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Dom Robinson reviews
Distributed by
Sega 
A year on and the long-awaited sequel, Shenmue 2 is here.
I never made it to the end of part one but have it on good authority that thelast few ‘days’ of the time-dependent action/drama involved you working on thedocks earning enough money to escape your location and board a boat to Hong Kong.One of the problems of the original was that certain parts of the game couldonly be completed at certain times of the day, and given that you can’t go tobed at 10am, if you missed your chance to shine you’d have to potter about foras long as need be until it’s time for bed-e-byes.
The plot of the originalShenmuewas to avenge the death of your father at the hands of the murderous warlordLan Di. And the plot of the sequel? To avenge the death of your father at thehands of the murderous warlord Lan Di – but in Hong Kong instead. And, again,the way to progress is to walk around town, talk with the locals and gain theinformation necessary to complete your tasks as well as getting into fightsand arm-wrestling contests.
This sequel is for those who couldn’t get enough of the original, so ifyou didn’t make it through to the end and was gagging for more, then this oneisn’t for you.
The graphics, sound and playability are all the same as before, the onlyreal difference between the change of setting and snazzier clip scenes, butwhile you can talk to anyone in the game, those who don’t have a directinfluence on the plot will either blank you or just assume you want to go toa pre-set location and may even take you there… slowly.
This is really for RPG fans. I took a trip with the first game because it seemedoriginal and felt like it would be more original than most console games althoughit did reveal its limitations. If you don’t go in for RPG titles, you’ll find itrather on the tiresome side.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.