Okay, so there’s a lot more to say. Shenmue sports, bar none, the most realistic graphics ever seen in a video game. You’ll be stopping yourself to make sure that it’s not full-motion video and, believe me, it’s not. The environments are absolutely fantastic, filled with tons of little detail that really makes the game feel real. And that’s important -- set almost completely in a small semi-urban area in Japan in the year of 1986, the place has to feel more real than most games need to. And, for the most part, it pulls it off. When you see the powerlines arcing over the buildings nearby and the grime-covered tiles in the back alleys, you know that the graphics design for this game was a labor of love. The character models are highly detailed, with mouths that often move realistically (but not always) and excellent texturing. The main character is the epitome, with spiky short hair and a Band-Aid or something on his face that makes him look all the more bad-ass.
All this eye candy comes with a price, however -- although the environment itself has no draw-in problems, the characters do. People “fade in” out of nothing like ghosts, and it’s somewhat disconcerting. Once I walked through someone because they hadn’t “appeared” yet, and it made me lose a little of my immersion in the game. It’s only a minor problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless.
The music in Shenmue is perfect for the game. It generally stays roughly ambient, with a little beat or flare, but not enough to distract you. When a dramatic scene occurs, however, it picks up and places itself in the foreground, complimenting the action as opposed to simply accentuating it. It works surprisingly well, and the various flavors of music in the game are excellent. There was nary a tune I didn’t like. Shenmue also uses ambient sounds very well, with a kitten mewing, industrial sounds at the harbor, and more. It all makes the world feel that little bit more realistic, and it helps.
Unfortunately, the voice acting giveth, and the voice acting taketh away. Some characters (like Ryo himself, and a few others) sound pretty much like you’d expect. Others, however, either read their lines r-e-a-l slow, or in the case of children, are read by adults trying to sound young. The result is grating, and once again takes away from the immersion of the game. The part I don’t understand is this -- it’s set in Japan, most of the text in the game is Japanese with English subtitles, so why not keep the voice acting in Japanese too? The game already has subtitles that you can turn on, and it wouldn’t have lost some of its "flavor" with Japanese voices instead of the rather cheesy English ones. It’s not Resident Evil, mind you, but it’s no Escape From Monkey Island either.
