The aesthetic and atmosphere/music is what makes Shenmue what it is for me. In that way, it's sort of like GTA 3. GTA 3's graphics weren't the best, the controls weren't the best, but damn... did it do things that other games couldn't. That's partly why Shenmue is what it is. It did things that other games in its class weren't even thinking about yet.

Yeah Yakuza's are better games, imo. There's a lot more in those, with way more fleshed out mechanics, story and characters. Which shouldn't come as a surprise since Yakuza (Ryū ga Gotoku) has years of development and sequels in the franchise on Shenmue.

I was just saying that Shenmue was a great game at the time because there wasn't anything quite like it. Now its fairly outdated (even counting the third) but its structure, its mechanics and ideas are fairly influentual in the games industry. Can think of like what Goldeneye did to FPS's popularity for consoles.. only not so much as impact as that.

And idd.. SEGA dropped the ball with the third one. Not enough effort and budget gone into it and it looks and plays like an old relic and a bit indie-like in presentation.

Prefer shenmue a lot. Found Yakuza to be easier, a combat system for noobs to be honest.

I'm very much in favour of Sega or Sony to fund a proper studio and keep Yu Suzuki on leash to make a proper Shenmue 4.

The Shenmue games were never good to begin with. there is not a single game play mechanic present in those games I would consider fun or enjoyable

I will explain why, with one moment from the game.

At one point in the game you're looking for a travel agency that happens to be across the street from a lunch stand I believe. If you go talk to the lunch stand owner at this particular segment of the game, which lasts about five minutes really, she will tell you in not so many words, "Idiot, it's right there."

Bear in mind, this was a time at which voice acting was relatively new itself, at least on this scale. And even in text based games, in a similar situation, that woman would have most likely given the same dialogue that she always did. But, in this one, they recorded a specific line of dialogue for this obscure situation, for the one idiot who decides to talk to her to try to find the thing that's literally two feet away from them. Just to keep the immersion going, because, that's exactly what she would say in such a situation.

The attention to detail in the game was absolutely astounding for the time when games like this were almost entirely new. It was kind of mind blowing in 1999. Even playing it today, when in hindsight a lot of the elements don't work, it's abundantly clear that the game was a labor of love, which is part of why all of its little quirks are so endearing.