Questions for people here: If you had the power to change the Forklift part and the voices in the game, would you change? you like the forklift part?
I do like the forklift part, and not just riding the forklift itself but the whole "job" section of the game. But at the same time I think it probably could've been improved in some ways.
If there is one thing that might bother me a bit, then it would be the "being on the rail" mechanics for the most part of that section of the game. Maybe the addition of the optional day off would be good.
For example, if you could choose to go to work today or not(not very realistic isn't it?
), and spend the whole day however you like. The option to finish early would be nice, but since cutscenes are scripted it wouldn't work well.
I don't know if it makes sense but it always bothered me that Ryo is making so much more money during that section, and there's not much time to spend it.
Unless it was intentional of course, I was thinking, what if it was made on purpose? The idea that player won't be able to spend much money in Shenmue I and would have to transfer it all to Shenmue II.
And since it would be quite a sum of hard earned money, it would have much bigger impact on player after losing it all.
With voice acting, well it's not the best, but it was fine for me, and it's not much about acting itself, but rather, I guess, the direct translations that made some of the interactions sound a bit weird. Like, the "Hey mister wanna wrestle?". It probably sounds more natural in original Japanese but a bit weird in English.
Maybe it is what you would call a charm, and I probably got used to it, so I wouldn't change it either.