It's a hot topic, especially since Yakuza fans usually hate the Shenmue series for some reason, and we already discussed this in the past, but never with a dedicated topic.
First of all I'm an original fan of both series and while they are two different games (and even if Yakuza could not exists without Shenmue) I think only Shenmue and Yakuza has the formulas to make the perfect open world games.
That said Shenmue is nowadays accused by Yakuza fans to be an old game, while in truth it's Yakuza that mantain the same oldish legacy of the PS2 games at its core, even with all the improvements.
Shenmue 1, 2 and 3 make lots of things that Yakuza doesn't that I personally miss when playing Yakuza, making Shenmue an overall better experience, I'll try to list them, of course you are free to add other things:
-Real time day-night cycle (Yakuza and some other current AAA games still doesn't have this)
-Real time weather system (same as above)
-Fully voiced dialogues (in more than 15 years, only 1 game in the series, Yakuza 6, achieved this)
-Advanced dialogue system (no other game does this, especially fully voiced)
-Seamsless exploration with no loadings in Shenmue 3 (achieved only in Yakuza 6, after 8 games released...)
-NPC with daily routines (other games and Yakuza only has NPC with some custom animations)
-Activitisies and minigames happens 1:1 in the game world (like RDR2 and unlike Yakuza series, where they are separate from the game world, usually loading a 2D minigame ).
-Music during exploration (unlike Yakuza and many other OW games that prefer to have a silent exploration).
-New city/enviroment at any new chapter (unlike Yakuza that recycle always the same city, Tokyo-Kamurocho, for budget reason of course).
-ability to explore almost every building and stores
That said also Shenmue could learn something from Yakuza series:
-Yakuza games has one of the best story pacing, with very few rivals in the industry
-Top level facial animations (sometimes even better than other AAA games)
-well balanced design overall
What do you think?
First of all I'm an original fan of both series and while they are two different games (and even if Yakuza could not exists without Shenmue) I think only Shenmue and Yakuza has the formulas to make the perfect open world games.
That said Shenmue is nowadays accused by Yakuza fans to be an old game, while in truth it's Yakuza that mantain the same oldish legacy of the PS2 games at its core, even with all the improvements.
Shenmue 1, 2 and 3 make lots of things that Yakuza doesn't that I personally miss when playing Yakuza, making Shenmue an overall better experience, I'll try to list them, of course you are free to add other things:
-Real time day-night cycle (Yakuza and some other current AAA games still doesn't have this)
-Real time weather system (same as above)
-Fully voiced dialogues (in more than 15 years, only 1 game in the series, Yakuza 6, achieved this)
-Advanced dialogue system (no other game does this, especially fully voiced)
-Seamsless exploration with no loadings in Shenmue 3 (achieved only in Yakuza 6, after 8 games released...)
-NPC with daily routines (other games and Yakuza only has NPC with some custom animations)
-Activitisies and minigames happens 1:1 in the game world (like RDR2 and unlike Yakuza series, where they are separate from the game world, usually loading a 2D minigame ).
-Music during exploration (unlike Yakuza and many other OW games that prefer to have a silent exploration).
-New city/enviroment at any new chapter (unlike Yakuza that recycle always the same city, Tokyo-Kamurocho, for budget reason of course).
-ability to explore almost every building and stores
That said also Shenmue could learn something from Yakuza series:
-Yakuza games has one of the best story pacing, with very few rivals in the industry
-Top level facial animations (sometimes even better than other AAA games)
-well balanced design overall
What do you think?
Last edited: