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Shenmue I & II

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Sappharad, Aug 17, 2018.

  1. Yuzu

    Yuzu

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    Out of curiosity, is Shenmue 2 HD like that too?

    I think you'd need to hold me at gunpoint to play Shenmue 2 dubbed.
     
  2. 360

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    Played Shenmue 1 in English back in the DC days and thought it was charming in its own B-movie way. That said I played Shenmue 2 in Japanese (had to, as the European DC release only had Japanese at the time - until Shenmue 2X on the Xbox had English which came much later) and God it was a so much better and more authentic experience that I think greatly amplified my enjoyment of the game. I remember thinking that Japanese was the way to go for both games, thinking the Japanese voice acting in 2 was just of a much higher standard relative to the English in Shenmue 1. It's hard to distinguish (especially given my hazy memory given this was so long ago) but I remember thinking that the Japanese voice actors in 2 actually gave a fuck and wanted to produce a movie-like performance and in that I think they succeeded. I remember thinking the Japanese voice actor for Ren in particular was just fucking amazing. Personified the character perfectly.

    Good to hear you guys are enjoying the hell out of these games without much issue so far. Personally I'll be going PC but I'm waiting on an upcoming patch or two first.
     
  3. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    Thanks for the heads up. I'll probably hold out on playing this port it until either someone fixes the timings in the PC version, or the Japanese version comes out. Hopefully the latter has right Japanese timings and includes an option for English subs and interface.
     
  4. itsstillthinking

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    Unpopular opinion, i actually prefer the English Voice acting and probably will never try the Japanese dialog it in Shenmue 1. When i first beat Shenmue 1 i loved the voices for the same reasons as everyone else does. When shortly after i picked up the PAL copy and played threw that i found it less engaging, at least to me in terms of characters.

    When i picked up the Xbox version sometime after that and played through it i must say i enjoyed it more for that reason, again unpopular but i though by Chapter 4 the voice acting quality in general really started to improve. Especially the many hours of conversations in Guilin
     
  5. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    But once you get to Guilin, it's just Ryo and Shenhua who are two main characters, and main characters got the good voice actors. The ones people make fun of are the bargain basement voice actors, where they had single people try to voice a handful of characters and that's where you end up with stuff like Wang who sounds like Kermit the Frog. I don't mind the English dub either, but for my first playthrough I'm playing both in Japanese. I've never played the first one in Japanese and since I've been slowly trying to learn that for the past year it's a nice experience to recognize some phrases occasionally. And I'm really looking forward to Shenmue 2, because I'll finally get to see how the male dub of Yuan compares to the female dub since they're using the uncensored version. When my copy of the Japanese Limited Edition arrives in November, I'll probably play that in English.


    Regarding the timings, at least in Shenmue II they were stored in a separate file from the voice clips themselves. The same problems happened when people swapped the voices there. I had a pretty good idea at one point of where the timings were stored (not anymore) but never found the motivation to sit down and figure out the format difference between Xbox and Dreamcast to port them between the two versions. d3t seems to have done the same things fans did, and just used the same timing data for both.
     
  6. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    Doesn't Sega own CRI?
     
  7. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    I got the cutscene bug yesterday and it's amazing:

     
  8. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    No.

    I'm behind where I wanted to be (busy most of the weekend) and I finally reached that point today. Got the cutscene bug for the first time on the scene after finding the phoenix mirror, like many people seem to have. Saved my game, closed the game and relaunched it and all cutscenes since then have been fine.

    In other words, restarting the game seems to solve the problem.
     
  9. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    I haven't bought it yet but I was just aware there was a beta branch on Steam. This really excites me as I wonder if things like Passport could be restored through this track for potential paid DLC? I would pay additional for the Passport restoration!

    Source:
     
  10. Sappharad

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    I think it's unlikely. The releases have many noticeable issues and the beta branch exists to show Sega's commitment to patching the game to fix those issues. Once the Japanese release is out in November, I'm expecting them to basically stop supporting the game.


    On that note, I finished my playthrough of Shenmue 1 yesterday. (PS4 version, 1.0.1) I only encountered the cutscene problem twice: the first time being the cutscene after recovering the mirror that I already mentioned, and the second being during Ryo's 2nd day of work when he's driving to Warehouse #3. The first half of the cutscene outside was fine, it didn't glitch until he's in the warehouse but it's fine as soon as the fight starts. As soon as work was over that day, I saved and restarted the game and didn't encounter the cutscene bug for the rest of the game. Also had no problem saving after the credits, but I made sure to press the triggers on my controller every minute or so to prevent it from going to sleep. (I had noticed during normal playthrough that controller sleep is bugged. I would pause the game to go do something and as soon as my controller went to sleep the game would unpause and the "no controller connected" message would come up) Ended up with every single trophy + Platinum on the first game.

