The “definitive” Shenmue experience? HD collection VS originals.

Kodama said:
Well that's debatable. A lot of the lack of load times and such are actually very jarring because the scenes were cut with load times in mind.
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You will never convince me that artificially increasing load times would somehow be better, I'm sorry :ROFLMAO:

The fast loading is so amazing that it's probably the port's biggest strength in this "contest". It really does improve the overall experience.
 
For me there isn't a proper definitive edition. Both have their faults and perks.

Originals:
Perks:
  • Music and voices quality good
  • Sound quality overall better
  • Stable throughout on the whole.
  • No odd pauses in speech.
Faults:
  • On a 4k TV they don;'t translate that well. I'm running an Akura with my DC and while it helps things still look washed out.
  • Jaggy edges are much more prominent for me as a result.
  • Loading times can be a pain. I've got a GDEMU and this is reduced greatly.
Ports
Perks
Quick loading times. I don't find these jarring at all and for me encourage exploration
Looks good on a 4k TV. Yes the graphics fundamentally are the same but they have been polished to look good on modern platforms and they do.
Longevity. The DC discs are failing and also we know the DC has issues with the GD-rom drive. These preserve the games to a point. However I accept the on disc version isn't right at all.
Ability to swap between dubs.
The new hud I really like.
Guilin is spot on. The rest of the ports should be like this.

Faults
Music is still messed up in Shenmue 2 though is better than original release.
Can display crashes though this hasn't happened to me.
Arcade games aren't quite accurate
QTE pop up on the PS4 can sometimes be hard to see.
Sound quality is poor

Overall a mixed bag but at the end of the day this is all subjective. People will hold their own ideas around what's best and that's cool.

On my first play before patches I experienced one issue on Shenmue 1 with the camera being stupid, the rest was fine. 2 played fine apart from the darts alignment issue and the music being crap across all parts barring Guilin, which was perfect.

Unless you asked us all the same questions there will never be that final answer on this. My biggest issue is that communication has gone dark on this. I feel that we deserve to know what's next as the fans revived this series. Sega got on board and fair play to them but we kept the game in the public eye to even give the potential to make anyone any money again.
 
orient said:
You will never convince me that artificially increasing load times would somehow be better, I'm sorry :ROFLMAO:

The fast loading is so amazing that it's probably the port's biggest strength in this "contest". It really does improve the overall experience.
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That's fine, to each their own. I just think it looks really jarring when you have two characters outside talking and then a quick cut to them inside a house with no loading time in between to portray a sense of time passing. Same when you enter areas with epic music and no load time to buffer your brain into the scene. Transitions in general throughout the entire game are just completely off due to the complete lack of load times. But then again the old load times never, ever bothered me lol so I guess I'm just more used to that kinda stuff...
 
Kodama said:
That's fine, to each their own. I just think it looks really jarring when you have two characters outside talking and then a quick cut to them inside a house with no loading time in between to portray a sense of time passing. Same when you enter areas with epic music and no load time to buffer your brain into the scene. Transitions in general throughout the entire game are just completely off due to the complete lack of load times. But then again the old load times never, ever bothered me lol so I guess I'm just more used to that kinda stuff...
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To me the shortened loading times are on balance a good thing (less time wasted, less hesitant to enter/exit areas/shops), but there are instances such as in the opening cutscenes where the transitions are jarring as they were designed with loading times in mind, i.e. changes in music between scenes become more jarring without pauses between them.
 
Amir said:
To me the shortened loading times are on balance a good thing (less time wasted, less hesitant to enter/exit areas/shops), but there are instances such as in the opening cutscenes where the transitions are jarring as they were designed with loading times in mind, i.e. changes in music between scenes become more jarring without pauses between them.
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Yeah I've never had an issue where I was scared to go somewhere for fear of a dreaded load time lmfao but I definitely feel the jank that comes with shortening them... Honestly it's great that they're shorter but where they are practically non existent is the problem. There should have been at least a 3 second buffer or something...
 
spud1897 said:
  • On a 4k TV they don;'t translate that well. I'm running an Akura with my DC and while it helps things still look washed out.
  • Jaggy edges are much more prominent for me as a result.
  • Loading times can be a pain. I've got a GDEMU and this is reduced greatly.
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-Akura isn't great for a 4ktv. It's not even really great for 1080 lol. If you insist on playing on a 4ktv, definitely better off with a VGA converter of some kind with high quality. I'm lucky enough to have a VGA port built right into my tv so the picture looks crystal clear...
-Jaggys are gonna happen no matter what connection type you use unfortunately. Shenmue DC has like, zero anti aliasing or texture filtering. They are shimmery jaggy messes lol. I know it sounds stupid but the most impressive part of the new ports is being able to see the telephone wires lmfao, they were just weird looking dotted lines before...
-GDEMU and USBGDROM only slightly reduce load times on these games unfortunately. Phantasy Star Online on the other hand, my god is it awesome...
 
The GDemu is generally faster than USBGD ala SSD, although I don't truly know why--perhaps something like firmware for USB slows down reading to identical speed as the disc drive? Point being, I think the load times of GDEMU are the perfect balance of not too quick, yet not too long.

