Shenmue 1 & 2: How not to handle a Re-release (UPDATED) (PlayStation 4)
User Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): August 21, 2018
- Release Date (EU): August 21, 2018
- Publisher: Sega
- Developer: d3t ltd.
- Genres: Adventure, RPG
- Also For: Computer, Xbox One
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
Review Approach:
This is less of a review of the games itself and more of an exposure to a slimey side of this whole rerelease.
To start, I have already reviewed both Shenmue and Shenmue 2 individually on this site. These are my all time favorite games and naturally I left them glowing reviews. I'm going to get this out of the way now, this review will not be positive. There will be severe criticism of Sega, an investigation of what went wrong, and even direct call-outs of the Shenmue community as they're also involved with how this game was released and its future on the market. Lets begin.
UPDATE:
So, things have changed quite a bit since I originally wrote this, whatever you want to call it, "article". First and foremost, the game has been patched and fixed basically entirely. There may be minor issues still but for the most part its completely fine now. Word is Sega Japan jumped in and fixed it before the Japanese release which for some reason was a few months after the rest of the world. So the game isn't a broken mess anymore, great, what else?
Turns out the developer d3t, who we all shat on and blamed for the piss-poor quality of the re-release, may not actually be the right party to blame. As revealed by Digital Foundry, d3t had actually been working on a full remake of Shenmue 1&2. What happened? Sega canned it because it was taking too long and not only tossed all their work out the window but didn't even give a deadline extension to just port the regular game. With this new information its reasonable to assume d3t really did put the collection we ended up getting in just a matter of months.
As you can tell from the footage, d3t is more than capable of putting out a quality product. The reason the re-release was so bad at and after launch is entirely Sega's fault(presumably Sega Europe because they seemed to kickstart the whole idea of this just judging by social media involvement) because they were pushing an arbitrary deadline.
Now what does this mean for my original post? Not really anything, everything I said still remains true(except for the blaming of d3t, for that I truly feel bad for and apologize.), the game really was as bad as I said it was and for several months after it came out too. And a certain shenmue website is still fucking awful with its its big-headed leadership and their cronies. Anyways, that's all I wanted to say, I just didnt feel right leaving this up without rectifying a few things.
The original post will remain unedited below:
Shenmue 1 & 2 is a mess. Basically this is a rerelease of the original 2 games from the Dreamcast onto modern platforms. Sega is quick to correct anyone who calls this "Shenmue HD" or "Shenmue Remastered" and for good reason, these are hardly either.
Improvements they made:
HD rendering so the game technically is in HD. Wide-screen but with a caveat, it only works during gameplay ONLY, so cutscenes are all small and in their original aspect ratios.
They attempted a bloom lighting effect but completely failed, its either way too overdone or it makes things too dark. Thankfully it can be turned off
And thats it, thats all they did to modernize it. No redrawn textures, no fullscreen cutscenes, they didn't go back and replace the audio with the original uncompressed recordings, nothing. They claimed they created a modern control scheme but all they did was map the original d-pad controls to the analog stick, they didn't change how Ryo walks or add analog movement just a lazy remap.
So they did the bare minimum and you know what, that might've been ok. The real problem with this is how absolutely ravaged this version is with bugs and glitches. You cannot play this game beyond the initial cutscene without experiencing something wrong. Whether its a cutscene breaking and showing you a still image, music playing incorrectly, missing sound effects, QTEs not prompting or reading correctly, events not triggering entirely, minigames not working, invisible toy capsules, shadows glitching, pretty much anything can go wrong and for seemingly no reason. None of these problems are caused by player action, they just happen whenever they want with the roll of a dice.
Its hard to believe the game was released in this state, you dont even have to be a veteran to know something's not right. I refuse to believe they even play tested it because all of this noticable within minutes. This is not only insulting to the fans(or at least it should be, we will get into that later) but its damaging to all the new players who have given this game a chance because all the hype from the community.
And there's a lot of new fans because this collection has sold scarily well. It was topping charts for months off pre-orders alone and now its completely sold out across a variety of retailers including Amazon and Best Buy. So in a strange turn of events, this collection has hurt the credibility of Shenmue by actually being successful.
"Surely a patch is on the way" I hear you say. Aside from the damage already being done, I wouldn't rely on it. This is where we get into a bit of drama. Prior to the games release, a couple of copies found their way out about a week early and those who had them decided to stream the games. We still really had minimal information about the collection at that point so most of us fans tuned into the streams to get a sneak peek of the game in action. Everyones excitement turned to dread as we saw all the bugs I stated earlier happen before our eyes.
For some background information, a YouTuber by the name of Adam Koralik had been giving us information about the game through videos on his channel, partnered with Sega. I don't know why Sega picked this guy to be the spokesperson for this rerelease, his videos are low quality and aside from name dropping the games a few times hes not really a big player in the community. Aside from that, the only other thing you need to know is that Shenmue Dojo is pretty much the Shenmue website. Got it? Good.
So the game gets in the wild early, people are streaming it and the Shenmue Dojo staff FREAKS out. I mean go absolutely ape shit. Anyone who made a thread trying to discuss the game based off the stream: Banned for "spoiling" the game. Yes thats right, banned for spoilers of a nearly 20 year old game that the website is dedicated to and normally discusses freely without the worry of spoiling eachother. Ridiculous. To make matters even more comedic, some mods had some choice words for these innocent people. To quote one of the admins when he saw screenshots of the game from the stream "Absolutely vile and disgusting. I got it early, so lets stream it for some likes and ruin it for others. I swear, my blood is boiling right now." I had to take a second to breathe because I was laughing so hard at this reaction.
As if to lose even more credibility, the staff ganged up on one of these people streaming the game and harassed the poor guy through the chat and mass reported him, causing his stream to be taken down. Now this seems more "vile and disgusting" to me than someone innocently playing the game.
After this whole stream fiasco, people took to the forums and Twitter to express their concern for the quality of the game since we had just seen numerous bugs. The staff at Shenmue dojo said that since the game wasn't offically out, this wasn't a proper indicator of the games quality. Normally, I would agree but since release was only 4 or so days away and there had already been a 1.0.1 patch for the people who got it early, this seemed like it would be what we get the following Tuesday.
Adam Koralik addresses these early streams and starts telling everyone on Twitter that a day 1 patch will arrive Monday, the day before release. The Dojo staff start ringing this bell bell too, a day 1 patch will fix everything. There was a lot of doubt. d3t ltd. does not have a good track record, besides being a tiny literally who studio, they also did the recent Genesis Collection for PS4 and Xbox One that still has problems to this day and hasn't been fixed. And thats just a simple Genesis emulator.
So the days come and go and, surprise, no Day 1 patch. Adam takes to Twitter again. "I've played with the next patch. At this point it's more about Steam/Sony/MS approving it. That should have happened by this point but...bureaucracy." So apparently its just the certification. Sure, ok Adam! A few days later, still no patch by the way, Sega publicly asks for us to submit bugs to them. Well wait why would they ask this if they already have a patch and its just waiting for certification? Wouldn't they want us to wait for that to come out first since logically they would have fixed some of the big ones at the very least? Odd. After some collection of info, a few more days later a PC patch comes out. Through a Steam beta you have to opt into. It fixes a couple things but not really enough, which is why its in beta I guess. Anyway, so if it took an extra week to get this beta patch, what patch did Adam supposedly have before the game was even out? What happened to that Day 1 patch? Logically, it probably didn't exist.
Its now been 2 weeks since release, no patches, and everyone knows its a broken piece of crap. Me and a few others realize this and go to Shenmue Dojo to point out these lies and the damage control and a few people, including me were banned from the site. Wow.
This is how games become discredited. This is how reputations are ruined. Shenmue fans killed Shenmue themselves. This is probably the end of the road for trying to get new fans into the series. Maybe I'm just doing more damage by pointing this out but this shouldn't be swept under the rug either.
To fans of these games I have this to say: We worked for this for years. We campaigned and made our voices loud enough to be heard. And this is what we got, a disaster of a rerelease. Are you genuinely satisfied with this? Is this what you want the uninformed masses to experience? You shouldn't be and if you are, you're not a real fan. We deserved better.
To any of the "big players" if any of you somehow find this: You should be ashamed. You shilled out for and defended Sega to the point of lying and for what? You have nothing to gain from this, except for Adam whos gotten a couple free vacations out of it. You've completely discredited the franchise, your long-standing website and you as people not only in my eyes but I know to other people as well.
