While I've not completed my first playthrough of Shenmue 1 (and I'll likely delay and start again if this gets announced), I feel it's worth mentioning the ridiculous amount of interactivity the game offers with even the most mundane of objects. It's not something I've seen a lot of games do, and you'll only appreciate it if you take the time to experiment by yourself.
One of my favorite instances of this is Fuku-san's love interest side story in Shenmue I. Most people have never even seen that sub-quest because you really need to prod him to get it out of him. When you do eventually stumble upon it, it really fleshes his character out (and you realize he's actually suffering from extreme depression since Iwao Hazuki died)
I've never heard of that one, and I thought I knew all about Shenmue. I hope they do this right, I don't expect it to be done this year, TBH, and I don't mind that.
What? You never need to grind for money in Shenmue I. You're literally given all the money you need for the trip, and the forklift job is to learn more about the Mad Angels, and is a fixed length of five days (unless you avoid events). You do, however, need to grind for money in Shenmue II, on two separate occasions (you need $500 to meet Ren, and $500 to fight Rod Stunt). I prefer the first game to the second, but purely for reasons of detail. The second is missing a lot of detail that is in the first - NPCs have no daily routine, and multiple copies of the same NPC can spawn together; outside of a few chosen rooms, there's no interaction with random objects; and there are three jewellery stores side-by-side that all have exactly the same layout. Having said that, the refined mechanics of the game (especially with regards to stairs), and the wait feature make it a lot easier to get into, and should be added into the first game if possible. Also I enjoy Fangmei's sidequests (it's a shame that most people when playing don't actually talk to Eileen to get Fangmei's birthday, it creates a weird disconnect when they don't as Ryo suddenly knows something he hasn't heard from anyone), and of course the duck racing. I'm not a fan of the pacing of the Wan Chai chapter (it's that medium where you can't get absorbed in the world like in the first game, combined with the fact that the world is a little too big), but Kowloon absolutely nails it, and the Guilin... preview is good too.
This happens only if you pass a certain date in-game. If you are speeding through the game, you need to grind for money. Before your bag gets stolen, sell all your items at the pawn shop at the dock, and you won't have to grind for this. You'll already have enough money on hand.
No, it doesn't, and there is no special date for such a thing. EDIT for clarification: Ryo draws the money from his bank account the day after he finds the Phoenix Mirror and talks to Master Chen. After going to the Travel Agency (either one) and returning to Fuku, he gives you the rest. This happens even if you use the Disc One skip glitch in order to get to this even on December 5th, the third day of playing the game. EDIT the second: In fact, you don't even have a job at this point in the game so you have no way of earning money outside of your daily allowance.
No, you buy up zippos before your bag gets stolen, then sell them AFTER its stolen so you can get the money back that they kept from your bag.
Didn't even see this. Barely (including Andeh's correction above), but it requires: a) that you're playing the Xbox version, or have enough items from Shenmue I to transfer over (you don't get items in Dreamcast Shenmue II from a new game) b) that you know your money will be stolen beforehand - which on your first playthrough, you shouldn't, and c) that you buy the "right" items - namely the Zippos you can sell for $35 (at the Golden Flower Pawnshop - others give you less, and you need to gamble or work to get more money) as opposed to the ones you can only sell for $2 (Helm and Rose); again, you won't know about this on your first playthrough. And even after having done all this, you still have to grind or save-scum for Rod Stunt - current speedrun strats involve gambling all your money on Big or Small and hoping you get lucky on the 50/50 chance.
RE: The money thing, when I talked about it my point was that you don't know you're about to lose it so when you do the game does a reasonable job of introducing part time jobs and the separate conversation button to ask about ways to earn money. If you've played it before, that's a moot point because you already know you're going to lose money so you can stock up on stuff to sell either at the dock or the guy selling them at Worker's Pier. When I needed $500, I always used to play one of the $50 lucky hit stands in South Carmain Qr. where it was relatively easy to win. Never really cared for the dice games until I saw a speed-run of the game and realized it was much quicker to earn money that way. Now I do take advantage of gambling + save/load to get money. But I still like playing lucky hit though. Regarding the ShenmueHD.com domain, they switched it to private registration after the news got out. You can no longer see that it's owned by Sega. Also, it was registered last September.