Although, I'm also of the opinion of not minding load times if I'm playing on an orginal unit, sans media modding. If I'm gaming on a 6th-gen console, I'm expecting longish load times, and in particular to Shenmue, am in a slow going mood anyway. Plus, in Shenmue II at least, exiting shops is just as instantaneous as the HD ports, actually.

Another spoil for me in addition to GDemu is, for about 4 or 5 years, I've had an amazing upscaler setup for my Dreamcast. To save a bit of budget (plus my late adopton of HDMI), I researchedprofessional VGA-DVI solutions. Found a really good company called Gefen (now discontinued, unfortunately, so if a replacement is needed I'll either need to be lucky on eBay again for a new or open box old stock). Once I finally upgraded to HDMI LED, simply needed a male DVI-male HDMI because their the same compatibility and specs. Anyway, I digress.

Point being, whether with GDemu or not, the very impressive performance my scaler outputs makes me still pretty damn loyal to the Dreamcast originals because load times are a moot point for me. They look as nice if not better than the software upscaling D3T achieved, although only if bloom is off--subjectively speaking. All this coming from an ardent supporter and lover of I+II for PS4.

Also, save transferring for PAL owners is also moot, as well as Gold scumming or arcade Chai re-loading. If you area jump to Sakuragoaka (then sprint through the Dobuita foliage entrance); really isn't so much quicker or more convenient in the re-release. Resume files only inconvenience are not remaining once they've been loaded.

Now, ignoring my ramblings above: I'm the average person whom no longer has a Dramcast, or at least doesn't give enough of a shit to either upscale or not use composite, import European Shenmue, or know about--let alone own--GDemu; I'm quite pleased with the games on PS4 as being definitive. Instant loading, moves transfer, accebility on contemporary platforms, bloom toggling and 16:9 widescreen scaling options plus Japanese dubs.
 
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@Kodama that's intersting that you do not speak in high regards of the Akura Normal the Akura is seen normally as one of the best ways to connect the DC to a HDTV. I am owning one though. I always used my Frameister or generic VGA To HDMI Converter to play with my DC on my 4K Tv and the image quality was always pretty good.

Almost every game looked nice. Just RE Code Veronia didn't age that well. Shenmue 1 and 2 looked especially good, it is even pretty today. But for the ease of use I still prefer the PS4 Version. It also looks a bit better than the DC version. The colors look nicer.

But thats just maybe the fault of my Set up for Dreamcast Usage.
 
9dragons said:
@Kodama that's intersting that you do not speak in high regards of the Akura Normal the Akura is seen normally as one of the best ways to connect the DC to a HDTV. I am owning one though. I always used my Frameister or generic VGA To HDMI Converter to play with my DC on my 4K Tv and the image quality was always pretty good.
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The akura looks pretty good, but JUST pretty good. There are many better ways to get a good image out of the Dreamcast...

But back on topic, I went back and played the Dreamcast version and man was it eye opening. Or rather, ear opening...

So let's get some foot in mouth out of the way first. There were a few graphical glitches in the original Dreamcast version that I've only first noticed in the PS4 version. I thought these were new but I've been looking for them and notice them in Dreamcast version as well, only some small ones not the real bad ones. The resolution and lack of texture filtering/anti aliasing is actually a bit hard to go back to as well. The game is still beautiful, but it has the opposite problem the ports have. You see in the ports when the camera is too zoomed in, the shitty textures show and it looks bad. But in the originals, if the camera is too zoomed out, you just can't see shit...

All that said, the Dreamcast version still lacks tons of annoying graphical glitches, namely the one where lighting keeps changing dramatically in the environment while talking to people. It looks much more consistent and overall is still a great experience, and possibly the better one depending on your tastes...

But the sound. Oh my god the sound. As big as a graphical leap the PS4 version is over the Dreamcast version, the Dreamcast version is just as big an audio leap over the PS4 version. They say you don't know what you have till it's gone, and this was a perfect example. Everything just sounds so much better, crisper and clearer and mixed at proper levels. Now I did notice one side effect of this is that the music itself can get slowed down in memory heavy moments, but it's so short and the rest is done so well I can't possibly care. Unlike the ports that do their best to constantly remind me how shitty the sound is. It was honestly breathtaking going back and hearing everything so perfectly done...

So yeah, I still find the Dreamcast version to be the definitive version, but this was a very cool experience...
 
Well! It’s certainly been interesting to read all your testimonies on the subject
I was hoping for honest reactions from various fans who had both internalized the originals and seen enough of the ports to know where they honestly stood on the subject, and you guys certainly delivered.

I know a lot of you have been playing the DC originals yearly for the past 15+years (very cool), so this port collection is a particularly tricky one to honestly look at, considering the amount of hopes, not to mention actual lobbying, placed upon its release.

Then again, it’s 2018. One would think that “remaster technology” (lol) would be a non-issue at this point, and threads like this one wouldn’t even exist…yet, in true Shenmue fashion, here we are. One step forward, one step back. Nothing is ever simple with this franchise, is it?

