Shenmue Dojo Blog

Shenmue x Yakuza Shenmue and Yakuza have a long history of being compared by fans. Some argue that Yakuza is the spiritual successor to Shenmue, and some even claim that Yakuza is what Shenmue should have been. In this blog post, i want to explore these similarities, talk about Yu Suzuki and Toshihiro Nagoshi and discuss much more. ~ Similarities ~ Before we proceed, i must admit that i haven't had the chance to play the Yakuza games extensively. I did play the beginning of the first Yakuza game for PS2 a long time ago, but my knowledge of the Yakuza series is limited. Therefore, i will be focusing on what i know, and i welcome any corrections if i get any information about Yakuza wrong. During my brief experience with the first...

Did the 18-year wait damage the Shenmue Series? Today, I will share my opinions and feelings about this interesting topic. Shenmue II was released in 2001, and Shenmue III was released in 2019. Personally, as a Shenmue fan since 2015, I didn't have to endure such a long wait since I completed Shenmue II for the first time in 2017. However, for many dedicated Shenmue fans, it was an 18-year wait. I can imagine how difficult and painful it must have been to wait for news about whether the Shenmue Series would continue or not during that time. People must have spent a long time contemplating how the story would continue, what Shenmue III would look like, and developing various theories. They imagined if Ziming would appear, if Xiuying...

During an interview prior to the release of Shenmue III, VG247 asked Yu Suzuki if the game would bring the story to a conclusion. According to Yu Suzuki, Shenmue III only represents 40% of Ryo's journey. This implies that Ryo's adventure is far from over and we haven't even reached the halfway point of the story. Today, I want to delve into this intriguing topic of Ryo's journey being at 40%. I'll discuss what I believe Yu Suzuki might do and what, in my opinion, would be the best course of action at this point. Additionally, we'll explore our expectations for the future of this incredible franchise and much more. From Suzuki's statement, it's clear that there is still 60% of Shenmue's story left to unfold. Many loyal Shenmue fans...

Shenmue Real Locations Chapter 1.5 ~ The Boat ~ In this series of posts i will talk about all of the Shenmue locations that exists in the real world. I will talk a little bit about the background of the places, some of the things you can do, curiosities, comparing the locations in the games with the real locations and much more! I will even talk about the places that maybe we will never see in the future Shenmue games like Suzhou, Baisha, Xian and many others locations that Yu-san wrote for the story. In the previous post in the series i talked about Yokosuka in Japan, now i will talk about the boat, yes, you read that right, the boat. It is possible to make the same trip in the boat that Ryo did from Yokosuka to Hong Kong? i...

~ Shenmue III Director's Cut Edition ~ In one interview Yu Suzuki was asked his score from 1 to 10 for Shenmue III, his answer was 7.5 and with his response it is clear to me that he wanted to do more with the game, but probably because of money and time this was not possible. At the time of development the game was even delayed 2 or 3 times as far as i remember, i imagine that Suzuki-san had a lot of problems in the development of the game. In this post i will imagine the Shenmue III Definitive Edition/Director's cut edition, a version of the game that i would love to see. I will talk about the things i would like to see in this version, and things i think Yu-san would want for this version as well, of course this version would...