Shenmue

[Daweii]

Without Shenmue there wouldn't be a Yakuza, but the games are only similar in the "time wasting" aspect. Yakuza is an action game where as Shenmue is a detective/mystery game. Yakuza has fights around every corner where as Shenmue has fights sparingly and quick time events for everything else. That said, Shenmue if you can get into it is a great franchise regardless of its limitations compared to Yakuza. 

[LakotaDakota]

21 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

Never played a Shenmue title before but does it play similarly to the Yakuza? games

If you're going to give it a try you need to start with the first one or you wil just think it is shite with no clue what is going on. If you have xbox gamepass the first 2 remastered games are on there so you coud give it a try for free or you can pick up the disc with both on for about £15 on ps4/xbox. It is a 20 year old game and very clunky in places but if you can get into and put up with the general wonkyness that goes with 20 year old 3d games they are great

[villa4europe]

Shenmue was incredible for its time, they built a village, they filled it with people (and pets) they had a shop where you could buy food and drink and more importantly they had one of those 20p plastic ball machines outside it where you could get sega character tat, it had an arcade, it was mundane, it was full of QTE, it was on a console that wasn't really that popular, its was just different from everything else, it was 2 years before GTA 3,

saw an interesting comparison to red dead where you can spend hours in awe at the shear scope of the game, from my memory Shenmue was like that, you could open the fridge in your house, take out some milk, give it to a cat, its boring as **** but there was nothing like it (especially on consoles)

also from memory the main story arc is good too

im put off revisiting it because I think it will have dated very badly

[Daweii]

I also need to add that Shenmue 3 is only available on PS4 and PC.

So if you own an Xbox you can play Shenmue 1 and 2 on Game Pass, but you will need a PS4/PC to play the 3rd game.

It's awkward, but the exclusivity is to do with Sony funding much of the games development. So ideally the best route is to buy Shenmue 1 & 2 on PS4/PC as at least you'll know you can play Shenmue 3 if you like the series.