SHENMUE: The Worst "Greatest" Game Ever Made...

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and manscape.com pretty much their project but we wanted to celebrate their announcement on our stage since this is a game that playstation vans have been very very very vocal about [Music] [Music] [Music] for but this kickstarter will be real success when you choose to make it the full-on shamu experience you have dreams of the fate of shenmue is in your hands now [Music] [Applause] why yes today's video does begin with an e3 announcement from 2015. now if you don't remember this e3 announcement i don't blame you there's a whole bunch of announcements that came out but if you were a shinmu fan you would be surprised that after almost 15 years of waiting and sitting around a sequel to one of your favorite games finally gets announced not just a sequel but the kickstarter to the sequel you still got you still gotta pony up some cash across the way now ladies and gentlemen it was kind of weird for me to notice this at playstations e3 and at first i thought this was a straight up exclusive but then i realized whoa it's a kickstarter announcement now i didn't know about shenmue this much of the time granted i've heard about this franchise i'm not an idiot i wasn't living under the rocks many gamer forums galore were talking about shenmue and how great it was to have grown up with the series and now if you owned the dreamcast it was one of those must-own games alongside sonic adventure uh sonic adventure 2 uh and let's not forget fantasy star online ladies and gentlemen shenmue and shenmue 2 are one of the cult classic gaming historic history greats that everyone really likes to talk about and it's a game franchise where you're either going to absolutely love it or you're absolutely going to hate it and in my opinion regardless of the outcome you should absolutely play it if not just experience why people have fluffed this franchise up for almost 20 years plus now shenmue is a revenge story following the footsteps of ryu hazuki avenging the murder of his father at the hands of lon d a tale of a young boy leaving the native home of japan behind to the great truths hidden in china hong kong and beyond while doing the most mundane [ __ ] life has to offer if that's the best way to describe it i don't know what is right that has to be now shenmue 3 has a kickstarter page and if you can probably tell who actually wanted shenmue 3 i would say 6.3 million dollars worth of wanting shenmue 3 actually happened and that's not even talking about the lofty stretch goals they had which they met a fair amount of but i mean they had goals going all the way up to 11 million dollars and beyond whatever this mystery tier ended up being i swear it probably had to do with some outlandish immersive feature that you suzuki was bringing whether it was a rendering of the entire world or adding more piss buckets to plan i mean here's an example of some of these riveting mini games this game had to offer you are about to play pale toss okay about salad toss okay guys that's what this [ __ ] game is i'm [ __ ] tossing of a salad what the [ __ ] is this dude am i about to piss in these buckets what the [ __ ] dude [Music] what is this what the [ __ ] oh okay let's throw rocks in the bucket and all of this was backed by the save shenmue which uh believe it or not fans gave enough money to save shenmue quite literally whether or not the conclusion of the franchise actually comes is a whole other story but fans did fun shenmue 3 and it ended up actually coming out underneath ease net by series creator yu suzuki it wasn't just no sega affair anymore it was a full indie project the best description i can give of shenmue is it is a revenge story where you occasionally have to file your taxes it's a bit of a hyperbole you don't ever have to file your taxes but i think the general uh you know understanding can be attained from that it's a game with a revenge story but you do have to do all of the other immersive work around it and trust me i know the irony of playing a video game on father's day where the dad dies in the first five minutes but i'm just saying if that boy it's a manscape you have some clean pubes before dying that's just a shameless plug imagine playing grand theft auto 5 and after the end of every heist there's no creative accounting that happens behind the scenes no you character switch into an accountant sitting underneath aaa safe house actually doing the money laundering yourself it might sound fun to a lot of people out there in the audience and for those people shinmu is one of your favorite games but i would wager for 90 of actual you know people who are just playing grand theft auto no one's sitting there to do [ __ ] accounting after doing a pretty you know heart-pounding heist if you will now let's go on further over here i never understood the appeal of this e3 at the time all right but the crowd reaction was insane like i said earlier 6.3 million dollars worth of insane 6.3 million dollars was pledged by 69 000 and plus people counting for shenmue 3. now at the time i found it a bit odd that it was coming out of sony's e3 with a kickstarter to gate i guess sony must have had a deal where they probably financed the marketing and advertising for the game and the publishing to an extent and the rest of the bill at least game development wise was footed by the actual company beyond now i found it weird since it wasn't even a true playstation exclusive even back then and now that it's finally out i believe it's an epic games exclusive like years down the road from its initial announcement but i guess it made sense during an era where multiple developers were making games off of kickstarter some really successful like bloodstained and some absolutely abysmal like mighty failure number nine and then you've got you know absolute cash pits like star citizen and [ __ ] you name it i could go on and on that's a separate video right there but this isn't a video about that nor is it a video about shenmue 3 even that'll happen down this entire shitpost channel history right here why do i mention all of this why am i going down this because this is my story with shenmue this is how this franchise warned its way back into my brain cells after years of leaving my mind now at this point in time i started playing a game franchise known as yakuza if you don't know what yakuza is it's an amazing beat em up franchise spanning multiple mainline games a whole bunch of spin-offs completely different franchises that are set in the universe as spin-offs it is truly a meaty franchise to get into if you've never played a yakuza game i don't know what the [ __ ] you're doing but there's a great quote about yakuza that comes from my friend hugbeas who said that shenmue crawled uh so yakuza could run i would actually wager to say shin moo [ __ ] crawled out and almost had a heart attack and keeled over and yakuza basically glanced at and said you know there's some good things about that guy i'm just not gonna go [ __ ] near i'm gonna go run off in a different direction but that's me being different now in my opinion while objectively i like to think that yakuza is a far better franchise it's got better world density the simulation is better there's a metric [ __ ] ton of things more to do in that tiny square you know a kilometer of land that they're giving you uh the combat is definitely far more impressive through the series in fact several games completely change up the combat do you know the recent game right now yakuza 7 is a full-on jrpg like dragon quest yeah you wouldn't believe it if you saw the other six games in action and you know what this point is subjective but i'd even wager the story overall game the game is far better than whatever shenmue has offered but yakuza has a franchise that's gained so much popularity in the last few years rightfully so pumping out solid game after solid game each one again filled to the brim with new content a game where literally each iteration in the franchise not only builds upon its gameplay but also the world and the various locales it takes place even the spin-off games offer their own styles of gameplay and their own perspective into the world that is already established so if you jump into the franchise now you'd be absolutely overwhelmed and if it sounds like that's a negative critique it's absolutely positive so finishing the story in yakuza is never really the ending right i mean there's also various sub stories there's packs of interconnected grinding i mean you'd be playing a single game for literally months if you'd be looking to say hundred percent complete them down the road and all of that content for the most part is incredibly meaningful and because of my love for yakuza and why i went on that tangent alone is the reason why i went down the path of playing shenmue see i figured if i liked yakuza so much i have to owe it at least in some subconscious [ __ ] up way that i have to give some credit to its actual predecessor spiritually of course in shenmue and that's what led me to go by shenmue one two on an hd collection for playstation and shenmue three i figured i'm gonna give these games a time i'm gonna give these games the absolute respect this deserves and i understood going in that there was a bit of bias from my end i realized that listen ladies and gentlemen regardless of what it is these are games from 1999. they're probably not going to age the best now shenmue is a weird game okay like i said earlier people will either love this game or they'll think it's a pretentious pile of [ __ ] for me i lean towards far into the pretentious pile of [ __ ] category but it's also a game from 1999 and you can't completely say that because there is a lot that this game is inspired and there is a lot this game does well even to this day so think about it like this now this video is all based around my experience with the game okay my experience spending 12 to 20 hours playing this first game all the forklift nonsenses all of watching tom dance for literally 12 hours of [ __ ] day all of this is based on my experiences so let's begin now to understand further context this is a dreamcast game from 1999 all right so in the spirit of all that we're going to give this a fair look as if this video was in 1999 right as if we were looking at it from that perspective now some of you all may be wondering what a dream cast is and my god doesn't hurt to even think that because i'm getting old the dreamcast was the final console sega ever made after spending almost two decades in the console war alright a sixth generation system that had some pretty solid games in its own right jet set radio sonic crazy taxi all of that nonsense hell it had fantasy star online i know i mentioned that in the beginning but that's one of the first console online games that actually did pretty well it looks really good it ryan pretty well from what i've seen i mean the servers are dead but hey fair credit where fair credit is due the controller even had this thing called a virtual memory unit back in the day video games needed like or video game consoles needed memory cards to save so for playstation you'd have a one megabyte memory card for the playstation one and an eight megabyte one for the playstation 2. you'd store all your save files in there dreamcast went above and beyond not only was it a memory card storing your game data and various other applications but you could also take that memory card out of the controller and play around with it as it was an actual micro console to be honest sega as far as many [ __ ] ups that they've made in the console industry the dreamcast was where this console alone had some of the most interesting gimmicks that i wish some modern day consoles at least try to take away from okay because as much as you want to crap on the dreamcast rightfully so in certain cases this is one of the most ambitious consoles and to this day it still does things right now again after all that why the [ __ ] did the dreamcast fail few reasons for one it came out about a year before the playstation 2. you know we knew that was around the corner it was a stronger system and it was going to be one of the best selling systems ever it also was marketed more towards a teenage and adult market so obviously this one was looking to future-proof itself from time in but the playstation 2 had what i think a lot of other systems didn't really have the playstation 2 came in hardcore with higher storage disks meaning you could store more game content instead of spreading it across four discs like shenmue you had better processing powers you know far better in terms of it i mean people thought that it could render toy story i mean that's how it was advertised as [ __ ] saddam hussein wanted to daisy chain a couple together apparently allegedly to take over america it was a crazy powerful system at least at the time but it also came with a cheap ass dvd player which believe it or not means a whole heck of a lot when it comes to buying one system for your house that's going to be stuck under your television it also helped that sony started pumping out way more cool and mature titles i mean you had your mascot games that were going to appeal to everyone but at this point gamers were getting older okay so at this point we were looking more towards the next generation of resident evil games the metal gears you know [ __ ] games like final fantasy were already mature story-wise it was only a matter of time before they went even further started to add shooters like dirge of cerberus i mean i'm never gonna forget that but then you also had games like grand theft auto which took the concept of shenmue's world technology its world simulation its day night cycles to the next level by creating a game that was way more accessible and it had a far more grandiose design in theory and again that's not to say that dreamcast didn't have good launch games i mean again like i said you had your sonics you had all of that you had your soul caliburs but the reality is this was competing directly with the playstation 1. i mean even the third party support you would find games like grand theft auto 2 that would get a weak port on the playstation 1 but then immediately look night and day difference literally on the dreamcast so that was the system it was competing it was like a generation it was com it was a generation ahead competing with the generation behind i guess is the best way to say it right the best way to really put it it also didn't help the fact that the dreamcast had