I thought the first Shen mue was a good game. It was a flawed game in many ways, but it was original, and once the story started moving I really wanted to find out what was going to happen next. But the second game is were the story really begins to shine, and is a much better game in almost any way.
Shen mue II starts out right after the first one, with Ryo arriving in Honh Kong. Here he starts his search for Lan Di, the man who killed his father. Sadly he is quickly robbed and must start earning money (so much for all the money I imported from my Shen mue save game...). Sadly this means that the story starts pretty slowly. But in a few hours you will be on track and have met several interesting characters, and when you finally reach disc 2 the game really starts. And from here it only gets more and more interesting.
One of the more interesting things about the story is that Ryo is an idiot. He doesn't care for anything else than revenge, and treats the characters that tries to help him pretty badly. This is also one of the flaws with the story, as why people continue to help him is a bit beyond me. Thankfully he grows a bit throughout the story, especially after he meets Ren, who is much more interested in helping himself than in helping Ryo. They form an interesting alliance, and it helps that Ren is damn cool.
The thing I liked best about Shenmue though is that it feels like you're playing a high budget kung fu movie. If you like cinematic games this is the game for you. But, unlike cut scene heavy games like Xenosaga, they actually made many of the cut scenes interactive in this game. In a lot of scenes you will have to press different buttons to make Ryo do the right things. It's very simple in theory, but it works very well, and makes the cut scenes that much more involving. It feels like you're playing a movie, not just watching one, and there's a good mix between these cut scenes and you doing all the action yourself; You'll do plenty of fighting by yourself as well. They also treat the subject matter with great respect. You'll meet up with a lot of different kung fu masters in the game, and you can learn new tricks for use in combat from them. You'll hear a lot of kung fu philosophy about the moves, and how you perform the new moves usually is linked to this. Overall I got the feeling that the creators love and respect martial arts, and it translates well into the game.
I played the PAL Dreamcast version of the game, which has Japanese voice acting with subtitles. I would recommend this version over the XBox version, because the Japanese voice acting works well with the very eastern feel of the game. This is Hong Kong in the 80s, and the game works hard to make sure it feels that way. It's true that it is a bit strange hearing everyone in Hong Kong talk in Japanese, but it still works way better than hearing them talk badly dubbed English. It also helped that Japanese voices were excellent, of course.
This is not to say the game is not without it flaws. But the magic of the game is that I truly didn't care. I was so caught up in the story and feel of the game that I couldn't care less everything wasn't perfect. If you like games with a good story and eastern kung fu movies, I can't see you not liking this game. It's sad that the first hours aren't that great, but if you stick with the game it's worth it. I only hope that Sega will one day make a third game, because it's a real shame if a series that started this good will end up unresolved.
