Reviews

My experience with the Shenmue franchise begins and ends with the couple reviews made by videogamedunkey. to my understanding this covers the plot of the first two games, with plans for a second season to cover the recently released Shenmue 3. Based on what little knowledge I have of those games, I can see now that they probably would have worked much better as a movie or a tv show like this in the first place than as games. While they were a marvel at the time they were released, showcasing realistic human models and expansive open world-cities rivaling even some modern games. On a technical level they were impressive to say the least, but in terms of what they had to offer in actual gameplay vs the amount of story they were actually able to tell it was pretty poor.

Shenmue is obviously meant to be story driven and the story on the face of it, is pretty interesting. You have a dramatic murder, and a hunt for answers regarding the circumstances of the death driven by a powerful desire for revenge. It's a classic setup and I would honestly be pretty mad myself if I had to wait 19 years for a sequel that continues not to answer questions and blue ball us at every turn. If they really want to continue the story of Shenmue I'd say just keep it going with this TV series or a series of movies, and don't bother with another kickstarter fueled game project.

The execution of the show is pretty good, it's pretty funny noticing some of the video game logic seeping into the plot in places like how this or that would have obviously been some sort of mini-game or puzzle to solve or how the second half of the season is just him gaining levels and learning new moves from the various martial arts masters in the area. It's neat, I liked it. Overall I think the show has a lot of potential, and as a standalone season I give it an 8/10.