no [ __ ] drm yes i [ __ ] you not if you had a cd-rom drive you could just download dreamcast games burn them and call it a day though even the piracy argument kind of falls flat a little bit because by the time it became really possible because of poor mismanagement the entire system eventually was doomed to failure now why is this story so important when it comes to the context of shenmue well that's because shenmue is also one of the most [ __ ] expensive games ever created okay you see whereas fantasy star online is one of those online games that came out and really sort of was the first console online mmo that i think did really well at least it at least you know executed well i don't really care so much about sales or anything of that nature but shenmue was one of the most expensive games of its release you know it cost around 45 to 70 million dollars when you finagle in the marketing budget and some of shinmutu's budget which kind of got mixed in with the first game but despite it being so expensive it was a commercial failure not even from a sales perspective the thing pulled in over a million sales which is great for a new ip but the fact that you had to spend so [ __ ] much you didn't make much back and since the system was dying i mean remember the dreamcast launched really well at the time they couldn't maintain those sales because of the competition coming in so again shenmue and by succession shenmue ii was doomed to fail with the hardware that it was releasing on now listen as much as i would love to [ __ ] on shenmue i have to give credit to you suzuki because he did in fact crap out of what is an ambitious title now shenmue came out before grand theft auto 3 a game that i think a lot of us know very well you see there's no doubt that rockstar games pulled magic out of their ass when they were developing gta 3 for the playstation 2 an open world game that you could blow almost anything up in and while gta 3 is a popular game that's been deconstructed and held up as a pillar of gaming shenmue came out way before you know relatively before on an on a much more weaker system by the way and was able to pull off some really impressive visuals and also provide a really impressive you know graphic effects and and day and night simulations in fact world simulation as a whole detail alone was at an all-time high for what shenmue was giving so to give credit where credit is really do you suzuki and sega weren't pulling any punches i mean this is a game that took itself so seriously in terms of immersion that they actually captured weather data from that region on those specific times and inputted them into the game as to add more immersiveness and realism i [ __ ] you not that's a legitimate options menu toggle that you can go into see comparing shenmue to games in 1999 is the smartest choice okay even if you were never interested in the revenge story or the gameplay at all you'd have people who would just want to see it run and play in the scenes just as a tech demo of games at the time yeah i mean it was rough around the [ __ ] edges but holy [ __ ] it's in 1999 guys computers are about to go full [ __ ] y2k two days down the road so enjoy your goddamn gotcha simulator while you're [ __ ] at it okay enjoy your revenge story god damn as far as critic reviews went at the time a lot of people really did appreciate the graphics for its release date i mean i'm not the only one saying that it doesn't stand the test of time there are people to this day that'll look at shenmue and say wow it was impressive i mean go look at the digital foundry videos they covered it really well on df retro looking at the visual style and its makeup still working well to this day and you know despite all of that positivity people were critical of the game's slow pace and the fact that it wasn't exactly the best game out on the market i mean [ __ ] you were looking at a revenge game that was more of a technical [ __ ] demonstration for looking at things really goddamn closely than it was an actual action adventure game but hey let's get to it shenmue begins with ryu coming home to see that his father is being attacked by an individual known as londy a very important antagonist for this franchise dying at his hands no less londy shows up to take a mirror away after killing kazuki senior leaving ryu degree for his dead a few days pass and ryu wakes up nightmares later and he decides maybe i should get some revenge now at this point this is where shenmue hindu's genre really does come into question is it an action game [ __ ] no barely i mean in terms of actual combat there's only a few times i feel i've ever gotten into actual combat is it an adventure game uh well yeah but i guess by that definition [ __ ] anything must be an adventure game [ __ ] toilet simulator must be a great story if you're if you're using that as a metric no see this is more a immersive simulator i think that's the actual genre that we're hitting uh interactive cinema is a name that i've seen tossed around over here uh walking simulator would be one that people would showcase um not in shenmue's case no no see this is still the apex of its of its craft now the first section of the game rio's bedroom is a great showcase into what shenmue really prioritizes which is the fact that every individual drawer can be opened and closed the closet door yeah you can [ __ ] around with it every individual item hold the l2 button zoom in you can peek into it you can grab it manipulate it around every single detail is captured as much as it can be for a dreamcast game okay but still even by that metric it's a lot of detail to capture and it's not just ryu's room it's the household it's the yard [ __ ] it's the entire hub world around you nearly every building is enterable and explorable to an extent within reason and in shenmue two and three it only gets even wilder but for shenmue's one case understand this blue people's minds respectively yeah maybe it's not so practical but shenmue's world isn't also that big either but again even for back then rendering just this small location with this impeccable of detail is pretty commendable now of course you have this notebook which is sort of the objective marker for the game again it's all immersive so this is where ryu will write what the what the next course of action is or a general summarization of events that have happened before in the first couple pages you'll find numbers for emergency services so if you do want to call the cops and let them handle them you can until ryu decides to linearly tell you no i will avenge my father myself that's a better way of doing it i guess for whatever reason no i'll avenge my father's murder on my own ria's first objective is to track that black car that we saw in the yard the day of the dad's murder and here's where you're gonna go into town and you're gonna talk and there's a couple of hub worlds too yamanos is the street just outside your house where you'll find the cat side quest and a few characters that you can speak to sakuragaoka is a residential neighborhood with a convenience store and del bulita is actually the city or rather town in this case if we're going with a metric this starts a breadcrumb trail where you're going to be talking to random video game npcs and you know what's really