Shenmue 2 is misunderstood. People think that it’s a game about life, that you have to do all the things you do in real life: eat, drink, sleep, and work. While these things are possible, the only one you absolutely have to do every day is sleep (which makes sense, really). Ryo, your character, must be some sort of robot, because he drinks about 1 cup of tea in the whole game. To add to that, you never see him eat: all buying food seems to accomplish is getting a free toy. Back to the robot thing, one complaint about this game is the voice acting. The actors sound like robots. Rubbish robots. And Ryo shows so little emotion during the game, further concreting the robot theory. Now, if I worked for Sega, I would say they have left him a kind of emotional blank canvas so you can form your own feelings about the characters. If I didn’t work for Sega, which actually is the case, I would say that they had about 10p to spend on voice actors. I’m sure most people would have preferred the original Japanese acting and read the subtitles. It’s not as if you watch Battle Royale or The Seven Samurai with dubbing, is it?
Wow, I’ve managed to write 200 words without referring to the story or the gameplay. I’d better do that then, I suppose. Ryo’s dad was killed by a bloke called Lan Di. Ryo vowed to have revenge. So in the first game he went around Japan looking for the bad guys. Then he followed them to Hong Kong. And he walks clumsily around the place, being an utter retard with no common sense at all. The designers seem to want you to make all the decisions. Maybe you are actually controlling a voice in Ryo’s head, telling him to buy children’s toys in vending machines and talk to ugly old women about where to find street gangs. Yes, the people you meet are, on the whole, arse-ugly.
Now, the game. It’s loosely an RPG. You walk around asking people if they know about things, and have to find money to pay people (usually Ren, a local gang leader – one of the few comparatively well-voiced characters) so they tell you important things. If you want you can earn an honest wage, by lifting boxes from one end of a dock to the other for no apparent reason. (They do actually manage to make this reasonably fun, like a rhythm action game on tranquilizers). It’s much quicker, though, to take part in street fights or gambling to get some dosh. When you do finally amass the money, the person, more often than not, totally fucks you over and a you-against-lots fight is the result. And the fighting’s made by the same people as Virtua Fighter, so it is actually good. You can buy or get given new moves to add to your repertoire, and you do actually learn stuff about kung fu. OK, so it doesn’t exactly make you any better at fighting, but you’ll know about the philosophy of it and that. It’s kind of like a game of a kung fu film. Maybe that’s why the voice acting’s so incredibly bad (at least it adds some comedy to the mix).
The Shenmue games are very original, so obviously not all of it will work. But enough does to make it enjoyable. For some. You might find it totally boring or completely enthralling. But no game comes close in the playing Space Harrier and Afterburner 2 in arcades, collecting plastic models of Sonic and chasing kiddies through docks stakes.