Well, thats everything I have to say on the matter. I know this isn't a typical review but I just had to write about this. To all the real fans, I wish this all went better for us. I hope the game eventually gets fixed but in its current state Id rather it didn't even exist. Let this also be a message to other fansites in similar situations in the future, please dont become this.
I run a Shenmue discord if anyone that isn't insane or a pathological liar wants to join!
discord.me/shemmue
Thanks for reading this massive wall of text, please leave what you think about this whole thing below.
So, things have changed quite a bit since I originally wrote this, whatever you want to call it, "article". First and foremost, the game has been patched and fixed basically entirely. There may be minor issues still but for the most part its completely fine now. Word is Sega Japan jumped in and fixed it before the Japanese release which for some reason was a few months after the rest of the world. So the game isn't a broken mess anymore, great, what else?
Turns out the developer d3t, who we all shat on and blamed for the piss-poor quality of the re-release, may not actually be the right party to blame. As revealed by Digital Foundry, d3t had actually been working on a full remake of Shenmue 1&2. What happened? Sega canned it because it was taking too long and not only tossed all their work out the window but didn't even give a deadline extension to just port the regular game. With this new information its reasonable to assume d3t really did put the collection we ended up getting in just a matter of months.
As you can tell from the footage, d3t is more than capable of putting out a quality product. The reason the re-release was so bad at and after launch is entirely Sega's fault(presumably Sega Europe because they seemed to kickstart the whole idea of this just judging by social media involvement) because they were pushing an arbitrary deadline.
Now what does this mean for my original post? Not really anything, everything I said still remains true(except for the blaming of d3t, for that I truly feel bad for and apologize.), the game really was as bad as I said it was and for several months after it came out too. And a certain shenmue website is still fucking awful with its its big-headed leadership and their cronies. Anyways, that's all I wanted to say, I just didnt feel right leaving this up without rectifying a few things.
The original post will remain unedited below:
Shenmue 1 & 2 is a mess. Basically this is a rerelease of the original 2 games from the Dreamcast onto modern platforms. Sega is quick to correct anyone who calls this "Shenmue HD" or "Shenmue Remastered" and for good reason, these are hardly either.
Improvements they made:
HD rendering so the game technically is in HD. Wide-screen but with a caveat, it only works during gameplay ONLY, so cutscenes are all small and in their original aspect ratios.
They attempted a bloom lighting effect but completely failed, its either way too overdone or it makes things too dark. Thankfully it can be turned off
And thats it, thats all they did to modernize it. No redrawn textures, no fullscreen cutscenes, they didn't go back and replace the audio with the original uncompressed recordings, nothing. They claimed they created a modern control scheme but all they did was map the original d-pad controls to the analog stick, they didn't change how Ryo walks or add analog movement just a lazy remap.
So they did the bare minimum and you know what, that might've been ok. The real problem with this is how absolutely ravaged this version is with bugs and glitches. You cannot play this game beyond the initial cutscene without experiencing something wrong. Whether its a cutscene breaking and showing you a still image, music playing incorrectly, missing sound effects, QTEs not prompting or reading correctly, events not triggering entirely, minigames not working, invisible toy capsules, shadows glitching, pretty much anything can go wrong and for seemingly no reason. None of these problems are caused by player action, they just happen whenever they want with the roll of a dice.
Its hard to believe the game was released in this state, you dont even have to be a veteran to know something's not right. I refuse to believe they even play tested it because all of this noticable within minutes. This is not only insulting to the fans(or at least it should be, we will get into that later) but its damaging to all the new players who have given this game a chance because all the hype from the community.
And there's a lot of new fans because this collection has sold scarily well. It was topping charts for months off pre-orders alone and now its completely sold out across a variety of retailers including Amazon and Best Buy. So in a strange turn of events, this collection has hurt the credibility of Shenmue by actually being successful.
"Surely a patch is on the way" I hear you say. Aside from the damage already being done, I wouldn't rely on it. This is where we get into a bit of drama. Prior to the games release, a couple of copies found their way out about a week early and those who had them decided to stream the games. We still really had minimal information about the collection at that point so most of us fans tuned into the streams to get a sneak peek of the game in action. Everyones excitement turned to dread as we saw all the bugs I stated earlier happen before our eyes.