cool back in the day is that every single one of these npcs is voiced not by an individual voice actor i want you to imagine it's you know a couple people doing the voices for everyone but for back then it's a voice for every character and it's not as crazy impressive when you look at it from a game developer perspective uh really these npcs have a few lines of important dialogue that they'll tell you pertaining to a current situation that you're in at the game at the time and then after those two lines will be repetitive lines that will tell you hey ryu uh sorry i have [ __ ] to do bye good luck with your dead dad that's sort of the dialogue that you're going with i mean back then it blew you away in 1999 and to this day i appreciate what they're going with okay uh dialogue choices no there's no [ __ ] dialogue choice for shenmue uh see the game has an interesting method where imagine if a is the interact button yeah you're gonna have to get real comfortable talking to somebody having a long awkward pause tapping over and over again to finish dialogue that's how it works in fact the dialog is a little too goofy too uh quite literally it's way disjointed i'm not talking about audio quality like i know it sounds like ryu that's because the game is from 1999 with off audio quality no i'm talking about the actual voice dialogue all right like if you just listen to it it's [ __ ] insane hey if it's what you've decided it's what you've decided ryo don't do anything stupid of course i won't i'll always treasure this yo take care of yours too i will i'll come back when i'm on vacation have you heard about my dad no have a good day that's the uh that's the level of dialogue that you'll have to come across okay it's very [ __ ] disjointing all right uh it's all over the place there's no like smoothness in the dialogue and i'm gonna attribute that to the fact that it's a game from 1999 and it does get better in shenmue too a lot better but that's sort of what you're gonna have to get used to okay now during this entire dealio you'll come across one of your first side quests in the game which is where you have to take care of this cat and i want you to really savor these side quests because it's going to be one of the few things the game allows you to do to break up the god-awful pacing that we're going to look at just down the road i made it a mission to take care of this cat until it came back to full health by fetching it milk every morning and by the time i came home to finish the day i would give it some you know tuna fish i wouldn't give it like fresh fish because i mean that costs a lot of [ __ ] money and with the with the 500 yen that enasan keeps on giving me at the end of every beginning of each day that ain't nothing to cover this thing's budget that's for goddamn sure yeah you get 500 yen each day it isn't until much later in the game that you start to develop an actual goddamn income but for the first little bit you're poor and money really doesn't have much of an importance in shenmue one it isn't until shenmue 2 when you start paying [ __ ] rent but that's a whole separate story shenmue 1's money requirement isn't really that necessary there's a few things you can do with money like go to convenience store and buy batteries you buy some soft drinks on the side of the road hoping to god you're lucky enough to get the special can that lets you redeem yellow super sonic uh there's also the option of opening up [ __ ] gotchas because that's a big thing in shenmue that's one of the ways you pass time yeah money's not really a focal point all right there's there's one necessary part of the game where you need it but for the most part it just sort of sits there alright so you can play arcade games do whatever you want but that's a general usage for money in shenmue anyways everyone here tells you to go talk to the chinese community because they're the ones that know everything about the chinese locals that keep coming into the area here the game gives you a little bit of a a little bit of a stop asian hate type message going on for you and then you find tom the one american character who is uh stuck in an infinite dance loop uh i've made my own lore regarding tom dancing for hours upon hours every day i think tom is on crack all right that's what i i'm getting a rough idea that tom touches the crack pipe a little too [ __ ] much because no one has this much goddamn energy i like tom but he's not really that helpful into the game i mean every time i ask this [ __ ] about the most basic [ __ ] no real man i got nothing to help you want a hot dog really hot dog no tom i don't want a [ __ ] hot dog in fact that's one of my complaints with shenmue why is it that i don't have a choice in buying a hot dog from tom why is there no health support tom's hot dog crack addiction business speedrun percent why doesn't that happen i don't [ __ ] know but the game that that's just tom's character in general okay i'm talking about it way too much the local chinese restaurants tell you about the three blades a community of individuals who work as chefs barbers and tailors ah get it they all use blades anyways you end up finding out from one of the chinese elders uh that the person who killed hazuki's senior actually belongs to a chinese cartel and you better left up talking to sailors and boy the [ __ ] sailors you know anybody you'll talk about who tells you about shenmue will constantly mention the sailors oh the sailors now finding these sailors involves that you wait until 7pm and i'm going to give shenmue some goddamn credit here okay shenmue believe it or not ladies and gentlemen has an absolutely impeccable day-to-night cycle i swear you could look up at this game and see actual proper star constellations it's not hard to do that but for 19.99 good job you suzuki did a bang-up job on that one now after 7 p.m the day turns into night and riu is out of town the bar district has opened and you can actually go inside and play pool with one of the sailor groups again mini-game that i've never been able to successfully do right i swear to god i can't play pool in a video game so i ended up [ __ ] this [ __ ] up and eventually during the night you'll find one real shady one tucked away away from the in-game street maps by the way no less now heartbeats is the bar that is full of the absolute shadiest of scummy characters so shady in fact that the game introduces you to one of its core components quicktime events oh you might be like what quick time yeah shenmue popularized quicktime events actually i think shenmue brought them into the party you might be thinking that dragon lair game i saw an avgn no game does quick time events as immensely as shenmue you ever wanted to put a controller down in the middle of gaming [ __ ] that with shenmue you're never going to do that [ __ ] success the game will give you a quick time event just for blinking sometimes straight fresh hell out of nowhere and while i'm okay with that you know i played games with quicktime events um these quicktime events have literally no chill all right and let me tell you something the window of success on these are so inconsistent it's not even funny some of them you'll be able to hit with relative ease sometimes they'll flash an arrow on the screen and if you're not