mentioning along this with the graphics, the sound is pretty good actually too and contributes to the living world that you're playing in.
Overall, Shenmue is a brilliant masterpiece that is unlike any other game on any system today and still holds well to a good playthrough (or 5 haha like i have) It will really capture your imagination, your hearts and your dedicated time spent on this game.