Nearly eight years after its release, overall Shenmue remains the single greatest video game experience ever made.
When I first purchased Shenmue on a whim, I wasn't really sure what I was expecting. I had seen my friend playing a demo of it and had labeled it as an RPG; the genre which I was into at the time. I suppose I was expecting some sort of Final Fantasy or Xenogears clone, set in Japan. I even had visions of a turn-based battle with multiple characters, and eventually being able to shoot lightning bolts from my hands. Which – I might add – I was fine with.
But what I got was so much more. Shenmue raised the figurative bar of my gaming expectations. It brought aspects I never dreamed might find their way into a video game, and has for many years been the yardstick by which I measure all other games.
Although the setting and the storyline of Shenmue is ordinary, what it offers is something captivating, emotionally involving and beautiful. It takes gaming ideals such as RPG, adventure, fighting, life simulation and interactive fiction, mixes them all up, and adds its own brand of something that has never since been cloned, despite several attempts. You end up really caring about what happens to Ryo, his friends and family, despite the simple storyline, merely because the game is so captivating and real that it puts you in the shoes of the protagonist and leaves you in a world of atmospheric escapism.
Many people complain about Shenmue being slow-paced, but the pace of the game is precisely one of the things that makes it so brilliant and sets it apart from the brain-dead trash adored by the typical gamer. It starts off as little more than a 3-d adventure game, where the purpose seems to be simply to walk around the local city and unearth clues about the people that killed your Father. Even after you're introduced to the astoundingly moreish quick-time events, it's still a good two hours of gaming before you actually get into a free-form battle. Rather than boring you, this actually makes you care about the setting and the protagonist, and leaves you intrigued as to what the game really has to offer.
After your first fight against several thuggish sailors, you're left wanting much, much more. Because as fun as the quick time events are, the real fighting against multiple opponents is so much more so. Rather than being a brainless combo-fest as found in the Dynasty Warrior games, Shenmue makes you learn moves, tactics, blocking, dodging, etc. While it might not be very hard to defeat the first few opponents, you quickly realize that in order to win the harder fights, you're going to need to do a lot more than just mash buttons, you're going to need to use your head. It's that realism that makes the fighting in Shenmue an experience you push through the game to get more of. Each (rare) fight is another chance for you to stylishly lay out five or six guys in a new, elegant way, and when the opportunity to do some comes around, you actually feel a little nervous.
The pace of Shenmue becomes the very thing that makes its gameplay compelling. But, as in all of the truly great action films, you aren't left wanting by the end. The game might begin slowly, taking time to involve you emotionally, to escape to what is the life of Ryo Hazuki, but it ends with a real solid bang. The final few battles are some real adrenaline pumping marks of brilliance. As you stand back to back with a friend and defeat a steady flow of seventy hardy gangsters; as you face off against a formerly unbeatable opponent; as you perform a final flurry of rapid quick-time moves that brings into play everything you've learned so far – it's there that the game really hits you as being one of the best you've ever played. You've worked through some nice puzzles, story elements, part-time-jobs and smaller skirmishes, and you've been rewarded with a series of bouts that are infinitely more satisfying than most action sequences you've played through on other games that rarely hold back from throwing you headlong into action long enough to actually tell a story.
Yes, Shenmue has some bad spots, which is why it doesn't get a perfect 10 rating from me. Its storyline does lack originality, despite its compelling nature. Also, the voice acting – although a defining character of the game – could have been a whole lot better. Aside from those two complaints, however, I have nothing bad to say about the first chapter in the epic Shenmue Sega.
It offers something for everyone, from fighting, to puzzle solving, to exploring an immersive 3D world with hundreds of unique characters, to a story that includes elements of romance, vengeance, action and comradeship. So if you have the patience to sit through a heavily story-driven plot, and the lust for the odd spot of fisticuffs, then Shenmue is a must buy.
You see, it's much more than the rare action that makes Shenmue a memorable experience. There are values in the story, overtones of meaningful allegory, an exploration of human emotion, cultural traditions, fables, friendships and morals. You're given a character fueled by equal measures of stoicism and a lust for honorable revenge, but the things he confronts and the people that touch his life make him into somebody more. By the end of the second game, Ryo is not a new person, but he has come to value the people that love him, and to doubt the morality of his mission. The lines of good and evil are far from black and white, and this is an issue that video games rarely even attempt to tackle, but Shenmue does it beautifully, and at a pace whose compare can only be found in the written word. What might at times appear to be transcending into the realms of the fantastic, only ever really hints at mystical elements behind the origins of the game's central relics – the mirrors. All of this is accompanied to a score of music so memorable and haunting that it in itself could provoke emotion as a separate piece of art.
It is a wonder to me how more games haven't taken a leaf out of the Suzuki guidebook and made games with similar epic scope, magnificent cross-genre gameplay, and fully interactive environments. It set itself apart from all other games the day it was released, and has stood apart from them every day since. The only game that has ever been released that was a close approximation to the idea that Shenmue was going for is Dreamfall, and even that lacked the free scope and perfect action sequences that Shenmue offers. I myself have played Shenmue from start to finish a grand total of about seven times. The first time I finished it, I went back and started it all again the very next day, and enjoyed it no less.
This is video game history in the flesh. Buy a Dreamcast on Ebay if you have to; just find a way to play this game. It is an honor and a privilege to experience such a masterpiece.
Yes, it really is that good.
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Score Breakdown
Based on the the Mooncalf Reviews scoring system as shown on this blog post:
http://uk.gamespot.com/users/MooncalfReviews/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25395842
> > Story: 3
(Unoriginal basic storyline, but dig deeper and you'll find much more than initially meets the eye)
> > Hook: 4
(Few plot twists, but the story is presented in some indefinable manner that compels you to fill in the missing pieces)
> > Characters: 5
(Unique, likable characters, who you actually end up caring for)
> > Originality: 5
(No other game like it came before, and none have come since, perhaps none ever will)
> > Art: 5
(1980's Japan presented in such a moving, lifelike way, with excellent character animations and beautiful designs. For its time, Shenmue was unequalled in graphical realism, and beautiful by compare in artistic presentation)
> > Voice Acting and Script: 3
(Charming - yet poorly done voice acting. Much better in the Japanese version. An acceptable script, with fairly realistic dialogue.)
> > Music Score: 5
(Some of the best music ever composed for a game. A match for most movies. And so many, many different compositions to be found, in almost every single shop and area)
> > Fun: 5
(Although the action-freak might consider Shenmue to be boring, its sporadically placed action only serves to make such areas of the game twice as fun. Simply exploring the game and talking to people can also be very fun, if you aren't of the aforementioned action-freak variety of people)
> > Freedom: 5
(Although the core plot cannot be deviated from, you are free to explore, play mini-games, and goof around at your leisure, for days on end)
> > Lifespan: 5
(A long game, made twice as long if you enjoy exploring and talking to random NPCs, and made thrice as long by replay-ability factor)
> > Multiplayer: 0
(No multiplayer support)
Total Points: 44
Gamespot converted rating: 9.5
(Best game ever rated by Mooncalf Reviews to date)