touching it at that right [ __ ] nanosecond you will fail you're allowed to fail a few times before the game immediately screws up that checkpoint or the quicktime event fours you and the stakes are so low in that regard in fact shenmue's difficulty is so low that the game will just consistently allow you to [ __ ] up you can [ __ ] up like a hundred times and the game will just rewind you back and you can continue like nothing happened now there are some exceptions to that rule some exceptions but in generally the game doesn't have any problems with players screwing up even the battles alone which there are only a handful of you can choose to screw up you can actually lose a few times and i swear to god i think the game just gets easier or gives you more health or it maybe makes you damage even harder just to make the battle easier the more you fail so losing in shenmue isn't a big deal you're always gonna win this game is literally a [ __ ] participation trophy for light like 99 of its audience at heartbeats you find out there's this fella named charlie that has some more information and this is where oh boy the real problem starts showing out finding charlie isn't exactly the hardest thing you just wait a minute wait a minute stop i know i i'm telepathically understanding wait a second as awkward as a dialogue in this game is as awkward as his moment is you're probably wondering mudo what's up with the fighting good question because literally an hour and a half into recording this [ __ ] game i have found out that this is where the first fight technically begins they ship you off to some sailors uh you know this like empty parking lot where you end up fighting other characters now let me explain the fighting in this game as little as there is most of the time you'll ever touch the fighting engine is if you willingly go out to practice there's a lot of moves hell there i think are i think there are ways to even level up the moves but the combat is generally weighty in fact i believe it's quite literally just ripped out of virtua fighter to an extent there's a punch there's a kick there's a block there's a grab there's combinations you can pull off and there's skills that you can find in the world buy and then learn uh a little meaningless i mean the combat is easy like i said earlier no matter how much you lose i feel like the game just gets easier as time goes on eventually after a few fights and talking to people around the time you track charlie down to this apartment tattoo parlor and that's where the big problem now arises see shenmue uses a 24-hour time system evident since i said the uh you know day night cycle is a thing and you probably noticed in the gameplay footage there's a clock all right up into the top right see that clock is running and i believe what four times real world speed or something like it's a faster version of real game time point is you are going to spend each day waking up at 8am and you're going to go to bed past 8 p.m or 9 p.m see you can't go to bed early all right you can't pass the time unless you just walk around no you literally have to sit there and watch the time manually pass i've heard people say that if you open up the watch in the game time passes faster but i honestly think that's either madness invoking into me or it's a [ __ ] placebo effect because this game has some long [ __ ] pacing wait times alright there's a reason this game is unspeed runnable sometimes and let me explain it so let's say that going to charlie at this apartment parlor right you find out where it is at 3 p.m right that day you find out to come back the next day so what do you [ __ ] do well you can either [ __ ] around in the game and do its few objectives like finish up maybe a side quest if you're lucky uh open up some gotchas where ryu buys a gotcha for like 100 yen opens the capsule looks around it oh oh that's sonic huh oh that's a truck oh that's a dice you either do that you you drink some soda you place it you buy some [ __ ] at the convenience store you walk around you look at tom [ __ ] dance that's all you can do so you have to make sure you kill enough time for 3 p.m in game to turn to 8 p.m so you can move on to the next day then you wake up at 8pm now here's where the pacing gets even more [ __ ] the game will tell you show up around 1pm so now you leave the house at eight eight a.m you feed the cat you do whatever you can there's no fight really to happen maybe there's an up maybe there's like an optional cut scene to watch but you're literally waiting from eight to like [ __ ] whatever time the game tells you to do and this is what kills the pacing because 99 of gamers are just either going to be on their cell phone i have fallen asleep all right waiting for an objective to kick in on this game it is embarrassingly bad how poorly this section is paced there are not enough activities in the game to make this time go by any faster okay after you play the arcade games for like a few hours after you've done boring [ __ ] for enough there is not enough activities there's only so much of dobu retail a player can run around and experience until they get [ __ ] bored this is what kills the pacing if you're interested in the revenge story at all like i said earlier this is a game that invests you this is a game this is a revenge story that has you filing taxes every once in a while you're gonna have to do the boring mundane [ __ ] i wouldn't be surprised if you suzuki at one point had a bm movement mechanic in the game where you had to regularly take pisses and [ __ ] i'm surprised that you suzuki didn't input a [ __ ] choke the chicken mini game so that ryu could sleep well at night i'm surprised basic [ __ ] like that is put into the game at this point if realism and immersion is what you're going for okay you know sometimes story progression can just be hey talk to this person one day you know just just have one conversation hey show up the next day and then you just sit there waiting and watching tom dance every [ __ ] excruciating minute of the day so after the next couple days of this you know nightmare in in uh in purgatory storyland ineson ends up giving you an actual letter written in chinese you find this little chinese kid getting bullied just outside your house well a little down your house buy some gangster rejects i mean who's bullying a little kid get the [ __ ] out of here so once you get into like what the the one out of the six fights in the entire game you end up saving this chinese kid who takes you to his grandmother who then converts and translates this letter for you inside the letter it is a past phrase father's heaven and nine dragons mother erts and comrades each of these corresponding to their respective partners and phrases you get a phone number and a warning of those who pursue the mirror remember that mirror we saw in the beginning yeah that's all tying in now so calling this number leads you to a goose chase where you go to the final hub world in the entire game uh which is the new yokosuka harbor the harbor hub world is one of the second biggest hub rules that you can find and at this point once you've reached this level of the game this is where you're going to be spending a great chunk of your time so here you have to find warehouse number eight and here you spend