I' ve been anxiously awaiting this game and two Famitsu reviewers hit it with a 10 score! Kickass! Adam' s probably gonna go ape$hitte with glee over the high score ;) :p..


From The Magic Box:

PlayStation 2
# Momotarou Densetsu 15 (Hudson): 8, 8, 7, 8 - (31/40)
# Monster Farm 5: Circus Caravan (Tecmo): 7, 8, 7, 7 - (29/40)
# Rogue Galaxy (Sony):10, 9, 9, 8 - (36/40)
# Ryuga Gotoku (Sega): 10, 10, 9, 8 - (37/40)
# Simple 2000 Series Vol.92: The Noroi no Game (D3P): 7, 7, 6, 6 - (26/40)

GameCube
# Densetsu no Quiz Ouketteisen (Nintendo): 7, 7, 6, 7 - (27/40)

PSP
# Metal Gear Acid 2 (Konami): 9, 9, 9, 8 - (35/40)
# Geki Sengoku Musou (Koei): 9, 8, 8, 8 - (33/40)

Xbox 360
# Every Party (Microsoft): 8, 7, 7, 8 - (30/40)
# FIFA 06 (EA): 7, 7, 7, 8 - (29/40)
# Need For Speed Most Wanted (EA): 9, 8, 8, 8 - (33/40)
# Perfect Dark Zero (Microsoft): 8, 8, 8, 8 - (32/40)
# Ridge Racer 6 (Namco): 8, 9, 8, 9 - (34/40)
# Tetris: The Grandmaster Ace (Arika): 7, 7, 6, 7 - (27/40)

Nintendo DS
# Bokujou Monogatari: Colobocle Station for Girls (Marvelous): 7, 6, 7, 8 - (28/40)
# Kouchuu Ouja Mushi King: Greatest Champion eno Michi DS (Sega): 7, 7, 7, 8 - (29/40)
# Mario Kart DS (Nintendo): 9, 9, 9, 9 - (36/40)
# Oekaki Puzzle Battle Vol.1: Yuusha-Oh GaoGaiGar Version (Sunrise): 5, 5, 5, 6 - (21/40)
# Sims 2: Hacha Mecha Hotel Life (EA): 7, 7, 7, 6 - (27/40)
# Slime MoriMori Dragon Quest 2 (Square Enix): 8, 10, 8, 8 - (34/40)

GameBoy Advance
# Sugar Sugar Une: Heart Gaippai! Moegi Gakuen (Bandai): 6, 6, 6, 5 - (23/40)
# Summon Night Craft Sword Monogatari: Hajimari no Ishi (Banpresto): 8, 8, 8, 9 - (33/40)

I have the demo of this game and it kind of sucks. I imagine if it were in English it would be more enjoyable. But the graphics are extremely poor, and all I could do in the demo is walk around and engage in giant tutorials. And how I absolutely HATE tutorials! I was just fighting and fighting and fighting, being ordered to do more and more different button combinations. It seems to have a crime aspect to it. I hate crime games.

It' s definitely no Shenmue. Don' t believe the rumors. It doesn' t use the Shenmue engine, it is not " F.R.E.E." at all. It reminds me of urban reign, only nowhere near as good.

Wake me up when the crime game fads end and good games start appearing again.

terry boggard you made my day, thank you for this great news , anyone knows a us release date ??

Joe Redifer, i really hope you' re the one who said that Ico sucks specialy graphicaly.

Shenmue, although it was a good game but it was very repetitive

90% of the main quest you' re looking for someone say his name " D"

to get to him , you always should look for A , A say That D is in a Cafe, go to a Cafe (fighting), D isn' t there but you found B, B says you should go to C because he just saw D over there, go to C (fight) and finaly you found someone who really knows D... fighting (found D at last)

this is the pattern in shenmue and although i beat it i didn' t think it' s that great...
and i played the second and it had exactly the same mechanisme .... disapointing

I never said Ico sucked. I just said the game runs in a low resolution, which it does. it was designed for the PS1 and didn' t get much of a bump when it went to the PS2 except for better textures. The low resolution remained.

Shenmue kicks ass. I don' t understand what you are talking about with your alphabet example. But seriously, if you think Ryuga has fantastic (anything above " decent" ) graphics, there is something wrong with your eyeballs. You are probably looking at rendered screens. I looked at the actual gameplay graphics on my TV. The characters all look very simple. Urban Reign has great graphics. Current games are all about graphics. Gameplay has departed us long ago. But hey, if you like Ryu, well then more power to ya!

PS - What' s wrong with the forums? They seem on the verge of crashing. This seems to happen every few months or so. Seriously, change the forum software. The current stuff is very buggy and isn' t cutting it. (Of course now that I post that everything magically speeds up).

I' ve noticed the forums being a liittle unsteady recently, logging me out on occasion...

