UK gamers have now been waiting around a year for the second instalment to Yu Suzuki's epic Shenmue. Gamers will welcome the fact that Yu Suzuki has delivered the goods, as promised the technical achievements of Shenmue II are remarkable. Especially as it is now on a machine that is now 3 years old.
Those lucky enough to have played the first three chapters will feel at home, as the games main look and feel are very similar. The most noticeable difference is that the Japanese translation voice acting has gone. Instead the Japanese acting is accompanied by English subtitles. No doubt this was done to save money and to cut production time, to enable the Sega to deliver the game to a British audience. But in no way does this take anything at all away from the game play; in fact it adds authenticity.
The ending of Shenmue saw Lan Di sailing off to Hong Kong. This is where Ryo begins his adventure in a small Town called Yokosuka. If you are lucky enough to have played and saved your data onto the VMU from the first instalment you can carry your cash, possessions, skill moves plus it also saves the date of departure to Hong Kong. However if you haven't played the first chapter not to worry there is a summary film available to view, which will fill you in on important events.
Shenmue II combines many familiar sounds and screens that will make you feel right at home. The one change is the X button is used for any action instead of the A button that was used previously. Ryo is equipped with his notebook, watch, Hazuki family rest, Phoenix Mirror, maps, and all his gatcha-gatcha collectables. Also all your money is magically converted to Hong Kong Dollars. Another minor change is the new I.S., or icon selection. All four of the Dreamcasts buttons appear in the bottom right-hand screen. They light up and an icon will appear. For example: lips will appear on the A button when you can speak to someone. This makes controlling Ryo a little easier.
Simply put the environments are now huge. The game is split up into four extremely large Cities. Each City is divided into many smaller Quarters. Luckily it is possible for Ryo to purchase maps, which you can also mark key areas with a pencil. If the game didn't have this feature it would be almost impossible to navigate yourself through the Cities. Even with the maps it is possible to get lost due to the game being the size it is. There are countless buildings, some consist of many stories, plus the game is littered with dark back alleys. However due to the effort of making the cities so large some detail has been lost. Only a handful of buildings have cupboards and draws that can be explored.
As you may expect with the environments being so large they need a lot of people to fill them. Sega must of employed hundreds of voice actors as the game is literally packed full of people walking around following there own routine. It is possible to talk to each and everyone of them. Admittedly some come back with unhelpful short answers to your questions, but some don't only help you with your enquires they will actually request you to follow them and take you to the location you were asking about. This is a great feature as it can save a lot of time.
However with so many people walking around the game suffers from some very apparent slow down. At times it feels like Ryo is walking in slow motion, this is not due to poor programming it is simply due to the fact that Sega have pushed the Dreamcast as far as it will go with this game. Another annoying problem with all the people on screen at one time is that it can make navigating Ryo difficult, as at occasionally people will stand in front of you and block your path. This can become increasingly frustrating.
Making money plays a large part of Ryo's life through the game. He will always need to be making money one way or another. There are lots of options to gamble and many jobs to choose from. You can even make money from arm wrestling and street fighting. There is always something to do.

The QTE (Quick Time Events) are also back, and have brought back something new! New freeze QTE's. The screen quickly freezes and flashed A + Left + Y you have a split second to respond. If you fail you usually don't get another retry, and will have to find them again at a later date This improves the cinematic and makes the game more difficult. At times this can however become infuriating as it leaves you to hunt about to find the opportunity to have another go.

The plot starts off very similar to Shenmue. Ryo is still himself; he isn't interested in anything but finding his father's murderer. The story unfolds to reveal many smaller plots. At some points it seems like Ryo completely forgets about Lan Di and is more worried about something else, but later in the game the plot comes back together. The game ends like its predecessor in the way it leaves the story open for the next chapters to follow on.

Shenmue II is a wonderful game if you have the time and patience to play it. Those who didn't rate the 1st instalment very highly will hate it. But those who enjoyed Shenmue will adore the game. Yes it does have its problems, it loses some of its detail due to it being such a large game, it suffers from slow down frequently and the tasks and QTE's that need to be performed can be very frustrating. For those who guide Ryo to the end however, will see that it was worth every minute. Shenmue II is a beautiful and compelling story. It will be interesting to see how the game turns out when Sega have the power of XBOX.

A review by Adam Graham