the entire day talking to everyone now this harbor section is where i really want to reiterate one of the strongest points of shenmue's gameplay right or shenmue's experience rather now going to the harbor every bus has its schedule you know they change differently depending on whether it's a weekday or even a weekend or a holiday and what's even more important in the situation is when you get down to the harbor how are you finding warehouse number eight or is it the numbers on the side of the warehouse is it talking to the various people around the harbor is it helping the homeless guy when he gets thrown out of an area by giving him some coffee there's a million ways well that's a bit hyperbolic but there's a lot of ways a lot of interactions a player can miss and this is throughout the entire game whether you're looking for the black car or the sailors or charlie or you know the warehouse number eight in this case there are multiple ways that you'll eventually end up coming towards something there's a great i would say there there's a great feeling to open up a notebook or look around at a map hidden in the game area or just generally use your actual deduction and perception to really come down to finding a location hidden or there's an experience right there that isn't really captured in games of today one of the biggest problems i have in modern day video gaming is the real the the the sort of um the hud issue where the game will always oftentimes just put a giant marker where you have to go anyways one of the coolest things that i've seen in games like assassin's creed lately is instead of just throwing a marker down the game will give you clues and say hey it's in this location a bit north of this river blah blah whatever yeah it's kind of a marker but the fact that you have to put some modicum of effort into figuring out something is a lost art in today's gaming and one that i feel only games like shenmue or in this case only shenmue has ever really captured and that's one thing no matter how much you hate or love this game this is something that sets shenmue apart and it sets it apart in a very positive way and if i had to tell you to play the game just to experience gameplay like this once that's absolutely worth it so finding the warehouse proper you talk to everyone you know you miss some interactions you see some interactions eventually end up sneaking into the old warehouse district and finding warehouse number eight where you find a character named master chen who explains that the miralon d took was just one of two and the other still exists the phoenix mirror a mirror that's going to be real important in the entire shenmue saga going forward this next section has you exploring your own house searching literally every nook and every cranny every drawer to find mysterious keys that lead into special rooms family heirlooms that eventually fit into secret keyholes hidden behind scrolls in multiple parts of the house i mean this is some real cool [ __ ] i mean if we're talking about detail and video games this is where it matters from a story and gameplay perspective now here you also get to fight master chen's son who says he'll body guard you because i guess you'll become really important down in the story and you'll also get your glimpse at the crack head of the game known as chai who's got some real [ __ ] meth energy built up one you'll be fighting very soon long story short you'll spend a lot of uh you'll spend a lot of time at the hazuki house basically looking around and checking uh you know for various keyholes you'll be going into town dubuita to check around local antique parlors to pick up what's left of your father's last belongings and eventually you'll come across a room hidden underneath the dojo and wait it's too dark to go in the dojo i'm not [ __ ] with you this blew my mind even on a second playthrough the game makes you go out and fetch a [ __ ] flashlight or light bulbs whatever your choice is to continue looking i [ __ ] you not so guess what i have to leave the dojo run outside and hope and pray to god the store was open which it was i went to the store you know the convenience store down in the city i bought some flashlights i bought some flash bulbs i bought whatever you want to call it and i came back and finally continued my exploration this is the thing with shenmue it's a great interesting story occasionally it'll make you do some busy [ __ ] work too that's the thing about it okay that's what shenmue does and if it's any that's part of the entire experience so at this point you end up going down into your basement you find out in a false space that there's this phoenix mirror and then you call up you know master chen again you meet him at the warehouse and this is where master chen tells you about mad angels the qiyu men group that's based in china and the fact that you're a kid and you probably shouldn't be chasing revenge a lot of people will tell you this and ryu will tell you no i must avenge my father and avenge he hopefully will i guess i'm not gonna spoil things anyways this point chai shows up and tries to steal the mirror and at this point i was really focused on the story so i [ __ ] up initially because they gave you a quick time event out of nowhere so again make sure you never put the controller down because that [ __ ] tends to happen ryu's next step is to actually take a ticket and go to hong kong to continue this revenge story and for that he's gonna have to do what all of us do and that's getting [ __ ] by travel prices yeah i [ __ ] you not ryu is a high school student meaning that he is in fact poorer than a medical student okay and for that he has to find the cheapest way of traveling whether that is you know literally swimming across the shore whatever you want to call it that's how it works nozomi who's another character's entire piece if you don't know who nizomi is i guess i'll explain it real quick there are a few other characters nozomi is ryu's sort of like love interest um you really have to develop your communication with you have to call her every night you have to talk to her to really develop that but she's one of the characters that ryu will confide and talk with and she'll tell you hey i go to canada all the time sometimes we have to go by boat because grandma's really scared of the planes so she tells you you can get a cheaper ticket and you find a travel agency i [ __ ] you not you go to the map you study it and it tells you hey that's a travel company you go to the travel company the cheapest one and you ask them can i have this ticket and they'll tell you yeah we do have a ticket and re realizing wow i'm poor but even i can afford that has this moment of giving his money up and being told to come up four hours later so you know what you can watch tom dance for the [ __ ] time that it takes to wait and you come back four hours later and you're getting scammed obviously so one quick time event and fight later you find out that okay come back tomorrow come back tomorrow to get your [ __ ] ticket so now you watch tom dance a little bit more you go back home sleep and you show up at the arcade at the arcade you find out that chai is over there the crack den meth addict that he is shows up eats your [ __ ] ticket and starts a fight with you now