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Shenmue I & II Remaster (8/21/2018; PC/PS4/XB1 - $29.99)
- Thread starter Y2Kev
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Probably the most ridiculous response ive read in Era since inception.
In case you couldnt get it, what i originally said was entirely my opinion. I believe Shenmue is a bad game. That comes from my experience playing and completing the game. It doesnt mean that the game is objectively bad. That thing does not exist in the first place.
And please, take my humble advise: dont go for the life insulting those who dont agree with you.
Shenmue (1) characters are super memorable to me as well, maybe more so than 2's. I loved how they had little stories going on in the background of the story as you played (if you spoke to certain characters enough you got little snippets of the characters lives). It was a great way to get to know Ryo's close friends. 2 had a different atmosphere entirely since Ryo was in a foreign country, but its pretty impossible not to remember Ren, Joy and Wong (oh, and Cool Z and his huge ghetto blaster).
DEMUL shots. 2x internal resolution.
Prologue:
IMO, the remastered version is way, way better than DEMUL. Even from compressed YouTube footage we can see that D3T have rebuilt the lighting, and Shenhua and the skybox have seen improvements on the textures. The lighting model in the remaster is really so much better, there's also anti-aliasing, and they've managed to almost entirely get rid of the persistent jaggies that plagued Shenhua's hair even on emulators downsampling from 3x internal resolution and above.
Opening:
There are a few visual bits and pieces missing, but it's nowhere near as extreme as that video makes it out to be.
Considering they've made vast, vast improvements to the prologue, including anti-aliasing that doesn't seem to be present in the rest of the video, I think we have to take that "work in progress" label seriously instead of panicking like D3T doesn't know what they're putting out. Remain calm.
Prologue:
IMO, the remastered version is way, way better than DEMUL. Even from compressed YouTube footage we can see that D3T have rebuilt the lighting, and Shenhua and the skybox have seen improvements on the textures. The lighting model in the remaster is really so much better, there's also anti-aliasing, and they've managed to almost entirely get rid of the persistent jaggies that plagued Shenhua's hair even on emulators downsampling from 3x internal resolution and above.
Opening:
There are a few visual bits and pieces missing, but it's nowhere near as extreme as that video makes it out to be.
Considering they've made vast, vast improvements to the prologue, including anti-aliasing that doesn't seem to be present in the rest of the video, I think we have to take that "work in progress" label seriously instead of panicking like D3T doesn't know what they're putting out. Remain calm.
Looks like I'm finally doing a replay then! All I really remember from my childhood playthrough is: creepy rooftop gremlin guy, buying chocolate from the Tomato market that did nothing, forklift races. I definitely remember it being awesome though.
30 dollars for BOTH games is a freaking steal. I'm so happy for the fans and that people of this generation can enjoy it! =)
Yes to both, though it included an amiibo.
I think the shenmue 1 and 2 is a good deal, but its a bit disappointing it didn't really get any texture upgrades.
Don't forget about Xiuying. She's one of my favourite female characters ever in gaming alongside Ada Wong from Resident Evil and Bayonetta. She's amazing!
Sure.
Theres two things I like about Shenmue: Technically speaking, was a marvel at that time. It was the first game I recall I could open cases, catching things on the scenario, and having a remarkable dynamic weather system. The recreation of the main japanese town (dont recall its name) was fantastic as well. It felt like a real town, and the level of detail (like going to an arcade and actually playing some Sega games there) was great.
Also, the game feeling of "hey, go there, talk to people and try to figure what happened" was awesome. In some way, I had that feeling of "i never play a thing like these before", similar to what happened to me when I first play MGS on PS1.
Now, I consider that the game had some severe flaws: First, gameplay. Theres no skill involved on almost any section (and the actual action scenes are incredible weak, like the fights in the factory/port, dont recall exactly what place it was, but im referring to the one you reached when taking the bug at the town entrance), and mostly feels like a walking simulator. That wouldnt be necessarily bad, but combined with a bland, boring story (IMO), and some forgettable characters, starting with Ryo -which could be easily a generic NPC on a nowadays game- made my experience quite forgettable overall on that time.
When I think on the great time I had with my DC as a kid, games like Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Sonic and PSO come to my mind. But not Shenmue.
I think some people will love the game eventually, and I really hope Shenmue III to be great, though. Dont want to flood this thread with negativity, because this remaster is 100% good news.
