Shenmue II is the sequel to the Sega Dreamcast Action/Role Playing Game Shenmue, written and directed by Yu Suzuki. The game was first released in Japan on September 6, 2001 for the Dreamcast. Soon after the release, it was announced that Microsoft had obtained exclusive rights to the game in the United States for its Xbox system, which cancelled the US release of the Dreamcast version. The Xbox version was launched in the US on October 28, 2002.
However, the Dreamcast version did get published in Europe by Big Ben Studios on November 23, 2001 for the Dreamcast. Unlike Shenmue, no English dub was made for the Dreamcast's version of Shenmue II; the original Japanese dub was supplemented with English subtitles in the European release.
Differences between the Xbox and Dreamcast versions
When the US Xbox version was released in 2002, it brought some changes and enhancements to the original with it. The most significant difference is the inclusion of a full English dub, with Corey Marshall reprising his role as Ryo Hazuki (芭月涼 Hazuki Ryō) from the first game. There are two new gameplay features - a Snapshot mode to take pictures of gameplay or cutscenes to store on the Xbox's hard drive and Filters to alter the colour filters used on the entire screen. The graphics were given a boost by the Xbox's more advanced hardware (more and better lighting during the night hours, better looking water, higher resolution textures, etc.), the framerate is now at a consistent 30fps without any loss in detail while eliminating the Dreamcast version's aggressive LOD that caused pedestrians to fade in and out of plain view in very crowded scenes, and shorter loading times.
Also added was a mode to view the player's snapshots, including six side stories that could be unlocked by taking pictures of certain characters. These side stories took the form of comics (or manga) and four of them expand on areas of the story that the main game touches on, while the remaining two contain bonus art.
While the original Dreamcast version came on four GD-ROM, the Xbox version is on one DVD and came bundled with Shenmue - The Movie on a separate DVD for play on a standard DVD player. The film is comprised entirely of scenes from the first game.
One feature the Xbox version lost was the ability to import a save file from a completed Shenmue game, allowing the player to bring items and money collected in the first to the second game.
Gameplay and story
Shenmue II features the same free-roaming gameplay as the first, and takes place in four main areas - Aberdeen, Wan Chai, Kowloon, and Guilin. The story continues the quest of the 18-year-old martial artist Ryo Hazuki to hunt down Lan Di, the mysterious Chinese man who murdered his father and stole a strange mirror with a dragon design.