of course understandably you probably want to fight chai back too but chai being a meth addict has about 30 plus to strain so if you think you're beating this guy never going to happen some people have and the grand reward for that is uh nothing all right there's nothing that you get by losing or winning this fight you're just supposed to lose it anyways so at this point this is where the real meme comes out for shenmue the the job you never hear people talk about this game and they'll tell you oh is that the game with the forklift job the actual full-time job yes this is the game with a full-on full-time job work week [ __ ] get ready so the next section of this game has you going down back to the harbor where you eventually have to go get a job to learn about the mad angels gang it doesn't help the fact that the mad angels themselves have their entire [ __ ] logo plastered on one of the warehouses door in times new large font so again finding these guys isn't that difficult but shenmue wants you to do what shenmue wants you to do eventually end up getting a job at the harbor from one of these uh foremen that don't care about child labor laws so he ends up giving you a forklift job with no certification by the way that's a that's that's real great and here comes the forklift gameplay loop so let me explain something there are five days you have to do this each day ryu comes into work at eight o'clock he does the same race the exact same race they don't change the race up to reflect the path that you'll be taking each day delivering crates no no it's the same race no difference to any outcome you could win lose whatever all that changes is your supervisor mark gives you a different dangling chibi as a sign of failure every time after this race you start your job where the game will give you a map that tells you take the crates from this location and move it to another location now wait you might be wondering muda there's plenty of games that have these job-like sections hell remember san andreas had you on a forklift moving like three crates yeah three crates shenmue you think after the third crate they switched to a cutscene and it just shows ryu moving day to day no you move every [ __ ] crate and the idea is to meet quota so you get your 50 yen raise every day it's not terribly difficult to meet this quota considering all you can do for that entire work day the nine to five is move boxes okay so you might as well get [ __ ] acclimated now moving boxes you have a you have a lunch hour and a half in between you'll be going back to moving boxes so yeah after the whole box moving shenanigan you'll have some fights here and there that'll break out and you'll learn a bit more about the mad angels right eventually on the fifth day you know these idiots who again by the way have graffitied their gang logo onto one side of the harbor and everyone in the area doesn't want to talk about it for some [ __ ] stupid reason uh decide to uh do some shenanigans all right not before getting you out of a job see after the couple fights that you have and the quick time events it's enough for your foreman to fire you from a job okay so you end up going home that day depressed as always until you find out on the phone that what's up oh no the nozomi's been kidnapped yeah the mad angels have kidnapped the high schooler my god this is this just [ __ ] embarrassing now at this point ryu wakes up at 10 o'clock and the game finally allows you to go out past its hours okay the curfew has been lifted you head into town and you find out one of your neighbors has a motorcycle so you ring their doorbell and you say hey can i borrow it at 11 and they're like sure why the [ __ ] not i mean you should call the police if someone's been kidnapped but it's a revenge story guys who cares so you end up taking this motorcycle and finally some breath of fresh air as the gameplay slightly changes now this motorcycle section isn't that crazy there's no traffic for some reason uh it's a straight line and uh the actual margin to winning is so razor [ __ ] thin that if you actually screw up once during a turn you may have to repeat the whole process over again that also means watching the cutscene because they're not they're not skippable by any imagination at least some of them aren't uh this one in particular isn't you end up racing all the way back to the harbor and you end up going to the mad angels warehouse where they have their giant logo plastered and you rescue nozomi after going through a couple fights and ooh a quick time event yeah after this you end up making a deal with one of the bosses and you say listen i will i will gladly beat up uh master chen's son if you can take me to lon d to which yeah i guess that's happening so you end up waiting one more day and you go back to the harbor where you can learn a new move from tom and if you've developed and cultivated a relationship watch him finally move back to the united states it's truly interesting because if you actually end up doing all these side quests which they're missable but given the fact that there's almost nothing to do in the game you'll probably end up finding this [ __ ] down the road and you know committing to it that uh you'll end up seeing all these relationships cultivate blossom and move on away uh nozomi is kind of important even if you haven't put all your time in with her the game will give you these key relationships and moments and insight into her life that is genuinely interesting okay i will say the character relationships in shenmue are very important and to me they're done really well so anyways tom ends up moving back to the states teaches you a couple moves and you're finally able to move on to kicking master chen's kid so you end up fighting gui zhong and gui zhong ends up you know sort of taking you on for real until you find out that oh no it's a setup i made a deal with the devil so this starts what is known as the 70 man battle no it's not some battle royale no no no no see what happens is you and guijang are tossed into this literal 70 man gauntlet with full of actual minions and mini bosses now these guys take a punch or two to waste but this is the definition of you getting [ __ ] zerg rushed now this section isn't necessarily difficult but you're gonna have to get used to either two things learning the [ __ ] fighting mechanic which i never did or cheesing it by running away and creeping your health back up slowly and hopefully beating everything there's no shame to choosing this fight they literally throw one boss at you that can just outright grab you and [ __ ] you up to no end so you better get used to cheesing this fight and glanding it piecemeal hits at a time chipping away damage in order to win okay this is like yakuza 3 combat at its finest after you've done the 70 man battle and you found out you know listen i have got to commit my ass to this revenge story uh hazuki finally realizes [ __ ] man i have to go to hong kong and finally travel arrangements are made by master chen who can help not only ryu get to hong kong but acclimate well within the chinese community over there so this takes you to the final evening of shenmue where all you have to do is make sure that you're set to go say your goodbyes you know have whatever money you have on you and move