For some background information, a YouTuber by the name of Adam Koralik had been giving us information about the game through videos on his channel, partnered with Sega. I don't know why Sega picked this guy to be the spokesperson for this rerelease, his videos are low quality and aside from name dropping the games a few times hes not really a big player in the community. Aside from that, the only other thing you need to know is that Shenmue Dojo is pretty much the Shenmue website. Got it? Good.
So the game gets in the wild early, people are streaming it and the Shenmue Dojo staff FREAKS out. I mean go absolutely ape shit. Anyone who made a thread trying to discuss the game based off the stream: Banned for "spoiling" the game. Yes thats right, banned for spoilers of a nearly 20 year old game that the website is dedicated to and normally discusses freely without the worry of spoiling eachother. Ridiculous. To make matters even more comedic, some mods had some choice words for these innocent people. To quote one of the admins when he saw screenshots of the game from the stream "Absolutely vile and disgusting. I got it early, so lets stream it for some likes and ruin it for others. I swear, my blood is boiling right now." I had to take a second to breathe because I was laughing so hard at this reaction.
As if to lose even more credibility, the staff ganged up on one of these people streaming the game and harassed the poor guy through the chat and mass reported him, causing his stream to be taken down. Now this seems more "vile and disgusting" to me than someone innocently playing the game.
After this whole stream fiasco, people took to the forums and Twitter to express their concern for the quality of the game since we had just seen numerous bugs. The staff at Shenmue dojo said that since the game wasn't offically out, this wasn't a proper indicator of the games quality. Normally, I would agree but since release was only 4 or so days away and there had already been a 1.0.1 patch for the people who got it early, this seemed like it would be what we get the following Tuesday.
Adam Koralik addresses these early streams and starts telling everyone on Twitter that a day 1 patch will arrive Monday, the day before release. The Dojo staff start ringing this bell bell too, a day 1 patch will fix everything. There was a lot of doubt. d3t ltd. does not have a good track record, besides being a tiny literally who studio, they also did the recent Genesis Collection for PS4 and Xbox One that still has problems to this day and hasn't been fixed. And thats just a simple Genesis emulator.
So the days come and go and, surprise, no Day 1 patch. Adam takes to Twitter again. "I've played with the next patch. At this point it's more about Steam/Sony/MS approving it. That should have happened by this point but...bureaucracy." So apparently its just the certification. Sure, ok Adam! A few days later, still no patch by the way, Sega publicly asks for us to submit bugs to them. Well wait why would they ask this if they already have a patch and its just waiting for certification? Wouldn't they want us to wait for that to come out first since logically they would have fixed some of the big ones at the very least? Odd. After some collection of info, a few more days later a PC patch comes out. Through a Steam beta you have to opt into. It fixes a couple things but not really enough, which is why its in beta I guess. Anyway, so if it took an extra week to get this beta patch, what patch did Adam supposedly have before the game was even out? What happened to that Day 1 patch? Logically, it probably didn't exist.
Its now been 2 weeks since release, no patches, and everyone knows its a broken piece of crap. Me and a few others realize this and go to Shenmue Dojo to point out these lies and the damage control and a few people, including me were banned from the site. Wow.
This is how games become discredited. This is how reputations are ruined. Shenmue fans killed Shenmue themselves. This is probably the end of the road for trying to get new fans into the series. Maybe I'm just doing more damage by pointing this out but this shouldn't be swept under the rug either.
To fans of these games I have this to say: We worked for this for years. We campaigned and made our voices loud enough to be heard. And this is what we got, a disaster of a rerelease. Are you genuinely satisfied with this? Is this what you want the uninformed masses to experience? You shouldn't be and if you are, you're not a real fan. We deserved better.
To any of the "big players" if any of you somehow find this: You should be ashamed. You shilled out for and defended Sega to the point of lying and for what? You have nothing to gain from this, except for Adam whos gotten a couple free vacations out of it. You've completely discredited the franchise, your long-standing website and you as people not only in my eyes but I know to other people as well.