Yesssss. Part ice queen, part sensei. Her story arc in II and how it ties into Ryo's was great work. A beacon of physical and spiritual strength that helps guide Ryo, if only a little, away from the path of a killer.Don't forget about Xiuying. She's one of my favourite female characters ever in gaming alongside Ada Wong from Resident Evil and Bayonetta. She's amazing!
Plus, dope theme music.
Yep!
I loved her every time she was around! Total badass! She might actually be my favourite character from both games.
Hell yes!!! Gonna jump on that pre order so fast when it comes up on the ebgames website. Hopefully out before shenmue 3
Neat video. I also hope they add the fog back. I have faith things will turn out fine.
This is the most detached explanation I've ever heard about Shenmue. The combat is certainly skill-based, as is piecing together information to solve mysteries to progress the story, and it's obtuse to claim otherwise. I assume your explanation here only covers Chapter I and not anything after it? The gameplay of the Yokosuka chapter is multi-faceted, but it's certainly more of a slow-burn adventure/mystery game than an action game so calling it a walking simulator in 1999/2000 is like calling out the adventure genre. Weird.
You can criticise Chapter I all day, but without the context of character growth and pacing in its grandiose and more action-packed sequel, you lose out in the end. Especially when this thread is about both games, and it seems like you've only played the first one and disregarded its sequel. Ryo's character development over the course of the second game is one that is noted by fans, I'm surprised that you think that framing Ryo's character as "a generic NPC on a nowadays game" makes sense, when the game isn't a nowadays game but one that came out over 15 years ago. The actual fact is that the characters are as memorable as you want them to be, and the more you talk to people and find out about their lives and connections, the more endearing they are.
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I disagree, both DC and PS2 games still hold up. Especially the Shenmue games as you can play them via VGA.
I will buy this even though I don't think I'd ever have time to actually play through it again.
I always believed that Dreamcast games held up better simply because of the VGA adapter. The system always had cleaner output.
I always believed that Dreamcast games held up better simply because of the VGA adapter. The system always had cleaner output.
Demul version is great I run it at 5x internal which is sharp AF
Only problem is the ui is clunky and input for Demul doesn't have that great support but is workable
Gladly will double dip on this
Only problem is the ui is clunky and input for Demul doesn't have that great support but is workable
Gladly will double dip on this
That's huge. Those were English-only in Europe if I'm not mistaken !
Now that this is happening, I feel like people should start to use the spoiler tag every time they wanna talk about one or several story bits ;)
Yeah, I'm probably going to try and be more careful with spoilers from now on.
I'm pretty interested to see what they choose to be the achievement/trophies.
I've been a Yakuza fan since Yakuza 3 and played it to death, always wanted to play Shenmue but never had a Dreamcast or Xbox and always forgot about emulation.
No excuses now.
No excuses now.
I watched the trailer again and I agree that the 16x9 footage looks a bit stretched horizontally. The shot from the pier in Shenmue 2 has no shadows either, but hey, it's a work-in-progress.
On a side note, I don't know why the trailers for this and Shenmue 3 have used Shenhua's theme so heavily and not the main Sedge Tree theme music, which is one of the best pieces of video game music ever composed.
I also hope Shenmue III will now adopt the Shenmue I & II logotype, which is infinitely better (sorry, Yu Suzuki!).
On a side note, I don't know why the trailers for this and Shenmue 3 have used Shenhua's theme so heavily and not the main Sedge Tree theme music, which is one of the best pieces of video game music ever composed.
I also hope Shenmue III will now adopt the Shenmue I & II logotype, which is infinitely better (sorry, Yu Suzuki!).
This isnt true in shenmue 2 at all. In fact, shenmue 2 was one of the very first open world games to let yoy skip time. You can choose to jump time forward in shenmue 2 whenever you want, and they are adding that feature back into shenmue 1 with this remaster.
DEMUL shots. 2x internal resolution.
Prologue:
IMO, the remastered version is way, way better than DEMUL. Even from compressed YouTube footage we can see that D3T have rebuilt the lighting, and Shenhua and the skybox have seen improvements on the textures. The lighting model in the remaster is really so much better, there's also anti-aliasing, and they've managed to almost entirely get rid of the persistent jaggies that plagued Shenhua's hair even on emulators downsampling from 3x internal resolution and above.
Opening:
There are a few visual bits and pieces missing, but it's nowhere near as extreme as that video makes it out to be.
