Now Playing: Shenmue 2

I played Shenmue again on Dreamcast back in 2014 and the intention was to continue my save into Shenmue 2, but I never quite got around to it. Spin on to 2018 and SEGA have now released a PC port of both Shenmue 1 & 2. Port not remaster – this isn’t a HD overhaul of Shenmue, so don’t expect any major graphical or gameplay upgrades.

As far as the port goes, it’s a fairly solid job but it’s had some bugs and issues, most of which appear to have been addressed by some patches post-release. I didn’t experience any real issues when playing the port aside from a couple of crashes so, overall, I’d have to say they did a pretty decent job – they just need to smooth out a few rough edges.

I played through Shenmue so I could carry my save into 2 but I won’t review that game again here because my original review in 2014 still sums up how I feel about it. Instead I’m going to focus on Shenmue 2 which picks up where Shenmue 1 left off – with Ryo arriving in Hong Kong to continue the search for Lan Di, and to uncover more information about his father’s past.

Shenmue 2 is a far more action focused and faster paced game than the original. When you look at the original game, most of it is just about walking around, talking to people and gathering information. There’s only a handful of action scenes and fights, and the plot doesn’t develop to any great degree.

 

Shenmue 2 drops you into the action almost immediately upon arrival in Hong Kong. Whereas in Shenmue, Ryo was in his home town and surrounded by people he knew, in Shenmue 2 he’s a stranger in a strange land and it isn’t long before he runs into trouble. The game has far more action sequences than the original in the form of QTE scenes, group fights and – most importantly – 1v1 battles.

I said in my Shenmue review that the combat system feels designed for 1v1 more so than the group battles. It’s a system that’s very reliant on patience, timing and position. But Shenmue 2 does seem to recognise this, and many of the moves you learn in Hong Kong are designed to help you manage these group battles more easily.

And that’s something I really love about the game – how Ryo’s training by various masters isn’t just a plot element, but a tool used to teach the player too. When Ryo is forced to learn patience and timing by say, catching leaves falling from a tree, it’s also a clever way of reinforcing these gameplay mechanics to the player.

As a result, group fights in Shenmue 2 feel far easier to manage, and when you do take down an entire group of bad guys without taking a single hit, you really do feel like a total bad ass. That said, some group fights do still devolve into some mindless mashing due to the small confines of the environment. But overall, they’re handled far better than in Shenmue.

 

It’s the 1v1 fights where Shenmue 2 really shines though, because that’s also where the combat system is best utilised. And Shenmue 2 gives you a lot of 1v1 opportunities throughout the game both in core and side content. But it’s when you leave Hong Kong and travel to Kowloon that you get to the really cool fights, as Ryo has to face down a variety of opponents in order to progress.

Like Shenmue, the world is impressively constructed and detailed. It’s also about ten times larger than anything in Shenmue. The sheer amount of locations you can enter and explore is kind of crazy, especially when you consider that if you simply follow the core story from A to B you’d probably never even see 90% of it.

Shenmue 2 builds a living world that puts even modern open world games to shame. And like Shenmue, it’s a game in which I always discover something new whenever I replay it – a new scene, a new character or a new location. And Shenmue 2 has far more variety to its environments than the original.

Everything about Shenmue 2 is a step up from the original – action, environment, characters and plot. Whereas Shenmue felt more like a solo quest for Ryo – despite a bit of help here and there from his friends along the way – Shenmue 2 has a larger and more involved cast of both heroes and villains, the best of which is the fantastic bromance between Ryo and Ren, the leader of a local street gang.

 

The story follows Ryo in his search for Yuanda Zhu, an old friend of Ryo’s father who’s also being hunted by Lan Di and his associates in the Yellow Heads gang of Kowloon. The Hong Kong area is a little more slowly paced and plays more like the original as Ryo explores, investigates and gets into the occasional scrap.

But the pace really picks up when he travels to Kowloon and from this point the action doesn’t really let up, culminating in a couple of very satisfying 1v1 fights in the Yellow Head building – one in the basement and one on the roof.

The characters and the story are great and I really hope we see many of these characters return in Shenmue 3. I also like that the game has more of a sense of humour than the original, my favourite moment being when Ryo is carefully climbing to the top of a building to find Zhu. It’s actually a pretty tedious and annoying section but thankfully you can save as you go, so if you fall you don’t have to restart from the bottom.

The humour comes when Ryo finally arrives at the top floor only for Ren to show up who used . . . the elevator. And the camera just lingers on Ryo’s face for a moment. He doesn’t say anything, because he’s a nice lad who keeps his cool, but his face says it all – F**K!

 

And just when you think the game is over, Ryo presses on into the heart of China to the small village of Guilin. This is best viewed as an ‘epilogue’ chapter because aside from some rather pointless QTE sequences it’s a very slow paced and dialogue heavy section. It introduces a character teased in the original game – Shenhua – and it’s really all about getting to know her and learning more about the origin of the mysterious mirrors at the heart of the plot.

And then it all ends with a cliffhanger which remains unresolved – but not for much longer. I must admit, I have my doubts about the upcoming Shenmue 3, so I’m keeping my expectations in check but I’m still pretty excited for it. Shenmue 1 & 2 were very original and unique experiences at release and they still are today. There’s nothing quite like them.

They may look a little rough graphically these days, and the character movement may feel clunky and dated, but the world, story, characters and – let’s not forget the fantastic music – keep Shenmue feeling like a very special experience. I think Shenmue 2 is a better game than 1, but 1 still has its charms and perfectly sets up events in 2.

So yeah, I still f**king love Shenmue 2 and I had a real blast playing it through again on PC. It’s still not a game I’d recommend to everyone, but if you think it’s something you might enjoy then be sure to check it out.

8/10