Well, thats everything I have to say on the matter. I know this isn't a typical review but I just had to write about this. To all the real fans, I wish this all went better for us. I hope the game eventually gets fixed but in its current state Id rather it didn't even exist. Let this also be a message to other fansites in similar situations in the future, please dont become this.
I run a Shenmue discord if anyone that isn't insane or a pathological liar wants to join!
discord.me/shemmue
Thanks for reading this massive wall of text, please leave what you think about this whole thing below.
Verdict
What I Liked ...
- Low price for 2 of gamings most influential titles conveniently available on a single, modern platform
- Save transfer finally available to US players
What I Didn't Like ...
- Shenmue 1 is borderline ruined by a laundry list of bugs
- The few improvements made to the games were half-assed
- Sega, Adam Koralik and the Shenmue community's shady behavior
7
Gameplay
The gameplay is unchanged from the originals and I think it would be wrong for me to score it lower than before because the rest of the collection sucks. However, there are bugs that hinder the gameplay as well, QTEs not working properly, broken minigames, events triggering incorrectly.
5
Presentation
For the time and several years after these games were originally released these were the best looking games around. In my opinion they still look great. However, I think the decision to not redraw any of the textures, leave cutscenes 4:3 and other choices are not acceptable for a remaster in 2018. As well as the numerous glitches I just don't think this was done well at all presentation wise.
5
Lasting Appeal
I can easily see players who have no prior knowledge of the series picking this up, seeing all these issues and thinking the game is shit because of it. As fans we know these weren't issues in the original but newcomers wouldn't know any better.
6.5
out of 10
Reviews
MelGeek CYBER01 Magnetic Switch Rapid Trigger Gaming Keyboard
Today for review, we’ll be taking a look at the latest gaming keyboard from Meltek, the CYBER01 magnetic switch offering!
GEEKOM XT12 Pro Mini PC
Claimed to be the world's most cost-effecient i9 Mini PC, we check out the latest from Geekom.
Kospet Tank T3 Ultra
Tough enough to navigate and conquer the rugged wilderness.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants
The Turtles are back for their umpteenth game outing, but is this one worth it?
Alone in the Dark (2024)
Alone in the Dark is a Survival Horror game available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.
Site & Scene News
New Hot Discussed
DOOM has been ported to the retro game console in Persona 5 Royal
Review MelGeek CYBER01 Magnetic Switch Rapid Trigger Gaming Keyboard
Xbox release date for shooter 'Hypercharge: Unboxed' revealed
'Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero' gets new trailer; revels new roster
PC and Xbox-exclusive 'Dungeons of Hinterberg' to launch in July
'Lost Records: Bloom & Rage' gets new trailer
'Promise Mascot Agency', the next game from 'Paradise Killer' developer, revealed
TheFloW releases new PPPwn kernel exploit for PS4, works on firmware 11.00
Delta emulator for iOS will support iPad devices in its next update
"Dino Crisis 2" for PC gets the "Classic Rebirth" mod treatment by developer Gemini
Wii U and 3DS online services shutting down today, but Pretendo is here to save the day
Nintendo Switch firmware update 18.0.1 has been released
The first retro emulator hits Apple's App Store, but you should probably avoid it
Delta emulator now available on the App Store for iOS
TheFloW releases new PPPwn kernel exploit for PS4, works on firmware 11.00
Nintendo takes down Gmod content from Steam's Workshop
A prototype of the original "The Legend of Zelda" for NES has been found and preserved
Anbernic reveals specs details of pocket-sized RG28XX retro handheld
Nintendo "Indie World" stream announced for April 17th, 2024
Nintendo Switch Online adds two more Nintendo 64 titles to its classic library
Wii U and 3DS online services shutting down today, but Pretendo is here to save the day
Nintendo takes down Gmod content from Steam's Workshop
The first retro emulator hits Apple's App Store, but you should probably avoid it
Delta emulator now available on the App Store for iOS
Nintendo Switch firmware update 18.0.1 has been released
TheFloW releases new PPPwn kernel exploit for PS4, works on firmware 11.00
Nintendo Switch Online adds two more Nintendo 64 titles to its classic library
Nintendo "Indie World" stream announced for April 17th, 2024
The FCC has voted to restore net neutrality, reversing ruling from 2017
DOOM has been ported to the retro game console in Persona 5 Royal
Options
View top chattersatleast you get paid