    I didn't go to the level of completion that I originally intended. I was hoping to get a full capsule toy collection, but I decided that was too time consuming since I blew most of Ryo's money at the beginning buying all of the move scrolls so I didn't have enough money to buy lots of capsule toys until the 3rd disc where you've basically set your fate towards amount of game time left.

    For Shenmue II, I haven't decided yet if I want to try for all of the move scrolls. I did one of the two really hard to get lucky hit scrolls on Dreamcast, that took hours. But I'll at least be trying for all trophies on the first playthrough. Not going to do the Fengmei sidequest due to starting in January, but I will definitely do duck racing.
     
  11. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    "Hi Shenmue fans! Wanna work for SEGA? Now you can do it! For FREE!" D:


    Seriously, what is with SEGA seemingly not hiring betatesters anymore. This is making them look really bad.
     
  12. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    It's better than no patches to be honest, which is what I was expecting.
     
  13. Sappharad

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    I think they knew about the problems before release and just didn't have the time to fix them. They probably wanted to get the game out before all of the big releases coming later so that it wouldn't be completely passed over. Some of the problems are so obvious that they must have known about them. In the first 20 minutes of Shenmue 2 you hear multiple audio tracks that sound awful because decay wasn't working correctly yet. (Arm Wrestling, Queens Street) Not to mention the black levels problem was noticeable in the trailers before release and we pointed it out back then, but were fooled into thinking it was fixed already by older screenshots that were taken before they broke it.

    I had initially thought that the reason Japan wasn't getting the game for over 3 months after the rest of the world was because of localization reasons (as Japanese text is not an option in the western release despite offering Japanese VO) but it was figured out less than 24 hours after release that the Japanese localization is present and you just need to manually set the language as selected in the config file on PC to use it. While we may never know the true reason, I think the Japanese release date was set based on when they believed all of the issues could be completely resolved so that the version on disc for Japan doesn't need a day-one patch.


    I played around with the PCv2 patch today. It fixes some audio problems, but it's still not 100% correct yet. Shenmue 1 finally has footsteps everywhere like it should now, and the ones outdoors that I heard in my short testing were fine, but inside the Hazuki residence they were weird sounding. Shenmue 2's music now has instruments decay properly, so the Arm Wrestling music doesn't sound terrible now but it still sounds off. At least it's to the point where it's not so bad that it's annoying.

    I decided to take a break shortly after starting Shenmue II, because the black levels bothered me a lot. Everything in the shade was way too dark and hard to see, even with contrast set to +100. I'm going to go back to it after Yakuza Kiwami 2, where hopefully the console versions will have caught up with PC. The point that the PC version is at now is probably what it should have been at launch. The remaining issues are things I think they need to fix still, but as far as I've seen PC is at least to the point where the remaining problems don't make the game too annoying to play.
     
  14. Ch1pper

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    Is that what it is? Ugh, I thought it was weird that I had to set the games (on PS4) to +25 contrast and on my TV separately just to see anything.
     
  15. Sappharad

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    We now have confirmation of that being the case. Saw this posted on ResetEra earlier today - John from Digital Foundry was on a podcast where they start talking about Shenmue 1&2 around 30 minutes in:
    http://backinmyplay.com/123-fall-preview-ys-shenmue-rpgs-music-ports/

    Sega provided reviewers with a list of known bugs prior to release and asked that they not be considered in reviews because they would be fixing them with the day one patch. When John made his video that came out on release day, the bugs were not mentioned because he was assuming they would be fixed by the patch that hasn't really happened yet. I'd love to see a reviewer leak the list...

    The problem only affects Shenmue II. For the first game, I did set my contrast to +25 like you did but everything was consistent in that game so increasing the level did make it closer to the original.

    This is a non-technical explanation, but in Shenmue II's case darkness seems to be multiplied instead of added so dark things get too dark too fast so contrast adjustment doesn't help with that. I believe the patch is due on Friday, but we still don't know if it's the 2.0 patch that PC got last week on the beta branch or if it's just the 1.0.1 patch that PC got the week prior. I'm hoping for 2.0 because that one fixes most of the major problems including music decay.
     
  16. Sappharad

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    I finished the PS4 version of Shenmue II tonight, so I figured it was a good time to bump this. I had taken a break for Yakuza Kiwami 2 but came back and did a relatively complete Shenmue II play through. Didn't get all capsule toys since there's not really a point to that, but I did get every single move scroll for the first time including the two that you have to win from playing Lucky Hit. Also got the Platinum trophy, which isn't too hard.