One thing that @DigitalDuck mentioned really surprised me:
How prevalent are the pauses in the JPN speech? Is this just occasional, or would you say the Japanese track is essentially ruined for anyone familiar with the language? (It would be interesting to see if this is even present in the Japanese release of the game, which only features JPN vocals. I assume it isn’t?)

Anyway, it seems like the modded PC version is the only real alternative to the DC originals at this stage. Fingers crossed the patched improvements keep coming, and we can revisit this thread ___months from now and definitively lock it then.
 
punkmanced said:
Well! It’s certainly been interesting to read all your testimonies on the subject
I was hoping for honest reactions from various fans who had both internalized the originals and seen enough of the ports to know where they honestly stood on the subject, and you guys certainly delivered.

I know a lot of you have been playing the DC originals yearly for the past 15+years (very cool), so this port collection is a particularly tricky one to honestly look at, considering the amount of hopes, not to mention actual lobbying, placed upon its release.

Then again, it’s 2018. One would think that “remaster technology” (lol) would be a non-issue at this point, and threads like this one wouldn’t even exist…yet, in true Shenmue fashion, here we are. One step forward, one step back. Nothing is ever simple with this franchise, is it?

One thing that @DigitalDuck mentioned really surprised me:
How prevalent are the pauses in the JPN speech? Is this just occasional, or would you say the Japanese track is essentially ruined for anyone familiar with the language? (It would be interesting to see if this is even present in the Japanese release of the game, which only features JPN vocals. I assume it isn’t?)

Anyway, it seems like the modded PC version is the only real alternative to the DC originals at this stage. Fingers crossed the patched improvements keep coming, and we can revisit this thread ___months from now and definitively lock it then.
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It's all due to how complex the game is and how little resources Sega were willing to give.
 
Jigen said:
It's all due to how complex the game is and how little resources Sega were willing to give.
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Not only that, but Sega never should have had d3t waste their time creating assets and a graphical engine for a full remake that they were never going to be able to finish. They started working on the project in 2015; they could have made these games perfect if their goal from the beginning was to develop simple ports like they ended up doing.

If they had devoted all their time and resources to figuring out the game logic, reverse engineering the Dreamcast's sound chip, etc., we probably wouldn't be having this conversation right now. They could have had the games in their current state a long time ago and had plenty of extra time to polish them up, get them completely accurate to the originals, and probably add extra enhancements like widescreen cutscenes (they could have manually removed any graphical glitches on a scene-by-scene basis).

Instead, d3t probably wasted years working on stuff that will never see the light of day and rushed through the actual ports that we ended up getting at the very end of the development cycle. It's truly a shame that we ended up in this situation because it was completely unnecessary.
 
punkmanced said:
One thing that @DigitalDuck mentioned really surprised me:
How prevalent are the pauses in the JPN speech? Is this just occasional, or would you say the Japanese track is essentially ruined for anyone familiar with the language?
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It's very prevalent, I got as far as talking to Sakuragaoka Gossip Gaggle

...

before I had to switch language because

...

there were literally seconds between one line ending and the next starting. It's especially strange because the subtitles disappear when the dialogue finishes, which just leaves a strange woman staring into space until the game has waited for the English dialogue timings to tell it when to move onto the next line.

It also suffers from the opposite problem - when the Japanese dialogue is longer than the English dialogue, the camera changes to reflect the new speaker, even though they haven't started speaking yet because the Japanese dialogue is still going. When that line is finished, the next line starts immediately without any pause at all.

punkmanced said:
(It would be interesting to see if this is even present in the Japanese release of the game, which only features JPN vocals. I assume it isn’t?)
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According to other posters on the forum, this problem is still there in the Japanese release of the game; it still uses the English timings, despite the English dialogue being non-existent, baffling everyone.
 
It makes it clear that extracting and modifying the timing data wasn't a simple task, or they would've just swapped the ENG timing with the JP timing for the JP release. I'm sure it would've been one of those issues d3t said was impossible to fix before the JP release and SEGA Japan "demanded" to be fixed.

If they had access to the tools used to make the games this would've been a non-issue, and they wouldn't have had to use community modding tools to alter subtitles etc.
 
Kodama said:
So then those are the definitive versions by definition lmfao, although I would recommend the undub version for Shenmue 1...
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I want to play the Undub but I read it in the tone of the English voices because I've played it so much, lol.
 
I say, whatever. However, I like in the Japanese version of Shenmue 1, you officially get Coca Cola products, and I’m a proud fan of Coca Cola LOL. However, the second game uses Boss coffee products, which are also the everywhere in Japan.

I’ll admit there are some novelties to playing it on the original Dreamcast, but thankfully, the HD remasters maintain how you can carry over your save from Shenmue 1 to Shenmue 2, which is why I always played Shenmue 1 and 2 in Japanese most of the time. However, I do enjoy the Passport disc features and how the Japanese version of Shenmue 2 includes Virtua Fighter bonuses.
 
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