on with your life so by the time you get to the harbor ladies and gentlemen you have one last fight in the game and who's that fight with well it's a resident sleeper favorite crackhead chai now believe it or not this is the hardest fight the game has to offer i don't really know what chai does in this game other than be an obvious reference to i guess lord of the [ __ ] rings but um chai believe it or not is just this crack meth energy [ __ ] they do teach you a swallow dive move before this fight that if you learn how to use it effectively you can absolutely cheese the chai fight and win it completely which i did and i won and this takes you to the final credit screen of shenmue it is fair to say that this game was planned well ahead with shinmutu in mind since there are a lot of characters namely xinhua the girl you see on the cover of shenmue 3 that shows up very much into shenmue 2. so you suzuki planned this out well in advance and this final ending to it is honestly i gotta say it's done really well you know it is i'll explain one thing real quick okay for me this kind of caused a bit of a hideo kojima moment with a game that's handling its cinematography pretty well and if it's one thing that i haven't mentioned at all really that i should have is the soundtrack i know in some cases some tracks you know they're just they're not nothing to write home about but when this game is trying to go for that cinematic flair you suzuki's like talent comes out hardcore and finding the absolute perfect music to pair with the scene you're watching and in a way shenmue's story becomes almost magical it becomes something worth experiencing and from a story perspective i like it okay i want to see this revenge story despite all of the gameplay pacing hiccups and issues if shenmue was just a movie on a disc it would be a good movie and that's the problem with it it's a bad game alright it's an awful game but it's an awful game that has some moments now the gameplay is dated again even for when it came out by the way it does not hold up whatsoever listen there is nobody in the world that's going to convince me shenmue isn't an awful game okay it is an awful game but it's an awful game that is absolutely worth playing because while the gameplay is dated for sure you know nobody can tell me the combat system isn't dated the movement tank control isn't janky even for 1999 standards ironically the boring aspects of shenmue make it a reason worth playing make it an experience jumping down into because the gameplay that makes it the strongest is the gameplay that has never been recreated in modern day gaming at all which is this level of immersive exploration this concept of hey i have to go down to the harbor and find this individual you're not just going to find him through a marker no you have to go to the harbor you have to talk to the security people you have to talk to the cafeteria you have to talk to the [ __ ] hobo you have to get into a fight here and there you have to watch you know generally there's a lot that goes into this game that has never been done for better or for worse in modern day gaming it's a revenge story with an absolute hard-on for [ __ ] immersion the soundtrack is definitely underrated like i said before but even more underrated than that is the phenomenal detail for the time that this game came out when the game wants to have a cutscene beyond the average in-engine dialogue it's an absolute breath of fresh air to constantly watch okay to this day a game from 1999 is standing up with modern day video games is it worth playing at least once even if you'll end up hating the game absolutely you know shenmue 4 is slated to come out and finish this entire saga off whenever that will [ __ ] come out i guess but i'm excited to at least see shenmue for despite the disappointment and gameplay even shenmue 3 has brought there's a certain charm that the shenmue franchise has that's unrivaled and unmatched this is a case of an individual making a game that is objectively in my opinion a bad game but an experience absolutely worth playing i think when people say our game's [ __ ] art this might be art okay this might actually be the definition of proper art because it's the definition of a man who's designed a game that is focused so much on immersion and simulation that i think he's i think you suzuki has forgotten that at some point he was developing a video game and in a way that's kind of what makes shenmue shenmue in a game absolutely worth playing and if i sound like a broken record listen at the end i still hate this game i still think it is a absolute boring pile of [ __ ] but even a boring pile of [ __ ] is worth playing if there are aspects of it that i feel have not only inspired games of modern era but have made it so that those same games have never been able to match the quality at least exhibited by shenmue to an extent i know that's a weird statement to make but it's just me basically telling you you have to play this game regardless of what anyone tells you it is absolutely worth the 15 hours that you will lose of your life to truly understand what shenmue is and where it came from and you know what if at the end of the day you want something to refute that statement i'm the same dumb [ __ ] that platinum debt stranding so maybe that makes my opinion invalid i don't really care at the end of the day i had to get my shenmue out of my system but you know what it's not out of my system because i have to make a video double the length of this when shenmue 2 has to be talked from my mouth and then hopefully shenmue 3 and by the time shenmue 4 comes out and i'm not collecting social [ __ ] security checks maybe a video on that one ladies and gentlemen this is you suzuki's greatest shitpost reviewed by another [ __ ] poster what a world we live in this is me mudahar and if you like what you saw please like comment and subscribe dislike it if you dislike it i am out [Music] [Music] you

Channel: SomeOrdinaryGamers

Views: 376,952

Rating: 4.9391022 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: NSFlrzv2MEc

Length: 56min 57sec (3417 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/C_Lana_Zepamo]

I didn't see anyone post about this, but the video made me want to buy the game, but fuck i don't wanna pay 30 bucks for shenmue 1 and 2 (you gotta buy it bundled)

However humble bundle ftw! for 7 bucks. However, it only last till tomorrow. I just wanted to let you guys know in case you get convinced to buy this game, you don't havve to pay full price. :)

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/shenmue-i-ii

edit: sorry idk the rules about posting like mutas own videos here, seems kinda dumb since we're all subscribed anyhow and probably all just watched it. my purpose for this was to let ppl know about the discout that expires in 16 hours in case they get moved to buy this game from muta wisfull, and lustful discourse of the game. not to get upvotes for basic ass post

[u/C_Lana_Zepamo]

Well I bought both of those games for $7 total using that deal and honestly I don't really like the game that much but I'm still going to give it a try because it's got historical value to the.

As many people said before most of saga's yakuza series stem from what this game was trying to do back in the day