From a distant land in the east, from across the sea, he shall appear. (Shenmue II (DC))

Member Name: Takeshi Kovacs

Product:	Shenmue II (DC)
Date:	02/08/03 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Engrossing storyline, Music, Mini-Games

Disadvantages: Ocassionaly slow, Voice acting on Xbox

Developed by Yu Suzuki, Shenmue II is the follow up to one of the most engrossing video games in recent memory, Shenmue. While a lot of people tend to dismiss the game as boring, or uneventful, they typically do not play past the first hour, which is when the action really picks up.

Picking up where the first game left off, Ryo Hazuki leaves the small town of Yokosuka behind to arrive at Hong Kong, hoping to find his fathers killer, Lan Di, and avenge his death, all the while trying to solve the ever unraveling mystery of the Phoenix and Dragon mirrors.

Arriving in Hong Kong literally takes your breath away the first time you lay your eyes on it. As the boat crosses the river, you get a panning shot of the first area of Hong Kong, Aberdeen, complete with huge fountain. The sheer feeling of depth you get from this one area can even be slightly off putting to those gamers who would rather get down to business right away, but is fantastic for the rest of us. As you step off the boat, into the bustling pier, you won't have a clue what to do first. Buy some Zippo's, talk to people, start a collection of toy figurines, or just explore the surroundings, there is enough in this one single area to kept you busy for hours. The great thing about Shenmue II is the huge scale of the environments and the amount of interaction you can experience with them. I haven't counted, and I don't wish to try, but there are thousands of houses, shops and alleys that you can enter to explore and maybe even gain rewards for your troubles.

Once the story begins to pick up pace, it never let's up, constantly hitting you with twists and shocks at every turn. Shenmue II helps develop a much more deeper plot, in which the strange mirrors play an important role and Ryo learns of his fathers past. At the end of the first Shenmue game, Master Chen gives Ryo a letter, which explains about a person named Lishao Tao, much of which the first part of the
game is spent searching for.

The second half of the game is more action packed than the first, and really get's the adrenaline pumping, also giving a chance to show off the simple, yet beautiful combat system. When one of the many battles ensues, the game switches to a side on view similar to the fighting games out there today, namely Virtua Fighter, on which the combat engine is based on, albeit a more watered-down version. The controls are simple with each of the four main buttons assigned to a particular action, kick, punch, block and grab. You can easily button - mash your way through this, but then you would be robbing yourself of the overall experience, and we wouldn't want that would we?

The best way to enjoy the combat is to learn a few combinations to pull off the more difficult moves, which will usually deal more damage or have extra style. Once you have a few moves down then you can really appreciate the engine, as you clear out a room of 5 thugs without getting a finger laid on you, making you feel like god, if only for a few moments. The system is complex enough that it will allow serious gamers to delve deeper into the fighting, thus giving them more style and making fights that little bit easier, and it will allow for the impatient gamers who don't wish to learn any of the moves the chance to just blast through the game by striking one button constantly.

This brings me to another type of game play Shenmue offers, Quick Timer Events, or just QTE. These keep you constantly on your guard, as they can happen at any moment, even during a tough battle. The premises is simple enough, a button will flash on the screen for a second or two, in which time you must press that button, if you succeed you will pass the QTE, fail and, well, you fail. This adds to the excitement, and accounts for some truly amazing cut scenes.

A new version of the QTE has been for the second game, CQTE, which is short for C
omman
d Quick Timer Event. These involve the action pausing for a second, and a combination of buttons will flash in a certain order, which you must repeat within a couple of seconds to pass the event.

One of the most enjoyable things about Shenmue is its mini-games, which return here in their hoards. The most addictive ones are the actual games themselves, which include Outrun, Afterburner II, Hang On and Space Harrier, most of which can be found in arcades or in one of the thousands of rooms the game offers. While in the game, you usually have to spend your hard earned money to have a quick play on them, but be careful, or you'll just waste it on that damn Afterburner like I did. There is also a selection of non-games to play, like Darts, Arm Wrestling or even some gambling, which are all just as popular as the arcade games.

The graphics, while not as impressive as they were when it was first released, still provide a solid foundation for the game play. Characters such as Ryo, Ren and Joy are amazingly detailed, while some of the other characters have been toned down, which is a slight disappointment. The best graphics still come from the environments though, with Hong Kong slowly turning from day to night as it immerses you even more. Effects such as the sun glaring off the screen and the water casually spraying forth from a fountain really add to the overall feel of the game, giving the impression of a living and breathing computer version of Hong Kong, the rain effects however, leave a lot to be desired.

One of Shenmue's most memorable experiences is its fantastic score, which you'd expect to hear in epics such as the Lord of the Rings films. While exploring the city, the music blends perfectly into the background, just enough to not get overly annoying, and during a battle or scene, more dramatic beats will kick in to help give you that rush. One of the more major complaints towards the sound department of Shenmue comes from
the voice acting. Some people cannot stand the terrible accents in this so much that they will not play the game, while it doesn't seem to affect over people. While it's true that nearly all of the voices can go right through your skull, killing you in the process, some of the voices are actually listen able, such as Ryo and Ren. In the UK and Japanese version of the game, the voices are just that, in Japanese with English subtitles, but in the Xbox versions of the game the voices are dubbed in English, so it will really depend on which version you get, and whether you care enough about it to let it bother you.

Overall, Shenmue II is a masterpiece in my eyes. Note what I said, in my eyes. Shenmue is one of those games that you would either die to get, or kill yourself to get away from it. If what I described sounds interesting to you, then by all means go out and buy a copy of the game right at this moment, but if you are more of an action gamer, maybe you should pass on this one, but I recommend you still try it, as you might just find a new found love for it.

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