Sega have revealed how the various actions in Shenmue II will be performed, and the interface looks to be improved over the original. Check it out.
During gameplay this is what Shenmue II will look like. It looks more complicated than the original and it is, but it's very intuitive once you understand it.
Anyone who's played Shenmue will recognise this - it's Ryo's watch and compass, moved up from it's former position and with an added AM/PM indicator. This is more useful than it sounds as Ryo no longer has a curfew and it makes it easier to tell whether, for example, it's 7am or 7pm.
As long as you've bought a map for the current area, it'll appear here in the bottom-left corner. It rotates to take into account Ryo's direction and you can add marks to remind you of important places (they appear as coloured crosses).
This is very clever. Different icons represent different actions that Ryo can perform, making complicated actions very easy to do. There are 8 icons:
| Icon | Action |
|---|---|
 | Talk |
 | Action |
 | Door |
 | Notebook |
 | System Menu |
 | Money |
 | Navigation Mark |
 | Cancel |
This is like in Shenmue - by pressing the D-Pad you can select replies and actions. It's timed and if you don't make a choice it will be done for you. For reference when gambling, left is 'Play', right is 'Rules', and down is 'Quit'.
Despite remaining basically the same, the Free Battle and QTE systems have numerous additions and improvements to prevent the fighting becoming stale. In one of the sections as you are adventuring through a derelict building you'll have to quickly press a direction to avoid a collapsing floor or sudden drop.
Another new type of QTE was shown in another section of the same building. As Ryo approaches a corner and spots an enemy hiding behind it he ducks behind the wall. The action then freezes and a button combination appears on-screen. In the movie it was down, B, but what you must do is repeat the combination to make Ryo defeat the enemy. Unlike in the original when missing a QTE would just give you another try, here if you fail you have to free battle the enemy from a view behind Ryo. This takes a little adjustment but works well. Defeating the enemy will allow Ryo to continue.
The adventuring sections that made up the bulk of Shenmue are now even bigger. The load times have been tweaked as well - now when you enter an area there will be a load time of around 10 seconds. This is a lot, but there's next to no loading now when you enter a building. The load screen is unchanged as it still shows the name of the area and the game time only now unlike the Japanese version of Shenmue, the place names are shown in English.
In the section shown, Ryo was looking for a part-time job (arubito in Japanese) but found no joy as most people simply commented on him being a foreigner (gaijin in Japanese). Eventually an old lady led him to a place where he could get a job and the game entered a new following mode in which Ryo automatically followed the old lady with the player free to look around in first-person whilst Ryo follows. You can break free of this, but I wouldn't unless you know where the rendevous point is.
