Even 25 years after its release, Shenmue still blew me away. Despite the massive influence it’s had on everything to come out since, I haven’t seen any game that quite captures the same spirit as Shenmue, even with its closest counterpart in the Yakuza series. The world of Yokosuka is the most finely detailed I’ve seen in any game to date. Sure, it’s not nearly as big as something like Grand Theft Auto, but the pure amount of things in the world to see, do, and experience more than make up for it. If I had an idea to try doing something, chances are the game allowed me to. It’s such a joy stumbling upon random things and being rewarded for your curiosity.

Shenmue’s story is also a massive landmark in the industry. There were story heavy games on the SNES and PS1, such as the Final Fantasy games, but nothing that is as cinematic as Shenmue. I don’t think that it’s an understatement to say it changed the way games tell their stories going forward. The plot is simple, but extremely effective. It keeps you guessing, and does a great job at stoking the player’s curiosity, further fueling the fun of exploration I mentioned earlier. I like that Shenmue doesn’t explain Ryo’s pre-existing relationships to the other inhabitants of Yokosuka to the player, and instead leaves it up to your imagination and allows you to infer. It makes the world feel even more believable to me.

The combat is the weakest part of the game, but it’s still pretty fun! It was difficult to learn (especially with the baffling decision to not have any in-game explanation for the controls), but once you get a feel for it it’s pretty fun. It’s slow paced and requires the player to give thought to each input, lest they be beaten to the ground. The second to last fight in the game made me really start to enjoy it. I only wish there were more opportunities to fight.

All in all, I think Shenmue is still a fantastic game. I avoided it for a while as common opinion made me imagine it’d be quite antiquated nowadays, but I’m so glad I decided to give it a shot despite that. Absolutely astonished me!

Played version 6.23

Some of the most obtuse and absolutely absurd puzzles I've ever seen, would've beaten it in half the time if I had used a guide

I love the purple guy though he's so silly

Really fun monster battle gameplay with tons of neat ways to customize your team, with a very extensive synthesis system that will keep you busy for hours! However, the story was a pretty massive let-down. I’ve wanted a game where you get to see the events of Dragon Quest IV unfold from Psaro’s point of view for a while now, so I was stoked when this got revealed. However, you might as well hardly play as him. First of all, he’s a silent, nameable protagonist which… just boggles my mind, to say the least. He’s still very much the same character as the Psaro from Dragon Quest IV, so I don’t get why they turned him into a silent protagonist who hardly emotes instead of the extremely rash and hot-headed character he is in Dragon Quest IV. There’s also a lot of story changes to make Psaro more of an admirable anti-hero which I think is lame. He already was! His story is tragic! You don’t need to change events that already happened in Dragon Quest IV to make Psaro look like a good guy! He isn’t! He kills people for no reason!

Was going to 100% this one but got tired of grinding for the X Rank monsters, as much as I’d love to have Zoma and Estark on my team </3

Perhaps the biggest example of being spoiled by a game’s sequel. Star Fox 64 really is just this game but better in every conceivable way. I still appreciate this a lot though, if technology never advanced past 1993 and this was still the latest technology, I’m sure I’d be throughly impressed! However, being born 10 years after this game released makes it a little hard to get used to, simply because I’m so used to the standard of every other game I’ve played that’s released after Star Fox. This feels very slow by comparison. It’s still a good time though, the levels are good and flying the Arwing is still fun. I was disappointed by how many levels force you into a first person view and have you shooting that way, though. While you still control the ship, you don’t move it around in quite the same way, which destroys a lot of what I love about the gameplay of these games.

All in all, it’s still worth a shot, especially with how short it is. At the very least, I appreciate this game a lot for its impact on the industry as a whole. I can’t imagine how crazy this must have been at the time!