So, after 15 years I finally replayed and finished Shenmue 1, want to give my impressions, the first time that I played the game I really loved it and found it almost perfect, but my 15 year of experiences playing lots of open world videogames really opened my eyes on all the issues than this game has.
- I think that Shenmue 1 biggest sin is that in the free time you can't really do much things, like is cool to have the arcade and other minigames, but they grew tiresome really quick, training is cool and all but it doesn't feel that necessary, and I hate how you can't train that much with Fuku. I guess that you could spend your time trying to discover what are the npc doing in their lives, but most of the time I seem to trigger conversations related to the actual quest, and not on their lifes. And this problem definitely gets worse when you arrive in the harbor, when you can't even leave the place even after you did all the possible things to advance your quest. And this is a real problem because you really have a lot of free time in between the main missions, so isn't like you can't easily skip, by the end of the final days I jsut spend my free time buying gatchas in a vain attempt to kill time. And speaking of gachas, they rates of the figurines are way worse than the mobile games lol.
- Interacting with the objects is cool and all, but it grows tiresome quickly, to the point that I didn't bother to do it after a while, also, I hate how most of the items in the shop are totally worthless and are there just for the sake of including realism. I have to buy potato chips and chocolates to get some rare prizes but in the end I couldn't do anything with them, not even an animation of ryo eating them and enjoying it or gifting it to some npc.
- The combat definitely is a little stiff at the beggining, but once you understand it is amazing, I feel like the game would have been better with more 1 vs 1 combats to make the virtua fighter engine shine more, since the multiple battles were not very rewarding. That being said, the mad angels final shodown is as good as ever and I feel that this game pulled it off better than any yakuza game ever.
- Besides all my criticisms, I still had a good time with it, the game has a lot of charm, at first I hated this but after a while I really appreciate how easy is to miss cutscenes and dialogues in this game, it makes the playthrough feel more unique ad make more entertaining to talk about this game with other players who played it, and discover things that you missed while also telling them things that they missed, and that regard the game is very unique and feels more "FREE" than games like Yakuza where everything feels more scripted.
Overall, I hated the game more than before, but also loved it more, gonna play Shenmue 2, I game that I dropped in the middle since I played it in an emulator ages ago, and then be excited for Shenmue 3