...but back to the topic. I never expected this game to *look* wonderful became, well, come on. It' s a PS2 game! Our eyes ahve been spoiled by 360 and PS3 games already. Hopefully there' s enough to keep you interested in the game so you can forget about the graphics. I' ve not heard a lot about this game but enough to know it' s sounding ace. Now all we have to do is wait about a year for it to hit the UK.. if it does at all.

joe redifer , i never said that ryu look awesom ,i' ve never seen the game but only on picrtures, and these look decent and sometimes excellent for a PS2... anyway i should see the game running on my tv before making a final judgement..

i don' t know why you didn' t understand my exemple, people who play shenmue should understand what i' m talking about... to sum up, shenmue is linear and very very repetitive, (only the excellent graphics and the thrilling story that kept me playing the game oh yeah and the hope of learning some cool moves) but the gameplay it stinks ....

Nice Ryuga Gotoku is a game im intrested in.
However i doesnt agree with the famitsu staff people about gaming...seen their most wanted games? 70% is not even worth poking on with a stick.
For me i mean...

The gameplay in Shenmue doesn' t stink. Sure it' s repetitive but is that necessarily a bad thing?
And I don' t think it is so repetitive. I mean, sure you' re usually looking for someone in Shenmue but hey, isn' t visiting dungeons in RPGs repetitive? Shooting people in most FPS games eventually gets repetitive, and so does racing games or any other game. Most games have lots of repetitive elements but are still fun to play because you have to see the whole picture. I never got tired of shenmue because of the combination of different elements in the game. And I thought it was fun to search for people, it felt so realistic and exciting somehow.

it is exciting to look for people and even to look for people to find these people , but what i don' t like : 90% of the game is based on that...

that' s why the game got average scores in most major websites and if it wasn' t for its excellent technical realisation (cut scenes , graphics, sound , music, animation) boy shenmue would have crashed so badly

and you mixed the cards with your exemple , many reviewers said that shenmue is very repetitive however they didn' t say that , half life 2 , god of war, final fantasy, devil may cry are repetitive, i think you got my point and made a difference. at least i hope so ...

Well shenmue is like FF you do the same thing,but there is that awesome story and characters that take with your for 30-40 hours min.

When it comes down to it, every game is repetitive, it' s what you do during the repetition that makes for a great gaming experience or one that' s easily forgotten.

Yeah,i think it was bungie who said;if you manage to make something really fun for 2 minutes you can repeat it for 10 hours and have a great game.
Thats why Fear got 90% of all gaming site/magazines,cause the lack of new stuff and repetively but still its fun enough to reach its high score,they managed to create a A.I that is enough fun to fight off every 1-5 minute and they come in a squad.
Ofc after some hours you seen it all same enemy same thing,but then you just had some hours left and had a blast.
Ofc they had some spooky things then again to get away from the action,but basically its the same thing the whole game,kill squad a,then squad b,then squad c then see spooky thing,kill squad d,see spoky thing,then next level and repeat in basically same enviorment.
Still the game was great and was well worth its 90% no doubt.
And bungies theory was right.
Btw,its almost the same with half life2,and halo/fear,you only need a awesome A.I then you can repeat like hell,with just a little distraction then and then.

thank you very much terry bogard i just didn' t know how to exactly answer the other guy

Shenmue' s story is linear, but stories do tend to need linearity. The game itself is not linear unless you just go from step to step and never stop to screw around. You don' t HAVE to go find the next person or learn that next move. Instead you can waste days playing Space Harrier or darts or practicing your moves. When you are ready, then you can go find those sailors!

Joe I totally agree - STOP the Crime GAMES :) - How many GTA' s do we need?

Good God what kind of gamer disses Shenmue? Man it is one in a milion and the only thing that' s pushing story telling so far is Shenmue 2 :)

Story linear? well so what - movies have much better storytelling than games and guess what ? they have one ending.

It' s linear Gameplay that may feel ackward but it all boils down to game design - FF7 had a linear story , but it had so much to do from gameplay perspective that no one will ever tell you how " linear" it was.

Oh and every game actually has 2 endings - the Credits or Game Over screen - so there are no linear titles :) hehe

Joe is Ryuga that bad?

I really had a Shenmue like expectations for it :(

Well the demo sucked, but the actual game seems much better. The story is a very large part of it, and unless you can understand Japanese you will be missing out substantially. I' d like to see this cross over with Engrish subtitles. Keep the Japanese voice in order to keep the Yakuza feel to it.

I think I said that the fighting reminds me of Urban Reign. The wandering scenes remind me of Need for Speed Most Wanted in that you basically just meander your way to a new point on the map at your leisure after each incident. You can' t talk to people (unless they are key characters) and you can' t go in stores and whatnot, unless there is an event waiting inside. There really isn' t much, if anything, Shenmue-like about it.

Well knowing that - I may actually like it for what it is.

Still a shame.

I hope Shenmue 3 - or even all parts in one package are really going to appear on next gen systems.

Kikizo had an article about it but to be honest I don' t think it' s possible if non of the big sites like gamespot or 1up or ign had any kind of info on that.

And they do mention rumors with that kind of signifcance.

Just because a certain site is big (like say IGN) doesn' t mean that they will ALWAYS have the info first or even have the info at all.

Kinda like the hint of the upcoming Sonic news Adam made a short while back and a few days later *BAM* Sega made it official and a lot of other sites reported it in their respective news sections.

True , but news with that kind of impact wouldn' t be neglected like that - especially since some of them have rumour sections.