    The black level problem in Shenmue II mentioned in the previous post(s) was indeed corrected in the patch the followed. The music was improved too, such that the missing decay is working correctly in the current (as of this post) PS4 build. There are still a handful of tracks that are a bit off, and the Tomato Mart song in Shenmue II is absolutely awful. PC got a new patch last week that fixed music even more, almost everything including the Tomato Mart theme is nearly perfect now. Some people are claiming some things are slightly off pitch, but I haven't really noticed anything other than the mixing maybe sounding slightly cleaner than the original. (Maybe Shenmue 1 still has problems?) In the quick 20 minutes I testing I did on last week's PC patch for Shenmue 2, the only outstanding audio problems that I noticed remain with sound effects like water fountains, including the little melody that plays when you walk near the Tomato Mart from outside which is still awful. Overall though the biggest problems are already patched on console including the cutscene bug in Shenmue I. There's supposed to be a new console patch coming at some point that will include the audio and misc improvements that PC got last week. At the rate they've been fixing things, they only have a few outstanding issues left on PC to fix so perhaps by the time the Japanese PS4 release is out in November they could have all of the problems fixed.


    Shenmue II did crash on me a couple of times after playing Afterburner II, but otherwise I didn't run into any problems as bad as people got in the first game before the patch was released. I was impressed that they do indeed have two separate versions of the English subtitles - When playing in Japanese the subtitles correctly refer to Yuan as he 99% of the time (the one time they miss it I believe was during a cutscene in the Yellow Head building, and literally the next sentence was back to he). The dialogue that completely changed between the Japanese and English dub also got translated for the restored dub - specifically the suggestive "don't touch it" cat conversation on the cassette tape that was replaced in English with a news report about the arcade games in Kowloon. If you switch audio language to English, even in-game, the subtitles swap back over to that dub's version correctly.

    There was a small bit of bad news out of TGS - The Japanese version (including the limited edition w/ soundtrack) removes language options. It will only have Japanese text with the Japanese dub, no English dub or subtitles. The PC version had Japanese text if you manually edited an INI file, but they patched that out in the most recent PC patch. Apparently the data is still there and can still be used on PC by forcibly patching the game. Actually, there's a code for the Japanese "Cyber Save Editor" PS4 cheat device to play the US / EU version of Shenmue I & II with Japanese text, which gives me hope that they're lazy and don't completely remove the English data from the Japanese version allowing a code for English on the Japanese version, but I guess we'll need to wait and see. Hopefully the fact that this is possible stays under their radar so that they don't have to make an effort to prevent it.


    That's about all I can think of for now. The games are still have a handful of minor problems, but they're at least to where they probably should have been on Day 1. Japan's release on Day 1 should be pretty good, so lucky them.
     
  17. Covarr

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  18. Rosie

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    So it turns out D3T were working on a "Shenmue Kiwami" of sorts before it was cancelled late 2017, when the project was shifted to the Shenmue I and II collection that we ended up with. It makes much more sense now that we had heard whispers of a Shenmue remake/remaster for years, but what we ended up with was a seemingly rushed and buggy port.
     
  19. 360

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    Cross posting my thoughts from ShenmueDojo:

    Well, my initial reaction was "This would have been amazing, go to hell Sega" but then I actually read the article and watched the video, and whilst this is a respectable update that looks quite decent, I'm seeing something lost in translation here, as in the original feel of "Shenmue", that intangible Yu Suzuki/AM2 immersive and beautiful magic that made us fall in love with the games in the first place, not being there in this prototype build. As though the essence of Shenmue is lost. So my reaction changed a little from being incredibly disappointed and sad to slightly relieved? The ports we have are the real Shenmue, entirely in-tact from 1999/2001 and as has been said this would have been torn to shreds by the mass market. Unfortunately in the modern games industry you either go hard or go home nowadays, so either Yakuza Kiwami/Resident Evil 2 with the ridiculous budget behind them or gamers will just complain and blast the product in to the stratosphere. The point I'm making is however sad this is in a "what could have been" way, without Sega Japan/AM2 and Yu Suzuki returning to the helm this project could have immensely backfired, and that being said I'm starting to understand the potential reasons for its cancellation.

    Given the Shenmue HD that we did get sold so well, a feat likely to be repeated or exceeded by Shenmue 3, I'm sure we'll see more Shenmue down the line, whether it be full-on Kiwami style remakes or at the very least Shenmue 4 from YSNet. So this isn't the end of the road, nor is it the end of the world. I also really do feel for D3T now and the response they received, given this was the hidden truth to their ambitions and love for the games behind the scenes.

    We still have Shenmue 3 and very probably 4, and something tells me this won't be the last we hear from this particular idea either, dependent on how Yu Suzuki's sequels do. The series still has a bright and positive future.
     
  20. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    It's an interesting idea but I think the greater goal was to have these games be more accessible, rather than spiced up for super mega HD 432945032K monitors. Sometimes these projects bring out a Star Wars Special Editions vibe, where you start preferring that they stopped after digitising and cleaning up the old film reels.

    This is particularly the case when it's not the original development team. But then again Sonic CD 2011 exists and we seem quite okay with that. Dunno.


    I think they made the right choice on this one. Shenmue is, at this stage, more of a historical piece, and I think the people likely to buy it want to see the game from 1999.