Considering they've made vast, vast improvements to the prologue, including anti-aliasing that doesn't seem to be present in the rest of the video, I think we have to take that "work in progress" label seriously instead of panicking like D3T doesn't know what they're putting out. Remain calm.
It seems like their current build is missing the colour filters from the Dreamcast version, in general. The soft orange glow on Shenhua is missing, and the desaturated filter from the opening scene is also not there yet. But some of your other points hold true. There are definitely some texture improvements as well as anti-aliasing upgrades. They are not huge upgrades, but they do help create a cleaner image when moving to 1080. Really hope the PC version can go even higher on the resolution.
I honestly think the original games still hold up really well artistically. Sure you can point to lower polygon models (they were high poly for 1999), muddy textures, some wonky low-tier looking NPC's and a few other visual short comings that became more apparent over time.
But looking at those Demul images, the original game still has a really consistent visual style to it. The artists made great use of colour and filters to create different moods.
I still rem3ber getting the first game for Christmas after the game launched. One of the best Christmas breaks of my childhood.
Yeah, I literally know nothing about the story of Shenmue. Like not even a plot synopsis. It was always this amorphous name that I knew because people on the internet would mention it in thread; I only ever learned it existed in the first place through GAF posts in the last four years or so. Like it might the only famous classic game series that I would be going into completely blind.
I gave you like a 800 word breakdown of the plot yesterday, haha, you still know nothing about it?
That was just all gameplay details and locations. I don't know anything about the characters or the story. Like I'm assuming "Shenmue" is the name of the protagonist? But I don't know that for sure
Er:
I kept it generalized and avoided major spoilers, but that indeed is basically the story to Shenmue.
As for what Shenmue itself is... it's not something you find out until like the last moments of Shenmue II, right at the very end. The name didn't make sense for 99% of people who played it, it's never even mentioned in Shenmue 1 at all in any capacity.
Comparing this to DEMUL is interesting, but it's the real hardware comparisons (DC/Xbox/360) that matter most, as those are the only legitimate way of playing the Shenmue games right now.
Sure, you can rip your original discs and jump through all the hoops to get it working in DEMUL...not exactly convenient or a realistic method for 99.9% of people interested in this release. Also, Shenmue 1 is only half the package. I never hear about people emulating Shenmue 2, which probably means it's a mess.
Sure, you can rip your original discs and jump through all the hoops to get it working in DEMUL...not exactly convenient or a realistic method for 99.9% of people interested in this release. Also, Shenmue 1 is only half the package. I never hear about people emulating Shenmue 2, which probably means it's a mess.
Shenmue is nothing like Yakuza. Only similarity is the Japanese setting.
New details are great. Good price. VO options. Control options. Nicer textures. Will get on Steam.
I doubt most people can rip their dreamcast discs. Its not a simple process. You literally have to Crack them, and it requires all sorts of special hardware.
Europeans are a "global audience" however, so it's factually not a "first time".
That is still not an easy task to do, the last time that I checked. You really can't just put a GD-ROM disc into a PC disc drive and get it to read. GD-ROM data is stored on a third layer, which can't be read by like 99% of disc drives. You would still have to rip the disc from a real Dreamcast using a Dreamshell micro SD card reader (which can be found for about $30-40 dollars) or use a rare and hard to find Dreamcast broadband adapter.
Dreamcast discs are a pain in the ass.
Basically, this.
Dreamcast GD-ROM discs are not like optical discs found on other game consoles (outside of the GameCube). You really can't just dump them into a PC disc drive and rip out the data.
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Those result in raw, encrypted dumps. You still have to manually deecrypt them by hand, per game, to get them running. It's not just about dumping you disc, it's about making the data usable, which is not a uniform process among games. it has to do with how games are loaded onto the dreamcast into memory. They are not read linearly into memory from the disc, they are scrambled and read out of order using a psuedo scattering algorithm. If you read a non-decrypted game into the dreamcast, when the game moves past the bootloader and starts moving the program into memory, it'll get destroyed and turned into gibberish. This was the Dreamcast's anti-piracy measure. All those DC images online? They are pre-scrambled in the opposite direction so that, when the program is read out of order, it'll "unscramble" them into the correct order into memory.
Groups like Echelon weren't just ripping games and putting them online. If it was that easy, anybody could have done it. They were actually cracking games one by one, just like old PC piracy.
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