it just doesn´t ´feel´ like shenmue.
I think the opposite, I'm not blind to things like the static facial animations or the frame rate dropping during the opening boat scene but the overall "feel" is very Shenmue to me.
a far cry from the gritty realism of the originals.
I've seen words like "realistic" used a few times when people are discussing the original games and I'm not sure if it's me being overly pedantic or not but the old games didn't have realistic graphics.
(I am working on the basis that you are specifically concerned with the character models and not the environments but please let me know if that's not correct.)
I think the there are Three main reasons that some people regard the original graphics as realistic.
The first is that Shenmue had
more realistic graphics than other popular console games at the time, it's especially easy to get trapped in this way of thinking if you started playing the games around the time of release.
Now I'll concede that this is a bit of a cheap comparison but consider that this was a popular game released within a year or so of Shenmue.
Obviously there were PC games (Half Life comes to mind) and console games that employed clever art styles (to hide architectural shortcomings) from that time which objectively look better than Silent Hill but you get the idea, the leap is quality was mind blowing for some people.
The second reason is a little more tricky to explain but essentially it comes down to the original games not going for a completely realistic art style but actually being reasonably consistent with what they presented overall. This isn't to say that the texture quality is fully democratic by a long shot, Ryo's jacket does look better than the sweater worn by a random Doubita shopper for example but there isn't the huge disparity that you will see in other games from that time, the asset "resource budgeting" of Shenmue is arguably better than its actual budget.
The third reason is that despite what some people might be writing in reviews the graphics hold up pretty well, not compared to modern titles but considering they are nearly 20 years old. In my opinion "realistic" graphics tend to age the worst. I don't know if you're familiar with MMORPGs but Blizzard really understood this, World of Warcraft had a very "cartoonish" art style which some criticised at the time but go look at its contemporaries such as Everquest now and see what you think aged better.