See, I went into Shenmue 1 expecting Virtua Fighter RPG, and it not being what I got was slightly irksome. I played some more anyway, since I wanted to find out what happens. I think I even...beat the game? Getting on the boat is the end of Shenmue, right? As for Shenmue 2, I don't really remember when I lost interest in it. I feel like if someone took Sleeping Dogs and made the combat more like Virtua Fighter, that'd be enough of a Shenmue fix for me, to be honest. That's why I played Shenmue, to become a badass martial artist and kick Shang Tsung's ass and get my badass mirror back. I hate to say it but I guess they're just not for me. Bummer. I really want to be excited for Shenmue 3.
As a dedicated Shenmue fanboy, I can not believe what I am reading.... you realize this game pioneered so much for the future of gaming, right?
. . . And it became basically the staple of every major game for many, many years... ugh... While I was referring to that specifically, yes, it also proved what could be done with a vision and a box-office budget for a videogame. I believe people at Rockstar had said they created elements of the GTA series with Shenmue inspired features as well. I believe the passport goes into the most detail about the various features I would like to say it pioneered. The weather elements were fucking awesome.
Even if it was super impressive for its time, it has not aged well at all. Besides that, being impressive is not the same as being a good game. I can't imagine a lot of the things in the game actually being things players would want to do back in 2000, and the story must have been incredibly disappointing back then as well. And considering how poorly Shenmue II sold, I can't imagine a lot of people were all that happy with the game back then either. And it's not like the ideas themselves were groundbreaking, it was just the first time that a lot of them were executed. If Shenmue didn't have stuff like weather elements and open world elements then a different game would have done those things first. Also, Aerosol, the Yakuza games might be what you're looking for. They're like the Shenmue games in that they have small but detailed worlds with a lot of side stuff to do, but instead of the main gameplay being tedious mundane stuff it's fighting people. And unlike Shenmue, each game does have a satisfying ending.
Ah but you're wrong. An opinion of a game is merely an opinion. But if you impress the world at the time, you had quite a bit of power, even if it was a substantial loss. Look at all the modern games which get cancelled these days for business reasons... but even with this's unhread of (at the time) budget and needing to literally sell 2 copies to every Dreamcast owner to even make a profit, the game released. That and it's well above average scores at the time make it impressive even to this day. You can argue your opinion about the game all you want, but the numbers at the time of release don't lie. That being said, the replay value was pretty low, except the Mad Angels fight with leaderboards loved that shit, and I agree, it did not age well. What I think many of you are arguing is that you wanted the Saturn version (or it's unmodified premise/vision) and not the Dreamcast version, and you got the Dreamcast version...
lol you say this as if a video game's quality is objective. Also you're only arguing that the game was good for its time, and going by all the things that were praised it was mostly just good as a tech demo. Even back then people criticised how tedious it was: I'm pretty sure that if the game was released today, that it would be widely panned. Much like how the Sonic Adventure games were when they were re-released. And also Sega spending more money on the game than they could realistically make back is not a good thing. Though games having way too high budgets is a common problem in the game industry now, so I guess Shenmue should be praised for starting that trend as well. Thanks Shenmue.
I hate every Final Fantasy game and actually gave away my copy of FF VII I disliked it so much. Also I found it's gameplay to be way more tedious than Shenmue. So through rose colored glasses you can see what you want, but I will keep my nostalgia glasses on. That said I do kind of regret my contribution to the final installment as it's just going to get plagued with same crowdfunding problems most games have had: being unable to deliver based on their hype.
